text,label
"(Int J Life Cycle Assess 23(3):1–13, 2016) and our own experience and logic, we assess ethical and practical issues, shortcomings, potential inconsistencies, and problems of inclusion of positive impacts and propose criteria for inclusion of positive impacts in LCA.ResultsDiscussed in relation to the inclusion of positive impacts in LCA are the conflicting descriptive and prescriptive character of LCA, the inclusion of internalities, considering “absence of negative impacts” as positive, measuring by status or by change and the therewith involved temporal scope, moral consequences of comparing positive and negative impacts to different stakeholder groups, the requirement of a capacity-raising character and maintenance of a positive impact, rebound effects, R&D, background and foreground data on positive impacts, and the inclusion of employment and product utilities as positive impacts",9
"(2018), p.417, state that “maximizing positive results might be more important than minimizing the damage originating from negative impacts.” It is indeed undeniable that modern agriculture and industry improved human wellbeing and reduced famine and epidemics",2
Fossil fuels were at the source of the industrial revolution but much later also of climate change,13
"Who in the nineteenth century could have expected climate change and who in the eighties of the twentieth century internet criminality? S-LCA should be based on performance reference points (PRPs) that preferably are based on legislation, international standards, or the sustainable development goals",13
"Questions arise like: “do the interests of the many outweigh those of the few,” “do the interests of the rich outweigh those of the poor, or the interests of shareholders those of the workers,” “do social positives outweigh environmental negatives, or the reverse,” and “may improvements in the working conditions in a coal mine with great effect on climate change, be considered as positives”? The concept of sustainability is defined by the Brundtland statement: “sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development 1987)",13
"We oppose the latter reasoning for two reasons: (1) Lack of maintenance” should be assessed a negative, just like it would be considering occupational health and safety aspects of equipment in industry",8
"The same difficulty applies for instance to commercial R&D activities on environmental or social improvements, where often a part of the activities is for maintenance or efficiency purposes (see also Section 4.1.11)",9
"In literature, the rebound effect usually refers to the compensating negative effect on one specific environmental aspect, usually related to resource and energy use and climate change",13
"For instance, an increased price of diesel, meant to mitigate carbon- and particulate matter emissions of cars, may lead to spending less on healthy food and thus to increased malnutrition",2
"In addition, one may seriously question if employment at sub-fair wages, or favoring privileged groups because of corruption, may be called a positive or a negative impact",16
"Therefore, as aforementioned, we propose to assess as positive the employment in the 20% poorest countries only, and only if the aspects of the fair minimum wage (Croes and Vermeulen 2016b) and fair inequality (Croes and Vermeulen 2016a) are properly included in the assessment",8
"But on the other side, the airbag was especially developed for a positive utility, which needs appreciation, just like windmills, solar panels, medicines, and food",7
"We argue that R&D and installation of impact-abating technology are capacity raising and therefore the depreciation and interest are positives (see Sections 4.1.7 and 4.1.11), but the utility is not, because of the here-described reasons",9
Several times aforementioned were R&D activities,9
"Literally taken, R&D activities by commercial actors are type 1 positive internalities, which should not be part of LCA",9
"This becomes very clear in the pharmaceutical industry, but also in information technology, where a major part of the price of the product is for financing the internal R&D costs",9
"Therefore, we argue that R&D activities that are really focused on sustainable development deserve a positive characterization",9
"However, because it will be very difficult to determine verifiable and reliable criteria for quantification of the positive impact of R&D activities, we propose to characterize R&D as positive for products and activities that are (almost) exclusively intended for sustainable development and are externalities or type 2 internalities",9
We have no proposal yet for R&D activities that are less exclusively intended for sustainable development,9
"We suggest to limit inclusion of positive R&D activities to well-defined contributions to one of the 17 SDGs, or more granularly, defined to the 27 midpoints as defined by Vermeulen 2018, p.24",9
"Even the original S-LCA guidelines admit that the inclusion of positives was influenced by negative perceptions of low-income countries considering S-LCA as “anti-development,” insufficiently addressing their most significant short-term problems like poverty, unemployment, accidents, and other immediate issues (Benoît Norris et al",8
R&D activities (almost) exclusively intended for environmental or social improvements are positives if the envisioned results are beneficial also to others than those involved in the economic transaction,9
"For the assessment of R&D activities that are less exclusively intended for sustainable development, we currently have no proposals, especially not for how to assess their externality share",9
"Products of which the utility is (almost) exclusively unburdening (e.g., solar panels) are positives",7
"For instance, a company may require from a supplier to renounce pesticides, child labor, or under-fair minimum wage payment for his total production, larger than intended for the company itself",8
Employment and minimum wages higher than the fair minimum wage can only be considered a positive in the 20% poorest countries and if equally applied for all personnel (Section 4.1.9),8
"The capturing itself would also be a positive if taken from the atmosphere, but not if used for prevention of industrial emissions, because that would be “mitigation of negatives.” Restoration and/or long-term protection of natural ecosystems, or upgrading of soil or water systems (SDG-14, 15), other than damage caused by the actor’s own activities Over-average crop yields in agriculture, compared with the yields by country, listed in (FAO 2019) (SDG-15), but only if the agricultural negatives are also included in the assessment Under-normal cost price provided beneficial by-products (e.g., heat from a power or chemical plant, used for municipal heating), sustainably mitigating impacts (SDG-12,13,14,15) Payments for ecosystem services (UNDP 2015) and of environmental taxes Poverty-reducing activities by capacity/ability improving means (e.g., micro-credits) or by other means, or hunger relief in the 20% lowest-income countries (SDG-1, 2) Healthcare (Srinivasan et al",15
"2016) (SDG-3), other than for inflicted harm in the supply chain itself Capacity building, e.g., education and training in the community, either intern or extern (excluding “on the job”) (Ekener-Petersen et al",4
"2016) (SDG-4) Helping underdeveloped actors to sustainably raise quality, yields, or sustainability also for others than involved in the relevant supply chain (various SDGs) Reducing gender inequality and empowerment of women and girls outside of the own company (SDG-5) Improving water safety and availability in the 20% lowest-income countries (SDG-6) Employment, but only if all of the following applies: The country or region has a (far) below-average employment rate",5
"The involved country has a high corruption perceptions index (low corruption), or the company can demonstrate absence of corruption (reversal of the burden of proof)",16
"The fair minimum wage (Croes and Vermeulen 2016b) is paid to all employees, and the country has an almost zero child labor percentage or the company can demonstrate zero child labor (reversal of the burden of proof)",8
"Good Occupational Health and Safety conditions can be demonstrated, e.g., by certification to ISO 45001",8
"(SDG-8) Second-order local employment in the 20% lowest-income countries, caused by the local expenditures of a company’s employees Employing of people with distance to the labor market by a mental or physical handicap (SDG-8,10) Donations to recognized and effective sustainability pursuing NGOs, but excluding political entities (SDG-17) Providing beneficial products below cost price, e.g., medicines for the underprivileged (SDG-1) Providing free services, e.g., internet services with positive sustainability impact, but only if the related negative aspects (e.g., invasion of privacy; spam) are also assessed Emergency relief, freely at the disposal of the community (SDG-3,11) Protection of cultural heritage and indigenous peoples and stimulation of cultural activities that do not harm sustainability (SDG-11) Sustainable contributions to the local community (infrastructure in the 20% poorest countries, nature, sponsoring, cleaning, sport (Schulenkorf and Edwards 2012), art, and other cultural aspects (Archer et al",11
Massive scientific research has been conducted to discuss the SDGs [3],9
"Economic cooperation such as international trade, integrated economic growth [20,21,22], and their interactions with other disciplines [23] are recognised as positive contributions to achieving the SDGs",8
"Perhaps the investments, technologies, and infrastructures to be applied within the different industries will inevitably generate various impacts such as displacement, resettlement, and other social impacts [39, 40]",10
"According to Amos and Lydgate [50], despite having been fulfilled as a global objective to ensure that all regions of the globe achieve economic growth, social development, and environmental preservation, the factual structures that contribute to the monitoring of goals and their development, especially those aimed at the SDGs interconnections, do not explicitly deal with the tension between the goods that are considered as global audiences and the quantification of the SDGs on national scales",8
"Some of these promising technologies have been and are being tested, but often in isolated “pilot studies”, which would benefit from global information sharing and development, e.g., technology that removes arsenic from water [56]; high potential, but not yet mainstream, waste-to-energy technologies [57]; or bio-based technologies limited by the availability of biomass [58]",12
"Four cases were selected to outline the application of SDGs 3, 6, 11, and 17 in Latin America, since it represents one of the most unequal regions with large technological, investment, and infrastructure gaps",9
"There has been more emphasis on terms related to climate change adaptation and mitigation, with related terms mainly being concentrated in the red and green clusters",13
"Therefore, technological innovation should be aligned with the principles of sustainable development to contribute to meeting the needs of all societal groups and ensure development within planetary boundaries [66]",8
"While technology is a major driving force of economic development, it has traditionally been dominated by a few giant companies that have prioritised consumption-oriented growth over sustainable development [66]",8
Such technologies are believed to promote economic development and improve national and local prosperity through optimising operations and improving service accessibility [67],8
"Also, SDG13 on climate change has received the second most amount of attention according to the same source",13
"In fact, the UN Secretary-General presented some priorities for 2021 [70] that are somewhat aligned with those identified in this study, namely, to make peace with Nature, tackle poverty and inequality and reverse the assault on human rights",1
"It is widely acknowledged that infrastructures are crucial to achieving significant development outcomes, i.e., poverty (SDG1), health (SDG3), education (SDG4), economic (SDG8) and environmental (SDG 12, 13, 14, 15) targets [73] through collaborative partnerships (SDG17) [74]",12
"As the case studies illustrate, there is a tension between achieving the SDGs on the one hand, while meeting the climate targets set by the Paris Agreement, on the other",13
"Poverty and hunger are mainly related to food security [77], which can be alleviated through a transformation in the agriculture sector [78]",2
"The use of advanced technologies and practices is critical to intensifying food production sustainability, namely in disadvantaged communities that are more vulnerable to poverty, hunger, and food insecurity [79,80,81,82]",2
"Interestingly, SDG11 on sustainable cities is included in the high-priority group, illustrating the importance of technology in contributing to necessary sustainable development",11
"On the other hand, technology can be used to increase productivity, positively contributing to economic growth, but can also exacerbate inequalities, which is, in fact, the major problem worldwide, significantly impacting SDGs 8, 9, and 10",8
Investments made are mostly focused on economic development but they have consequences on the SDGs achievement at the global level [88],8
"The investments and infrastructures needed to improve the access to affordable and clean energy become obvious from the extraordinary dependence on the health, economic and environmental sectors’ performance",7
"According to the UNCTAD SDG Investment Monitor [62], SDGs investment activities declined sharply across all SDGs sectors, except for renewable energy, which continued to grow in new SDGs projects, however, only at one-third of the pre-COVID level",7
"Investments in food and agriculture, water and sanitation, health and education, were reduced by one to two-thirds from 2019",6
In 2015 the United Nations drafted the Paris Agreement and established the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for all nations,13
A question of increasing relevance is the extent to which the pursuit of climate action (SDG 13) interacts both positively and negatively with other SDGs,13
"Equally, as the widespread impacts of climate change continue to unfold, there is growing concern that insufficient climate action is being taken in response",13
Understanding these questions should allow policy makers to mitigate the trade-offs and amplify the synergies between taking climate action and delivering on the core objectives captured by the SDGs,13
"In an attempt to clarify these questions, we use the United Kingdom (UK) as a case study to test a hybrid methodology to identify SDG synergies and trade-offs, with a particular focus on climate action (SDG13)",13
"As well as being the first country to declare such an emergency, the UK is a leader on SDG 13 policies, establishing the Climate Change Act in 2008 [1], which was amended in 2019 to mandate net-zero emissions by 2050 [2]",13
The UK policy approach therefore provides fertile ground for the identification and evaluation of the extent to which SDG 13 interacts with other SDGs and how far these interactions can inform policy-making across the UK’s administrations,13
This allows for a more detailed evaluation of interactions with goals which have particular relevance to both the UK and SDG 13,13
"The exclusion of the eight remaining SDGs does not posit that these goals have no meaningful interactions with SDG 13, only that they were omitted from this study to keep the scope manageable whilst proving the basic concept",13
"The principal objective of this work is to identify and assess interactions between SDG 13 and SDGs 3, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14 and 15 as they appear in UK climate-relevant policy documents",13
"It is therefore not an exhaustive assessment of SDG 13 interactions more broadly, but a proof of concept exercise which applies a novel research methodology to those SDGs deemed relevant to the UK context",13
SDG 6 ‘Clean Water and Sanitation’ was not selected because the UK generally has high levels of potable water access and sanitation infrastructure),6
"Our approach clearly builds on existing work in this area, combining a semantic and expert survey dimension in order to identify and evaluate SDG interactions in a national policy context with a focus on SDG 13",13
"By contrast, our interest here is in understanding how SDG 13 interactions (synergies and trade-offs) with other SDGs map onto the UK and devolved administrations’ departments and policies",13
"In summary, the rationale for our methodology design is three-fold: firstly, to develop a novel hybrid approach to rapidly identifying and assess SDG interactions; secondly, to identify and assess the co- benefits and trade-offs with other policy goals of taking climate action in the UK; and thirdly, to provide an analytical toolkit which can be applied by the research and policy community to a range of national and international settings",13
"For example, keywords for SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) included ‘clean energy’, which forms part of the goal title, and ‘renewable energy’ which appears in the goal description",7
"Since our research question concerns itself with synergies and trade-offs between SDG 13 and other SDGs, we focused on identifying policy and strategy documents of direct relevance to SDG 13",13
"The remaining policies and legislation were then deemed relevant to SDG 13 either because they were referenced in the SDG 13 chapter of the VNR, or because of their explicit connection with, or relation to, climate action",13
"For example, the Agriculture Bill (2019) isn’t included as a policy document in the SDG 13 chapter, but it has obvious linkages to climate action, given the large role of agriculture and land use in greenhouse gas emissions",13
"As already noted, we focused on the interactions between SDG 13 and a subset of eight SDGs (3, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14 and 15) from the full set of seventeen, in order to demonstrate a concept rather than provide a fully comprehensive mapping, whilst keeping the research tractable",13
"Again, this aspect of our methodology was designed to focus on the identification and assessment of potential negative interactions (as well as identifying further positive interactions) between SDG 13 and other SDGs",13
"We chose this particular subset of SDGs because of the strength of their interaction with SDG 13 as identified in the keyword search, as well as because of their relevance to the UK’s current policy focus around national health systems in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, and possible policy responses to the lockdown-related recession",13
[12] with permission) Nilsson scale for scoring interactions between the Sustainable Development Goals  The relevant SDG targets for UK climate action across which synergies and trade-offs were explored are as set out in Table 2,13
"Secondly, because the health co-benefits of climate action are likely to provide significant economic return [24,25,26]",13
"By contrast, targets like 3.a, which is to ‘strengthen the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control’, are not considered sufficiently relevant for the purposes of this study",3
“Identifying and assessing SDG 13 synergies: keyword search” section gives results for the keyword search and “Identifying and assessing SDG 13 trade-offs: expert survey” section describes results from the expert survey,13
"“Identifying and assessing SDG 13 synergies: keyword search” section is broken down into subsections which show interactions between SDG 13 and SDGs 3 and 8, respectively",13
Each subsection of “Identifying and assessing SDG 13 synergies: keyword search” section has as its title the relevant SDG and sub-target (shown in brackets) whose interactions are presented,13
"To illustrate this, Table 1 below shows the top seven SDG 3 (Good Health and Well- being) keywords by frequency in the climate-relevant policies tested (shown in S3)",3
"As well as the SDG 3 ‘title’ keywords (‘Good Health’ and ‘Well-being’), the climate-relevant policies frequently mention other important keywords such as ‘mental health’, ‘air pollution’ and ‘disease’, indicating the potential importance of these health-related themes in climate policy",3
"This is shown in Fig. 4 by the fact that the lines leading into SDGs 7 and 11, which originate from the suite of SDG 13-relevant policy documents, are the thickest, and therefore have the greatest number of keywords relevant to these two SDGs",13
"Sankey diagram showing the frequency of SDG-relevant keywords in climate action policies and their distribution across UK administrations, departments and directorates, as determined by the keyword search Figure 4 also offers a more nuanced picture of the relationship between climate-relevant policies and SDG delivery across the UK’s departments, directorates and administrations",13
"On this basis, in England, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) appears to play an especially important role with regards to delivering SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), as does the Department for Transport (DfT)",11
"In both cases, this relationship is shown in Fig. 4 by the thickness of the lines from SDG 11 to the respective UK government departments, which signifies the distribution of SDG 11 keywords found in policies for which those departments are responsible",11
Summary of SDG 13–3 positive (green) and negative (red) interactions and Nilsson scores provided by expert survey phase,13
Central number indicates average score The relevant SDG targets for UK climate action across which synergies and trade-offs were explored as set out in Table 2,13
"By contrast, targets like 3.a, which is to ‘strengthen the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control’, are not considered sufficiently relevant for the purposes of this study",3
"obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases from sedentary lifestyles and respiratory diseases from poor ambient air quality)",3
"Equally, policies which discourage high levels of carbon intensive food consumption, such as a red meat, are also likely to reduce rates of cardiovascular disease [27]",3
cardiovascular and respiratory disease and anxiety),3
"By contrast, experts highlighted that the decarbonisation of heat has gone largely unaddressed in the UK, and so the potential negative impacts will, in large part, be determined by future policy approaches",13
"As a result, there is a risk that any move to absorb heat decarbonisation costs through consumer bills will increase heating costs and therefore the extent of fuel poverty",13
"Overall, respondents considered this trade-off to be ‘constraining’, giving an average score of − 1.1, acknowledging that several supporting measures (such as improved energy efficiency) are likely to help offset future increases in heating fuel costs",7
"biofuel production, and the impact this could have on human health through its interaction with arable land and therefore food price and availability, particularly as the UK begins to warm and the risk of pestilence, crop failure and drought increase",15
"Most obviously, this is because improving our capacity for impact reduction will protect human life from the effects of climate change (e.g",13
"However, respondents argued that messaging around climate action is a very challenging communications task, and if mismanaged, can create panic, hysteria, and support the spread of misinformation",13
"This is likely to have a material impact on the mental health and well-being of UK citizens, in the form of ‘climate anxiety’ and stress [30]",3
"This is because policies which encourage low-carbon or active modes of travel, such as public transport, cycling or walking, remove individuals from private vehicles and therefore often from infrastructure which shares road traffic, reducing the accident risk",11
"On the other hand, the example trade-offs provided by respondents highlight that the decarbonisation of private mobility, e.g",13
"For this section, no new example synergies were generated by respondents beyond those given, which gained strong consensus (average score of + 2.4)—strengthening resilience and response to climate change and reducing deaths from chemical, air, water and soil pollution/contamination",13
"Overall, respondents scored this as a strong interaction with an average score of + 2.7, citing the Covid-19 pandemic as an example of a large-scale public health risk",3
Summary of SDG 13–8 positive (green) and negative (red) interactions and Nilsson scores provided by expert survey phase,13
Table 3 below shows the SDG targets considered most relevant for examining the relationship between climate action and SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) in a UK context,8
"First, experts interviewed expressed concern that measures which effectively decoupled emissions and economic growth could simply lead to the offshoring of emissions elsewhere (− 1.0)",8
"Secondly, others argued that whilst in principle targets 13.2 and 8.4 are synergistic, there are certain high carbon UK sectors that pose an inverse correlation risk, such as agriculture, where growth of the sector may actually drive environmental degradation (-1.0)",15
"Thirdly, some respondents suggested that without some shift away from orthodox economic thinking, growth and environmental degradation cannot be decoupled",15
"For example, as energy efficiency improves people may consume more, resulting in negative impacts outside of energy (e.g",7
"These results, taken in their entirety, help demonstrate that our methodology greatly improves our understanding of how current climate action policy is distributed across the SDGs and UK departments, directorates, and administrations",13
"Furthermore, the results of the keyword search give a detailed indication of the SDG-relevance of climate action policy in the UK and a picture of how these policies (and therefore SDG-delivery) are distributed across UK departments, directorates and administrations",13
"We demonstrated a connection between the keyword search and expert survey phases by focusing on two of the highest scoring SDGs which were also contextually relevant to a post-Covid UK and the target SDG(s), (in our case SDG 13)",13
The first is that SDGs connected to SDG 13-relevant policies from the UK’s VNR are much more inter-departmental than the UK Government's classification would suggest,13
"Third, by looking at the most frequent keywords for an SDG of interest, we can better understand exactly how a certain policy, or group of policies, is linked to our SDGs—for example, that there is particular mention of ‘mental health’ in climate- relevant policies",3
"Finally, in addition to the above, it is important to reflect on the limitations of our focus on SDG 13 itself",13
"We have taken climate-relevant policy and strategy to represent UK climate action, documents which Laumann et al",13
"However, it is unclear what impact these policies, frameworks and strategies have on actually reducing the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, as global mean temperature is not included as an indicator for SDG 13",13
"We recommend here that in order to fully understand the relationship between the SDGs and climate change, we must include as a foundational indicator global mean temperature",13
"We have demonstrated the efficacy of this approach in a UK context, through examining interactions between SDG 13 (Climate Action), represented by climate-relevant policies from the UK VNRs, with a subset of eight other SDGs",13
"Finally, we hope that the tools highlighted by this study are capable of improving our understanding of SDG delivery alongside large-scale societal challenges, such as climate change and the coronavirus pandemic.",13
"target 2.1 “End hunger by 2030”), whereas in some cases targets are just defined as changes in the direction of movement or specific trends (e.g",2
"The most cited SDGs were SDG 3—Health (86 results, e.g",3
"[20, 22, 62]), SDG 13—Climate change (69, e.g",13
"[55]), SDG 7—Energy (28, e.g",7
"[44]) and SDG 6 – Water and sanitation (28, e.g",6
Obersteiner [47] found that policies for SDG 12 (Sustainable Consumption and Production) are the most effective at minimising trade-offs and emphasise the importance of these policies to the formulation of coherent SDG strategies,12
"“Proportion of people”, “Death rate” or “Maternal mortality ratio”), but most of them do not define actual target levels",3
"(“By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day”), the ambition level is described already in the target, but the indicator (“Proportion of population below the international poverty line, …”) just specifies the metrics for measuring it",1
“achieve access to adequate sanitation”) Quantified progress: The development is described by a verb indicating quantified progress (e.g,6
"For example, target 8.8 (“Protect labour rights and promote safe and secure working environments …”) has two different targets (“protect labour rights” and “promote safe and secure working environments”), and thus 50% of it was classified in the category “full achievement”, and 50% in the category “progress”",8
"Also, the time horizon of the deadlines varies between SDGs, with the shortest timescale being for SDG 14 (“Life below water”) where half of the targets have a deadline of 2020 or 2025",14
"At the other end of the scale was SDG 9 (“Industry, innovation and infrastructure”), in which only 13% of the targets belong to either of these categories",9
"For instance, some targets have specific deadlines, but only vague or non-existent quantification (e.g., target 6.2 “By 2030, achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation”)",6
"Conversely, there are targets with defined levels of quantification, but no deadlines mentioned (such as target 5.1 “End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere”)",10
"Distribution of 193 countries into different classes in terms of how they perform in each SDG according to the SDR Based on the results, we identified four SDGs that illustrate interesting findings when comparing them using the outcomes derived from our evaluation framework: High SAI, low API: On SDG 2 (“Zero hunger”), the results of the SDR are quite in line with our semantic ambitiousness analysis",2
"One additional reason for a generally poor performance of the countries in achieving SDG 2 is that besides having indicators related to hunger itself, there are also indicators not related to hunger but to the ways of producing food such as the sustainability of food production including nutrient loading",2
"High SAI, high API: On SDG 4 (“Quality education”), our analysis and the SDR suggest very opposite results",4
"One reason for this is that the SDR interprets the targets of this SDG quite loosely, and most of the SDG 4 targets that are initially formulated as “full achievement” (such as “ensure that all boys and girls complete secondary education”), do not require 100% of people completing the goal but something between 90 and 97%",4
Another reason is that the SDG 4 targets seem to be correlated with each other in the sense that if you reach one target (e.g,4
"“primary education for all”), it is likely that you will also reach the other ones (e.g",4
"“secondary education for all”), and vice versa",4
"That is, this is the second-least achieved goal in the SDR (API = 0.54), but in our analysis it is the least strictly defined (SAI = 31%), and only one SDG 9 target was defined as an achievement",9
"Low SAI, high API: SDG 17 (“Partnerships for the goals”) is the fourth best achieved goal by the countries in the SDR (API = 1.35), and is also quite unambitiously defined according to our analysis (SAI = 33%), which is quite in line with expectations",17
"One should, however, note that the SDG 17 targets are very diverse and thus, much depends on which indicators are selected for the analyses",17
"Actually, in 2015 the share of protected areas at a global level was 12.5%, which means that the target was already met at the global level at the time of the target being originally set",15
The coverage of births attended by skilled health personnel has increased constantly in recent decades following the overall economic development of countries globally,8
Target 8.1: “Sustain per capita economic growth”,8
"In this respect, constant economic growth can be considered rather ambitious, especially as the link between the increase in economic growth and well-being is not straightforward [41]",8
Target 3.3: “[By 2030] End the epidemic of malaria”,3
"Another example is SDG 13, in which the initial set of indicators did not include the actual CO2 emissions, but the commitment by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to mobilise $100 billion annually by 2020 to support climate activities [67].Footnote 1 A likely reason for not specifying explicit targets for CO2 emissions was the risk of disturbing negotiations aiming at the Paris agreement",13
"The targets characterised by a natural limit, such as target 2.1 “End hunger”, are often very ambitious, as they are typically defined in terms of “what should be done”, following the principle of leaving no-one behind",2
"One should also note that there are various ways of formulating the same achievement, for example, “end hunger” can be seen as synonymous with “ensure access to sufficient and healthy nutrition to all”",2
"In contrast, regarding the targets that have no meaningful lower or upper limit (for example, target 9.5 “enhance scientific research”) the development can be—at least in theory—continued endlessly",9
"85% of the targets under SDG 9), perhaps with an aim to help implement them through national policies",9
"For example, on SDG 9, the SDR has apparently defined the target levels quite strictly, as in our analysis it was only the second least achieved goal in the SDR",9
"For example, on target 4.1 (“Ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes”) the SDR has the indicator “the lower secondary completion rate” which is already considered to be achieved at a level of 90%, whereas semantically “all girls and boys” should mean 100%",4
"For example, the SDR has only three indicators for SDG 1, all of which are related to absolute or relative income (i.e",1
The SDGs were designed to conclude the work that the MDGs started and thus explicitly included “zero goals” (such as “End poverty in all its forms everywhere”) from the very beginning [59],1
"Among them, while the MDGs only mentioned environmental stability, the SDGs have introduced a mainstreamed approach to safeguarding climate and biodiversity and include, apart from a standalone goal of climate, a wealth of new focus areas such as topics of urbanisation, an entirely new goal on water and sanitation, as well as on energy",6
"In this respect, the differences highlighted by our analysis, for example, between the API and SAI on SDG 9, is a good example of the need for being aware of the implications of formulating ambitiousness of goals and targets in different ways",9
"Third, there is a wider commitment to certain global challenges (e.g., climate change, poverty, water, peace)",13
"Many of the above global trends pre-date COVID-19, being accentuated as the pandemic progresses, including digitalization, authoritarian and extreme right tendencies, and growing global inequality [9]",9
The combination of public and business policies with technological innovation can mitigate the negative impact of economic activities on the SDGs [22],8
Green refers to rebuilding after the COVID-19 crisis in a way that tackles climate change and aligns with the SDGs,13
"Green recovery will be carried out differently by country because measures depend on factors such as macroeconomic conditions, fiscal budget, pre-existing stimulus packages, capacity and ambition to address the climate crisis, and level of commitment to other policy objectives [19]",13
"This level of investment in the green economy is comparable to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 designed to harness economic benefits from investing in green infrastructure, promoting renewable energy and creating green jobs after the recession",7
"This demonstrates the importance of making investment decisions based on the skills within each community and, although costly, the need to combine investment in green job creation with investment in training",8
"To date, analysis by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on green recovery responses shows that governments have included the measure of “creating jobs and stimulating economic activity through ecosystem restoration” however skills training has not been prioritized",15
The OECD advises that investment in skills and education is vital to ensure a successful transition to a green economy that is inclusive of all communities,4
"Shortages of green skills are most prevalent in sectors including renewable energy, resource efficiency, building renovation, construction, environmental services and manufacturing",7
Taxing the damage caused by carbon emissions and environmental pollution and eradicating fossil-fuel subsidies could create government revenue that could then be diverted to investments in the green economy,12
Incentives for long-term investment in renewable energy decrease the demand for fossil fuels and aid the transition to more sustainable economic practices,7
A technology spillover occurs when the research and development of a firm or industry rapidly diffuses to other firms and industries,9
"However, spillovers can act as a disincentive to private firms and industries because the firm or industry carrying out the research and development receives little or no return from the diffusion of innovation despite incurring costs",9
Technology-push policies are a solution for addressing underinvestment in green research and development,9
An example of this involves government subsidies designed to increase demand for clean energy,7
Accessible clean energy is vital for a higher quality of living [37],7
A strategy for increasing government revenue for investment is lowering tax avoidance,17
"Low-income countries lose 1.3% of their GDP via companies practicing tax avoidance each year, which highlights an opportunity to intercept this money and use it to fund the achievement of the SDGs",17
This includes adaptive behaviors such as using unfamiliar technology to work remotely and reduced use of public transport and private vehicles,11
Post-crisis investment should consider high-speed broadband and teleworking infrastructure as well as domestic energy efficiency for those working from home on a long-term basis [38],7
"Sustainable energy transitions depend on complex behavior changes, such as working from home or cycling, so there is certainly an opportunity for successful de-carbonization of energy systems [39]",7
"A study by the UN asked one million people about their aspirations for the future, and people around the world are citing climate action as being important to them in future COVID-19 recovery plans [40]",13
"
The circular economy and nature based solutions
 OECD analysis shows that 24 national governments plan to implement pandemic measures that have negative environmental impacts",12
"The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has calculated that transitioning to a circular economy has the potential to create 700,000 jobs by 2040, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% and save US$200 billion per year",12
UN High-level Political Forum (HLPF) in 2020 identified nature-based solutions and circular economy as important for achieving the SDGs and argued they should be mainstreamed by decision makers to create more resilient systems,12
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has also cited the circular economy as the key to creating resilient supply chains post COVID-19,12
Including the reuse and recycling of materials in supply chains can lead to cheaper products for consumers and cheaper materials for producers,12
The World Economic Forum has launched a set of 21 metrics that are designed to show how companies are tackling the climate crisis and contributing to the SDGs,13
"Investing in green systems and clean energy will be challenging, as it is estimated that before COVID-19, governments were $2.5 trillion short of being able to achieve the SDGs",7
"For example, in lower- and middle-income countries, investing in renewable energy also increases the rates of electrification, which lowers poverty levels and makes neighborhoods safer [38]",7
"Questions were raised as follows: Is it truly important for young people to travel around for short-term projects? How can one better correlate international work with local communities? What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of educational online programs? Organizations were pressured to find solutions, such as “QG Enviro”, a local organization in Lecce, Italy, working on environmental education and awareness, which is reorienting toward sustainable agriculture and tourism for resilience to unexpected events",2
This is a positive result of labor-related crisis management with respect to securing the “Good Health and Well-being” (SDG 3) of employees and their social environment,3
Bradbury and Isham [58] note the consequences of COVID-19 on domestic violence,5
Preliminary interpretations allow a first conclusion that technostress induced by forced home-office work can be considered a substantial threat to decent work and to workers’ good health and well-being,8
"Implications for consumption/production SDG 12 “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns” is one of the most transversals in its design because it includes a wide range of topics, such as efficient use of natural resources, minimizing the loss and waste of food, ecological management of chemicals throughout their life cycle, solid waste management, sustainable public purchases, sustainable tourism, environmental education and finally the elimination of fiscal incentives for fossil fuels, which can distort the market",12
"Individual decisions are important for the mobility system, in order for the trend to continue and SDG 11 about the sustainable cities and communities to be achieved",11
"Alternative transport, such as cycling, allows easy social distancing and contributes to better public health through the reduction of air pollution",3
"However, many residents perceive public transport as posing the risk of being infected and are using more private vehicles",11
The global response to COVID-19 could accelerate progress on climate change if governments are able to use the momentum created by the short-term decrease in global greenhouse gas emissions,13
"Lock-down related effects such online education, forced home-office work, unemployment or decreased working hours, reduced mobility, etc., have enhanced social-structural injustice and inequality (SDG5) and (SDG10)",8
"In addition, climate change is a global issue that transcends political boundaries, so strengthening global cooperation is an integral part of achieving the SDGs",13
"We present an overview of the identified interconnections between topics related to education, workforce and wellbeing, consumption and production, and climate change",13
"Building on recent advancements in the water footprint concept, it can be an effective steering instrument to support, inter alia, achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) - SDG 6 in particular. Within the research program “Water as a Global Resource” (GRoW), an initiative of the Federal Ministry for Education and Research, a number of research projects currently apply and enhance the water footprint concept in order to identify areas where water is being used inefficiently and implement practical optimization measures (see imprint for more information). With this paper, we aim to raise awareness on the potential of the water footprint concept to inform decision-making in the public and private sectors towards improved water management and achieving the SDGs",6
"Two billion people live in countries experiencing high water stress, and more than four billion lack access to basic sanitation (UN Water 2019)",6
The “water crisis” is constantly ranked among the top 5 global risks reported by the World Economic Forum in its annual global risk reports (WEF 2020),6
The link between the global water crisis and our production and consumption of water intense products has been made transparent by concepts like “Virtual Water”,6
Other methods allow to assess the effects of water consumption on: human health and well-being (due to malnutrition Pfister et al,2
2018) or infectious diseases (Boulay et al,3
2019a)) freshwater resources (Mila i Canals et al,6
"With this short communication, we aim to raise awareness on the potential of the water footprint concept to inform decision-making in the public and private sectors towards improved water management and achieving the SDGs—SDG 6 in particular",6
"Building on the advancement of the WF concept within the last 20 years, WF assessments today can support different stakeholders in achieving the SDGs, and in particular SDG 6, in the areas policy and planning, production and consumers",6
from developing countries into the European Union via cotton and textiles or mineral resources used for conventional and renewable energy production,7
It can also show the extent to which water scarcity in a country is caused by its export of water intense goods,6
The GRoW research project go-CAM (2020) uses WF calculations as additional information for a Multi Criteria Decision Analysis to support decision making on water management strategies in the water stressed region of Northwest Germany,6
"On a more local level, the WF concept can inform policy decisions on how to achieve water-use efficiency e.g",6
by demonstrating how improved use of green water can help to reduce water scarcity (Schyns et al,6
Support sustainable procurement by identifying where water efficient raw materials and intermediate products could be part of a company’s environmental management strategy,12
"Identify potential hotspots of water scarcity in modern electricity production supply chains, e.g",6
"concentrated solar power, with a special focus on remote impacts induced by mining of mineral resources that are required in electricity generation",7
The GRoW project InoCottonGROW (2020) developed a framework to communicate the WF of textiles to consumers by means of ecolabels considering best water management practice in cotton cultivation and textile production,6
"Despite the scientific advancement of the WF concept, several challenges remain that may hamper its wider application as an instrument to guide decision-making towards more sustainable water use",6
The GRoW project ViWA (2020) includes biodiversity into a refined water scarcity assessment in order to support decision making towards environmentally sustainable water use,6
Methodologies to assess impacts of water use on water quality have not yet been sufficiently developed,6
Impacts on water quality are often not addressed or only calculated based on a single quality parameter,6
The GRoW project InoCottonGROW (2020) analyzes local cause-effect chains of water pollution resulting from the use of pesticides in cotton cultivation and the emission of hazardous substances in textile dying in Pakistan,6
Most studies merely focus on the blue water scarcity and blue water saving,6
The GRoW community recommends applying recently developed methods to assess local impacts resulting from both water consumption and water pollution,6
Make use of the water footprint to identify where investment in more sustainable water use is most efficient,6
"For private companies as well as for governments, it might be environmentally more beneficial and often economically more efficient and to invest in water use efficiency measures at suppliers or in exporting countries which face high water stress rather than focusing on production-site or domestic measures only",6
"Analyse virtual water flows and resulting impacts in order to identify hotspots, for instance associated with European imports, and develop specific policy measures mitigating local water stress in the exporting countries",6
"Policy measures based on virtual water trade analysis should consider local circumstances to prevent negative social and economic trade-offs, such as, reduced income or unemployment",8
Apply the water footprint to guide decisions on strategies to achieve SDGs interlinked with SDG 6 on water,6
This has been incorporated into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) which focuses on providing equitable education and promoting lifelong learning [15],4
"The process of learning on sustainable development has shown to significantly contribute to the development of new skills, tools and concepts that are utilised in abolishing unsustainable practices",4
"Furthermore, it aids in building resilience to a variety of social problems",3
Sustainability learning is also multi-faceted,4
"It allows knowledge to be transferred about personal experiences, values and opinions which promotes social cohesion and inclusivity [1]",10
"Among the many types of non-conventional learning environments on a sustainable development context, mention can be made to four of them: lifelong learning, transformative learning, and learning based on traditional knowledge",4
"Lifelong learning has been described as a developmental tool that can be used as an effective tool to support learning on, through and about the environment [7], can provide a strong framework for the achievement of the SDGs",4
"It can be used as an accessory for stakeholder engagement, international partnerships, social equity and lastly to alleviate poverty",1
"The process of lifelong learning goes before and well beyond the school phase, which allows people to continually learn and adapt their knowledge accordingly [14]",4
"Furthermore, the incorporation of indigenous knowledge into sustainability learning tends to be more cost-effective (since the usual classrooms structures are often not necessary) and provide a more fertile ground for the search for practical solutions to sustainability challenges [8, 12]",4
"As this commentary has shown, learning on matters related to sustainable development in non-formal settings is not only multi-faced, but also has the ability to draw attention to social inequalities, while allowing for solutions to be discussed and developed",10
"Combined, the various modalities of learning on sustainable development may specifically help in achieving the SDGs, especially those which target inequalities such as educational inequality (SDG4) and gender inequality (SDG5) [14]",5
The widespread approach narrows the gap of educational and gender inequality and provides fair opportunities to all people.,5
"1 SynopsisIn the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations’ (FAO) latest report, the change in narrative from failure to continued progress of Southeast Asia in addressing undernourishment, is akin to ‘snoozing’ a much-needed wake-up call for achieving the zero-hunger 2030 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)",2
"In the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations’ (FAO) latest report, the change in narrative from failure to continued progress of Southeast Asia in addressing undernourishment, is akin to ‘snoozing’ a much-needed wake-up call for achieving the zero-hunger 2030 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)",2
"In the 47th Session of the Committee on World Food Security, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations called for transforming agri-food systems in the face of the COVID-19",2
"Falling by approximately 4.5 million per year, undernourishment fell from 101.7 million people in 2005 to 60.6 million in 2014",2
The 2018 SOFI Report reflected climate impacts on undernourishment materialise: across Southeast Asia it increased from 60.6 million in 2014 to 63.6 million in 2016 (page 6),2
"An increase in food prices, relative to income, thus led to reduced economic access to food, especially in rural areas",2
Loud ‘Wake-up calls’ could have been sent to policymakers by these trends of worsening climate-induced food insecurity,2
"The revised statistics in the 2019 Report painted a new narrative of ‘constant improvement’ regional progress in addressing undernourishment, altered from one of ‘worsening/reversing progress in addressing undernourishment’",2
"It showed a steady decline in regional undernourishment from 103.8 million people in 2005 to 61.9 million in 2016, further declining to 61.1 million in 2017",2
"The report, in fact, stated that ‘Western Asia is the only sub-region in Asia where undernourishment is on the rise’ (p",2
"Moreover, the ‘clock’ for undernourishment seems to be adjusted annually with each report, ‘snoozing’ the ‘wake-up’ call further",2
"For instance, in the 2020 SOFI Report, one can no longer observe the abrupt increase in undernourishment from 60.6 million (2014) to 63.6 million people (2016)",2
"Rather, undernourishment levels in earlier years were adjusted to reflect 66.7 million people in 2015 and 63.9 million in 2017",2
"A gradual decline in undernourishment is reflected, from 10.5% (2015) of ASEAN population, to 10% (2016), and remaining at 9.8% in 2017, 2018 and 2019",2
"The change in narratives occurs, since the FAO regularly revises its method of measuring the prevalence of undernourishment (PoU)",2
"The implication of this, however, is that the PoU metric no longer serves as a consistent/reliable metric for undernourishment, reflecting mostly the ‘average national food consumption’ (p.149, 2019 Report; p.220, 220 Report) based on the supply of food relative to demand, in terms of calories",2
"This implies a further worsening of food insecurity, going against the narrative of ‘continued progress’",2
"From an immediate, practical standpoint, it also means that undernourishment figures which may be used to guide policy, may underestimate the actual number of undernourished",2
"Annual changes in the FAO’s measurement of undernourishment therefore require serious re-thinking, given their potential to serve as signalling mechanisms for states to take action",2
"In doing so, the FAO can better help leaders to appreciate that climate change is upon us, tipping the balance for state and non-state actors to change old ways sooner too, rather waiting for the next world crisis to serve as ‘wake-up calls’",13
"Air quality is a major concern for not only local public health, but also for the economy (Gautam et al",3
"Without access to electricity, services of health care have stopped, which directly affects the health facilities",7
"The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) stretches statistics on poverty, unemployment, labor scarcity, etc",8
"CMIE shows that people lose their jobs during the lockdown, referred to as unemployment and poverty statistics",8
Similar improvements have been observed in water quality,6
"The indicators such as labor scarcity, e-commerce, and GDP growth all suffered a toll and are predicted to improve over time",8
"Life on land has deteriorated due to reduced productivity in farms, mental and physical health problems",15
"The people's social security coverage has reduced, and hence the motion for SDGs has digressed its path, leading to negative impacts during the lockdown",1
"The environmental factors such as air quality, water quality, and GHG emissions might have improved for a short duration; the impacts on GDP, poverty, health, and well-being have suffered a massive blow in India",6
"The approach did not entail or mortal component, morbidity, COVID-19 incidences, identification practices (i.e., population of area, total number of tests, total number of positive tests, etc.), lifestyle factors (i.e., smoking, diet, and drinking habits), and prevalence of preexisting conditions (i.e., respiratory issues, diabetes I and II types, cardiovascular diseases, etc.)",3
"As a result of the fast-moving unbalanced economic growth, the world’s systems may lose their ability to adjust with the people’s well-being which also significantly affect the environment",8
"To achieve this, appropriate establishment of plans as well as creating infrastructures are able to guarantee the sustainability of these basic needs for long term periods [10]",1
Managing climate change,13
"Strategies for sustainable development and climate change have shown many common fundamentals, suggesting that sustainable development is a key to capacities for mitigation and adaptation [12]",13
"To take the example of China, air pollution from over-reliance on coal-based electricity generation and other fossil fuels contributes to the deaths of more than 1.2 million per year [13]",7
"The critical role of energy has been highlighted in this road by the former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: “energy is the golden thread that connects economic growth, social equity, and environmental sustainability” [16]",8
"It is believed that by achieving the SDGs in this sector, many sustainable jobs will be created, affecting the stability of the economy [17]",8
"For instance, “Collective action”, requires guidance and global coordination, which would emphasize inclusive decision making, involvement of diverse actors, and contributions from all sources",16
"For instance, success in achieving poverty reduction is of crucial importance for every country around the world",1
"Even in case of optimistic scenarios, African countries such as Nigeria Benin, Burundi Central African Republic, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Somalia, South Sudan, and Zambia are expected to have poverty levels increased by a further 20% by 2030 [71, 72], characterising what is “extreme poverty”",1
"In 2017, nearly 821 million people were affected by chronic food deprivation or undernourishment [74]",2
The global health system is also threatened by spread of infectious diseases,3
The latest EU scenarios project that real GDP growth might fall to 0% or even be considerably negative as a result of the COVID-19 crisis [76],8
Economic development depends also on education that provides children and youth with knowledge and skills necessary for their future,8
"As global phenomena like climate change, the continued loss of biodiversity and rising inequality are expected to increasingly impact global human development, a new debate that is emerging slowly in the sustainability field centers around the worst-case scenario: What are likely consequences if the implementation of the SDGs falls short, what may happen if the underlying 169 targets are not reached in 2030 by the global community? Introduced in 2015, the UN Statistical Commission created the Inter-agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG-SDGs) which is continuously working towards improving the global indicator framework",13
"Until today, measuring SDG performance seems a never-ending story, due to the continued need to develop of appropriate methodologies and standards as well as making required country-level data available that allow reliable truly global SDG monitoring and forecasting [83]",17
nurturing poor labor standards or promoting deforestation,15
"Referring to biodiversity conservation, Kok et al.’s [86] assessment of an ‘option space’ provided by three distinctive pathways (see [88, 89]) for agriculture and forestry, the sectors reported to be responsible for up to 60% of the total reduction in global terrestrial biodiversity, suggested that human development may thrive best if the world pursues a global technology pathway whereas a pathway linked to reduced consumption might be less favorable [82]",15
"Despite existing methodological challenges, SDG monitoring and forecasting is progressing and has produced first results that point into similar directions (e.g",17
"The dull perspectives suggested by Moyer and Hedden [87] can be underpinned by current monitoring and trends for the respective regions: Presently, Sub-Saharan African countries, show poor performance on socio-economic goals and provide even basic access to services and infrastructure (SDGs 1–9)",1
"However, achieving the SDG targets in a region comprising nations if varying sizes and economic development is a complex endeavor",8
"A lack of agricultural transformation and shifting in diets remains problematic, also inequalities, the poverty of the elderly population and a persistent gender gap relating to pay and unpaid work prevail [81]",8
"In addition, economic growth and well-being can also be negatively influenced if a low emphasis to the SDGs is provided",8
"Moreover, complex issues related to social justice, gender equality and peace are likely to remain unsolved, and many problems will prevail, if the SDGs are not duly implemented",5
The persistent effects of lockdown were likely to be predominantly reversed from their immediate impacts due to economic recovery,8
"Also, the significant effects were recovered after reducing the lockdown, especially economic recovery occurred in both lower-middle-income countries and high-income countries [5]",8
"OxCGRT collected COVID-19 GRSI daily from publicly available information for indicators, including ‘school closures’, ‘workplace closures’, ‘cancel public events’, ‘restrictions on gatherings’, ‘close public transport’, ‘public information campaigns’, ‘stay at home’, ‘restrictions on internal movement’, and ‘international travel controls’",11
"For example, Target 3 b, which aims to support vaccines and medicines for developing countries, can be directly influenced by COVID-19 issues including lockdown",3
"In particular, the scores of SDGs 11, 13 (Climate action), and 15 mostly shifted from positive to negative, which may be due to the recovery of human activities, including the economy",13
"By contrast, SDGs 9 and 10 (reduced inequalities), 16 (peace, justice, and strong institutions), and 17 predominantly changed from negative to positive, which may be due to improved governance",16
"Global consequences of the lockdown have been observed for other phenomena, such as CO2 emissions [9], air PM2.5 concentration [26], human mobility via ‘Disease Prevention Maps’ by Facebook users [27], and environmental noise [28]",3
"Especially for food security, some studies have assessed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food security and resulting health effects [30,31,32]",2
"We will have to face many significant challenges, e.g., ensuring food safety and security, reducing losses and food wastage, as well as identifying alternative, safe protein sources that meet the nutritional expectations of consumers",2
"The achievements of climate change and ecosystem protection, such as Goals 11, 13, and 15, predominantly shifted from positive to negative, while those of economic issues, such as Goals 9, 10, and 16, primarily exhibited a negative to positive trend",13
This occurred primarily because economic recovery that goes against ecosystem protection can be expected to occur after the global lockdown,8
[35] simulated the increase in global temperature after the economic recovery up to 2030,8
"Furthermore, there were conflicting effects among goals protecting biodiversity and those promoting economic development [16, 36]",8
"Therefore, a comprehensive debate is necessary to consider the achievements of SDGs concerning economic recovery and ecosystem management after global lockdown",8
"Moreover, major global lockdown policies and the subsequent economic recovery, such as the cohesion policy of developed countries, may not consider the future SDG achievements for 2030",8
"Therefore, policies concerning SDGs should be considered while factoring in the global lockdown and subsequent economic recovery",8
"Moreover, use of resources for the COVID-19 pandemic, e.g., lockdown, is likely to hinder reactions to concurrent threats (e.g., heat waves, wildfires, drought, and extreme weather) as under-resourced systems and emergency responses become stretched and disrupted [41], radically transforming the current state of global development [42]",13
"BackgroundIt has been more than five years since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement, which seek to improve the well-being of people and the planet and strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change",13
"The three most common policy-related issues identified by the studies reviewed are lack of integrated/cross-sectoral planning, narrow emphasis on energy justice in policies, and the need for more cost-effective strategies in pursuit of the Paris Agreement.ConclusionsThis study revealed emerging trends in energy debates and policy discourse within academic discussions addressing the SDGs and the Paris Agreement",13
"Country case studies, in particular, can encourage policy-learning through cross-country comparisons, which can inform regional and domestic energy policies towards achieving the SDGs and the Paris Agreement",13
"Yet, its use has become one of the greatest challenges that the world is facing today, with fossil-based energy being a leading cause of global warming and climate change",13
"Consequently, the UN Sustainable Energy for All initiative was launched in 2011, and subsequently, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (the Sustainable Development Goals-SDGs) was adopted in 2015",7
The Paris Agreement was adopted in the same year with an ambitious target to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees by 2050,13
"These international commitments have spurred new interests in developing and utilising energy, ranging from emission reduction approaches to justice dimensions in energy access and transitions",7
"These various dimensions of sustainable energy development regarding how we generate and use energy broadly underpin the concept of the sustainable energy transition, transcending both technological innovations and institutional and behavioural changes",7
"The term socio-technical transition has, thus, become common parlance in sustainable energy discussions, with the socio-technical transitions theory (STT) currently being one of the leading theoretical frameworks applied in sustainable energy transitions research [4]",7
"Sustainable energy development is also known to have costs and benefits and sometimes creates winners and losers [5, 6]",7
"[6], for instance, examined the extent to which energy justice is mainstreamed into renewable energy policies of Sub-Saharan African countries",7
"[5], on the other hand, studied energy injustices in rural Indonesia with a focus on community renewable energy",7
They found that the apolitical framing of community renewable energy interventions has the potential to perpetuate energy injustices in rural energy provision,7
"Sustainable energy, energy transition, and energy justice have become more prominent in contemporary energy and sustainable development discourse",7
"However, studies that synthesise how the adoption of the SDGs and the Paris Agreement has shaped this discussion and the emergent research themes are limited",13
"Section 4 discusses in-depth strategies existing research has offered to advance efforts to fulfil the commitment to the Paris Agreement and achieve the SDGs, especially in the energy sector",13
Two separate searches were conducted for the SDGs and the Paris Agreement,13
The period was limited to 2015 onwards due to the fact that both the SDGs and Paris Agreement were adopted this year,13
Studies that specifically dealt with either the energy policies and SDGs or energy policies and the Paris Agreement were selected for inclusion,13
"Despite the SDGs and Paris Agreement being launched in 2015, publications on these subjects only started to emerge in 2017",13
"Studies published this year were mainly predictive, trying to map out possible scenarios for achieving the SDGs and the Paris Agreement",13
"Notably, studies focusing on the Paris Agreement [11,12,13] have all used scenario analysis to map possible pathways for attaining the Paris Agreement",13
"Characteristically, publications with a geographic focus on Africa and some parts of Asia deal more with energy and the SDGs than the Paris Agreement",13
These regions have some of the lowest energy access rates in the world,7
"With SDG 7 specifically targeting access to clean and affordable energy services, it is understandable that research in these regions focuses on the SDGs",7
"On the other hand, much of the studies with global foci and a focus on Europe, Asia and the Americas tend to emphasise the Paris Agreement, particularly on low emission pathways that can help achieve the 1.5-degree target by 2050",13
"The supply side of energy is also dominant in the sectoral focus of publications, with the majority of studies focusing on electricity generation",7
"The dominance of electricity generation as the focus of most publications possibly is because: (i) more energy needs to be generated to meet both unmet and rapidly increasing demand in the global South (SDG focus), and (ii) there is a need to phase out polluting fuels in the energy mix of the advanced countries through renewable energy generation (Paris Agreement focus) in order to engender the attainment of the SDGs and also to reduce global warming",7
"Most studies were, thus, predictive and prescriptive in nature, often attempting to forecast possible pathways for achieving the SDGs and the targets of the Paris Agreement",13
"[17] tried to answer whether the EU climate mitigation ambitions will lead to carbon neutrality, while Liobikienė et al",13
[11] examined the possibilities of the EU meeting the targets of the Paris Agreement,13
"Hence all 81 documents analysed focused on one of four themes: finance, policy and regulation, climate mitigation and energy-SDGs nexus",13
A majority of studies (42) fell under the climate mitigation theme,13
"Many studies on this theme dealt with the Paris Agreement, with decarbonisation and GHG emission reduction being the principal focus of most studies",13
"[3], who, upon reviewing the history of sustainable energy development, noted that ensuring equitable access to clean and affordable energy is crucial for attaining sustainable development",7
"While the sectoral focus of most publications on the Paris Agreement was on power generation (supply side), SDG research focused more on the demand side of the energy equation",13
"A word cloud (Fig. 8) generated from these keywords shows that demand-side issues such as energy consumption, household energy appliances and energy efficiency were dominant in the SDG research",7
"Consequently, they argued that mainstreaming the justice dimension and fostering comprehensive policy frameworks that balance developmental concerns and market creation is essential for the clean energy transition and sustainable development in Africa",7
Studies that have analysed energy policies in pursuit of the SDGs and the Paris Agreement have unveiled some gaps in existing policies of various countries and regions,13
"[24] found a lack of coordination between policy and industry, with policymakers having limited knowledge of climate mitigation options in industries, resulting in unbalanced/biased policies",13
"[25] noted that in Indonesia, the national policy’s focus on a single energy source (gas) is insufficient to achieve the clean cooking targets since most households have low incomes and mostly rely on biomass for their cooking energy needs",7
"This issue was found, particularly in Africa, with many studies not entirely dealing with the question of energy justice in the context of sustainable energy transitions [6]",7
"While many studies have also used scenario analysis/forecasts to predict how and when the SDGs and Paris Agreement targets may be achieved, there are divergent views regarding attaining these international commitments",13
"Even though biofuels are recognised as clean fuels, biomass/biofuel development has negative impacts, especially on agricultural production, and could potentially impact food security [15, 28, 29]",2
Diverse standpoints also exist on whether current policy commitments toward the Paris Agreement target are sufficient or otherwise to achieve the target,13
"Some studies [29,30,31] suggest that current policy efforts are on track toward achieving the Paris Agreement target",13
Three key issues emerged regarding the economic aspects of achieving the SDGs and the Paris Agreement,13
"First, many studies have established that strengthening local financial markets and increasing funding for renewable energies is critical to both the SDGs and the Paris Agreement",13
"Consequently, green finance, green bonds and green investments have become commonly used terms in SDGs and Paris Agreement research",13
[37] assert that green transition finance could jeopardise poverty alleviation efforts,1
A second economic issue that emerged from the reviewed literature is the need for cost-effective solutions in pursuit of the Paris Agreement,13
Quite a number of studies have shown that pursuing the targets of the Paris Agreement could come at some economic costs to countries,13
"[32], leaving the Paris Agreement raises the exiting country’s GDP even though it reduces some domestic co-benefits in terms of carbon emissions",13
"[20] also found that retreating from the Paris Agreement would increase the real GDP and actual private consumption by 1.13% and 0.78%, respectively, in the US, while Kat et al",13
[19] noted that Turkey’s pledge to the Paris Agreement might be possible at a modest economic cost of about 0.8–1% by 2030,13
"These economic downsides possibly accounted for the resistance some countries showed in pursuing the Paris Agreement and, consequently, the US withdrawal from the accord under the Trump administration",13
"The cost of renewable energy technologies emerged as a crucial factor for sustainable energy development, especially in the global South",7
"[40], the cost of renewable energy technologies is a barrier that hampers the integration of renewable energy technologies for sustainable development in Sub-Sahara Africa",7
"Finally, a third economic issue emergent from the literature is the need for good regulations to facilitate energy for sustainable development and the Paris Agreement",13
"With regard to socio-technical and political issues, one recurrent issue was the challenge of policy coordination between various levels of government",17
Sanderink [42] frames vary strongly across different levels of governance and among multiple types of renewable energy institutions,7
"[43] also stressed the need for increased coordination between different levels of government in the implementation of energy policies noting that countries may be spending resources on creating numerous renewable energy policies, but those resources may be wasted while GHGs continue to rise due to a lack of coordination between different levels of government",7
Policymakers could no longer work in silos and develop energy plans based on only assumptions from the energy sector and try to achieve SDG 7 [48] or myopic environmental policies focusing only on GHG emissions [47] and increasing generation capacity [34],7
"Policymakers must also incorporate the additional energy demand necessary to accomplish other SDGs and transformation toward decarbonisation [48, 58]",13
"Relevant to this issue, it is found that countries with tangible positive economic growth effects on their per capita CO2 emission made significant advancements in the SDGs, implying that embedding carbon in highly intensive sectors greatly impacts other sectors’ carbon footprints [59]",8
"Favourable regulations provide a strong impetus for investments in sustainable energy and green projects [25, 33, 38, 61]",7
"However, regulatory uncertainties remain a significant barrier to renewable energy investments",7
[25] noted that about five times the current budget allocation for renewable energy development is needed to meet Indonesia’s electricity access target by 2025,7
"In Niger, disarray between energy policies and development blueprint and unsustained and inconsistent energy policies hinder the implementation of sustainable energy projects [62]",7
"Technologically advanced countries can benefit from stricter environmental regulations coupled with the advancement in environmentally friendly technological innovation to offset negative economic shock [63, 64]",8
"Multi-stakeholder dialogue and partnerships and a regulatory framework are crucial to guide the CSR initiatives toward realising the SDGs and Paris Agreement ambitions, emphasising the need for collaborative planning [21, 67]",13
[68] noted that the cost-effectiveness of existing energy efficiency policies obscure opportunities for public–private partnerships regarding investment in sustainable energy,7
"Financial instruments, thus, could be designed to synergise private funding for investment in sustainable energy while keeping risks at low levels [38, 68]",7
"Existing carbon market mechanisms and climate finance institutions have successfully engaged the private sector in a variety of roles, yet unilateral implementation models, such as single Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects, have difficulties taking off in many African developing countries",13
"With developing countries often suffering from endemic corruption and political insecurity, high financial risk and low payment capacity, setting up institutions to respond to the risks and improving programmatic procedures have proven to be beneficial",16
"In the context of NDCs, clarifying interrelationships between the government and the private sectors can help provide long-term investment certainty for private actors, including by integrating existing mechanisms relevant to the Paris Agreement and the SDGs with domestic finance mechanisms [41]",13
"The situation in South Africa offers an example where anchoring the NDC into the flagship policy instrument can provide a clear timing and scale of procurement appeals to private investment, having a procedural process and financial guarantees of the government",13
Existing research also showed that stringent NDCs exert positive impacts on green bond-based investments in renewable energy [69],7
"Increasing the NDC ambitions for strengthening climate action will contribute to closing the gap toward the required systemic transformation in many countries [31, 69]",13
Policies on climate change closely relate to domestic interests and need to be understood within the broader development priorities,13
"This explains why despite the national commitment to the Paris Agreement and the SDGs, implementing policy change is a challenging task",13
"Gulf countries, for example, suffer from a narrow operational focus that does not correspond to a resilient understanding of environmental security or to the climate-related risks and fluctuating interest in climate change driven by economic aspirations and regional security, which leads to underperformance with regard to achieving key parts of the SDGs and other global sustainability agenda [70]",13
"For the Gulf countries, regional and domestic issues such as the region’s political turmoil and the vital importance of carbon fuels have resulted in reluctant policy integration and fragile institutions relevant to sustainable development and climate change",13
"In Indonesia, energy use is shaped by policies not primarily intended for energy conservation, and renewable energy targets are undermined by a growing coal consumption target [25]",7
Mombeuil [27] suggests that the country needs institutional reforms alongside stakeholders and political elites to advance progress towards achieving SDG 7,7
"Centralised energy planning was also identified as a critical shortfall in current energy policies; hence, decentralised energy planning is advocated for sustainable energy development",7
"Moreover, public engagement in energy policymaking has enabled vulnerable groups to have a voice in energy transition [56]",1
This is important from the perspective of integrating a justice dimension in the renewable energy transition,7
"[57] further identified that a limited understanding of user needs and aspirations currently constrains progress towards SDG 7 in Rwanda, especially in the off-grid sector",7
"They suggested that understanding the spending patterns of users and the appropriate system designs in terms of battery sizing, pricing plans, and appliances used is essential for advancing renewable energy development",7
[5] found that the top-down approach to community-based renewable energy could potentially result in exclusion and energy injustices at the local level,7
"[6] advocated for a justice approach to energy policy, adding that justice-related renewable energy policies will allow for the creation of a policy framework that pays attention to the social change rationale, which forms the basis of SDG 7",7
"The different transition scenarios within Africa underscore the benefits of justice-based energy policies in achieving the goals of SDG 7 [6, 54]",7
"In response to this challenge, current literature suggests that decentralised approach to community energy should be considered to advance sustainable energy development, especially at the community level [73]",7
"It has been six years since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the SDGs and the Paris Agreement",13
"In this review, we provided an overview of the emerging trends in these debates and policy discourse through an examination of published literature on energy and the SDGs, as well as the Paris Agreement",13
"Consequently, adopting integrated, cross-sectoral and collaborative planning emerged as one of the key recommendations for amplifying the role of sustainable energy in achieving the SDGs",7
"With the process of sustainable energy development known to have both costs and benefits and, in so doing, tends to potentially create winners and losers, it is imperative for the justice dimension to be mainstreamed into energy policies for sustainable development",7
"The cases with Gulf countries show that despite states seeking to accommodate the SDGs into their national strategies, policies on climate change are rather scant, with the notion of low-carbon development mainly attached to economic diversification efforts",13
"While our study offers some insights into the recent trends of research on energy policies in pursuit of the SDGs and the Paris Agreement, our findings must be considered with cognisance of the timeframe in which this research, especially the document search, was conducted",13
"Furthermore, a web-based interactive learning environment is developed to analyze the interdependencies among public health activities and study the impacts of possible intervention countermeasures or prevention policies",3
"Indicators including poverty line, food insecurity, gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are evaluated to track Egypt’s performance in relation to SDGs 1, 2, 8, and 13",2
"According to the significant governmental efforts to follow its vision of 2030, Egypt can achieve a decreasing percentage of food insecurity, reaching 3% in 2030, and this percentage will continue to decrease until it reaches full sufficiency by 2050",2
The GDP growth rate will rise every year until it reaches 13.71% in 2050,8
"This approach revitalizes debates about the achievement of SDGs amid the crisis and acts as a powerful tool that aids decision-makers in identifying leverage points to avoid the long-term negative repercussions of the crisis on the economy, people, and environment",3
"As a result, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the newly discovered infectious coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) a global public health emergency (Li et al",3
The COVID-19 epidemic has proven to be associated with ramifications ranging from public health to economy,3
"According to the “Sustainable Development Goals Report 2020,” a pandemic outbreak in 2020 would push 71 million people back into poverty, rising the worldwide poverty rate for the first time since 1998",1
The number of children under the age of 5 and maternal deaths was expected to rise in 2020,3
The main findings imply that effective institutional governance aids in the eradication of poverty and economic inequality in society (Coccia 2021a),3
"However, experts have warned that any economic recovery might be hampered by the ongoing epidemic (World Health Organization 2020b)",8
"Accordingly, it is essential to reduce the negative economic effect of pandemic outbreak reactions despite the paramount importance of public health (Xiao and Torok 2020)",3
"As a result, COVID-19 has slowed Egypt’s progress toward achieving the SDGs (Ministry of Planning and Economic Development 2021)",8
The research highlighted the necessity of conducting more quantitative and qualitative scientific research to quantify the importance of attaining the SDG objectives in individual nations based on continuing lessons learned from the health crisis,9
"In the last few years, the system dynamics approach has been used to manage public health issues and many other domains",3
This research used a system dynamics approach to simulate the nonlinear behavior of COVID-19 impacts on public health and the related SDGs,3
"Causal loop structure of the proposed model Examining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the selected goals of sustainable development public health in Egypt, in the long run, requires examining the effect of the major variables on the assessment",3
"By referring to feedback loop B3, it can be observed that raising the number of people that die as a result of disasters reduces the population, which lowers the GDP growth rate",8
This in turn leads to strengthening social protection policies and ensuring efficiency in social spending,1
"Consequently, the number of deaths due to disasters will be decreased due to increasing the percentage of the population covered by social protection",1
"This results in decreasing the unemployment rate, strengthening the economy, and rising GDP growth rate",8
"As a result, the proportion of the population with access to basic services will be increased",1
"Feedback loops R1 and R2 show that increasing the number of deaths due to disaster helps in reducing the population, which leads to a decrease in the GDP growth rate where there is a direct positive correlation between population growth and economic growth (Sibe et al",8
This has negative effects on economic growth,8
"Consequently, if economic growth is low, then, the government spending on basic services is low",8
"Inflation affects the purchasing power of money, which reduces consumption and, as a result, the GDP growth rate (Mukoka 2018)",8
"Consequently, the number of deaths due to disasters will be decreased due to increasing the percentage of the population covered by social protection",1
It can be shown from feedback loop R7 that increasing the number of individuals who die as a result of disasters reduces the population and lowering the GDP growth rate,8
"Feedback loop R10 is the same causal loop relationships of loop R4, but the difference in the positive effects of inflation on rising food price anomalies index",2
"Feedback loop R11 is the same causal loop relationships of loop R8, but the difference in the positive effect of decreasing the unemployment rate on economic strength",8
"A stock variable is a noun that refers to something that builds up through time, such as population, climate change scorecards, and economic strength scorecards",13
"A stock-flow diagram for assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the SDGs A web-based interactive learning environment (ILE) is created to help decision-makers analyze the interdependencies among public health activities, which are affected by unpredictable catastrophic events, and study the impacts of possible intervention countermeasures or prevention policies",3
"The ILE can be easily tailored and transformed into a Decision Support System (DSS) effectively usable in a specific environment, both by disaster preparedness analysts and by personnel acting in disaster management control rooms",11
"To study Egypt’s performance toward the “no poverty” SDG, the indicator 1.2.1: Proportion of population living below the national poverty line is studied (Fig. 5)",1
"After 2018, Egypt’s poverty rate fell to 29.7% in 2020",1
"Expected COVID-19 impact in Egypt with respect to a SDG1, b SDG2, c SDG8, and d SDG13 The second targeted SDG is “zero hunger” which can be clearly expressed by the indicator 2.1.2: Prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity in the population, based on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), shown in Fig. 5, showed a stable response to the COVID-19 impact on the Egyptian economy",2
"Despite the overall worldwide increase in food insecurity, results show that Egypt maintained a constant percentage of around 29% from the start of the pandemic up till now",2
"According to this significant governmental effort to follow its vision of 2030 where Egypt vision is a “first step toward inclusive development,” to ensure that future societal transitions are both inclusive and sustainable, Egypt can achieve a decreasing percentage of food insecurity and can reach 3% food insecurity in 2030 and this decrease will continue until it reaches full sufficiency by 2050",2
"From 2015 to 2019, Egypt managed to increase its GDP growth rate from 4.37 to 5.56%",8
This is represented by a sudden contraction in the GDP growth rate that occurred in 2020 and 2021 to a value of 3.8%,8
"For that, according to the simulation model, the GDP growth rate is expected to increase yearly to reach 13.71% by 2050 as shown in Fig. 5",8
"To track Egypt’s performance related to the “climate action” SDG, indicator 13.2.2: a total GHG emission per year was studied as shown in Fig. 5",13
"Following Egypt’s vision 2030 and by committing to the Paris Agreement regarding reducing global warming, it is expected that GHG emission will tend to decrease in the following years until a value of 192 Mt CO2-equivalents is achieved again in 2030",13
"According to Climate change mitigation initiatives, it calls for a 50–80% reduction in emissions by 2050 compared to 1990 levels that reached around 20,000 Mt CO2-equivalents (World Bank Group 2016)",13
"In recent years, the majority of government responses to the COVID-19 epidemic have focused on risk mitigation techniques and activating governmental efforts to raise public awareness about climate change and environmental concerns",13
"In 2015, the percentage of the population living in poverty was 27.5%, which remained steady until 2017 before rising to 32.5% in 2018",1
The poverty rate declined to 29.7% in 2020 and it is predicted to fall until it reaches around 25% by 2030,1
"Despite a global increase in food insecurity, Egypt maintained a consistent ratio of roughly 29% from the start of the epidemic until now",2
"Egypt can achieve a decreasing percentage of food insecurity, reaching 3% in 2030, according to the significant governmental efforts to follow its vision of 2030",2
"Egypt’s economy was heavily impacted by COVID-19, as seen by a sharp drop in GDP growth rate to 3.8% in 2020 and 2021",8
"According to the simulation model, the GDP growth rate will rise every year until it reaches 13.71% in 2050",8
The total GHG emission per year was evaluated to track Egypt’s performance in relation to the “climate action” SDG,13
"Following Egypt’s Vision 2030 and its commitment to the Paris Agreement on climate change, it is predicted that GHG emissions will decline in the coming years, returning to a value of 192 Mt CO2-equivalents in 2030",13
"We find that SDG localisation can influence urban sustainability, but effective implementation requires sufficient data, resourcing, and guidance—which are not readily, nor equally available to all city governments",11
"As cities proliferate, “there is no longer a question of whether cities are important to sustainable development”, but rather, how urban development can—and will—“affect our common future” (Parnell 2016, p",11
"After defining the methodology and case material, we conduct an analysis using policy success factors from the four spheres that describe transition management—strategic, tactical, operational, and reflexive—to identify the mechanisms that influence urban sustainability transitions (Loorbach 2010; Wittmayer et al",11
"Adopted by all 193 UN Member States in 2015, the 2030 Agenda moves beyond the socio-economic development objectives of its predecessor, the Millennium Declaration, by considering human development in tandem with planetary boundaries (Sachs et al",8
"In response to the SDGs, alongside other global sustainability agendas such as the Paris Agreement, city actors are becoming increasingly engaged in international decision-making (Hartley 2019; Pipa and Bouchet 2020)",13
"effectively use the SDGs to direct and transform urban planning processes), and in doing so transition our current and future cities toward sustainability, urban development must undergo radical systemic change (Ernst et al",11
"Sustainable transition theory is an emerging field of scientific research that recognises cities as complex, dynamic systems within the broader normative context of sustainable development (Wolfram and Frantzeskaki 2016)",9
"It is regularly used as an operational model for transition governance, including for the management of urban sustainability transitions (Wittmayer et al",11
"As the most rapidly urbanising region in the world (UN-DESA 2018b), the Asia–Pacific has become a recognised hotspot for high-impact sustainable urban development (Mohan 2006)",11
"In addition to resource provision, access to technical skills and knowledge were identified by all participants as necessary tools to support engagement with the SDG framework",4
"Assessed through the lens of transition management, effective SDG localisation—and the subsequent transition toward urban sustainability—relied on a city government’s capacity to address all four spheres of the transition framework (strategic, tactical, operational, and reflexive) (Frantzeskaki et al",11
Local engagement with the SDGs also proved a useful mechanism for embedding sustainability principles into urban planning,11
"Urban sustainability strategies typically require articulation of the problem, vision development, and construction of a plan to achieve the vision (Etzion 2018)",11
"Customising the SDGs to fit local context is an useful process for promoting internal coordination, managing performance and orienting urban planning toward global sustainability outcomes (Pipa 2019)",11
"Concurrently, whilst SDG engagement by city actors can influence urban sustainability outcomes, effective localisation relies on the ability of those actors to integrate the SDGs into planning (de Haan and Rotmans 2018) and consolidate efforts toward their achievement (Klopp and Petretta 2017)",11
"The measures to curb the impacts emanated from the pandemic will likely lead to overlooking of critical issues prevailing in developing countries, such as infrastructural deficiencies, conflicts, paucity of quality education, fragile fiscal space, weak institutions, and inequalities",4
"A review study emphasizes the pandemic impact on food security, agriculture, and livelihoods from the perspectives of developing countries and also provides coping strategies for the post-pandemic period (Workie et al",2
The primary target of this goal is to achieve a less than 3% extreme poverty rate at a global level by 2030 (SDGs Knowledge Platform 2020a),1
"Hence, specific attention is required in the case of multidimensional poverty control and poverty among children (Pinilla-Roncancio et al",1
"Indirect ways of mitigating poverty are also been investigated, such as co-benefits of the Paris Agreement on poverty (Campagnolo and Davide 2019)",13
"In the period between 2015 and 2018, the rate of poverty reduction slowed down to less than 0.5% per year (The World Bank 2020)",1
"However, due to the devastating impact of COVID-19, the poverty rate will shoot up for the first time since 1998",1
The longevity of the pandemic occurrence and the economic recovery rate will influence the severity of these effects,8
"In this scenario, the impact of pandemic results in a raise of 44 million people in extreme poverty (UNDP SDG Integration 2020)",1
"Data  The main motto of Goal 2 is to end hunger and, simultaneously, attain food security and promote sustainable agriculture",2
"As people lose their jobs, it makes them vulnerable to poverty which hinders them to purchase their basic needs including food",1
"In 2020, due to COVID-19, about additional 132 million people may suffer from undernourishment (UN statistics 2020a)",2
This induces transient food insecurity among these countries,2
The prime impact on SDG 2 will be the lack of significant focus in the next few years as poverty will emerge as a potential and bigger problem which might amplify the malnutrition levels among children,2
"On analyzing the key strategies to end hunger, a new approach in leadership, adaptive measures towards the agroecosystem diversification, and investments in the agricultural sector are observed to be crucial to achieving the goal (Herrmanna and Rundshagen 2020; Blesh et al",2
The emergence of COVID-19 affects and strains the healthcare system more straightforwardly than ever which drags SDG 3,3
"Currently, the main challenges associated with the COVID-19 and SDG 3 are to tackle the situation and to provide quality healthcare to every individual irrespective of the situation",3
"For instance, more than 70 countries have stalled the childhood vaccination programs during this crisis (The Lancet Public Health 2020)",3
"The healthcare sector’s normal functioning for providing service to cancer screening, non-COVID infectious diseases, family planning, and promoting health awareness is either interrupted or completely neglected",3
"On the other hand, the indirect health impacts inflicted by the loss of income, poorer nutrition, and disruption of continuing medical care could be humungous, and the extent of the indirect impact is highly uncertain (Hughes et al",3
"In the post-pandemic period, the role of spending towards the progress of SDG 3 is significant, and more funds are needed to be allocated for improving the health sector especially in low-income and lower-middle-income countries",3
Feasible analysis of these factors can help us to reform the educational approaches towards SDG 4,4
have performed one such analysis on the politics of quality reforms and presented the challenges associated with attaining quality education (Bruns et al,4
"World Internet penetration rate across different geographical regions in quarter 1 of 2020 The exposure to distant learning methodology is enough to create an impact on the field of education, and it might have a positive drag on SDG 4 in upcoming years",4
"A study from UNESCO indicates that the cost of achieving SDG 4 has already increased before COVID-19, but given the impacts of the pandemic, the cost has further increased (UNESDOC Digital Library 2020)",4
The relationship between SDG 5 and 10 is depicted in Fig. 5,5
"It is seen that though the women employment is increasing day by day which is a good progress as in the case of SDG 5, their income is not justifying as compared to a man with a similar performance (not in all the cases) (UNESCO Inclusive Policy Lab 2020a) which in turn contrasts the development in both SDGs 5 and 10",5
"Three in ten people lack access to clean drinking water, and six in ten people lack access to sanitation facilities (Sustainable Development Goals 2021)",6
"Wastewater treatment, local governance, policies and services in the water sector, and natural resources are some of the crucial factors that influence the progress of this goal (Herrera 2019; Kookana et al",6
"On analyzing the impact of the pandemic on the water crisis, it is clear that the lack of water accessibility to the billions of populations is one of the boosting factors for the prevalence of pandemic",6
"During pandemic, the water pollution levels were low, while consumption was higher due to hygiene requirements",6
The major impact of SDG 6 in terms of the water and sanitation sector is that the ability to make the critical capital investment was affected drastically,6
"This goal emphasizes affordable, sustainable, reliable, and modern energy for all",7
"The global electrification rate is accelerating, and it reached 89% in 2017, but still, there are 800 million people without access to electricity (SDGs Knowledge Platform 2020c)",7
The renewable energy usage from 2010 to 2019 has been doubled according to the IRENA report (IRENA 2020a),7
"In India alone, the project of extending a 3000 MW power generation capacity through solar and wind energy-based projects has been delayed owing to the pandemic (pv magazine 2020)",7
"Concerning clean cooking, a survey of over 100 enterprises reported that two-thirds possess high concerns for the reduced paying ability of the customers (United Nations 2020)",7
"To promote clean cooking fuels, strong political prioritization and subsequent investments are required",7
"SDGs 8 and 9 deal with decent work, economic growth, industry, innovation, and infrastructure",8
"Hence, it is clear that the COVID-19 pandemic has catastrophic effects on the progress of SDG 8 in multiple aspects",8
"Since manufacturing industries drive the overall economic growth, a serious impact on the economy is resulted especially in the least developed countries",8
The aviation industry which boosts economic development had undergone the deepest fall,8
"In terms of innovations, the pandemic accelerated the R&D funding in the pharmaceutical industry and emerging technologies such as digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and service-based innovations (UN statistics 2020d)",9
It will have a  positive drag on the employment with more sophisticated approaches which ultimately enhances the progress of SDG 8,8
"Therefore, hastened digitalization might create more employment opportunities in near future",9
"presented a more comprehensive approach in terms of monitoring, benchmarking, and evaluating policies that are directed towards the development of healthy and sustainable cities (Giles-Corti et al",11
"In terms of SDG 11, the major impact is seen on the lifestyle of the people",11
"Concerning SDG 16, the pandemic threatens to exacerbate the fragilities in society",16
"Besides, trends suggest that lockdown measures induced high homicide rates in Latin American countries, while it is quite opposite in European countries with a reduced rate of violence (UN statistics 2020f)",16
"There is also an increased volume of domestic violence throughout various countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, India, Fiji, Samoa, and Russia",5
This is evident from the increase in call volumes in domestic violence helplines ranging from 33% to doubling during COVID-19 times (United Nations ESCAP 2020),5
"Concerning SDG 12, a large amount of food is lost in the supply chain before reaching the end customer",12
"The study further calls for plastic waste management initiatives, strict regulations, human awareness, and plastic waste footprint research (Mallick et al",12
"Moreover, the pandemic has decreased waste recycling and municipal waste generation (Singh and Mishra 2021)",12
"As an example, rivers in India such as Ganga and Yamuna have shown improved surface water quality in the lockdown period (Yunus et al",6
"Hence, balancing the contrasting effect between the goals is necessary by keeping SDG 12 (sustainable consumption) as the center of balance (Campbell et al",12
"Also, individuals should indulge the notion of climate action in their behavior, feelings, and values for effective action (Bouman et al",13
"The pandemic has no direct effect on climate action, but it helped in suppressing human activities in terms of lockdown and quarantine, during which nature’s replenishment activities occurred with negligible human interventions",13
"Apart from air pollution, the pandemic resulted in a cleaner beach than ever, reduced marine pollution and environmental noise (Zambrano-Monserrate et al",14
"The pandemic has caused several impacts, but in regard to SDG 17, the impact can be assessed in two approaches",17
"If these challenges are not encountered properly, SDG 17 would not make any sense towards sustainability even though several partnerships exist",17
"Besides, SDGs 15, 13, and 16 are the least impacted goals, and SDG 14 has a net positive impact due to the pandemic",14
"It can be observed that SDG 9 has the highest progress which is followed by SDGs 1, 3, and 11",9
But the progress change in SDG 7 was relatively low,7
"This is because renewable energy penetration and other initiatives towards clean energy, energy accessibility, and energy intensity were predominant only in recent years",7
"On contrary, SDG 1 has the highest degree of randomness score yet exhibits the second-highest progress",1
"For example, SDG 9 is directly impacted by the implementation of lockdown",9
"Due to the same reason, the economy is affected, and thus, a red line is connected to SDG 8",8
"For instance, let us consider SDG 8; here, the influencing, depending and interdependence types of SDG interaction are observed with SDGs 1, 17, and 7, respectively",8
"For example, consider the interdependence linkage between SDG 8 and 9",8
"For instance, stalling the industrial activities devastated the economic growth, while the impacted economy influence on industrial development is very less",8
"Focusing on the strategy that regains economy especially, creating jobs or increasing employment opportunity, and investing more in start-ups that promise sustainable technologies, reskilling of workers is the most urgent societal need that can ultimately reduce the menaces imparted by the pandemic, and also, it would form a strong foundation for progressing in the direction of sustainability",4
"Also, super prioritizing the strategies that have the highest prioritization score in Table 8 corresponding to SDG 7 and 9 is necessary",7
"For instance, the major environmental concerns are the need for minimal degradation of resources, optimized consumption, and the addressal of key causes for climate change",13
Directing the developments relevant to SDG 9 in an economically beneficial and environmentally favorable approach is crucial (IRENA 2020b; Kynclova et al,9
"On the other hand, SDG 7 is on the right path progressing towards renewables, but the progress further needs to be hastened, and affordability has to be imparted in the energy sector",7
"As the progress in SDGs 7 and 9 happens in the post-pandemic world, large employment opportunity prevails, but it requires reskilling of workers to grasp the opportunities (IRENA 2020b)",4
Only SDG 14 has managed to possess a little positive impact with an overall impact score of − 0.04,14
"According to the results of the prioritization factor, the strategies such as expanding employment opportunities with equality, investing more in start-ups dealing with renewables and modern sustainable technologies, reskilling of labors, and promoting partnerships and investment towards sustainability are the top strategies that should be prioritized in the post-pandemic period",4
The results emphasized that the progress in SDGs 7 and 9 should be focused in the post-pandemic environment through which the advancement towards the other goals can be expedited if the approach is environmentally favorable and also supports the economic development,8
"So far, no study has addressed the key research question: Where can corporate digital responsibility (CDR) be allocated, and how shall an adequate ethical framework be designed to support digital innovations in order to make full use of the potentials of digitization and AI? Therefore, the research on how best practices meet their corporate responsibility in the digital transformation process and the requirements of the EU for trustworthy AI and its human-friendly use is essential",9
"To the author’s knowledge, no study has set out to investigate how CDR in construction could be conceptualized, especially in relation to digitization and AI, to mitigate digital transformation both in large, medium- and small-sized companies",9
"Furthermore, the goal is to define ethical principles which are key for success, resource-cost-time efficiency and sustainability using digital technologies and AI in construction engineering to enhance digital transformation",9
"In order to get closer to the design of possibilities of a successful, sustainable digital transformation in the construction industry concrete steps must be taken towards a more efficient, economic project life cycle with safe use of innovative digital technologies",9
Digital transformation and digitization are based on AI,9
"Like Socrates, Greek philosopher and founder of Ethics, and the philosophical current dealing with the main question of how a person should live in order to lead a good life, this research study poses a fundamental ethical research question: How can innovative digital technology and AI be developed to ensure safe, efficient and sustainable human work and which ethical framework offers guidance and orientation? Such a holistic research goes beyond dominant financial focus; it aims to create societal and economic benefits at its core and may encourage other branches to recognize the benefits of ethical principles of digital transformation for a strong corporate culture",9
"Both theoretical background and comparison of recent research on the general ethical issues and connections of human–machine interactions, and the risks occurring with data-driven technologies add value to applied sciences and just emerging scholarship in this area",4
With increasing technological progress and complex human decision-making processes technology ethics emerged by offering orientation to normative fears,8
"Scientific research on human-friendly AI for the common good took off, especially in philosophy, theology, law, social and economic sciences, leading to the term 'Ethics in technology'",9
"As a result of researching trustworthy handling of AI, industry and corporate Codes of Ethics have been developed, not least to counter the legal pressure due to allegations of discrimination",10
"In the US, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy responded with a report on how to deal with AI technologies responsibly within the rapid global digital transformation [10]",9
"German and international construction engineering associations, Chambers of construction trade associations, Departments for digital transformation in German Ministries, research centres, educational and academic institutions and Ethics and AI Institutes participated in that survey",9
The key findings and deriving recommendations are shared with the Task Force on Digital Transformation at the T20 Conference in preparation of the decision papers for the G20 Summit in October 2021,9
CDR was found a key factor for enabling successful digital transformation in companies and to fulfil their responsibilities,9
"The increasing complexity of processes and the occurring risks of digital transformation on both human, technologies and human–machine interaction itself lead to a need for responsible innovation, orientation, sensible and safe development and an overall CDR culture in the construction industry",9
The study identified the design of CDR for the digital transformation process as a key solution,9
"The study identified moral and ethical principles as key for orientation in both researching and applying these technologies, and as essential factors for successful sustainable digital transformation in complex decision-making environments",9
"This close cooperation between strong partners coming from research and applied science sends a strong signal, especially to corporations, both intensifying the awareness of ethical fundamentals in digital transformation discussions and focussing on the significant potential of AI technologies and methods in construction industry as well as providing adequate corporate digital infrastructure",9
"The study’s results do not only offer an added value to the scientific, multidisciplinary discussion on ‘Ethics in AI’ and complement current research debate on the potentials in construction, but also enhance the efficiency of the project life cycle and sustainable digital transformation led by ethical principles and a human-led AI",9
There is a consensus between all interviewed experts: it is essential to strengthen entrepreneurship ecosystems by diverse approaches,8
Emerging technologies play a fundamental and catalytic role in digital transformation,9
"In this context, diversity represents the key to avoid gender bias, discrimination and filter bubbles in developing data-driven tech",10
"The construction industry could benefit significantly by implementing the strategic decision-making processes, planning and operational phases more efficiently by both standardizing digital technologies, methods of AI and increasing corporate women leadership",5
"In short, diversity is essential to a cutting-edge portfolio in construction to shape digital transformation holistically, successfully and sustainably",9
Technical business transformation includes digital transformation by synchronizing and harmonizing with a profound human transformation,9
"Unfortunately, algorithms all too often have a “gender bias”, a gender-related distortion effect, for example male thought patterns in the selection of job applicants leading to discrimination, as algorithm experts discuss around the globe",10
Scientific journals reflect the significant increase of scientific research in this specific field,9
"More and more companies realize the significant role of HR, digital ethics, and corporate digital responsibility to shape a successful digital transformation",9
Diversity and digital transformation are closely linked,9
"On the one hand, the goal is to conserve resources, the climate and the environment, to think through the construction cycle from the project idea to dismantling and recycling, on the other hand to create attractive structures that are optimally embedded in the landscape, efficiently operated, and usable for generations, supported by constantly evolving technologies, used sensibly and with awareness of values",12
To allocate and examine opportunities and risks of human-led technologies undergoing digital transformation is seen as key responsibility in order to deal with them in a targeted manner,9
The construction branch is envisioned to encourage other branches to recognize and fully use the potential of the ethical implementation of digital transformation within a strong corporate culture,9
Digital transformation and AI are changing this perception,9
"Language transfer, transparency and education are essential for gaining trust in new technologies, participating and shaping the digital transformation process, moving forward and fully using all potentials",9
"The understanding and knowledge of such technologies are still limited to a minority of people in research and development, leading to the conclusion that its opportunities, the risks and weak points of the technology need further education, communication and transparency",9
"On the one hand, their goal is to protect the climate and the environment from the project idea to dismantling and recycling",12
"The overview illustrates these elements which are key for helping to shape the digital transformation responsibly and with long-term effects, while being mutually dependant—visualized via a ""mind map"" (Fig. 2).: building up knowledge and competencies, designing all basic technical requirements, interdisciplinary cooperation",9
"According to AI developer´s statements, it remains a human key responsibility to programme, guide, control, adjust, manage and maintain data-driven tech: digital transformation has the great potential to aid both the economical and efficient building project life cycle, but technologies involve responsible handling, deployment, management and monitoring",9
"In order to fundamentally rethink technological progress in construction and keep up with digitization in a sustainable manner, everyone involved is challenged to lead this process to success and shape it proactively with qualified human resources, an open discourse on new technical possibilities and the allocation of potential fields of application",8
"Opportunities and high potential of digitalization in construction offer approaches to adopt new methods from AI, build on existing digital data structures, e.g",9
"To comply responsibly with both shaping the design of the digital transformation process and sustainable, resource and climate-friendly construction, active participation is required at all levels",9
The study builds on these initial findings to draw new conclusions as to how a successful digital transformation can be complemented by ethical guidelines,9
"Each company bears responsibility for educational knowledge, designing a structure and providing the requirements for participating in the digital transformation process",9
CDR increases innovation and growth in companies and strengthens the shared added value both for companies and society [36],8
"The study identified key elements for responsible digital transformation: clearly defining requirements (data, processes, qualification), quality features and interfaces, ensuring the consistent digitization of all planning and execution-relevant information data, and providing the consistent data platform that is used in all process phases by all participants",9
"The study identified best practice companies as Case studies, concluding that a culture of knowledge is the key resource to get engaged in the digital transformation",9
"One result of the study is that these imbalances have to be stated precisely, because they interfere with the exchange between specialist disciplines and the search for holistic solutions in the design of the digital transformation process, particularly the innovative progress in Germany",9
The construction industry holds significant potential to create value in the digital transformation process,9
"Merging new AI methods with existing digital models may lead to new working environments with eye catching concepts of AI (Table 3): Ideally, digital transformation assists architects, planners and the operational part of construction, makes the interaction between workers and machines more efficient, performs partially automated processes and uses existing data to provide new experiences, its values and the basis for strategic decisions (= Self-learning construction site)",9
"A long-term Head of Civil Engineering faculty sees the education of values and ethics as an integral part of the engineer’s academic training, because the course for the success of construction projects is already set there—by well-trained engineers who are prepared for digital transformation",9
"For him, the entrepreneurial responsibility in the digital transformation consists particularly in rethinking process and communication improvements in order to remain competitive",9
"The digital transformation consulting shows that raising awareness, education and knowledge transfer and exchange require communication in an appropriate language",9
"Successful digital transformation at PERI means 'taking people with you', getting excited about AI, with methods that solve a problem",9
"The aim remains problem solving for the benefit of the community, especially in the case of resource bottlenecks, at high costs! “Digital Construction”, a business unit of Wayss & Freytag founded in 2016, copes with the challenge, that digital transformation and entrepreneurial culture form a cross-cutting issue",9
"For Apleona, digital transformation means a win–win–win partnership between our customers, us and our subcontractors",9
"Such technology helps to face ethical, environmental and legal concerns about deforestation and use of endangered tropical timber",15
"This is central topic in the question of dismantling, re-usability, recycling, ecological and energy conception in the context of the sustainability discussion",12
"In order to design state-of-the-art city systems, efficient city logistics, mobility and innovation systems fulfilling SDGs, the question arises in some interviews: who are the actors, the masterminds and designers, who are the executors? Local climate adaptation strategies, digital strategies, the living and urban worlds of tomorrow, sustainable urban infrastructures, sustainable design of space and society can only be achieved with the help of experts and know-how",13
"It makes a big difference whether a company cultivates and upholds a culture of values, compares its technological progress with safe, meaningful and responsible human–machine interaction, or if it only relies on PR campaigns that encourage particularly ethical, fair action by the entire company or strategies put in a ""green"" light (greenwashing)",8
"Digital transformation changes the engineer’s profile, qualifications and competencies",9
It is a corporate responsibility to train knowledge and provide the infrastructure for fulfilling requirements for shaping digital transformation and anchor values in the corporate culture as to bridge the gap between Ethics and practice for trustworthy AI technologies,9
The presence of a CDO (Chief Digital Officer) or CIO (Chief Information Officer) is often an indicator of the structural change as part of corporate digital transformation,9
Another reason is the in-house research and development (R&D) carried out by large companies in order to successfully master existing and future challenges—up to and including the technological role model for competitors,9
"Most construction companies do not want to miss out on being part of digital transformation, but rather want to conduct efficient business, reduce costs, remain and increase competitiveness, increase customers’ confidence and generate new orders",9
"One of the key factors, the study identified, is stability and sustainability by setting up safe digital transformation environment to handle corporate data securely and protect against misuse",9
An additional limitation is represented by academic teaching that has not been adjusted in terms of academic teaching staff’s skills and competencies to train and prepare students for ethics and digital transformation processes and its requirements,9
"The study’s research moves the Body of Knowledge forward by providing constructive solutions, a framework and an inclusive approach to fill these gaps and to shape digital transformation with focus on the specific needs of supporting the construction industry at all levels",9
The study comes to the conclusion that a sustainable digital transformation can only succeed and the shares in the value chain can only be increased if humans are placed at the centre of technological developments,9
"However, they offer people orientation and support in order to be able to design and use digitalization and AI in a targeted and meaningful way and to be able to make balanced decisions with increasing complexity of data and decision-making options",9
"The study sends a strong signal on how important it is that the construction industry gets engaged now—not only to strengthen its own competitive role and highlight its unique selling point, but also to not to be left behind in the era of digital transformation",9
This study is especially targeted at understanding the critical path and key processes of the digital transformation in the construction industry,9
It was stated in the 2030 Agenda for SDGs that socio-economic development is dependent on the sustainable management of natural resources and the environment,8
"(2018) in their research titled distilling the role of ecosystem services in the SDGs used a bipartite network analysis to plot the 178 ecosystem services–targets interactions and found targets under SDG 1, 2, 6, and 15 to be the most frequently evaluated and distinct targets",1
"The social effects include relocation, violence, human trafficking, and prostitution (Pring et al",8
"The development of the oil sand resource has potential for environmental degradation, pollution, and problems, which is an integral part of environmental governance",15
"The processes of calculations in Table 4 use the following steps as explained, using Targets in SDG 6 as example",6
Target 6.1 was prioritized as very high in all the three phases of mining because most mining communities are located in rural areas with little or no safe drinking water,6
"Therefore, a mining company can make provision for safe drinking water to a community as part of its corporate social responsibility thereby achieving this target",6
"However, it is rated 5 both during the mining and post-mining phases because in these phases, there are different types of pollution from waste water, tailing ponds, chemicals, and heavy metals which affect water quality (Masliyah et al",6
"This target was highly prioritized at these phases because oil sands processing requires a large volume of water, and mining companies must be able to recycle the water from tailing ponds in order to reduce the amount of fresh water intake thereby ensuring water-use efficiency (Masliyah et al",6
Table 5 shows the responses of the three communities on their basic needs from the mining company and their expectations from mining operations,1
"For example, targets 1.1, 1.5, and 8.3 were considered most relevant to this proposed condition, which is “job creation,” and the other targets were considered and linked to their relevant proposed conditions",8
"At the bottom of the list are community participation in decision-making, provision of health care, and protection of cultural heritage, and they have just one related target each",11
"“Restoration of degraded and polluted areas” as a proposed condition can be accomplished by abiding and following the rules of ecosystem management, environmental management, and increase agricultural productivity",2
"Prioritized targets under SDG 16, 12, and 1 were of very high and high priorities, each perceived to have high impacts and peculiarities in the three phases of mining",16
"(2019) used a multi-criteria analysis to prioritize SDG targets and based on their results, targets under SDG 16, 12, and 1 were among the highest scoring target",16
"The top four prioritized targets in this research cover governance issues, which include reduction in corruption and bribery, accountability and transparency of institutions, access to information, and protection of fundamental rights",16
"This is because the community expects the mining enterprise to maintain peace and justice through responsible production and consumption of the natural resource thereby ensuring there are economic progress and reduced poverty among the people, which is important for achieving multiple SDG targets",12
"Environmental management (Targets 8.4 and 12.4) is a crucial aspect of the life cycle of a mine to ensure sustainable exploitation of resources in order to reduce the amount of pollutants released into the air, water, and soil while achieving economic growth (Alekseenko et al",8
"Increase agricultural productivity (Targets 2.3, 2.4., and 2.5) should be the focus during the mine restoration in ensuring that indigenous people implement agricultural practices that help increase yield through managed and diversified seed and plant bank which can in turn help to maintain the ecosystems (Sheoran et al",2
"In ensuring safe operations, mining enterprise should focus on waste management (Targets 6.3, 12.4, and 12.5) to reduce the amount of waste generated",12
"In addition, secure and safe working operations should be practiced (Targets 3.9 and 8.8) to reduce the number of illnesses and deaths",8
The opinion-based conditions indicate that “community participation in decision-making” and “protection of cultural heritage” have the lowest numbers of linked targets and goals for the proposed conditions,11
"Furthermore, conservation of natural and cultural heritage may also be deemphasized because of the inevitable destruction of the environment to allow for mining operations in the community",11
"For example, the proposed condition “reduced violence, corruption, and bribery” can be achieved if peace and justice are strongly maintained within the mining communities, which is the focus of targets in SDG 16",16
Corruption and bribery often lead to community–company conflict (Omotehinse and De Tomi 2020),16
"The proposed conditions “job creation” and “establishment of schools and vocational centers” go hand in hand, which can help in achieving targets 4.1 and 4.4",8
"Health risk is usually associated with the mining phase, because mining activities may result in health risk like cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and tuberculosis due to silica dust exposure",3
The proposed condition “compensation” is important during the pre-mining phase where there will be deforestation; this could lead to loss of job,15
"Taking Dianchi Lake Basin as the research area, land use data from five periods, 2001, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2019, were analyzed using the dynamic equivalent method to determine ecosystem service value (ESV) and hot spot analysis method to explore temporal and spatial changes in ESV in Dianchi Lake Basin",15
"Three sustainable development goals, SDG15.1.1, SDG15.2, and SDG15.3.1, were selected to quantitatively analyze the impact of land use change in Dianchi Lake Basin",15
"explored the impact of land use change on ESV in Guangxi Province from 1990 to 2020 and evaluated the degree of completion of the SDG15.1.1, SDG15.1.2, SDG15.1.4, and SDG15.2 indicators (Qiu et al",15
"However, under the influence of climate change and intensive human activities, many ecosystems are on the verge of serious degradation",13
"In the past 20 years, with the rapid economic development of Kunming, urbanization has been accelerating, and the urban area has expanded into a large area, which has drastically altered the natural land structure and had a significant impact on the ecosystem function, land use, and sustainable development of the Dianchi Lake Basin",8
"Therefore, based on the existing research, this paper combined ESV with SDGs to explore the impact of land use change in reference to the SDG15.1.1, SDG15.2, and SDG15.3.1 indicators",15
The land use transfer matrix was calculated to determine the degree and direction of land use change in Dianchi Lake Basin from 2001 to 2019,15
"In this study, the basic equivalent data for ecosystem service function value in China, as revised by Xie et al",15
"2015), was used as reference; the equivalent assignment of construction land referred to the research of Deng Shuhong (Deng 2012).The adjustment coefficient was calculated using the NPP, precipitation, and soil conservation data, and the basic equivalent of ecosystem service value was dynamically adjusted in time and space",15
For ecosystem service value (Liu et al,15
"2019), where E is the ecosystem service value, C is the ecosystem service function type C, \({E}_{C}\) is the value of ecosystem service function type C, \({F}_{nij}\) is the equivalent factor of unit area value of type n ecosystem service function of a certain ecosystem in year i and area j, D is the average value of ecosystem service of one standard equivalent factor over many years (yuan /hm2), and \({A}_{ij}\) is the area of region j in year i",15
"Among them, considering the data availability and definition we studied, we selected SDG15.1.1, SDG15.2, and SDG15.3.1 related to the impact of land use change",15
"SDG15.1.1 refers to “forest area as a percentage of total land area,” and its mathematical expression is as follows (United Nations 2020): SDG15.2 refers to “promoting sustainable management of all types of forests, halting deforestation, restoring degraded forests, and substantially increasing global reforestation by 2020” (Zhang 2019)",15
"To quantify SDG15.2, the types and degrees of forest degradation were defined as follows: the conversion of any forest land type to another land use type is termed forest degradation, and the reverse is forest restoration (Qiu et al",15
"SDG15.3.1 focuses on “proportion of degraded land to total land area.” By combining three sub-indicators, land use change, land productivity, and land carbon storage and considering the data availability in this study, land degradation in this paper only considered the change in land circulation, according to the land cover trend chart provided by   and existing studies (Peng et al",15
"According to the spatial distribution of land use (Fig. 2), the main land use types in Dianchi Lake Basin during the 20 year study period were woodland, arable land, construction land, and water area",15
"Construction land saw the largest increase, with an increase in area of 310.12 km2, accounting for 32.24% of all transferred land, 226.51 km2 of which came from arable land",15
"As can be seen from Fig. 6b, land degradation was concentrated in the central and northern Dianchi Lake Basin, namely, Guandu District and Panlong District",15
"Specifically, the most common land type degradation transformations were tree forest land to shrubland and from arable land to construction land",15
Spatial distribution of forest improvement and degradation for SDG15.2 (a) and land degradation for SDG15.3.1 (b) in Dianchi Lake Basin from 2001 to 2019 Figure 7 shows the temporal and spatial changes of various regulatory coefficients in Dianchi Lake Basin from 2001 to 2019,15
"Ecological service value adjustment coefficients As can be seen from the ecosystem service value of different service functions (Fig. 8), the change in total ESV in Dianchi Lake Basin from 2001 to 2019 generally decreased at first, then rose, and then decreased",15
"2020), which means that the destruction of forests can easily cause natural disasters related to soil erosion",15
"For SDG15.2 and SDG15.3.1, further analysis shows that the total ESV loss caused by land degradation is 1.342 billion yuan, while the ESV income in the land optimization area is 275 million yuan",15
"Therefore, controlling the occurrence of land degradation is a feasible measure to reduce the loss of ESV (Peng et al",15
"From 2005 to 2019, the cold and hot changes of ecosystem service value in Dianchi Lake Basin are obvious, and there were large fluctuations in ESV that were closely related to the influence of temporal and spatial variation in precipitation and its hydrological regulatory function in the study area",15
"(2) In order to change the status quo of SDG15.1.1, SDG15.2, and SDG15.3.1, afforestation, agricultural conversion, and inefficient forest transformation should be targeted to restore vegetation, reduce landslide and water and soil loss, and actively carry out regional ecological restoration (Wang et al",15
(1) SDG15.3.1 refers to the proportion of degraded land in the total land area,15
"It is obtained by combining 3 sub-indicators including land use change, land productivity, and land carbon storage",15
"Due to the limitation of data availability, the quantification of land degradation in SDG15.3.1 in this paper only considers land circulation, and the land degradation results obtained are relatively one-sided (Peng et al",15
"Taking Dianchi Lake Basin as the study area, this paper analyzed the temporal and spatial changes in land use and ecosystem service value from 2001 to 2019 and explores the impact of land use change on SDG15.1.1, SDG15.2, and SDG15.3.1",15
Most degradation of SDG15.2 was caused by the conversion of high forest to low forest and the conversion of forest land to arable land and construction land,15
"The decreases in cultivated land, high forest land, and open forest land were the biggest factors influencing SDG15.3.1 and accounted for 84.27% of the total land degradation",15
"Such environmental risks of debtors and lenders could result in significant financial losses due to natural disasters (e.g., because of extreme weather events) to restore physical damages and could result in heavy penalties for non-compliance with environmental regulations",13
"Secondly, banks view sustainability issues as an opportunity to make new products for businesses and households (e.g., energy saving buildings, environmental investments of firms, green consumer cards) (Bătae et al",7
2022) and some specific SDG goals such as SDG 10 (Úbeda et al,10
"SDGs were launched by the United Nations through the 2030 Agenda in order to support economic prosperity, environmental protection, and social welfare issues in global and national contexts (UN Global Compact 2015)",15
"To achieve this goal, many banks adopt practices to improve their sustainability performance such as EMAS, energy management, waste management, CSR strategies, and sustainability reporting strategies (Pérez and Rodríguez del Bosque 2012; Pérez et al",12
"For this purpose, as we explain below, we examine the effect of sustainability awareness on customers’ image (H1), loyalty (H2), fair pricing (H3), satisfaction (H4), and trust (H5)",12
A questionnaire-based survey of 130 Taiwanese bank customers examined their attitude-behavior approach to different CSR initiatives such as environmental protection and philanthropic initiatives,15
"So far, the majority of current literature has mainly focused on analyzing how banks meet the SDGs through sustainability reporting evaluation",12
"They identified that some strategies of CSR play a critical role in the customer trust such as legal compliance, social norms, product responsibility, environmental protection, and employee relations",15
One reason to explain this relationship could be that customer sustainability awareness creates positive attitudes and behaviors in the other factors considered,12
"Overall, findings showed that sustainability awareness has a positive effect on the behavior and intentions of bank customers and constitutes an exploitable path from decision makers to strengthen the behavioral structures of bank customers",12
This work highlights the role of sustainability awareness at an early stage in customer behavior,12
"So, it is proposed to examine these impacts in different sectors in order to examine whether and how strong the influence of sustainability awareness on consumer behavior is to other products or services.",12
"It redirects humanity towards a sustainable path to end poverty, hunger, inequality, and climate degradation, enable improved access to education and healthcare, and build just, peaceful, and equitable societies [1, 2]",1
"Interestingly, many studies have shown that economic growth can lead to the scarcity of natural resources, thus destroying our environment [27,28,29]",8
"Furthermore, political crises, corruption, and distrust of interventionist governments may result in outspoken opposition to active planning and roll-out of transformative actions required to realize the 2030 Agenda [43]",16
Social and environmental challenges pose a risk to achieving SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) and energy justice for developing countries [45],7
"The universal and global 2030 Agenda requires a human rights-centered perspective due to SDGs’ universal, transformative, comprehensive, and inclusive nature [50] to “leave no one behind.” SDG 10, in particular, commits to ensuring equality both within and between countries paying attention to marginalized and disadvantaged populations",10
"Several reports indicate that although SDG 10 represents a unique opportunity to narrow down on inequality, the language in the goals and targets are poorly aligned, thus jeopardizing its implementation [52]",10
"The disparity may be evident in income equality, gender, disadvantaged, disabled, and marginalized populations",10
The lack of robust accountability systems [55] and monitoring of SDG 10 is a significant issue,10
The HLPF on Sustainable Development can play an essential role in monitoring the transnational dimensions of the SDGs through the Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) and analyze the shortfalls of the current indicators proposed to measure progress towards SDG 10,10
"According to the Director of Open and International Programmes at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability and Leadership, it would be harder to secure public support for SDG 13 Climate Action targets on decarbonization if people are struggling with poverty and discrimination [57]",13
Capacity building and empowering people to make practical contributions in the face of limited competencies can promote healthy democracy and good governance,16
A sense of belonging needs to be ignited through increased social connectedness and decreased isolation to promote peace and prosperity across cultures,16
"The centrality of collaborations across multiple stakeholders to achieve the SDGs is recognized through SDG 17, which calls for partnerships between and across the three sectors",17
"Simultaneously, the lack of financial investment and allocation, lack of development and social cohesion, a potential increase in interest rates, and debt vulnerabilities could have adverse spillover effects",10
"There are four discourses (pro-, skeptical, middle-ground, and anti-private sector) on the private sector’s role in SDGs that emphasize socio-economic development over environmental goals [128]",8
"They more importantly can support reconciliation efforts in local communities by integrating small local businesses into their supply chains, thus contributing to SDG 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities",11
"The plural sector needs to become robust, and it needs to be perceived as robust by the other two sectors, such that it is at the table where decisions are made. There must be an enabling environment for their participation through access to resources and information, fundamental freedom, and outreach [135, 136]",16
An example of addressing a complex social issue that reflects utilizing a biopsychosocial-ecologic approach to achieve the goals is Brazil’s successful handling of the HIV crisis,3
Themes in Brazil’s successful response to HIV crisis (extracted from references quoted in the text),3
considering drug use as a public health rather than a criminal justice issue) led to policies and programs (e.g,3
"Moral courage was evident in the decision to provide universal access to free medicines, standing up to international pressure, and successfully negotiating loans and a UN motion on treatment for AIDS as a human right [147]",3
Brazil’s success in handling the AIDS crisis rests upon effective collaboration across three sectors,3
"The plural sector’s central role in mobilizing and galvanizing social action can be observed in such actions as developing AIDS NGO, sanitary reform movement, civil action lawsuits to human rights challenges, education, and being a catalyst of partnerships",3
The plural sector’s initiatives based on non-discrimination and solidarity shaped the national program,10
"As can be expected in any CAS, the gains require constant attention for sustainability, and the relatively recent rise in HIV positive cases in Brazil [149] requires renewed commitment and approaches",3
So far there is only little research focusing on the relation between the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations 2030 Agenda and the digitalization of industrial processes,9
"Although there are expectations that Industry 4.0 creates a window of opportunity for a more sustainable production, we could not find evidence to support this idea",12
"Instead of targeting a more sustainable production, many descriptions draw a picture in which Industry 4.0 processes run exactly as before, just in a digital way",12
"This literature review focusses on the established understanding and anticipated consequences of the Industry 4.0 concept and seeks to analyze how they align with SDGs 8 (decent work and economic growth), 9 (industry, innovation and infrastructure) and 12 (responsivle consumption and production) and their respective targets and indicators",8
SDG 8 is the one referred to most frequently among these three SDGs (see Fig. 2),8
"Number of analyzed text fragments relating to SDGs 8, 9 and 12 respectively A total of 120 text fragments are referring to topics pertaining to SDG 8, targets 8.3 and 8.5 being the most frequently addressed ones (see Fig. 3)",8
"The targets of SDG 8 relate to economic (8.1, 8.2), social (8.5, 8.6, 8.7, 8.8), socio-economic (8.3) and a combination of economic & ecological (8.4) topics",8
"Number of analyzed text fragments relating to the relevant targets of SDG 8 respectively Target 8.1 and 8.2 both relate to economic parameters like growth and productivity, which is why they are measured by the indicators like annual growth rate of real GDP per capita and per employed person [26]",8
"11 text fragments draw on the topics mentioned in target 8.1, focusing on economic growth in particular in least-developed economies",8
"In many text fragments efficiency gains are mentioned as a “byproduct” of the innovative Industry 4.0 environment such as cost-efficient batch size one production [3, 33, 42], cloud manufacturing [42, 43] or the cross-linking of data [41, 44], which implicitly rather relate to the company level than entire economies",9
"One of these exceptions is referring to the entire manufacturing industry, forecasting disruptive innovations such as ”distributed organization of production, with connected goods (products with communication ability), low-energy processes, collaborative robots, and integrated manufacturing and logistics” [2]",9
It is not clear to what extent Industry 4.0 is expected to support the creation of decent jobs as demanded by SDG 8,8
All other issues included in target 8.3 like entrepreneurship or financial services have not been addressed in the analyzed body of literature,8
"Target 8.5 is strongly centered around the topics employment and work, which have already been presented in the paragraphs above in the context of the vaguely phrased “decent job creation” in target 8.3",8
"The more specific issues in targets 8.5, namely employment for young people and persons with disabilities as well as equal pay, have not been addressed in the analyzed body of literature",8
"None of the analyzed publications was referring specifically to the further aspects of target 8.8 namely labor rights, migrant workers or precarious employment",8
"39 text fragments address this target, of which 18 refer to resource efficiency [3, 29, 36, 37, 41,42,43, 47, 53,54,55] and 16 more specifically to energy efficiency [2, 27, 29, 37, 41, 42, 47,48,49, 55] as the two most prominent topics",7
"Most of these statements do not provide any explanation or reasoning for these suggested improvements: Industry 4.0 is expected “to present solutions to issues that need to be dealt with (such as the resource and energy efficiency, urban production, demographic change)” [43]",7
"The technological development in the context of Industry 4.0 is believed to contribute to “a concept towards a holistic resource efficiency” [41], “improve resource productivity and efficiency” [37] and give rise “to completely new innovations with added value and business models that support optimal resource utilization and smart control” [53] and thus “[…]make a substantial contribution to the sustainable development of the company” [29]",8
"arguing that the improvement in efficiency is based on “the detailed information on each point of the production process […]” which makes it possible to optimize resource and energy “[…] over the entire value network (this means optimal resource and energy productivity, optimal resource and energy efficiency)” [29]",7
"Another approach to improve efficiency is “to consider resource and energy efficiency already in the planning stage of the company by the optimization of rooms, spaces, pathways or lines, by the design of centralized and decentralized supply and disposal systems or by creating closed material and energy cycles” [29]",7
"A total of 58 text fragments are referring to topics related to SDG 9, where the target most addressed is target 9.4 (see Fig. 4)",9
"The targets of SDG 9 relate to economic (9.3), ecological (9.4), social (9.c), and socio-economic (9.2) topics",9
"Number of analyzed text fragments relating to the relevant targets of SDG 9 respectively 12 text fragments refer to the topics mentioned in target 9.2, which calls for an inclusive and sustainable industrialization where the share of industrial employment is raised particularly in less-developed economies",9
"Consequently, authors expect digitalization to support industrial growth whereas it is not clear which regions or countries will benefit from this growth expectations and improved competitiveness",9
"As stated in the context of SDG 8, only one paper identifies new opportunities for non-industrialized countries through the virtualization of supply chains and digital technologies such as additive manufacturing [33]",8
"With respect to the sustainability of future industrialization, a number of digitally enabled approaches are mentioned, including smart grid technology to supply smart factories with a higher share of renewable energy, as well as circularity and sustainable process design [41]",7
"Meanwhile, the expected changing requirements of future jobs in Industry 4.0 emphasize the need “for inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” as called for in SDG 4",4
"While no paper refers to impacts on the also requested financial services, some text fragments refer to changing value chains and opportunities for SMEs due to digitalization",9
identify the improved flow of information through digital interconnectedness and the cloud manufacturing concept as new opportunities for small-scale enterprises to enter manufacturing value chains [43],9
Target 9.4 demands to upgrade infrastructure and retrofit industries to make them more sustainable,9
Upgrading the intraorganizational ICT infrastructure while also combining “IoT technology with advanced machine learning algorithms” to optimize the energy consumption of companies was suggested in [37],7
Only one publication explicitly suggests retrofitting as”an easy and cost-efficient way of upgrading existing manufacturing equipment” in order to enable Industry 4.0 processes [41],9
"A total of 54 text fragments are referring to topics related to SDG 12, where the target most addressed is target 12.2 (see Fig. 5)",12
"The targets of SDG 12 relate to ecological (12.2, 12.5), socio-ecological (12.4) and a combination of social & economic & ecological (12.6) topics",12
Number of analyzed text fragments relating to the relevant targets of SDG 12 respectively With respect to SDG 12 target 12.2 is the one most often referred to in our body of analyzed literature,12
Target 12.4 is focusing on the management of chemicals and wastes,12
Target 12.5 is also addressing waste reduction like target 12.4,12
"Additionally, it is focusing on recycling and reuse",12
"With regard to waste prevention, retrofitting is mentioned as a basic solution to avoid having to buy new machinery [41], while one paper claims”the ability to provide more individual or even products […] may reduce the number of product returns” [57]",9
Target 12.6 is rather broadly demanding more sustainable practices and to integrate sustainability information into their reporting procedures,12
"We have graded many of the approaches presented for previous targets under this term, such as Corporate Social Responsibility (target 12.2), practices for an efficient management of energy and material (targets 8.4 and 9.2) or their recycling and reuse (target 12.5)",12
"The strengthened role of sustainability reporting, which is also demanded by this target, is not explicitly addressed by any paper",12
Only one text fragments is indirectly referring to sustainability reporting requesting to widen the practice of Corporate Social Responsibility [3],12
SDG 12 contains the biggest number of targets which occur to be not directly relevant for the Industry 4.0 concept,12
"Two of these group of terms are mentioned here as examples: on the one hand there is”sustainable industrialization” (target 9.2)”environmentally sound technologies and industrial processes” (9.4) and”sustainable practices” (12.6) and on the other hand”resource efficiency” in target 8.4,”resource-use efficiency” (9.4) and”efficient use of natural resources” (12.2)",9
Target 8.1 clearly calls for a focus to be placed on the economic development of the least-developed countries,8
"These predict that Industry 4.0 technologies will be less widespread and less widely used in low- and middle-income countries [58] and suggest that, for example, African countries are likely to benefit less from increasing levels of digitalization [59]",9
"The effects of digital technologies on industrial employment also strongly depend on other national factors such as the respective social protection mechanisms as well as the structure and the educational level of the workforce [10, 66, 67, 73]",1
"There are some approaches in the literature where the use of Industry 4.0 technologies has led to more energy efficiency [74,75,76,77] or a more economical use of materials [78]",7
"During the digital transformation of industry conflicts and dilemmas will likely occur between the ecological, economic and social dimensions of sustainability that will require painful compromises and trade-offs",9
"Practitioners need to be integral members of these discourses, so that actual challenges and best practices from corporate contexts are shared with other communities to enable mutual learning processes and the dangerously common myth of an increased ecological performance as an automatic consequence of digitalization can be deconstructed",9
Central expectations are focused around strengthening economic parameters such as growth and productivity through the digitalization of production,9
"This would require digging deeper than only hoping for efficiency gains as a “byproduct” of digitalization, while also systematically investigating potential risks of Industry 4.0 for a sustainable development",9
"Digital innovations will not per default increase sustainable practice; rather a professional technology assessment, a clear commitment to sustainability goals as expressed in the UN SDGs, and an inclusive decision-making style are required to promote sustainability within all three dimensions of sustainability",16
"As an overarching task for the international community, efforts should also be intensified for all regions to ensure that the increasing implementation of the Industry 4.0 concept enables a globally equitable distribution of the opportunities offered by digitalization in the manufacturing industry.",9
"Of the approximately 128 500 species assessed by The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, more than 28% are threatened with extinction (IUCN 2020)",15
"Despite a global rhetoric to address biodiversity loss, as well as numerous international and national-level political strategies for protecting biodiversity, there is no indication that the trajectory of global biodiversity declines will change in the near future (IPBES 2019)",15
"Global biodiversity loss has been most acute in tropical regions globally, where species richness and endemism are particularly high (Barlow et al",15
Both deforestation and forest degradation have reduced the extent and quality of tropical forest habitats (Alroy 2017),15
"However, while deforestation and forest degradation have received considerable political attention (UNFCCC 2016), a third “de”—defaunation, a term that refers to the disappearance of fauna as a result of anthropogenic drivers such as hunting and habitat alteration (Dirzo et al",15
"2014)—has been largely overlooked within forest conservation policies and forest protection mechanisms such as REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), and is routinely left out of forest governance strategies (Krause and Nielsen 2019)",15
"Recent studies provide insights into the linkages between SDG 2 and the loss of forest fauna, indicating that food security and several targets under SDG 2 are directly (e.g., target 2.1, 2.2) and indirectly (e.g., target 2.3, 2.4) related to defaunation (Rowland et al",2
"(2020) conducted a study in six forest communities bordering Nigeria’s Cross River National Park, showing that wild meat consumption was significantly associated with relatively higher household food security status",2
"These studies provide evidence of the importance of wild meat and indicate that defaunation has implications for ending hunger and ensuring access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food throughout the year (target 2.1) and ending malnutrition for children under 5 years of age (2.2)",2
"Defaunation has indirect consequences on SDG 2 target 2.3—to double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, and target 2.4—to ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production that help maintain ecosystems",2
"Two SDG 3 targets relate directly to defaunation: target 3.3—to end the epidemics of neglected tropical diseases, and target 3.4—to promote mental health and well-being",3
Hunter–wildlife interactions and wild meat consumption is of global public health importance because wild animals are hosts and transmitters of numerous deleterious—and potentially fatal—zoonotic diseases (Olival and Hayman 2014),3
"Several major viral outbreaks—including SARS-CoV, Ebola, HIV and now SARS-CoV-2—have been linked to wildlife and its consumption in tropical areas (Wolfe et al",3
"Nonetheless, Hammerschlag and Gallagher (2017) found that only 16% of these symbols are nationally protected and only 50% receive international trade restrictions, highlighting the fact that even prominent flagship species with cultural significance are not immune to overexploitation",15
"From an intergenerational forward-looking perspective, the ongoing tropical biodiversity loss and widespread decline of animal populations will affect how individuals and societies as a whole will see their world in the future",15
"Defaunation plays a particular role for climate action, especially the SDG 13 target 13.1—strengthening resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries, and target 13.2—integrating climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning",13
"Forests are the world’s most important terrestrial carbon sink, and maintaining and protecting healthy forest ecosystems is critical to mitigating climate change (Watson et al",13
"At the global scale, it is likely that defaunation therefore poses an indirect, but significant, threat to efforts to address climate change (Brodie and Gibbs 2009)",13
"2012) global forest governance, including proposals that aim to curb deforestation and forest degradation and aim to foster more sustainable forest management (e.g., REDD+), largely fail to address forest fauna loss (Krause and Nielsen 2019)",15
"In the context of SDG 15, defaunation is an overarching threat for achieving its targets",15
"Some of these targets are already likely to be missed, foremost target 15.2—by 2020, promoting the implementation of sustainable management of all types of forests, halt deforestation, restore degraded forests and substantially increase afforestation and reforestation globally, and target 15.5—taking urgent and significant action to reduce the degradation of natural habitats, halt the loss of biodiversity and, by 2020, protect and prevent the extinction of threatened species",15
"These indirect effects cause biodiversity declines and ecosystem degradation, further undermining SDG 15 and in particular target 15.2 and 15.5",15
Most traditional conservation strategies have relied on state-managed protected areas to conserve forest fauna,15
"In the short-term, this helps maintain healthy tropical forest ecosystems (SDG 15, targets 15.1, 15.2) and protect the threatened species that they harbor (target 15.5)",15
"In the long-term, the preservation of healthy forest systems within protected area networks, with intact faunal communities, is essential for strengthening climate resilience (SDG 13, target 13.1)",13
"International cooperation and financing for biodiversity protection, as stipulated in the SDG 15 targets 15.2, 15.a and 15.b, is certainly crucial to achieve this, but is not enough to ensure equitable and effective outcomes when the underlying drivers of unsustainable use of natural resources from these areas are not addressed",15
"In situations in which local communities retain some level of ownership of forest resources and are the primary users of wildlife, they have to be empowered to sustainably manage forest fauna as a means to ensure its long-term conservation",15
The fact that local communities often have a vested long-term interest in sustainably managed game populations can provide conservationists with a unique opportunity to use local hunters as potential allies to protect forest areas (Harrison et al,15
"These norms and management rules that have developed over centuries can support a more sustainable use of forest resources and protect species, but they can also be a threat for specific species",15
"In general, these complex cultural norms need to be better understood to improve effective biodiversity conservation policies",15
"Incorporating these behavioral approaches into larger conservation strategies may ultimately help to foster local guardianship of wildlife resources, which could directly benefit the protection of threatened species (target 15.5)",15
"Demand reduction for illegal wildlife products is an essential component in curbing unsustainable hunting across many tropical regions, especially in places like Southeast Asia where a highly commercialized wild meat industry has created an insatiable demand for wildlife products from tropical forests around the world (Drury 2011; Gray et al",15
"Official data on the illegal wildlife trade often stem from confiscations and are likely the tip of the iceberg, thus severely underestimating the quantities of commercialized wildlife (Sas-Rolfes et al",15
"Reducing consumer demand will require collaborations on international, national, and local levels, and must incorporate education and awareness campaigns that simultaneously work toward shifting cultural norms as well as address weak institutional capacity to control and enforce wildlife trade bans",16
"To date, many public demand reduction campaigns focused on voluntary behavioral change as it relates to illegal wildlife trade have not utilized the full spectrum of knowledge present within the social sciences",15
"Such programs could benefit, for example, from the adoption of strategic behavioral change approaches that are based on key societal pressures that make illegal wildlife socially unacceptable (Wallen and Daut 2018)",15
In situations where demand for wild meat is linked to extreme poverty (de Merode et al,1
"Furthermore, countries from the Global North and international coalitions have a responsibility to help strengthen local capacities so that tropical countries are better able to control illegal wildlife trade within their own borders",15
"(2019), this topic has not been discussed often within the specific context of reducing illegal wildlife trade",15
"In the context of forest rich developing countries this includes forest-based climate mitigation, for example through implementing REDD+ mechanisms (Bastos Lima et al",13
"It is imperative that global forest governance protects ecological processes instead of focusing solely on maintaining forest cover, as is currently done by most well-established approaches, such as REDD+ (Krause and Nielsen 2019)",15
Monitoring forest cover using remote sensing as a simple metric of conservation success is therefore insufficient to understanding the ecological degradation that occurs under tropical forest canopies as a result of defaunation,15
"Nonetheless, we must reject blaming biodiversity loss on groups of people who rely on forests for their daily livelihoods, and there is a need to rethink narratives that resulted in the stigmatization of hunters and the consumption of wild meat, particularly for subsistence purposes (van Vliet 2018)",15
"Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has, as one of the first global policy relevant bodies, recognized and explicitly pointed out the global indirect drivers of biodiversity loss (IPBES 2019)",15
"It is not enough to focus on tree cover in forest governance and forest protection alone, but the drivers of defaunation must be understood and addressed as well if these ecosystems are to provide the services humans clearly benefit from",15
"The demand for wild meat, wild animal parts, and other forest resources represents a Damocles sword, putting at risk the ecological functions of forest ecosystems and, ultimately, threatening the well-being of local communities and global society",15
The aim of this paper is to analyse the health crises from an ecological economic and a gender equality perspective in order to see how the pandemic is affecting Sustainable Development Goal 5 (gender equality) and particularly Target 5.2 which is about eliminating domestic violence and 5.4 which is about the valuation of unpaid care and domestic work,5
"The virus might have some short-term positive effects on the environment, but the backbone of society’s response is unpaid care work, therefore women are being exploited even more",5
There is extensive research on environmental issues and gender inequality issues,5
"There are only a few articles and surveys about Covid-19’s effects on SDG 5 and no literature about the deep lying reasons behind those effects, to the best of my knowledge",5
How is Covid-19 effecting SDG 5? 2,5
"Is it endangering the implementation of SDG 5, particularly Target 5.2—eliminating violence against women and 5.4—the recognition of unpaid care work? 3",5
"After that, the case study of Covid-19 will be analyzed through ecological and gender equality lenses",5
"Findings about the connections between the exploitation of the backbone of society’s response for the crises (which is paid and unpaid care work and other forms of metaindustrial labor) and the exploitation of natural resources might be of interest for economists, ecologists and sociologists as well and could reinforce deep structural change for a more safe and just world",5
But they also have a social dimension covering gender equality (SDG 5),5
An important part of the social equity dimension of sustainability is gender equality,5
According to UN Women and the Department of Economic and Social Affairs [3] global gender equality is unfortunately still far on the horizon,5
"Women and girls around the world are 4% more likely than men and boys to live in extreme poverty, and the risk rises to 25% for women aged 25–34",1
Women also had a 10% higher risk of experiencing food insecurity than men in 2018,2
One in 5 women and girls between the ages of 15 and 49 have reported to have experienced physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner within a 12-month period,16
Forty nine countries currently have no laws protecting women from domestic violence,5
Seven hundred and fifty million women and girls were married before the age of 18 and at least 200 million women and girls in 30 countries have undergone some form of female genital mutilation,5
"Only 57% of women married or in a union freely make their own decisions about sexual relations, contraceptive use and reproductive health care",3
Three in 4 human trafficking victims are women and girls [3],8
Women spend three times as many hours each day in unpaid care and domestic work than men,5
"Based on data from 2018, only 19% of all countries had a comprehensive system to track budget allocations for gender equality",5
According to the European Union’s (EU) gender equality databaseFootnote 1 the pay and pension gap in the EU remains and doesn’t show any signs of narrowing,5
The new gender equality strategy of the European CommitteeFootnote 2 has been released on March 5th this year,5
"The new pandemic Covid-19 hits countries worldwide and it puts a great pressure on the care economy, on our health care systems and on our unpaid care workers who are mostly women",5
"The research questions (How is Covid-19 effecting SDG 5? Is it endangering the implementation of SDG 5? Is this process connected to other SDGs, and how?) cover an interdisciplinary field",5
"Therefore, qualitative research methods: literature review, a case study with ecological and gender equality analyses and secondary data analyses with logical argumentation have been chosen as methods that could best serve the answering of the research questions and prove hypotheses: Hypothesis I",5
"The pandemic is endangering the implementation of SDG 5, particularly Target 5.2—eliminating violence against women and Target 5.4—the recognition of unpaid care work",5
The exploitation of the backbone of society’s response for the crises (which is paid and unpaid care work and other forms of metaindustrial labor) and the exploitation of natural resources are interconnected,5
"The paper is also conducting a deductive research aiming to test the theory of capitalist patriarchy and the care economy (used in feminist studies, feminist economics and ecofeminism) by analyzing the case of the global pandemic from ecological and gender equality lenses",5
"Deforestation, destruction of natural habitat, causing erosion by building roads and houses, by mining, etc",15
"[6] has found, that intensive agriculture contributed to more than half of all infectious diseases, that leaped from animals to humans since 1940",3
"Loss of biodiversity and deforestation lead to risking a very important ecosystem service, that is the ability to reduce virus emergence",15
"Animal agriculture is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gases emissions and it provides an amazing opportunity for viruses to thrive.Footnote 5 We urgently have to deal with the contradictions of intensive agriculture, that on the one hand provides more food for the population but on the other hand is unacceptable from an animal ethics perspective and that also threatens more planetary boundaries (such as the biosphere integrity, the biogeochemical cycles, the land-systems, and the fight against climate change)",13
"Domestic violence, various forms of male chauvinism, sexual violations of children throughout the internet could and already are escalating amid curfew and lockdowns both in developed and in poorer economies [7]",5
"The unpaid care work, that is mostly done by women is the backbone of the response to Covid-19",5
The rise in unpaid care work has also other consequences for gender equality: the psychosocial effects from providing care to infected relatives,5
"On the 6th of April 2020 UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned about a sharp rise in domestic violence (in some countries—also in Hungary—the number of women calling support services has doubledFootnote 7) amid global coronavirus lockdowns, that threatens SDG 5, Target 5.2 that is the elimination of all forms of violence against all women and girls",5
"China and the UK reported, that domestic violence have more than doubled in Covid-19 lockdown period between February and April 2020, compared to the same period of the previous year [13]",5
[14] even states that “Covid‐19 and violence against women are interrelated pandemics”,5
"[15] Covid-19 disruptions have unfortunately also lead to “significant delays in programmes to end FGM”, which is female genital mutilation, “potentially leading to around two million more cases of FGM over the next decade” and to “an expected additional 31 million cases of gender-based violence and 13 million more child marriages over the next 10 years”",5
A new UN Women survey [16] assessed the pandemic’s effects on SDG 5 in 11 Asia–Pacific countries,5
"It also states, that the pandemic has disproportionately affected women’s mental and emotional health and as the unpaid care and domestic workload has increased, “women are bearing the heaviest burden”",5
"It’s main finding is, that Covid-19 is putting the implementation of SDG 5 at risk in Asia and the Pacific region",5
In the next section following questions will be discussed: why is Covid-19 affecting women negatively and how is this process also linked to environmental degradation,15
"Economic Nobel prize nominee Waring cited a 2017 Price Waterhouse Cooper researchFootnote 8 in one of her presentations showing that the largest economic sector in Australia is unpaid childcare, and the second-largest sector is all the rest of the unpaid work",8
According to McMahon [13] capitalist patriarchy disguises “the ways in which the market and economic man are dependent on unsustainable transfers from nature and from unpaid work” (pp,8
"Fraser [27] suggests that the expropriation of social and natural reproduction (and as a result gender and racial oppression, ecological crisis, underemployment and unemployment, etc.) is a structural feature of capitalism",8
"Results show, that the rise of the new pandemic Covid-19 could be an effect of destroying natural habitats, and even if it had short-term positive effects on the climate and on biodiversity; it has a significant negative one on gender equality",5
"The case of Covid-19 highlights the undervaluation of care work, which endangers UN Sustainable Development Goals, and SDG 5, Target 5.4 but also Target 5.2 in particular and therefore negatively affects the well-being of women (see Sect",5
There is a connection between the exploitation of the backbone of society’s response for the crises (which is paid and unpaid care work and other forms of metaindustrial labor) and between the exploitation of natural resources,5
"Furthermore, the case of Covid-19 highlights the role of manmade biodiversity loss and intensive agriculture in the appearance of animal-borne diseases, where for both of these processes, capitalist patriarchal socio-economic systems can be made responsible",15
"I’ve also found, that new forms of Covid-19 adaptive behaviors are exacerbating the risk of violence against women, but on the other hand, these new behaviors and the economic slowdown have also resulted in a fall in emissions on the short run (see Sect",5
"Degraded habitats (caused by deforestation, destruction of natural habitat, causing erosion by building roads and houses, by mining, etc.) are likely to carry more viruses and most of the farming practices also contribute to the emergence of diseases",15
"However, these new behaviours seem to have a rather negative effect on reaching SDG 5, such as: rise in domestic violence; more care work due to children and partners being at home; more care work due to sick and elderly people having only remote medical services and therefore a drop in the physical and psychological health of women",5
"But, there is the perspective of gender equality",5
"The consequences of Covid-19 such as loss of income but also the new adaptive behaviours (such as home office) seem to lead to a worsening in women’s and children’s well-being caused by, for example the rise in domestic violence and therefore might put back the implementation of SDG 5, Target 5.2, that is the elimination of all forms of violence against all women and girls",5
"Results from the review of several papers show that the very idea that “the economic men” can be independent, he can be free of caring, he can do it all on his own—leads to serious consequences and it starts to show in the consequences of the pandemic, in the consequences of crossing planetary boundaries, such as in the consequences of climate change",13
"The real value of health care system workers (such as doctors, scientists and public health officials) but also the value of low-wage service workers (such as people and mainly women working for retails and deliveries, cleaning services, home health assistance, garbage disposal, transport, etc.) showed itself in times of Covid-19 to economic decision-makers",3
"As the backbone of the social response is unpaid care work—women are being exploited even more which is sustained by patriarchal characteristics, such as normalized systematic domination and ideologies of male “productivity”",5
Findings and their application in policymaking would bring significant change for the recognition of unpaid care work and for the elimination of violence against women,5
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has amongst its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) the Goal of Gender Equality,5
"Women working in the care economy mostly for free, providing the bulk of care in times of the Covid-19 pandemic are certainly among the ones who are continuously being left behind and therefore reaching SDG 5, might get even farther away, unless science and policymaking starts to work on a deep structural transformation, that makes gender equality and sustainability more realistic.",5
It provides a guideline and direction for the sustainable urban expansion,11
The sustainable urban expansion promotes the realization of SDGs worldwide,11
"We find that firstly, the net profit of land use (LNB) reaches the highest value under the economic development scenario (ED), when the probability of environmental constraint violation p = 0.01 and p = 0.15, LNB = [2625.48, 3244.98] × 109 CNY, and [2646.95, 3271.51] × 109 CNY",8
"Ecosystem service value (ESV) reached the highest value under the sustainable development scenario (SD), when p = 0.01 and p = 0.15, ESV = [75.34, 93.12] × 109 CNY, and [72.62, 95.56] × 109 CNY",15
"2021), soil quality degradation (du Preez & van Huyssteen 2020; Lin et al",2
"This model should not only meet the economic and social needs of urban development, but also maintain or even improve the quality of the ecological environment and minimize the risks of deterioration of the ecological environment (Liu et al",11
"These goals fully reflect the three aspects of measuring sustainable development, namely, economic development, beautiful environment, and social progress",8
Its goal is to promote economic growth and social prosperity while maintaining the balance of ecological environment and improving the quality of life (Lu et al,8
The complexity makes urban expansion a research hotspot in the world’s urban development,11
"2019a), which is completely in line with the three objectives of developing SDGs, namely, realizing economic development, beautiful environment, and social progress",8
"It can be said that the SDGs provide guidelines and directions for the sustainable urban expansion, and the sustainable urban expansion promotes the realization of the SDG goals in the world (Han et al",11
"Specifically, Goal 2 corresponds to agricultural land: by 2030, eradicate hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture",2
"For example, we should increase government investment in agriculture, increase food production and ensure food security, reduce the pollution emission from cultivated land, and build a modern and sustainable agriculture in both quantity and quality",2
"Goal 6 corresponds to water, wetlands, and woodlands: water and sanitation for all and sustainable management by 2030",6
"Target 11 corresponds to construction land: by 2030, build inclusive, safe, disaster-resilient, and sustainable cities and human settlements",11
"In the future urban construction, it is necessary to further improve the land use rate, reduce the discharge of solid waste, and provide a safe, inclusive, convenient, and green public space",12
"Target 15 corresponds to terrestrial ecosystems (forest land, grassland, and unused land, etc.): by 2030, protect, restore, and promote the sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems; sustainably manage forests; combat desertification; halt and reverse land degradation; and curb the loss of biodiversity",15
"Following the SDGs in the process of urban expansion and land use can help achieve the goals of economic development, beautiful environment, and social progress in three dimensions",8
"Considering the different needs of Wuhan’s future development, we have designed four development scenarios: natural development, economic development, ecological protection, and sustainable development",8
"Economic development priority scenario ED: Under this scenario, Wuhan will give priority to economic development, strengthen the level of urban construction, increase various inputs, and improve the level of economic development in the region",8
"Land-use carbon emissions are an important component of terrestrial ecosystem carbon emissions, and the total carbon emissions caused by land-use changes account for one-third of the total carbon emissions caused by human activities",15
"It is generally filled in based on experience, for example, urban land is not easy to be converted, and it is not easy to be converted under the condition of wetland protection, etc",6
"Because, with the improvement of the city’s ability to treat sewage and solid waste (increase of waste treatment plants, improvement of waste treatment processes, etc.), the environmental capacity in the urban space system also indirectly increases",12
"In this case, the administrator can formulate more relaxed environmental protection policies and allocate more land area to land types (construction land, arable land, etc.) that create more economic profits",15
P value can help land planners and environmentalists to analyze the quantitative relationship between land economic benefits and environmental protection,15
"In the process of rapid urbanization and urban expansion, land resource elements should ensure economic development, and at the same time, more attention should be paid to the protection of the ecological environment and the risk of ecological environment damage",8
"These risks mainly come from two aspects: on the one hand, urban expansion, increase of construction land area, and decrease of ecological land use; on the other hand, pollutants (sewage, solid waste, land-use carbon emissions, etc.) generated during the land-use process bring risks and challenges to the ecological environment protection",12
"At the same time, we can find from Fig. 10(a) that the expansion area of construction land in the northeast and the south of the research area is lower than that in the central area, because Wuhan is in the process of high-speed economic development, and rail transit is an important part of the urban spatial layout of Wuhan",8
Giving priority to economic development has always been the primary goal in the process of urbanization in most developing countries,8
This provides authentic support for decision makers to comprehensively consider economic development and ecological environment protection policies when formulating land-use planning in the future,8
"After obtaining the optimized land-use demand quantity, we coupled the PLUS model to simulate the urban land expansion scenarios under three scenarios: economic development priority scenario (ED), ecological protection priority scenario (EP), and sustainable development scenario (SD)",8
"(4) PLUS model can effectively analyze and explore the contribution of various driving factors to urban land expansion, for example, traffic stations have the greatest impact on the expansion of construction land and arable land, and tertiary roads have the greatest impact on wetland expansion.",15
"The 17 SDGs, building on the three pillars of sustainability, namely, economy, society, and the environment [53], cover a wide range of socioeconomic and environmental themes ranging from gender equality to sustainable management of natural resources (Fig. 1).
 The Sustainable Development Goals The SDGs are a globally recognizable symbol and a banner under which the various initiatives for sustainable development can assemble and re-brand themselves",5
"Nevertheless, the effectiveness of strategies for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, be they at the national or international level, relies significantly on extensive collaboration on a national and institutional level as well as on the combined use of a range of political and technological tools, as is reflected in SDG 17: Partnership for the Goals",17
"Geolocation is central and ubiquitous in advanced industrial society, being widely employed in all modes of transport (road, aviation, maritime, etc.), fleet management, high-precision and consumer applications, provision of time information in critical national infrastructures, as well as scientific applications such as measuring the impact of space weather on the Earth, of earthquakes and climate change on human communities, among others",13
"Technology transfer is the “mechanism by which the accumulated knowledge developed by a specific entity is transferred wholly or partially to another one to allow the receiver to benefit from such knowledge” ([51], p.13)",17
"For the purpose of this paper, this term is interpreted as any type of activity, initiative, programme or technological innovation facilitated by space research and technology",8
"The three SDGs with the highest number of related project alignments and the three with the lowest number of project alignments, along with SDG 17 (for further information about the justification behind the choice of SDG 17, see section 4), were selected to be analysed qualitatively",17
"From this perspective, projects that help farmers improve their crop yield can be viewed as having both direct but also indirect implications",2
"A direct contribution to Targets 2.3 or 2.4 as an increased food production is the direct consequence, while poverty reduction would be considered a side effect of increased agricultural efficiency as an indirect contribution to Target 1.1",1
"It should be noted that SDG 17, which is a unique Goal within the SDG framework, due to its focus on cooperation for the achievement of the rest of the SDGs, exhibits a significantly high number of project alignments",17
"This result is quite interesting, yet expected, considering the nature of SDG 17, which is discussed further in section 4.
 Number of project alignments per SDG",17
"GNSS, Space Exploration, and Technology Transfer follow with a similar number of alignments (approximately 115)",17
"EO and SatCom were by far the most commonly used technologies with either of them contributing to more than a third of the total number of projects, whereas the use of GNSS, technology transfer, space exploration, space science, and other technologies was less prevalent",17
The most commonly used technology combination was EO and GNSS followed by space exploration and technology transfer (Fig,17
"All three SDGs with the highest number of project alignments, as well as SDG 17, exhibit higher numbers of tagged items when compared to the three SDGs with the lowest number of project alignments",17
"During that process, the comparative results of two combinations of SDGs, namely the group of SDGs with the highest number of project alignments (group A) and that of those with the lowest number of project alignments (group B), produced a very interesting insight (Fig. 12).
 Word clouds generated for a) the three SDGs with the most (SDG 2, 3, and 9) and b) the three SDGs with the fewest project alignments (SDGs 5, 10, and 16), using NVivo [43] As illustrated in Fig",2
"At this stage, it is important to acknowledge the existence of SDG 17: Partnership for the Goals, as it has been a staple aspect of the interpretative approach that this study has adopted",17
"From the perspective of space contributions to the 2030 Agenda, the existence of SDG 17 is pivotal, as it brings in the element of international cooperation",17
"Therefore, the cooperation reflected in the SDG 17 plays a fundamental role in the development of space technologies, affecting deeply the contributions of space to the 2030 Agenda in a circular way (Fig. 13).
 Schematic representation of the circular interaction between the 2030 Agenda, international cooperation (SDG 17) and the development of space technologies Throughout this paper, SDG 17 has been consistently included in the analysis, intended to be used as a basis for comparison to enhance the interpretation of results",17
"The reason behind the role that SDG 17 plays in this study lies in the fact that, as mentioned earlier, SDG 17 constitutes a very particular case within the SDG framework",17
"As the only SDG formulated differently than the rest of the Goals, in both content and actual format aspects, SDG 17 is also unique in terms of content as it is the only SDG that refers to other SDGs and the wider SDG framework",17
SDG 17 calls for the development of partnerships for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda and does not constitute a stand-alone objective like the other Goals,17
"This uniqueness of SDG 17 is also evident in its format, being the only SDG that categorises its Targets into thematic areas with subtitles",17
"SDG 17 has alignments to Targets 17.6, 17.7, 17.8, 17.9, 17.16, and 17.17, which correspond to the thematic areas of Technology, Capacity-Building and Systemic Issues",17
"The other two thematic areas of SDG 17, namely Finance and Trade, do not exhibit any alignment",17
"As is evident in the case of SDG 17, the content of the SDGs impacts the type of projects that are aligned to each Goal, and this impact also affects the potential of space to contribute to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda",17
"However, the versatility rationale may apply also to technology transfer, as spin-offs of the different technologies, such as miniaturization of computers, permeate our daily lives",17
"14, this correlation is difficult to establish for technology transfer, space science and space exploration, as the latter are not reliant upon assets as easily quantifiable as satellites",17
"In the case of technology transfer, there is some degree of information tracked by dedicated organizational units within the space agencies (technology transfer offices), which allows for an order of magnitude",17
"For example, ESA has “spun-off” over 150 projects during the last 10 years, yet, the total number of ESA projects in the database of this study is 258 and 54 are listed under technology transfer",17
"For example, the application of intellectual property rights to data, services or technologies, might restrict or increase their availability",1
"7, about a quarter of contributing projects involve a combination of two or more technologies, with EO and GNSS being the most common of such combinations, followed by space exploration and technology transfer",17
"A prime example is SDG 5, one of the SDGs identified as one of the Goals with the lowest number of project alignments",5
"Two hypotheses support this outcome as rationale: i) SDG 5 may benefit from a significantly higher number of future projects than it does currently as it incorporates several gender-related thematic areas that are eligible to be served by space technologies, or ii) SDG 5 already benefits from a significant number of projects that have not been included in this study because they have not been officially mapped against the SDG framework",5
"Specifically, in the case of already existing projects, potential connections to SDG 5 could be incorporated and highlighted by targeting specific groups",5
SDG 5),5
"Policies on reducing energy demand should incorporate the newly formed economic models, digitalization, and consumer awareness trends",9
"Therefore, this study analyzes the interaction of the three trends with SDG7 under energy efficiency vision 2050, measuring the energy efficiency of OECD from 2005 to 2017 to enable this inclusion",7
"Therefore, Austria and Korea have the highest energy efficiency score of 0.76 and 0.75, whereas Canada and Chile have the lowest energy efficiency score of 0.41 and 0.42",7
"In this context, recent studies assess SDG number 7 with energy efficiency presenting different solutions (Raberto et al., 2019)",7
"Furthermore, the new worldwide sustainable development goal encompasses subjects, such as poverty eradication and improvement in health and quality of life to mitigate climate change and inequality (He et al., 2018)",13
"Furthermore, it is possible to achieve the goals set out in actionable terms of the sustainable development strategy, such as population growth and energy supply with investments in modern energy infrastructure",7
"Moreover, the “Results and discussion” section examines recent social dynamics and the sectorial increase in energy consumption, providing a preliminary evaluation of how they interact",7
"Different countries influence pollution reduction in this region under the Paris Agreement through goals and activities established by their Nationally Determined Contributions (Qi et al., 2019)",13
"In this context, numerous researches on the energy efficiency “paradox” indicate the challenge to achieve significant savings due to the decrease in the optimum standards for practical execution of energy efficiency measures (Barua et al., 2020)",7
"Consequently, notwithstanding reliance of literature surveys on a particular form of tool, the literature indicates direct effects of energy conservation measures on energy consumption and the price of durable goods (Mohsin et al., 2018a, b, Ikram et al",7
"This process tackles the issues of rising inequality, showing the potential to do away with the questions of whether the shared economy is helping to promote sustainable economic growth (Tothmihaly et al., 2019)",8
"Therefore, such effects suggest different aims, including the following: To estimate long-run scenarios of digitalization, consumer awareness, and new economic models until energy efficiency is achieved in 2050 To achieve comparatively active and prudent utilization of renewable energy sources To explain multiple time bound conditions associated with SDG 7 about energy efficiency vision, linking it with technological settings, energy sectors, and carbon emission factors under the procedures of European Commission (2010a, 2010b) To locate and empirically estimate the long-run trends of new economic models, energy awareness, and digitalization, developing competitiveness for energy-efficient systems in the context of this study To measure the objective of specific policies associated with energy efficiency vision and SDG 7 to maximize the national economic growth by applying viable policy measures Moreover, the recent techniques used in research include both qualitative and quantitative approaches",7
"Furthermore, this section shows a rough quantification of the impacts of energy demand, excluding the considered patterns, such as digitalization—IEA/OECD, 2017",9
"Therefore, the following hypotheses are developed in light of the literature cited above: H1: There is a significant role of economic models on energy efficiency in OECD countries to achieve energy efficiency vision 2050",7
H2: There is a significant role of mass digitization on energy efficiency in OECD countries to achieve energy efficiency vision 2050,7
"Similarly, Step 4 looked at the effects of digitalization, new economic models, and energy consumer awareness movements on the individual models (Sheng et al., 2021)",9
"Thus, digitalization, energy consumer awareness, and new economic models are designated in relation to economic and social importance with various unsetting impacts on sustainable developmental goal number-7",9
"Consequently, it is assessed whether it pertains to the research and development as a pattern itself or certain facets of it (D",9
"
Using the fixed effect of panel quantile regression (PQR) model studied in the equation, it is converted as, Thus, the success model of the study is converted and drawn as, Therefore, the coefficient function is estimated to assess the role of new economic models, energy consumer awareness, and mass digitalization, respectively, and the DEA method is applied to estimate the study findings",9
"Zhang et al., 2021) as the primary model to evaluate the energy of total factor and energy efficiency under SDG 7",7
"Let us suppose there are DMUs, marked with DMUj (j = 1, …, N), each of them representing an administrative region of these 25 countries, where each DMU uses m non-energy input (labor, energy consumption, CO2 per capita), Xij (i = 1, 2, …, M), and L energy input (labor, energy consumption, CO2 per capita elj (l = 1, …, L) to generate favorable s",7
"Therefore, in the manufacturing process, a DMU produces desirable products as much as possible, consuming input (labor, energy consumption, CO2 per capita) resources as little as possible (Azadeh et al., 2007), whereas the energy sources, such as coal or oil used in these 25 countries, are virtually unalterable and the burning of energy generally generates waste gases, such as CO2 and SO2, which should be considered",7
"Therefore, the measure of total energy factor and environmental efficiency reduces the consumption of energy for a given desirable product and non-input (labor, energy consumption, CO2 per capita energy, and CO2 more desirable) (W",7
"However, it is not allowed to reduce contaminants in standard DEA models, which is addressed by a number of methods, such as using rewards of unpleasant outcomes, treating unwanted outcomes output as input (labor, energy consumption, CO2 per capita), and mathematically translated unwanted outputs into favorable outputs under classification",7
"In our study of energy and environmental efficiency, unfavorable results were mainly generated by fossils and the fuel burned during the manufacturing process should be reduced if energy consumption is reduced",7
"(2013), we first present the following DEA-based radial model to measure the sum and extent of environmental energy efficiency as, s.t 
Since model (5) produces undesirable outputs proportional to the energy input (labor, energy consumption, CO2 per capita as much as possible for a given level of non-energy input (labor, energy consumption, CO2 per capita as and favorable outputs",7
"Similarly, model (6) shows energy efficiency index θ for a region between 0 and 1 and the larger the index, the better the ability of the corresponding region to save energy and reduce pollutant release",7
"Consequently, if E1 = 1 (θ = 1) and all slacks \({S}_{i}^{x-}\), \({S}_{l}^{e-}\), \({S}_{r}^{y+}\)  are zero, the corresponding region is considered energy-efficient and environmentally friendly, and does not reduce energy consumption and pollutant release (Briec & Horvath, 2009)",7
"Therefore, the total factor energy and environmental efficiency measure shown by the model is a type of radial efficiency with a potentially poor discriminatory power in the relative energy efficiency",7
"Therefore, we extend the radial energy measure to a non-radial count measure as, s.t Furthermore, model (8) measures energy efficiency (E2) through various disproportionate configurations for different energy inputs (labor, energy consumption, CO2 per capita as pollutant outputs, which account for the effects of energy) \(({\theta }_{l}^{e})\) and effects of pollutant output (\({\theta }_{k}^{b}\)), respectively",7
"Therefore, model (11) allows energy consumption and pollutant emissions to be reduced differently",7
"Hence, it is important to notice how, in model (2), energy efficiency and environmental efficiency are evaluated using various non-proportional adjustments and a specified decision maker calculates the unified efficiency considering the weights assigned to each of these two efficiency scores",7
"However, the manufacturer can also assign different weights to show different energy use performance preferences or environmental protection performance in a unified efficiency equation",15
"In this context, model (12) has a higher discriminatory power than model (1), so we will use model (12) to evaluate the total-factor energy and environmental efficiency under SDG 7",7
Recent research predicts an increase in renewable energy by 1% by 2030 to boost the GDP by 3.1% and productivity by 3.1% in OECD,7
"Moreover, the three scenes show dramatic (non-linear) social-societal shifts potentially affected by energy efficiency strategies, suggesting reduced demand on the left side of the graph, which is left as it is",7
"Moreover, research on technological and nearly economic barriers to energy efficiency concentrates on realizing the close potentials in the market, suggesting the addition of new patterns, showing an almost invisible continuation of existing ones",7
"Austria shows the highest energy efficiency scores recorded at 0.76 and 0.75, whereas Canada and Chile show the lowest energy efficiency score at 0.41 and 0.42",7
"Similarly, the energy efficiency of the OECD is expected to drop by 0.1551% if crude oil output rises by 1% and energy efficiency of decreased crude oil output grew in the OECD",7
"Moreover, OECD energy efficiency of the industry is decreased by 1.8697% with 1% increase in energy consumption, and the higher the amount of energy consumed, the more likely it is to generate clean energy",7
"Energy efficiency trend Therefore, both the stories are valid considering the elimination of market barriers",7
"Furthermore, the economic and close-to-economic capacities for energy efficiency are fully realized, allowing the removal of market barriers, and many non-socially shared and powerful effects are seen in the latest developments, such as growing energy consumption with weak penetration of the shared and digital economy trends, unable to proceed straightforwardly or logically",7
"Consequently, the second expert workshop, the list of potential future energy demand patterns was reduced to include the 12 stated by the energy efficiency theory",7
"Furthermore, the four major social, economic, and economic movements presented in Table 3 show digitalization of life, industrial transformation, new economic models, and industrial continuity",9
"Therefore, we use the European Commission’s (2016a) report on energy mix for the benchmark situation, showing a power blend with a higher proportion of renewable energy sources to be used on the European Council (EUCO) 3030 example (see Table 5)",7
"Both examples already include a portion of the latest cultural patterns, and can be considered a continuation of the previous changes.Estimating the role of new economic models, digitalization, and consumer awareness on SDG-7",9
"This section presents an overview of energy efficiency potentials in the four non-baseline scenarios (“Removing Market Barriers,” “New Trends Efficient,” “New Trends Inefficient,” and “Worst Case”) along with the possible contributions of new societal trends towards the increase or decrease of energy demand in the EU until 2050 and thereby to its emission reduction targets",7
"Hence, four possible scenarios are designed for the year 2050 with the help of top advisors, which represent the “baseline maps.” Moreover, the techno-economic scenarios on the left-hand side of Fig. 2 show the policies producing the highest amount of energy efficiency with low efforts or producing high amounts of energy savings while using the least energy consumption",7
"The OECD sample is chosen because OECD nations now account for roughly 63% of global GDP in US dollars, whereas fiscal decentralization seeks a large quantity of non-renewable energy to meet revenue targets in the face of weak environmental tax laws",7
"Moreover, the OECD’s carbon footprint observes a significant rise since 2000 due to the recent increases in transportation and energy consumption",7
"Therefore, both aspects of the economy benefit from more efficient use of resources due to greater creativity and technological capacity",12
"Third, in the actual Fraunhofer ISI (2009) study, energy efficiency estimates are tested until 2030, extended until 2050. In this context, the identified energy saving is expensive, too",7
"Furthermore, global challenges, such as growth, urbanization, scarcity, and environmental change, become the key strategic drivers for business in the coming decade, presenting vast opportunities in a broad range of business segments with huge transformational capacity, according to energy efficiency vision 2050",7
"Renewable energy enables a significant improvement in the energy efficiency of OECD, decreasing the degree of pollution",7
"Similarly, the increased use of renewables and the use of more efficient gas-fired power generation and a minor use of coal for electricity generation show an improvement in average power plant performance, increasing from 36 in 1990 to 44% in 2014",7
"Moreover, market liberalization and energy sector reforms increase energy efficiency through privatization, wholesale competition, retail competition, spin-off, and autonomous regulation implementation",7
"Since the 1990s, privatization, considering the invitation for independent power producers to build power plants, is observed in many countries of OECD",7
"Despite the fact that it has been in the eighteenth century since the first independent energy purchase, only a few private companies have built power plants and supplied power to the national grid",7
"An impact of quality and security on energy efficiency An availability of maintenance requirements and extras The equipment efficiency is aided with the best technology, such as (i) transmission networks, which are highly dependent on power companies, (ii) the variation in investment costs, and (iii) the misery associated with the application of commission which helps in achieving important and drastic advantages, after forming a balance between energy consumption and quantity",7
"Sustainable economic development is accomplished in the long run, by associating the production and distribution of electricity from policymakers, as shown in Fig. 3, with public–private partnership as policy tools",8
"Hence, the idea of decentralization of renewable resources forms the basis for a public and private partnership to generate electricity, which helps to achieve the desired outcomes for energy efficiency and electricity consumption",7
"The electricity balance includes 50% solar energy and 25% for CCS in power production by the year 2030, which acts in a way that save energy are needed in order to save energy",7
"Similarly, another projection suggests an increase in the final energy consumption over the year 2025 and the year 2050",7
"However, a 63% long-term saving potential is established, which results in a long-down effect in 2050 on overall energy consumption",7
"Energy efficiency and reforms Furthermore, the social developments listed above are considered to be of significance for the energy use and parameters of tertiary and technological along with the technological and economic potentials being realized",7
"Moreover, the cluster of digitalization accounts for 22%, New Social and Economic Models cluster for 37%, and the cluster of Quality of Life for 41%",9
"This goes to illustrate how new social movements are not necessarily good or bad for potential energy consumption, but the consequences will vary dramatically based on how they unfold, which is heavily influenced by accompanying policies along with other factors",7
"This drop occurs as the external factors, such as the financial crisis in 2007–2009, show a direct impact on energy efficiency in OECD",7
"Furthermore, environmental taxes help energy efficiency by reducing the per capita need for petroleum goods, promoting creative and technical goods, and stimulating development in clean energy sources",7
"Firstly, the latest updates of energy efficiency goals and the accompanying policy framework, such as reviewed renewables directive, are not taken into account due to the rapidly developing European ambitions",7
"However, “Industrial Transformation” contributes only 5% to the overall GDP growth of the nation",8
"Although the “Quality of Life” (41%) has a unique place in the household market, Digitalization of Life (22%) plays a comparable part, but its position of strength is decreasing in comparison to the rest of the FED (28%)",9
"Hence, the current study used the data envelopment analysis and scenario analysis of energy efficiency vision 2050 to realize the enhancement in projected energy efficiency gains based on SDG7 for OECD countries",7
"Consequently, Austria shows the highest energy efficiency score at 0.76 and 0.75, whereas Canada and Chile show the lowest energy efficiency score at 0.41 and 0.42",7
This increase in productivity does not mean that there is a decrease in energy consumption,7
"Additionally, market liberalization and electricity policies improve energy efficiency in OECD nations via privatization, wholesale competition, retail competition, spin-offs, and adoption of independent regulations",7
"Hence, the introduction of new social developments could contribute to an increase in energy inefficiency and climate neutrality",13
"In simple terms, expenditure in customers such as end-use and supply-side energy efficiency and demand response should be factored into the model",7
"Although energy efficiency is elevated to the status of a resource equivalent of generation and use in the energy efficiency strategy, numerous barriers still inhibit its integration and impact the benefits of the energy efficiency at the policy and business levels",7
"For instance, increasing energy use might not be followed by energy efficiency policies",7
"Although this paper seeks to increase understanding of the broad energy developments, it is important to examine not just their possible benefits, but also their associated costs to truly measure their potential impact so the European policymakers could someday have a better understanding of the impact their strategies have on both energy consumption and productivity improvements if this experiment succeeds",7
"Similarly, market growth requires active participation of governments as a consumer, information supplier, and policymaker to encourage financing for energy efficiency",7
"Therefore, specific energy efficiency financing windows in suitable financial institutions, such as banks, are required to grow the local financing market and it is also necessary to acquire skills in energy efficiency project assessment and the creation of finance products to carry out energy efficiency projects",7
"Consequently, specialized energy funds and guarantee funds may be required in certain instances to jumpstart investment in energy efficiency initiatives.",7
"From NARDL and dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS), we find that economic growth through economic activities is statistically significant in determining the trend (increase) of carbon emissions in China in both periods (short run and long run)",8
"Because of its impact on global warming and potential to disrupt the global carbon cycle, subject of environmental degradation is rapidly gaining the attention of governments across the globe",15
Climate change is the core issue of this era confronting humanity,13
"Climate change is induced by greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), primarily carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and this poses unprecedented threats to human progress and survival, including extreme weather, extinction of species, and food scarcity (Dong, et al",13
"However, accomplishing these goals will necessitate measures in multiple areas, including technological innovation (Omri 2020; Cancino et al",8
"2018; Tabrizian et al. 2018), renewable energy (Güney and Kantar 2020; Tiba and Belaid 2020), and financial development (Ziolo et al",7
"CO2 emissions have been caused and impacted by numerous aspects, including a country’s income level, financial development (FD), renewable energy consumption (REC), technical innovation (TI), and others",7
"Therefore, preceding research has connected them to economic growth, FD, REC, TI, and GDP (Inglesi-Lotz and Dogan 2018; Fu and Zhang 2017)",8
Long-term financial development helps economic growth (Goodhart 2004),8
The findings also revealed that global financial development and renewable energy usage have a major positive impact on environmental sustainability in the long run,7
Neglecting the environment’s effect for the sake of economic development is unsustainable,8
"Innovation accelerates productivity and economic growth, as well as the transition to low-carbon energy",8
"The economy, taxes, subsidies, and regulations are all affected by renewable energy innovation backed by policy enactment",7
"Governments, for example, are increasingly enacting regulations to provoke the utilization of renewable energy throughout the production cycle of companies, which has an impact on market efficiency",7
Technological advancements have aided in the growth of renewable energy and have benefitted countries in abating pollutant emissions and in reshaping the quality of their environments through their efforts to maximize their usage of renewable resources,7
"Extensive literature has shown a relationship among innovation and renewable energy sources, as well as their ultimate contribution to economic and environmental developments (Li et al",7
CO2 emissions may be reduced by using renewable energy (Long et al,7
This is done through transiting from huge amounts of non-renewable energy puts a lot of strain on the ecosystem to a more sustainable energy source,7
"(2020), economies are changing their industrial structures to sustainable energy derivatives like renewable energies",7
"Furthermore, technical advancements have been discovered to aid in the reduction of pollutants and the improvement of environmental protection measures (Long et al",15
"However, the said factors working simultaneously trigger natural resources exploitation, environmental degradation, and accumulated strain on human wellbeing",15
The major reason for the Chinese government’s attempt to encourage renewable energy over non-renewable energy consumption (NPC 2005) is to reduce air pollution,7
"Between 1978 and 2017, China saw a tremendous increase in both traditional fossil energy and renewable energy consumption, as well as a change in investment towards renewable energy resources",7
The Industry Catalog Guiding Foreign Investment 2017 for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce includes renewable energy as an investment sector that encourages international investors to set up entirely foreign businesses in the country (NDRC-ERI 2016),7
"China is among the economies that pose a serious threat to global climate conditions through its excessive usage of energy sources which has above 60% of fossil fuels in its energy mix and is capable of increasing greenhouse gas emissions, if they do not undertake ways to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions",7
This is due to the structure of its economic activities mostly done with excessive utilization of fossil fuels as it includes manufacturing and industrial activities and these activities have direct impact on climate change,13
China is among the countries that pledge to the Paris Agreement of 2005 of controlling climate change,13
"In order to understand the interrelated questions, e.g., how can renewable energy ameliorate environmental deterioration, a careful examination of the connection between CO2 emissions, GDP, financial development, RE, and technical innovation in China is required",7
What relationship exists between CO2 and GDP? How might technology advancements help to prevent environmental degradation? What is the fallout of financial development on CO2 emissions? These are all interconnected topics that require an extensive and detailed study of a sample over a long period of time,15
"Subsequently, we discussed the nexus among financial development, renewable energy and CO2 emissions, and the link between both renewable energy, innovations, and CO2 emissions",7
"According to Adewuyi and Awodumi (2017a, b), between 2009 and 2016, research on GDP, renewable energy (RE), and CO2 emissions was more profound, particularly in 2014",7
"(2019) conducted research to determine the causation between GDP, CO2 emissions, and energy consumption in Chinese regions, using a vector autoregressive model embedded with panel data over the period of 1997 to 2015",7
"Their findings revealed a long-run equilibrium between renewable energy consumption, carbon emissions, and GDP",7
"A univocal causality was identified moving from GDP to CO2 emissions, whereas bidirectional causality was identified between CO2 emission and renewable energy and among renewable energy and GDP",7
"For Tunisia, investigate the link between CO2 emissions, GDP, renewable energy use, and trade",7
"They identified the existence of short-run unidirectional causation between GDP, CO2 emissions, and renewable energy based on the statistical results of their research",7
"It was pointed out that if CO2 is negative, GDP has no effect on renewable energy consumption, and that conventional fossil fuels have a positive influence on renewable energy consumption",7
"Their findings, based on econometric data, indicated the existence of long-term association among CO2 emissions, per capita income, and energy consumption; moreover, their findings corroborate the legitimacy of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis (EKC) in the short and long run",7
"They discovered a bidirectional causal link between GDP and renewable energy based on econometric estimates, suggesting the relevance of renewable energy as a provoking element to boost GDP",7
"Notwithstanding the diverse effects of technological breakthroughs and FDI, financial development may have a substantial impact on the sustainable energy sector",7
"They demand a large amount of start-up capital, constant innovation through research (R&D) investment, and long-term debt settlements (Sonntag-O’Brien and Usher 2006)",9
"In comparison to developed financial mechanisms, which may assist expand the renewable energy industry in an effective manner, an underdeveloped financial system can hinder the promotion of renewable energy businesses even when demand is strong Eren et al (2019)",7
These findings also suggest that a developed financial position in any country or area may offer funding to shift from renewable to non-renewable energy industries,7
"(2018) used data from 1995 to 2015 to investigate the dynamic relationship between total reserves, financial development, renewable energy use, and trade openness for a panel of 19 Asian nations",7
"Khan and Qianli (2017) investigated the link between renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, agricultural land utilization, and greenhouse gas emissions for Pakistan using Toda and Yamamoto’s methodology",7
They found unidirectional causality between renewable energy utilization and GHG emissions,7
The FMOLS and cointegration regression indicated that using renewable energy reduced GHG emissions by 1.086%,7
"(2016), for example, found a cointegration connection between financial expansion and utilization of renewable energy in order to discover the variables that influence Chinese renewable energy utilization",7
"The findings revealed that financing has a favorable influence on renewables, but liberalization and energy use have a negative impact on China’s usage of renewable energy",7
"Khan and Qianli (2017) examined the long-run correlation among greenhouse gases (GHGs), financial development, improved sanitation, renewable energy, and trade and forest for a set of 24 countries of different income groups over the period of 1990 to 2015",7
"They explored bidirectional causality among financial development and forest (Asia), energy use and renewable energy, and forest for the Asian region",7
"They further identified one-way causality running from financial development to GHG for the US region, energy to GHG for the Asian region, renewable energy to GHG for the US region, GHG to financial development for the European region, and GHG to energy for Europe, US, and Africa",7
"(2020) investigated the impact of financial development, technological innovation, and corporate quality on CO2 emissions in Pakistan",8
"They revealed that financial development and technological innovation have a negative impact on CO2 emissions notwithstanding emission intensity, indicating that both explanatory variables can participate in CO2 emissions mitigation",8
"Furthermore, the causality study revealed a unidirectional causal link between visitor numbers and economic development, as well as a bidirectional interaction between CO2 emissions, financial growth, energy, and visitors",8
(2018) used VECM Granger causality to examine the causal link between renewable energy and financial development,7
"(2020) CO2 emissions, growth, and oil costs are all major constructive drivers of renewable energy use in OECD nations, Over the last two decades, there has been a lively discussion about the rapid development of renewable energy and its influence on environmental quality and economic progress (Moutinho et al",7
"Several studies have looked at the influence of renewable and non-renewable energy use, as well as technical innovation and GDP, on CO2 emissions",7
"Studies on renewable energy determinants, on the other hand, are few and have yet to be discovered empirically",7
Several studies have looked at several aspects to see what influence they have in renewable energy; Razzaq et al,7
"(2021), for example, investigated the interconnections between green technological innovation and carbon emissions (consumption-based and land emissions) in BRICS nations",8
"The findings revealed that in Brazil, China, India, and Russia, the emissions-mitigating effect of green technological innovation is only pronounced at higher emissions quantiles, but at lower emissions quantiles, green technological innovation is neutral or positively related to carbon emissions",8
Alam and Murad (2020) found that technical innovation and economic growth have a mixed influence on OECD nations’ renewables use,8
"Omri (2020) explored the influence of technological innovation on the three pillars of sustainable development for low-, middle-, and high-income nations and deduced that technological innovation contributes simultaneously to the three pillars of sustainable development only in the case of rich countries",8
"Santra (2017) discovered that while innovations have a substantial influence on economic development, they are not trustworthy for environmental improvement",8
"(2004), which showed adverse impacts on energy utilization, have claimed that technical advances are required to attain energy efficiency, leading in the increased awareness of renewables, suggesting that innovations can help China improve its energy efficiency",7
"According to Yu and Du (2019), independent innovation initiatives have played a significant influence in China’s CO2 emissions reduction",13
"(2015), technical innovation has aided the establishment of an efficient energy market while also allowing for long-term economic growth throughout the BRICS and G7 nations",8
"Yii and Geetha (2017) found a causal relationship between technical advances, growth, energy consumption, energy costs, and CO2 emissions in Malaysia from 1971 to 2013",7
"Despite the fact that empirical data suggests that GDP growth and CO2 emissions are the major drivers of CO2 emissions variations, the authors observed conflicting results for the impact of economic activity on CO2 emissions across nations",8
"(2017) showed that patents appear to hinder development and are viewed as a barrier to climate change mitigation, which is consistent with this premise",13
"We discovered that the influence of GDP, FD renewable energy, and innovations on the environment is widely investigated; however, the acquired conclusions are equivocal, after evaluating a large body of empirical literature",7
"As a result, additional research is needed to reduce the debate over GDP, foreign direct investment, renewable energy, and creativity",7
"As was mentioned in the introduction section, this study aims to assess the symmetric and asymmetric effect of financial development and technological innovation on China’s environmental performance",8
"The data for all variables, except renewable energy use, was obtained from World Bank World Developing indicators (WDI) and renewable energy data was gathered from the British Petroleum Statistical Review of World Energy (bp.com) (2021)",7
These values show that increasing economic performance and prioritizing the economic growth to environment in China will lead to higher CO2 emissions and greater degradation to the environment,8
"Moreover, China should develop some rules/policies for domestic/foreign investors to act environmentally friendly and invest with environmentally friendly technologies",17
"Furthermore, a 1% increase in the share of renewable energy sources in total energy consumption will contribute to the environmental quality by 0.552% in the short run and this value was accounted as 0.541% in the long run",7
"However, a 1% decrease in the use of renewable energy in China will degrade the environmental quality by 0.488% and 0.437% in the short run and long run, respectively",7
"Our findings with regards to renewable energy correspond to the findings of Alam and Murad (2020) for OECD, Moutinbo and Robaina (2016), and Kahia et al",7
"To this end, government should increase its financial support on installation of renewable energy technologies as well as pursue some policies to remove the limitations on the use of renewable energy sources",7
"Lastly, the coefficients of technological innovation demonstrate that a 1% increase (decrease) in technological innovations improves (degrade) environmental quality by 0.173% (0.124%) in the short run, whereas these values were calculated as 0.718% and 0.365% for the long run, on average",8
Bidirectional causal association were found among technological innovation and financial development,8
"Moreover, technological innovation also has another bidirectional causal relationship with economic performance in China",8
"However, the unidirectional causal association runs to environmental quality from renewable energy and innovation",7
This is due to the structure of its economic activities mostly done with excessive utilization of fossil fuels as it includes manufacturing and industrial activities and these activities have a direct impact on climate change,13
China is among the countries that pledge to the Paris Agreement of 2005 of controlling climate change,13
"From NARDL and DOLS, we find that economic growth through economic activities is statistically significant in determining the trend (increase) of carbon emissions in China in both periods (short run and long run)",8
"Hence, bidirectional causal association was found between technological innovation and financial development",8
Technological innovation also has another bidirectional causal relationship with economic performance in China,8
"However, the unidirectional causal association runs to environmental quality from renewable energy and innovation",7
"Therefore, it is imperative for China’s authorities to look more into energy transition (from fossil fuels to more sustainable energy sources)",7
This policy will aid in making funds available for capital projects such as sponsoring research and development which enhance innovation,9
The policy will also assist in making capital available to both the public and private parties who are interested in investing in renewable energy sector,7
It will lead to expansion and sustainability of the renewable energy sector in China,7
"Also, the authorities should frame liberalization cum privatization policies that will attract both private and public parties into investing in the renewable energy sector",7
"Developing countries, such as Pakistan, are facing severe food security issues, where most of the population still experiences poverty and hunger in their daily lives",2
"This research work focused on investigating the flood hazards vulnerability and risk of food security in the Bait community flood-prone areas of Punjab, Pakistan, with a broader aspect in contrast to previous research work",2
A constructed food security index composed of several IPCC and FAO factors with correlated dimensions of food security was used for the empirical estimation in this study,2
A composite food security index was developed through polychoric principal component analysis,2
"To estimate the influence on the overall food security condition in the study area, a food security index was regressed on various independent variables",2
Estimates of the study indicated that three-fourths of household respondents in the study area are confronted with the issue of food security with changeable scale,2
"Financing schemes, physical assets, and family type illustrated the positive influence on respondents’ food security level, whereas respondents suffering property losses owing to floods had a negative influence",2
The study findings suggested integrated strategies must be adopted to effectively deal with issues of food security in the scenario of increasing severity of flood disasters,2
Policymakers and disaster-concerned institutions need to develop disaster risk mitigation strategies by constructing new water reserves and clearing river encroachments to deal with flood disasters,13
Pakistan was ranked the world’s 5th most affected country regarding climate change natural disasters because of frequent floods and being situated in a hazard-prone region (Eckstein et al,13
"2019), specifically by distressing availability and access of food, thus obstructing attaining SDGs of the UN, particularly the SDG-2 focused on endorsing sustainable agriculture, improving nutrition, attaining food security, and hunger eradication by 2030 (Banik 2019)",2
"Food security is regarded as a worldwide human right (WHOFootnote 52018) and achieving food security is a vital objective that can be attained through maintaining affordable health and a sustainable supply of food (Perez-Escamilla 2017; Ahmad and Afzal 2021a, b, c, d, e, f)",2
"In the global scenario, least-developed and developing countries are constantly confronted with the major challenge of achieving food security and almost 820 million people do not have sufficient food for their hunger satisfaction (WHO 2018)",2
"In Pakistan, the green revolution was introduced in 1960 with advanced inputs of high yield seed varieties, fertilizer, pesticides, tubewell, mechanization through tractor, and other advanced technologies (Khan and Makki 1980; Chaudhry 1982; Khan 1983), which caused a hyper increase in agricultural outputs, reduced income inequalities in rural areas consequently contributing to reduced poverty and food insecurity issues even though the population of the country doubled (Choudhry 1994; Khan and Gul 2013)",2
"Currently, the extreme climate scenario and its variations have increased the issue of food security of previously vulnerable peoples",2
"Furthermore, climatic variations have increased the tendency of floods frequency, which hinders the measures to reduce the issues of food security in Pakistan and poses an alarming threat to attaining food security",2
"2016; Choithani 2020) and climate-based natural disasters could push 122 million people, particularly farmers, into extreme poverty by 2030 (FAO 2019; Thiede and Gray 2020)",1
"Humans need food for their survival; the repercussion of flood disasters is terrible because of insufficient accessibility, constrained utilization, and reduced access to food (Abbas et al",2
Household food security managing capabilities are reduced due to long-term exposure of floods and farmers consequently have to switch their assets to handle flood risks (Hwalla et al,2
"In the global scenario, rural communities are particularly confronted with the manifested effects of floods such as reduced agricultural production, diminished employment, lower purchasing power, increased health issues, higher and severe threats of poverty, malnutrition, food insecurity, and enhanced hunger",2
"In the general scenario of flood vulnerability of households, food security is considered a robust indicator",2
"Deluges have severe implications regarding food security, as they hinder access, availability, utilization, and stability of food (Vervoort et al",2
"Food security is the function of access, availability, utilization, and stability of food as SDG-2 broadly covers the outcomes of these four dimensions (FAO 2019; ADB 2021)",2
"Floods impact on food security and the significance of the four dimensions fluctuates over time, across regions, and most importantly related to the whole socioeconomic conditions of the country",2
"In Pakistan, Indus and Chenab are major rivers of the country (PBS 2020) that frequently flood and cause destruction in the summer season due to extreme erratic rains and extreme snow melting because of intense climate change variations (PMDFootnote 102019; Ahmad and Afzal 2021a, b, c, d, e, f)",13
"In natural flowing progression, such rivers are scattered in various impermanent inland waterways while crossing in the course of various areas as impermanent islands are frequently engendered in the river areas",9
"The frequent scenario of floods has severely affected Bait farmers’ livelihoods and harshly increased food security issues in contrast to the farmers in other regions because of inadequate flood hazard mitigation measures, including insufficient allocation of resources and measures for hazards mitigation, lack of awareness and communication, and partial function of hazards institutions in Bait areas of southern Punjab",2
"In literature regarding global and Pakistan perspectives, the food security aspect has been discussed in various dimensions, where some significant studies have focused on the factors affecting food security (Abu and Soom 2016; Olayiwola et al",2
"2022), household level aspects of food expenditures, food consumption, and nutrition security (Li and Yu 2010; Carletto et al",2
"Furthermore, in the scenario of flood-prone communities, the household-level food security aspect was elaborated in a few studies (Di Falco and Bulte 2011; Ajaero 2017; Balana et al",2
"In the above-cited literature, flood hazards are discussed with some significant aspects, including the aspect of flood hazards with food security in the global scenario",2
"However, no significant study exists on flood hazards and food security with the particular aspect of SDGs objectives and FAO dimensions focused on flood-prone areas of Pakistan according to the best knowledge of the authors",2
"Hence, it is a prerequisite to the application of an unrestrained approach for estimating household level food security to includ the four dimensions of food security: food access, availability, utilization, and stability",2
"In such background, food security investigation involves the dimensions of access, availability, utilization, and stability as central elements significantly affecting the food security of households in flood hazards areas",2
"In this scenario according to the research gap mentioned above and using a comprehensive approach, this study focused on these specific objectives first by considering the four dimensions to examine the status of food security in flood Bait communities of Punjab, Pakistan",2
"In the previous research scenario, some studies discussed the changeable levels of dimensions in most frameworks of food security, and a significant food security framework was developed particularly focusing on linking pathways of agriculture to food security outcomes (Kanter et al",2
The mechanism linked the outcomes of agriculture and food security more appropriately and directly suggested by a pathway in these frameworks (Renzaho and Mellor 2010),2
"Most food security frameworks addressed the perspective of developed countries in the context of political, cultural, and social aspects of these outcomes",2
"The significance of this framework in contrast to other frameworks is that it confined the modulation variation of food security regarding various cultures, for example, in conventional communities food security severity is estimated in terms of hunger among adults in contrast to children",2
Food security (family base) at the household level for the description of cultural variations was used to capture the food shortage,2
"As a dimension of food security, food availability is concerned with the suitable and adequate quantity of food available to households throughout the year by import or domestic resources (Swaminathan and Bhavani 2013)",2
Food access indicates the scenario in which all community members have sufficient earnings to attain the appropriate quality of food substance composing a healthful diet for a healthy lifestyle,2
"The food access dimension has unified functions of different institutional, social, physical, and policy-based environments that settle on effective utilization and access of resources for making certain food security goals among households",2
"Food stability includes the capability to secure the food security dimensions of food access, availability, and utilization in due course (Hwalla et al",2
Household-level adoption of vulnerability functions causes food security declines in the dimension of sensitivity as it is extremely susceptible to the least type of natural hazards,2
Climate change and floods constitute exposure dimensions that affect households,13
"Regarding different individuals, communities, regions, and nations, the various status of food security was estimated (Arouri et al",2
"Food security is preferably measured by a few methods such as HFIASFootnote 15 and FAO for estimation of household expenditure and income survey, per capita calories available at the national stage, and individual basis dietary intake measurement",2
"Furthermore, no single approach is able to address all dimensions of food security in the given period, in the same scenario no organization or institute has the mandate or capability to monitor or assess food security taking into consideration all of its different dimensions (Carletto et al",2
Household level food security was measured by adopting the developed food security index (Sam et al,2
"The food security index is based on a weighted index, which elaborated a single composite indicator with the combination of various four dimensions and 11 key indicators in this food security index, as indicated in Table 1",2
"Individual household holding livestock, PDSFootnote 16 access, and farmland area are included in dimensions of food access",2
Household-level potable water accessability issues and malnutrition problems highlight the dimensions of food utilization,2
The principal component analysis (PCA) method was used to estimate the food security indicators procedure of acquiring weighting objectives,2
Some discrete indicators were also estimated in the food security index such as whether some households have water access issues,2
"The calculation of the food security index is performed in equation form in 2 and 3, afterward the estimation of polychoric PCA",2
Equation (3) has elaborated the FSSm as composite mth household respondents food security score and nth principal components variance as Vn,2
"Food security score (FSS) is employed in Eq. (4) for developing the Food Security Index (FSI), which ranges from scale 0 to 1",2
"In Eq. (4) mth household respondent’s food security index is indicated as FSIm, and the sample maximum food security score value is denoted as FSSmaximum, and FSSminimum illustrated the minimum food security score of the sample of the study area",2
"Food security score as the dependent variable of the model consists of the factors that determine the food security of Bait flood-prone rural households, which is the function of economic, social, demographic, flood, and physical factors",2
"In Eq. (5), mth household’s composite food security score is indicated as FSSm, and sub-factors variables under exposure and adaptive capacity dimensions explained as Xim and respective coefficients are denoted as βi",2
"The food security index considers a continuous variable with an interval (0, 1) in this model and correlated to added variables in the structure of regression",2
"In the scenario of continuous variable, the average marginal effect would be incidental as an added unit of increase in the variable increases the score of food security by coefficient level",2
"The food security index replicates the selection of food security dimensions, which proceeds through the preliminary stage of performing polychoric PCA regarding the dataset of 11 indicators",2
Each indicator variance proportion was illustrated through the component is indicated via loading square (Abdi and Williams 2010) in which each indicator’s highest loading factor was applied for food security score construction as elaborated in Eq. 2,2
"In component 2, the maximum loading factor was estimated regarding the indicators number of livestock, sufficient food for all over the year, and household monthly food expenditure",2
"In the scenario of component 3, the highest loading factor was for the issue of malnutrition and public distribution system, whereas the highest factor loading was related to the indicator of food supply instability in component 4",2
"In component analysis, all food security indicators were significantly related to indicators of food security, and these findings are similar with the studies of Glago (2019), Kakinuma et al",2
Information related to hidden associations in different variables could be presented by PCA and this method focused on producing weights for the formation of the food security index for this research work (Sam et al,2
"Households were categorized into four quantile according to the range of food security index, and households with the most food security were indicated 1 while 0 for the least food security status",2
"Mostly inhabitants in the study area have the least food security, and these findings are in line with the studies of Bulte et al",2
"The impact of social, demographic, physical, economic, and flood factors on rural household food security was investigated using beta regression model coefficients and calculated variables average marginal effect, as depicted in Table 4",2
Family type and demographic profile are the most prominent demographic sub-factors that significantly and positively affect the food security of rural households,2
"Landholding fragmentation may lead to complete termination of agriculture or reduce agricultural products output that will eventually generate issues of food security for rural area households, and these results of the study are inconsistent with the studies of Zhou et al",2
Household head status considerably influences rural households’ food security,2
Estimates of the study illustrated the significant and negative influence of the household head in rural areas’ food security,2
"Female-headed households faced higher issues of food security than male-headed households because of children responsibilities, maintenance of the household, mobility restrictions, ownership of limited land, labor markets wage disparities, and levels of lower literacy, and these findings are in contrast with the studies of Hasanah et al",2
Household food security is notably influenced by the age of the household head because more significant decisions related to family are made by the household head,2
"In a crisis scenario, institutional networks, social connections, and communal integration are considerable factors in achieving food security at a household level",2
Estimates indicated the school access variable reflects a positive and significant effect as household-level in-school access considerably improves household-level food security,2
"Household-level overall food security is not directly connected to school, but it facilitates helping children attending schools to develop food security, and these findings are in line with the studies of Hasanah et al",2
This helps those children related to the disadvantaged segment of society with insufficient access to food possibly have adequate intake,2
"In Pakistan, the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) was launched in July 2008 (GOP 2009) and results of the study indicated a positive and significant correlation between BISP and food security reflecting that BISP financial assistance makes food security more feasible, particularly for rural households (PBS 2019)",2
"In this study, a positive and significant association was estimated regarding migration and food security of households",2
"Households through performing small business practices, migrating to nearby states or cities, and participating in daily labor activities are diversifying their incomes",9
"The income status of a household is considered one of the significant sources for influencing hunger and food security, where increasing income status directly reduces hunger because some basic food items (preferred food, oil, salt) are neither bartered nor domestically produced and require cash to purchase (Silvestri et al",2
"In the food security scenario, there is a considerable role of household assets, which significantly improve the ability of households to withstand unanticipated changes",2
The managing capability of households related to issues of food security depends on their various access to assets (Ellis and Manda 2012),2
"In such a scenario, these durable assets are an instrument for safeguarding the food security of households during extreme climatic conditions; therefore, it can be presumed that households with more physical assets are more food secure",2
The findings of the study reflected the significant and positive effect of rural households’ food security and durable assets,2
"Increasing various durable assets is the element of food security that enhances household’s capacity regarding the issue of seasonal food security and sudden economic shocks as such durable assets are highly liquid for cash conversion, and these findings of the study are in line with the studies of Renzaho and Mellor (2010), Russell et al",2
"In the scenario of rural population food security, floods have some considerable indirect and direct effects",2
The above subsections reported indirect losses related to flood vulnerability and floods in the scenario of food security in the region of the study areas but also reflected the direct effect of floods on the food security status of respondents,2
"In Table 4, findings of the study showed property losses owing to flood event onsets considerably destabilized the household status of food security",2
"Property losses because of floods distressed the food security situation as an indirect effect; on the other hand, property losses integrated with losses of crops, livestock, and grain stored with durable assets havd a direct and strong bearing on the regional food security",2
The marginal effect of such variable was significant and complemented the role of property loss on regional food security conditions,2
"More particularly, an increase of 1% probability of property loss owing to floods was indicated to reduce food security status by 5%",2
"Furthermore, stress owing to floods had an anticipated earlier sign, illustrating the negative association with household status of food security; however, the correlation was non-significant statistically",2
Related variables such as deterioration in environment income-earning and average rainfall variation owing to the incidence of the flood were illustrated to have a non-significant or diminutive impact on the food security status of the household,2
"These results show floods effect food security by disturbing or destroying household inventories and assets basis, and the findings are in contrast with the studies of Zhou et al",2
"In the major factors group of the flood, other variables are not as significant in affecting the food security of people because of the lower or equal to 5% marginal effect",2
"In such consideration, the rising vulnerability of flood leads to rising losses of property, which significantly affects food security levels in the population",2
"Human livelihood routine matters such as economic performance, health care, water access, agricultural production, and human livelihood have been severely affected by flood disasters, which has raised household food security issues",2
"This study used the composite index approach to investigate food security with a focus on components that influence the pattern of food consumption, food expenditure, and nutritional security",2
Estimates of the study indicated mostly rural flood-affected households are facing issues of food security,2
Such conditions need the implementation of intervention policies to reduce future risks of rising levels of food insecurity owing to intensified frequent floods,2
This study also examined the factors that affect household food security and calculated each significant variable average marginal effect,2
"The study findings indicated physical assets, education, BISP, and structure of joint family positively and significantly affect food security",2
"In the study area, the provision of social support and alternative employment opportunities are more feasible measures for reducing the food security issue",2
Generating additional employment opportunities by developing agro-based industries through public–private cooperation is practicable financing policy measures in local flood-prone areas which will ultimately boost food security,2
Food security is indirectly or directly affected due to household vulnerability to flood hazards,2
"Various stakeholders need to carry out systematic changes, particularly in government institutions and financial sectors, mainly participating in welfare administration and social protection to reduce the influence of temporal and spatial severity",1
"In high-risk, flood-prone and least developed regions, issues of food security are substantial; therefore, it is essential to concentrate on base-level indicators that direct to food security",2
"In the broader perspective of Pakistan, local, regional, and national-based disasters managing authorities such as NDMA, PDMA, and DDMA need to develop feasible short-term and long-term plans of disaster mitigation, particularly in disaster-prone areas",11
"Application of such strategies preserves valuable land, ensures food security, reduces the destruction of crops, infrastructure and homes, and inhabitants’ livelihood will be more secured",2
"Cities are important agents of change to build actions that identify virtues and vulnerabilities, as evidenced in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations (UN) (UN 2015), contributing to the urban environment, improving from urban climate to the global climate, life quality of the population worldwide, and tackling key challenges established in the global pact signed by 193 UN member states, including Brazil (UN 2015, 2018; Acuti et al",11
"AQ models are the only diagnostic and/or prognostic method that quantifies the deterministic relationship between emissions sources and concentrations/depositions at the receptor, making it possible to define and evaluate the effectiveness of mitigation strategies (Daly and Zannetti 2007; Nguyen 2014; Yadav et al",13
"For this reason, steady-state and homogeneous models (e.g., Industrial Source Complex (ISC) (USEPA 1995) and American Meteorological Society-Environmental Protection Agency Regulatory Model (AERMOD) (USEPA 2004)) are used even in non-applicable conditions, such as under complex terrain",15
"Also valuable is the use of AQ models to design and support the local observation network and depict violations of air quality standards, as well as to establish and guide public policies for urban-industrial planning and RJMA environmental protection areas (Silveira et al",15
"The methodology is based on the implementation of the Sustainable Cities Development Index–Brazil (IDSC-BR) ( -br.sdgindex.org/methodology), produced by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) (Lafortune et al",11
The flow on the inventoried roads was measured using counts of light and heavy vehicle traffic at certain times of the day based on the manual of the National Department of Transport Infrastructure (DNIT 2006) and data from the Department of Transport of the Rio de Janeiro (DETRAN-RJ),9
"It is not surprising the R index values close to 0, since the present evaluation is audacious in the sense of trying to model a highly urban environment with infinite casualties, unlike well-controlled experiments",11
"BOX 1: Selecting product-related targets Target 2b aims to “Correct and prevent trade restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets, including through the parallel elimination of all forms of agricultural export subsidies and all export measures with equivalent effect, in accordance with the mandate of the Doha Development Round” (UN 2015b)",2
"By contrast, target 8.5 aims to “By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value” (UN 2015b)",8
"In the view of the involved experts and stakeholders (see chapter 2.4), the activities of the companies involved in the production of the product (C2) can be linked to the aim of providing “decent work for all” as well as achieving “equal pay for work of equal value”",8
"However, one single company cannot achieve full employment on a society level, and the number of jobs that a company has to provide to contribute to full employment is hardly logically derivable",8
"In the opinion of the involved experts and stakeholders, companies can therefore contribute to “decent work for all” as well as achieving “equal pay for work of equal value” but not “full […] employment […] for all”",8
"This focus resulted for example in some quite food-specific indicators like the coverage of sustainable agriculture, biodiversity, food losses and investments in conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystems in the sustainability risk management",2
"For instance, indicator 1.1.1 of the GIF-SDG measures the “proportion of the population living below the international poverty line”",1
"As it is deemed suitable to measure the target 1.1 “By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere […]”, it is selected as an indicator within this method",1
"However, since a company can only contribute to improving the situation of workers involved in the production of the product as well as of other employees such as procurement, research and development (R&D) or sales but not all people everywhere, the indicator has been adapted to measure this contribution",9
"For instance, for SDG 3.9 “[…] substantially reduce the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals and air, water and soil pollution and contamination”, it was looked for EF indicators measuring health impacts with respect to hazardous chemicals used along a product’s life cycle",3
"In S-LCA, there is an agreement on six impact categories, human rights, working conditions, health and safety, cultural heritage, governance and socio-economic repercussions, and 31 sub-categories (UNEP 2020)",11
"This is the case, for example, with target 1.1 (By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.90 a day)",1
"This means, for example for target 1.3 (Implement nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all..) that all employees along the value chain should benefit from certain benefits (e.g",1
social security) and none should be excluded,1
"This is, for example, used for target 2.5 (By 2020, maintain the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species…) to derive a reference value for the number of used breeds and varieties in agriculture",2
"This is, for example, used for target 9.5 (Enhance scientific research… and substantially increasing the number of research and development workers per 1 million people and public and private research and development spending) to derive a reference value for the share of income spent on research and development",9
"This is, for example, used for target 14.1 (By 2025, prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds…) to protect marine ecosystems since a quantitative assessment was not (yet) possible",14
The target 1.1 aims to “eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere” and defines that no one should earn less than the current UN poverty line of $1.90,1
"Here, EF recommends assessing the impact on terrestrial biodiversity, but no concrete method has been proposed so far",15
"Aquatic biodiversity is not yet addressed in EF, nor is ocean acidification, the reduction of which is explicitly mentioned in target 14.3",14
This is for example the case for the GIF-SDG indicator “1.1.1 Proportion of population below the international poverty line” which was adapted to “Workers earning below the UN poverty line”,1
"Similarly, indicator 14.3.1 covers the “average marine acidity (pH) measured at agreed suite of representative sampling stations” which was adapted to measure the “marine acidification potential” of products with the E-LCIA method proposed by Bach et al",14
"As the corresponding target 5.1 states to “end all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere” and does not include further genders, the indicator has been confined to men and women",10
"Additionally, discrimination and equal opportunities were added as a topic for the sustainability risk management described in indicator C2.3 (the last step of the reference point approach)",10
Bell-shaped functions (3 out of 20): These were considered suitable for targets that address gender inequality and are based on Gaussian functions,5
"This is the case for indicator C2.12 that is based on target 6.1 “By 2030, achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all”",6
The corresponding GIF-SDG aims to enhance the “proportion of population using safely managed drinking water services” and can be directly transferred to employees involved in the production and management of a certain product,6
Result of the expert discussion was that the contribution to the target (reference value) is fully achieved (C2.12 = +1) when all workers/employees have access to safe drinking water at work (Fig,6
"(1) [S-LCIA for indicator C2.12]), as every additional worker/employee with access to drinking water at work is considered an improvement",6
"For example, target 1.3 aims to “implement nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including floors, and by 2030 achieve substantial coverage of the poor and the vulnerable”",1
The requirement for the corresponding GIF-SDG is to analyse the “proportion of population covered by social protection floors/systems […]”,1
"If the principle “leave no one behind” is applied to target 1.3, the reference value can be set to let all employees along the product life cycle benefit from all types of social security (C2.2 = +1; Fig",1
A neutral impact on the target (C2.2 = 0) is assumed if the average coverage of the company’s employees with social security equals the average coverage of employees in the country concerned,1
"If none of the employees is covered by any type of social security, a negative impact of C2.2 = −1 is assumed",1
y1 and y2 represent different types of social security support as an example,1
"n1 and n2 are the corresponding national country averages To define a social security system, the definition of the International Labour Organisation (2017, p",1
"168) was used, which includes the following types of social security: (a1) child and family benefits (e.g",1
"benefits in form of periodic cash or housing, holidays, help); (a2) maternity protection (e.g",1
paid leave or leave with adequate social security benefits); (a3) unemployment support; (a4) employment injury benefits; (a5) sickness benefits; (a6) health protection; (a7) old-age benefits; (a8) disability benefits; (a9) survivors’ benefits (e.g,1
The contribution is first assessed for all nine types of social security independently (y1 to y9) and then summed up to an equally weighted average C2.2,1
"Since the average coverage with social security varies within the different countries and also for the different types of social security systems, the x axis intercept can occur at different values of x",1
"(2) [S-LCIA for indicator C2.2]), as every additional worker/employee with access to one or more of the nine different types of social security is considered an improvement",1
"Since the national averages regarding social protection systems are different for different countries and thus yi = 0 is varying, this also results in different slopes of the functions as displayed in Fig",1
"where ai is the share of employees benefiting from social security support, a1 is the child and family benefits, a2 is the maternity protection, a3 is the unemployment support, a4 is the employment injury benefits, a5 is the sickness benefits, a6 is the health protection, a7 is the old-age benefits, a8 is the disability benefits, a9 is the survivors’ benefits and n1–n9 is the national country average of related coverage a1–a9",1
"The basis for the indicator C2.4 is target 2.5 which states “By 2020, maintain the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals […]”",2
The requirement for the GIF-SDG 2.5.1,2
"(United Nations 2021) for this target is to report on the genetic resources in conservation facilities and the proportion of local breeds being at risk of extinction which, in the view of the involved experts and stakeholders, cannot be transferred to products",15
"C2.17 illustrates such an indicator which is based on target 9.5 “Enhance scientific research, upgrade the technological capabilities of industrial sectors […]”",9
The potential contribution of companies is to raise the share of income spent on R&D,9
The GIF-SDG 9.5.1 proposes to measure “research and development expenditure as a proportion of GDP” which is adapted to products,9
The maximum impact on the target (C2.17 = +1) is reached when the share of income spent on R&D (input parameter) is equal to the average of the five branch leaders in the sector (r2),9
There is a neutral impact on the target (C2.17 = 0) when the expenses spent on R&D are equal to the national country-branch average (r1),9
The impact is set as C2.17 = −1 when there are no expenses for R&D,9
"The function is expressed in linear terms until the spending of the five industry leaders is reached, as each additional resource spent on R&D represents a positive contribution to the achievement of the target (Fig",9
"C2.14 relates to the amount of wastewater treatment, uses the top five performing countries as reference point and is also expressed as a linear function",6
"where x is the share of investments in R&D based on income, r1 is the national country-branch average and r2 is the average share of 5 industry leaders in the sector",9
"x is the share of income spent on R&D As a fifth choice, a product-related topic addressed in a target can be included in the sustainability risk management if a quantitative assessment is not (yet) possible",9
An example of an impact assessment based on sustainability risk management is target 5.1 which aims to “End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere”,10
"However, not all kinds of discrimination can be covered using wages as proxy",10
"Therefore, discrimination was added as a topic for the sustainability risk management",10
The highest possible positive impact on preventing discrimination (C2.3a = +1) is achieved when all management measures (policies/goals and targets; responsibilities/resources; specific actions/measures) are covered,10
Equation (5) (S-LCIA for indicator C2.3a) gives details on the measurement of the indicator regarding discrimination C2.3a,10
"where C2.3j is a Boolean operator (value either 1 or 0) for management measures against discrimination covered, C2.31 is the policies/goals and targets, C2.32 is the responsibilities/resources and C2.33 is the specific actions/measures",10
"In this study, only one indicator to measure the expenses in R&D (C2.17) uses the approach to benchmark against the five top companies in the sector",9
"Since expenses in R&D are a common business measure, the suspicion of setting the bar too low was deemed neglectable",9
This is for instance the case for target 5.1 which aims to “End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere”,10
"However, not all kinds of discrimination can be covered using wages as proxy",10
"Therefore, discrimination was added as a topic for the sustainability risk management",10
"Other targets directly address issues related to minorities like target 10.2 which aims to “empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status”",10
Both C2.1 (Workers earning below the UN poverty line of $ 1.90 per day) and C2.17 (Investments in R&D) use the same reference point approach as the sustainable development report,9
"For indicator C2.10 (Equal wages for men and women) and C2.14 (Wastewater treatment), the sustainable development report uses the technical optimum as a reference point approach which is not given as an official step to derive target values (Sachs et al",6
"For indicator C2.15 (Employees under 24 years) and C2.18 (Relative poverty rate), the sustainable development report uses the average of the top performers while in this research the principle “leave no-one behind” is applied as it has higher priority (see Sect",1
no child labour or modern slavery in law,8
The UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights discussed by the UN Human Rights Council could also give human rights due diligence at the international level a legally binding instrument to regulate the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises in terms of human rights,16
the indicators C2.1 and C2.2 both contribute to SDG 1 of reducing poverty,1
"The site-specific assessment indicated different results than the social risk assessment, showing worse social performance in the spinning stage (located in China)",1
"For instance, although the SDG 13 aims at combating climate change, the E-LCA indicator is related to mitigation, while the SDG indicator is related to adaptation",13
"However, just a few S-LCA peer-reviewed case studies have been published on textile products, mostly based on general social risk assessment, or focused on a few stakeholder categories",1
The assessment was conducted in two steps: (1) a social risk hotspots assessment and (2) a site-specific assessment,1
"During the classification, it was found that the S-LCA indicators are currently not detailed enough in terms of discrimination issues, contrary to the SDGs, where discrimination issues are measured through many indicators in several different goals (e.g., regarding gender and access from indigenous communities to education and income)",10
"For instance, the life cycle of an agricultural food product would necessarily contribute to some extent to SDG 2",2
"Although there are no SDG targets directly related to the function of clothing, clothes could be contributing to targets of SDG 3 (healthy lives and well-being) when they are aimed at reducing the risks of illnesses or accidents",3
"On the other side, clothes can include messages that promote gender equality and sustainable behavior, and therefore, addressing targets of SDGs 4 and 5",5
"For affordable and clean energy (goal 7), the higher risks are associated with a high extraction of biomass (probably for energy purposes) in the activities of fabric weaving, shirt manufacturing, and retailing",7
"The main risk for decent work and economic growth (goal 8) is related to a low trade union density rate in China, Bangladesh, and The Netherlands",8
"For responsible consumption and production (goal 12), main risks are related to a low rate of certified environmental management systems per employee, in every sector (and mainly in China, Bangladesh, and The Netherlands)",12
"For the peace, justice, and strong institutions (goal 16), risks are related to low social responsibility in the supply chain, due to the low participation of the sectors in the UN Global Compact Initiative, and to high public sector corruption in Malaysia (knitted fabrics) and Bangladesh (wearing apparel) (according to the PSILCA database)",16
*Contribution to economic development is the only category presenting positive risks instead of negative risks,8
The Bangladeshi garment sector has been frequently associated with human rights violations and poor health and safety conditions of workers (Kamal 2013),16
"This situation can lead to an increase in non-formal jobs, insecurity in urban areas, and a slowdown of the local economic growth as a whole (Jordaan 2018)",8
"Weighted social risks contributing to each SDG, per life cycle stage of the shirt under study The results obtained for goal 5 (gender equality) indicate similar social risks in The Netherlands than in Bangladesh, associated with a high risk of gender wage gap in the former, and a high risk of female illiteracy in the latter",5
The main negative social hotspots identified in the site-specific assessment are related to (1) the number of hours worked per week in the cotton spinning (60 h per week in average) and the shirt manufacturing in Bangladesh (average overtime of 36 h per week) and (2) an absence of a waste management system in the spinning stage,12
"Most of the indicators, especially in the SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth), presented a neutral performance (neither above nor below compliance of laws or international standards)",8
This includes social issues related not only to discrimination but also to environmental preservation (which could be potentially covered by environmental LCA),10
"The site-specific assessment indicated different results than the social risk assessment, showing worse social performance in the spinning stage (in China)",1
"The risk of an absence of environmental management systems was confirmed by the site-specific assessment that found an absence of a waste management system in the spinning (China) and the retailer (The Netherlands), but not in the shirt manufacturing in Bangladesh",12
"Additionally, more detailed indicators measuring discrimination issues should be developed in the S-LCA framework",10
"In this context, the aim of this study was to perform an unprecedented bibliometric analysis of literature reviews on SDG to assess the evolution and consolidation of the scientific research",9
"However, there are crucial challenges to overcome, emphasizing the importance of the interrelationship between sectors, actors, and countries that have lesser and greater economic development (Stafford-Smith et al",8
"Thus, the aim of this study was to conduct a bibliometric analysis of literature reviews on SDG from 2015 to 2022 with the following specific objectives: Get a perspective of the status and evolution on the scientific research of SDG Provide a visual representation of interrelations of the SDG review articles and its scientific elements Reveal insights from the identified patterns of thematic currents Define research gaps and hidden key elements on the SDG and propose future research The analysis of scientific literature was performed using a bibliometric analysis and was conducted in three phases (Fig. 1)",9
"In 2015, only one review was published, related to SDG 3, and the number of published review papers increased to 9 in the year of 2016",3
"The main fields covered were (i) environmental sciences, (ii) green sustainable science technology, (iii) environmental studies, (iv) public environmental occupational health, (v) water resources, and (vi) energy fuels",8
A decrease trend in the proportion of SDG 3 publications over years was observed,3
"It is clear that publications related to SDG 3 increased in number; however, the proportion of articles concerned to SDG 3 decreased, while the number and proportion of other SDG increased",3
"Sustainable development goals (SDG) distribution of the review publications over the years In the second year, an interest in relation to SDG 2, 12, and 17 was observed",2
"Thus, it is noted that even though the total number of documents, TC, h-index, and IF indicate that SDG 3 is among the top 3 most relevant sources, the normalized citation data indicate that journals research on energy, multidisciplinary and general environmental sciences, and sustainability are among the most noticeable sources",3
(2018) also discussed about energy (SDG 7) and did not present bibliographic coupling with those articles,7
"(2018) was the only article about the SDG 6 included in the most-cited reviews, which contains water scarcity metrics for monitoring progress, and thus, it was not found bibliographic coupling with others top-cited documents",6
"(2018) focused their articles on SDG 3 and reviewed studies about heath, HIV, and disease prevention, respectively",3
"(2018), which brings a review study on social determinants of mental disorders, did not presented bibliographic coupling with the other documents of SDG 3",3
"This is an indicative that the psychiatry field is traditionally separated from other medicine branches of medicine and health fields (Fiorillo and Maj, 2018), even though mental health should be considered as good health and well-being (SDG 3)",3
"This is a strong indicative that developing countries are relevant when it comes to SDG, since there is an exclusive SDG that seeks equality (SDG 10) and this topic remains at the center of global debates (Díaz-López et al",10
"Investigating the normalized words, a hidden key element was observed, the keyword industry 4.0 presented the highest ANC (3.99), which is 3.5 times higher than the average ANC of the analyzed keywords, followed by the keywords big data, supply chain, nexus, strategy, circular economy and technology",12
"This result is very important, as it is possible to observe the rapid growth and the importance of technology to achieve the goals, aiming at profitability and economic growth, in addition to pursuing environmental benefits (Walsh et al",8
"The keywords food security, agriculture, and food are the most used keywords in the fourth cluster and are associated with SDG 2",2
"Some keywords could be attributed to SDG 15, such as land and soil",15
"However, they possibly refer to land cultivation and therefore, are aiming at higher agricultural productivity, and thus, they were also classified as SDG 2",2
"Furthermore, trade-offs and stakeholders were among the most evident keywords according to the ANC, and are related to the difficulties of implementing the SDG, being the only cluster where the 5Ps category partnership was found (SDG 17)",17
No reviews articles related to marine water (SDG 14) were found (with a minimum number of 6 occurrences),14
"Some authors (Bordignon 2021) also include freshwater in SDG 14, as being “life below water.” However, in the official document, the 2030 agenda only includes marine life (United Nations 2015)",14
"Many authors disagree with this distribution, which also causes some disagreements in the classification of SDG 6 on 5Ps, as people or planet",6
"(2020) addressed this issue in his paper and proposed a relative distribution of the 5 Ps among the 17 SDGs according to the targets, whereas for SDG 6, about 40% corresponded to planet and 31% to people",6
"Therefore, the lack of review articles on SDG 14 indicates a research gap in this field",14
"The sixth and last cluster includes the keywords, Electricity, greenhouse-gas, emissions, renewable energy, barriers, developing-countries that can be attributed to the SDGs 7, 10, and 13",7
"In addition, the SDG 16, peace, justice, and strong institutions, showed to be a major gap in the research on SDG literature reviews",16
"The targets also aim to reduce violence, corruption, bribe, exploitation, trafficking, torture, abuse, illicit arms, organized crime, and also develop international cooperation, participatory, and inclusive decision-making, inclusive (United Nations 2015)",16
"As an example, the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict is a dramatic world event that, in addition to the loss of life, impacts the environment, economy, and society",16
The most-cited documents and the most relevant sources indicated that the SDG with the greatest relevance was related to artificial intelligence (SDG 9) according to normalized citation analysis,9
"Since the establishment of the 2030 Agenda, research work has been conducted to map energy [4,5,6], infrastructures [7, 8], climate action [9], water [10], ecosystem services [11], oceans [12], mining [13] and artificial intelligence [14] to the SDGs",13
"The actors, the project stages and the energy sources were determined, these included two actors, policymaker and project developer; three project stages, planning, building and operation; and seven energy sources, hydropower, wind power, solar power, biomass/biofuels, waste to energy, nuclear and fossil fuels",7
"‘⁎’ represents an example of an action performed by a project developer for a hydropower plant in the planning stage After the completion of the systematic mapping, the compilation of actions (electronic supplementary material: Annex B) was included in the existing SDG-IAE Framework and corresponding Excel tool",7
"For example, the action “Plan/promote off grid and mini grid systems” can be found in two topics: “expansion of energy access” and “high cost of electricity”",7
It can be observed that SDG4 (Quality Education) has the lowest number of linkages and the lowest number of actions,4
"For instance, SDG11(Sustainable Cities and Communities) has the highest number of actions, but it does not have the highest number of linkages",11
"While, SDG12 (Sustainable Consumption and Production) has the highest number of linkages and a relatively low amount of actions",12
"For example, in SDG4, out of the eight linkages identified, seven can be found in the subtopic “expansion of energy access synergies”",7
"The actions impacting only one SDG target are mainly actions addressing linkages with SDG3 (Good Health and Well-being) and SDG6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), present in the subtopics “Large bodies of standing water” and “Withdrawal of water”, which address SDG targets 3.3 and 6.2, respectively",6
"On the other hand, all the seven actions impacting more than 42 SDGs targets, can be found under the subtopic “expansion of energy access synergies”",7
"Actions that can be applied to more than one technology but not to all, two to six, are mainly actions regarding renewable energy sources and technologies that contribute to air pollution",7
"The VARGA Project is located at the Avedøre Wastewater Treatment Plant, Denmark (WWTP) [27]",6
"Forty-three synergies and 13 trade-offs were identified as applicable to the project, with linkages regarding incineration, biomass production through agriculture and provision of clean cooking fuels being classified as “0 = Not Applicable”",7
"The project has six main characteristics that differentiate it from others: optimised carbon harvesting, minimisation of nitrous oxide, valuation chain of organic waste, recycling phosphorus and nitrogen nutrients, release of raw materials, and source optimisation of organic waste biopulp in anaerobic digestion and upgrading of biogas [27]",12
"Therefore, the most important synergy of this project is the increase of energy, water and natural resource efficiency",12
"The two most relevant trade-offs are the vulnerability extreme weather events, and the disturbance of marine ecosystems",13
"The area where the plant is located may be under the threat of climate change and extreme weather events, which has trade-offs with SDG7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) and SDG13 (Climate Action) [28]",13
"During the meeting with the project manager, it was understood that possible trade-offs associated with extreme weather events were already analysed",13
"The recycling of phosphorus and nitrogen which in high concentration in wastewater can cause eutrophication [32, 33] will be ensured by the plant and the nutrients will be reused in the agriculture sector",12
"This action mitigates the trade-offs [34, 35] present in Table 3 and the synergies [36,37,38,39] presented in Table 4, since the recovery of nutrients is also a possible action to enhance the natural resource efficiency [40]",12
Our approach uses a multilevel perspective to explore how various stakeholders perceive and assess the effects of sustainable public procurement,12
"First, it contributes to understanding that perceived effects of sustainable public procurement vary from the stakeholders' perspectives and that public procurement initiatives perceive to have cultural effects in addition to innovation, environmental, economic, and social impacts",12
"In this context, public procurement is often highlighted as a strategic instrument to stimulate sustainable consumption and cleaner production",12
The climate plan argues that public procurement can play an essential role in reducing CO2 output and stimulating innovative green solutions,13
"An OECD assessment of the public procurement system in Norway showed that Norway had a solid legal and regulatory foundation for sustainable public procurement, which, however, was not well-implemented (OECD MAPS, 2020)",12
"Earlier research has studied how procurement can drive the circular economy, e.g",12
"When looking at sustainability and effects, other studies have aimed to explore the relationships between environmental energy sustainability, low-carbon energy, and climate change mitigation, e.g",13
"Based on the introduction, the paper aims to answer two research questions: RQ1: How do government agencies, procurement officers, car suppliers, and end-users perceive the effects of sustainable public procurement of cars? RQ2: How do these stakeholders assess the effects of sustainable public procurement of cars? The study proceeds as follows",12
GRI is an international independent standard that aims to help organisations communicate their impact on climate change and human rights issues,13
Kemp and Rotmans (2004) suggest that transition into sustainable transport should be done in small steps,11
(2012) show a wide variation in involvement in implementing sustainable procurement when there is a demand for cars,12
(2017) and Sönnichsen and Clement (2020) show that the general scientific literature on sustainable public procurement is broad and growing,12
(2018) studied the implementation of green public procurement in a building project,12
"It is recommended that the sampling process in grounded theory studies should involve the recruitment of participants and organisations that are perceived as experts in the subject matter (Edmondson and McManus 2007; Makri and Neely 2021). Thus, in the research design, we invited experts in a government agency specialising in sustainable public procurement to suggest study participants and organisations",12
"The literature study collected data through Google Scholar searches using the following keywords: ‘sustainable public procurement’ AND ‘public procurement’ AND ‘green’ AND ‘car transport’, AND ‘effects’",12
"As stakeholder D said, “Sustainability includes the climate, the social perspective, and the circular economy",12
I will give you one example: I met with the home care services at a municipality yesterday; they have 100 cars,3
This is also reflected in the government’s climate plan for 2030,13
"Cultural effects of sustainable procurement relate to whether there is a cultural shift in how stakeholders and society address economic, social, and environmental issues",12
The second research question was related to how the stakeholders assess the effects of sustainable public procurement,12
"From the government agencies, sustainable procurement decisions are expected to demonstrate high levels of environmental value",12
From a practice and policy perspective achieving sustainable procurement will often involve balancing conflicting social and environmental values,12
"Besides confirming the relevance of the management control theory, this study extends it by using it in a public procurement setting and showing that decision-making in sustainable public procurement should be seen as a non-linear process",12
"Model of the procurement system based on our findings Model of control of public management of sustainability with feedback mechanisms for more informed decisions If we look towards policy implication, the findings presented fall within the broader debate about digital transformation in the public sector (Mergel et al",9
"Elucidating how decision-making within public procurement can become data-driven, thus providing a foundation for improving the quality of the decisions, represents an example of how policies can be strengthened towards better feedback mechanisms within sustainable public procurement",12
The Paris agreement (2015) and other sustainability initiatives e.g,13
"Despite the growing body of literature on sustainable public procurement, there is still a need for understanding the concepts and the calculation practices of effects",12
"To better understand how knowledge is produced around sustainable public procurement, there would be interesting for further research to explore the co-creation process thoroughly, especially the cultural effects mentioned by several stakeholders",12
"The 17 SDGs and their targets capture many different dimensions of human wellbeing, and recognize the dependence of social and economic development on the sustainable management of our planet’s natural systems",8
"Besides, when risk appears explicitly, as in SDG 13 (climate action), it does not refer to a coherent concept of risk provided by the corresponding field of knowledge (IPCC 2014)",13
full priority on economic recovery after the Covid crisis at the 2021 High Level Political Forum) is critically lacking within the 2030 Agenda,8
"Hence, climate change assessment and climate action may be seen as a model in terms of the articulation between science and policy, and the global scale and ambition of the approach",13
"By contrast, its concrete results in terms of climate change attenuation remain insufficient so far",13
"One possible explanation is the historically too sectoral nature of climate change attenuation approaches which neglected connections and trade-offs with, e.g",13
"A Risk conceptualisation from IPCC (2014), B risk for IPBES (2019), C risk definition for UNDRR (2019a) and D systemic risk according to UNDRR (2019a) The global IPBES assessment report (IPBES 2019) gives a large place to risk expressed in terms of biodiversity loss (Fig. 4B)",15
"In addition, IPBES strongly advises on the interdependency of all environmental issues, as (i) land-use is the major driver for habitat loss and fragmentation, causing anthropogenically driven biodiversity loss globally (Dirzo et al",15
"2014), (ii) the piecemeal development of infrastructure severes ecological networks and causes an unprecedented nature decline worldwide, and (iii) climate change acts on top of these land-based dynamics, often exacerbating these downwards trend, and accelerating the path leading to tipping points",13
"The 2015–2030 Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), known as ""Sendai framework"", renewed the United Nations' action in the field of disaster risk management (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015), with a main focus on risks due to natural hazards and NatechFootnote 4 risks",11
"The four main objectives of this framework are the reduction of impacts, the establishment of effective governance and strategies for prevention, mitigation and adaptation, the strengthening of international cooperation and the development of alert systems",16
"Also, the new urban Agenda from the EU ""smart cities"" encourages the adoption and implementation of DRR (European Union Council 2017)",11
DRR was historically envisaged as a “top-down” approach with main focus on the technical evaluation of potential hazards,11
"Even more innovatively, DRR now strongly grounds on a systemic risk conceptualization (UNDRR 2019a; Renn et al",11
This has recently led to deepened reflections conducted jointly by the IPCC and IPBES regarding interactions between climate change and biodiversity losses (Pörtner et al,13
"As an explicit support, the United Nations propose a correspondence between the targets of the SDGs and those of the Sendai Framework (Fig. 5A)",11
"Moreover, the causal link between different types of risks, such as the risk of habitat loss caused by ongoing infrastructure development and land-use changes, and the consequent risk of biodiversity loss and tipping points affecting entire ecological networks are rarely adequately conceptualised and quantified",15
(2021) estimate an overall one-third increase of risk due to climate change for every additional degree of warming,13
2020; DRR Research Agenda Core Group 2021),11
"Nevertheless, sectoral and/or local data are available (WMO 2021) and a clear trend towards an increase in the cost of disasters is well established, as well as the preponderant weight of social inequalities in vulnerability to these disasters (Wallemacq and House 2018)",10
"Also, whereas 15 years ago, the World Economic Forum was primarily concerned by risks of economic collapse and war, in 2020 it pointed out first to the risks linked to climate change and weather extremes (World Economic Forum 2020)",13
"And even in the (post-)Covid pandemics context, the failure of climate change mitigation strategies remains placed almost at the same level as the pandemic risk in terms of impact (World Economic Forum 2021)",13
"Also, whereas biodiversity conservation increasingly considers biodiversity loss in an explicit risk assessment framework, side effects such as loss of ecosystem services and protection against natural hazards (floods, wildfires, etc.) are for now weakly considered",15
"For example, approaches to identify and quantify cumulative impacts on, e.g., biodiversity loss (IPBES 2019) are largely lacking",15
"In parallel, communities in the areas of insurance, finance or disaster mitigation work routinely within a risk framework but they generally lack a holistic perspective, so that a greater use of the implementation of SDGs may be useful for them as well",11
"The environmental problems derived from the economic development became evident during the 1960s and a number of solutions were proposed [1, 3, 8]",8
"In an attempt to clarify and simplify the BR’s concept, it became important to describe and explain the following key concepts: Needs: necessary or basic needs (especially referring to developing countries’ needs); Technological Limitation: insufficient technological development; Social Organisation Problems: originate an unequal allocation of income",1
"Until 2015, the MDGs allowed progress in several important areas, such as: reducing poverty and child mortality; providing access to water and sanitation; improving maternal health and combatting several diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis",3
"The most notable accomplishments were: the reduction of child mortality and the number of children out of school by more than half; more than 1 billion people left extreme poverty; and, HIV/AIDS infections have been reduced by almost 40%",3
"The 2030 Agenda [5], which coincided with another historical agreement achieved at COP21 Paris Climate Conference [29], sets specific objectives and attainable targets for the reduction of carbon emissions, management of climate change and risks of natural disasters",13
"EO data are an example of a big data source that can be acquired at low cost, over long periods of time and used to comprehend the entire Earth system while addressing scientific challenges [35] such as climate change and global warming [36], ecological change and reduction impacts of habitat and biodiversity deterioration [37] and used to produce statistics and indicators that enable the quantification of SD [11, 12]",13
"The United Nations report [12] has demonstrated the viability of using EO data to produce official statistics, including SDGs statistics such as agricultural [38], urban and land planning [39] or food security indicators [40]",2
"A substantial number of ML algorithms have been used and described in the literature, performing a wide range of tasks in a variety of domains like Agriculture [73], Renewable Energies [74], Disasters [54], Climate [75], Construction [76], Human Living Conditions [58] and Health System [77]",3
"Some of the most common SDGs presented in this paper, which benefits from the synergy EO-ML are: SDG 11, 15 and 9; and the most common fields are Agriculture, Land Cover and Pollution",11
"SDGs are unique as they cover issues that affect all communities and reaffirm the international commitment to eradicate poverty, hunger and inequalities to build a more sustainable, prosperous and safer planet for all humanity",1
"Sustainable Development Goal 9 targets (SDG 9 targets) are mainly tracked through the indicators of penetration of internet and mobile broadband subscription, logistic performance index, quality and ranking of the universities, investment in research and development initiatives, industrial reforms and emission control, and connectivity to rural areas",9
"This systematic review on achievements, challenges, and future scope in attaining SDG 9 consolidates the literature from the Web of Science, related to SDG 9 and indicators, since 2017; develops bibliometric patterns; conducts thematic analysis by focusing the leading indicators of SDG 9; and develops agenda for future research",9
"This review recommends policymakers, researchers, and administrators to focus on promising themes such as tackling the digital divide and ensuring digital justice and digital equality; clean fuel and technology adoption; enhancing internet and mobile broadband subscription with reduced negative impacts, logistic sector reforms; industrial policy reforms and technology integration; improving the quality and sustainability of universities; and increasing funding and support for research and development initiatives and improving the rural connectivity",9
"Infrastructure, sustainable industrialization, and innovation is the key to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 9 (SDG 9)",9
"The SDG 9 can be tracked with eight targets and twelve indicators developed by the United Nations (United Nations 2021): road access to rural population, passenger and freight volume by mode of transport, increasing the share of manufacturing in GDP and employment, increasing share small scale industries, medium and hi-tech industries in total industry value-added, carbon dioxide emissions for economic value-added, expenditure on research and development as a percentage of GDP, the share of researchers among inhabitants, international support to infrastructure, and the population covered by the mobile networks and internet access (SDG Tracker 2021; United Nations 2021)",9
"The UN updates of these targets show that 57.7% of the rural dwellers lack good access to the road in twenty-five countries, and COVID-19 impact is severe on the targets of SDG 9, with poor numbers from manufacturing and employment manufacturing and weak air travel demand",9
"Similarly, supporting tourism and innovation in industries and infrastructure development are also essential for attaining the targets of SDG 9 (Anser et al",9
"However, there is increased spending in research and development and progress in the number of researchers among inhabitants (United Nations 2021)",9
"Moreover, the sustainable development goals of industry, innovation, and infrastructure (SDG 9) are highly connected with other SDGs (Mantlana and Maoela 2020) (Coenen et al",9
Only seven Asian countries are spending more than 1% of their GDP on research and development (Sachs et al,9
"Only one African country is with an average score of the top three universities above fifty, and none of the African countries are spending at least 1% of their GDP for research and development initiatives (Sachs et al",9
"Thirteen European countries with an average score of top three universities above fifty, and fourteen European countries are spending less than 1% of their GDP for research and development (Sachs et al",9
Sustainable infrastructure and sustainable industries are very essential for the achievement of SDG 9,9
Two Oceanic countries with an average score of the top three universities above fifty and only two Oceanic countries are spending more than 1% of their GDP for research and development (Sachs et al,9
"Similarly, except for one country, the average score of the top three universities is above fifty, and the spending on research and development is above 1% of the GDP figures (Sachs et al",9
"Similarly, the only country in the region is spending at least 1% of its GDP on research and development initiatives (Sachs et al",9
None of the Caribbean countries are spending more than 1% of their GDP on research and development (Sachs et al,9
"In short, higher numbers are preferred in all these three indicators of SDG 9",9
"Based on the average score of the top three universities, the USA and the UK are the regions with top universities, and Italy is comparatively lagging in performance in this indicator of SDG 9",9
Selected SDG 9 indicators of leading economies,9
"Data source: Sustainable Development Report 2021, by Cambridge University Press Selected SDG 9 indicators of leading economies",9
"Data source: Sustainable Development Report 2021, by Cambridge University Press A higher level of spending for research and development as a percentage of the GDP and, similarly, a higher number in the logistic performance index on a scale from 1–5 are desirable",9
Figure 2 is the continuation of Fig. 1 and tracks the performance of the leading economies in the world in respect of their expenditure on research and development as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product and the logistic performance index on a scale of 1–5,9
"Japan is the country with the highest spending for research and development, as a percentage of GDP",9
"Italy, comparatively spending less in this respect, spends only 1.4% of the GDP for research and development initiatives",9
"Industry, innovation, and infrastructure are the three basic pillars for achieving SDG 9, and the industry-related targets of SDG 9 can be better monitored by an index on SDG 9 indicators on industry-based indicators",9
"In the study on the industry-based index related to SDG 9, the industrially developed countries (Ireland, Germany, the Republic of Korea, Switzerland, and Japan) are much ahead of the remaining countries (Kynclova et al",9
"2020), and similarly, the index for monitoring the SDG 9 targets is an index based on five indicators related to three industry-related targets (Saieed et al",9
Better policy implementation and policy reforms can be possible through the analysis comprehensive evaluation index for SDG 9-related targets,9
"This paper is with six chapters: an introduction section of SDG 9 with a global focus is the first chapter, followed by a review methodology of the paper",9
"This paper on the industry, infrastructure, and innovation in the global scenario discusses the role of internet penetration, mobile internet, ranking of the top universities, logistic performance, and the government spending in research for achieving targets of SDG 9, i.e., for the goals of sustainable industries and sustainable infrastructure",9
To summarize the SDG 9 initiatives and achievements at a global level To consolidate the literature on SDG 9 To find out future research niches on SDG 9 What challenges are faced in the achievement of SDG 9 targets? What can be done for achieving the targets of SDG 9? What are the achievements of SDG 9? Which are the promising areas for future research? Web of Science is a professional database for academic records comprising highly impactful journals and conference proceedings,9
"This paper has used the goal-specific keywords “Sustainable Development Goal 9 “ and “SDG 9” and indicator-specific keywords “internet penetration,” “logistic performance index,” “mobile broadband subscription,” “Times University Ranks,” “Scientific and technical journal articles (per 1000 population),” and “Expenditure on research and development” (% of GDP) which were used on 19/12/2021 and drew 204 papers which were obtained for the review on topic-based research",9
"Data source: Web of Science database The most influential journals related to research on SDG 9 are “ Sustainability” (14 citations), “Journal of Cleaner Production” (234 citations), “Applied Energy” (20 citations), “ Environmental Science and Pollution Research”(4 citations), and “International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology” (22 citations)",9
"“Sustainability” and “Applied Energy” have a similar impact on all these parameters and closely follow the “Journal of Cleaner Production.” “Sustainability” published articles on the topics related to Logistics 4.0 of Brazil’s industry and its relation with SDG 9, digital infrastructure assessment tools in line with SDG 9, impacts of the production of woody pellets and SDG 9, usage and applications between artificial intelligence and SDGs including SDG 9, the role of the construction industry in the achievement of SDG 9 targets, research and development and sustainable economic performance, and sustainable e-tourism",9
"“Applied Energy” published articles on measuring the achievement of SDG 9 targets, tracking the progress on SDG 9, and inclusive and sustainable industrial development in China",9
The article published in “Environmental Science and Pollution Research” is related to pavement maintenance management of roads and the relation between international tourism and environmental degradation,15
"The leading authors related to SDG 9 are Sinha A, Quatraro F, Ranjbari M, Esfandabadi ZS, and Siebers PO",9
The major works are related to technological innovations and sustainable development goals including SDG 9,9
"2020a) is published in “Journal of Cleaner Production.” The collaboration among Quantraro F (University of Turin), Rajbari M (University of Turin), Esfandabadi ZS (Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy), and Siebers PO (University of Turin) has written two articles related to SDG 9, (Ranjbari et al",9
The articles dealt with sustainable development goals and COVID 19.” The region-wise analysis related to SDG 9 and the bibliometric details is given in Fig. 6,9
"Management, system, big data, climate change, conservation, consumption, and impact are the most occurred keywords in the documents selected for thematic analysis",13
"The indicators to be monitored for the achievement of SDG 9 targets are the internet penetration levels, logistic performance index published by the World Bank, percentage of mobile broadband subscription, and the average score of the top three universities in the Times Higher Education University Ranking (Fig. 9)",9
"Key themes, sub-themes Sustainable Development Goal 9 deals with industry, innovation, and infrastructure",9
"Internet penetration has casual relations with economic growth, and thus, rapid internet penetration is key for economic growth (Pradhan et al",8
"2016)(Harb 2017)(Haini 2019); for promoting economic growth, especially farmers’ income (Li 2020) and regional financial development (Jiang et al",8
"Even though internet access can bring business growth and employment, it can also enhance the digital divide (Latapu et al",9
"However, the impact of internet penetration in income inequality in developing regions is severe in comparison with developed regions in Asia (Panichsombat 2016); there are also studies pointing out the reduction in inequality due to enhanced internet penetration (S A Asongu and Odhiambo 2019a, b)",10
Internet penetration can also promote sustainable consumption (Wang and Hao 2018) and innovations (Xiong et al,12
2020); for gender economic inclusion (Asongu and Odhiambo 2020); promote insurance penetration and governance (Asongu et al,10
2020) and government’s environmental protection expenditure (Zhang et al,15
"Mobile broad brand subscription rates are increasing and improving energy efficiency, promoting environmental sustainability reducing carbon emissions (Zhao et al",7
Logistics has a significant role in the economic growth of modern trade and commerce,8
There are several challenges associated with attaining the targets of SDG 9,9
"Even in these recovery periods from the pandemic, the volumes need to pick up for achieving the SDG 9 targets",9
"However, positive signs are visibly related to the SDG 9 targets associated with research and development and the penetration of mobile networks and internet access",9
"In mapping, in the literature related to indicators associated with SDG 9 and papers directly related to SDG 9, very few papers have worked on challenges and solutions associated with achieving internet penetration and mobile network access, except a few documents on the need for improving speed and quality of the network",9
"Similarly, very little literature has directly dealt with connections between rural road access and the attainment of SDG 9 targets",9
"Internationalization, size, generation of industrial income, innovation, research funding, teaching quality, and research orientation are the key points to be focused on for achieving targets related to research and SDG 9",9
"Very few research works are available on the logistic performance index and SDG 9 targets, passenger traffic volume, and SDG 9",9
The major themes for future research related to SDG 9 can be on the various dimensions and impacts of internet penetration and mobile broadband subscriptions,9
"Future research agenda The literature review on SDG 9 has identified the conclusions that internet penetration cannot result in positive impacts in income, per capita income, inclusive financial development, and environmental actions",9
"The digital divide is another area, that is, to be explored are solutions for the digital divide, and research can also be for ensuring digital justice and measures for improving digital literacy and digital access for all",4
More government funding and international funding including options of climate finance can be considered while developing policies and strategies for sustainable industrial reforms,13
"This paper also recommends reforming the research and development sector, by providing automation and self-sufficiency for universities, quality improvement measures, better funding opportunities, and other measures for quality enhancement, research output, and ranking of the universities",9
"The targets of SDG 9 focus on enhanced road connectivity in rural areas, industrial reforms, improved logistic infrastructure, higher level of internet penetration and subscription of mobile broadband connections, increased spending for research and development, and improving the quality and ranking of universities",9
"This review looks into addressing the achievements, determinants, and challenges associated with these targets and indicators of SDG 9",9
"Many of the targets and indicators associated with SDG 9 are under-researched and offer promising themes for academicians, researchers, and scholars for further research",9
The issues discussed in this review are important for policymakers and administrators for developing and reforming policies to better address challenges associated with the attainment of SDG 9 targets,9
"Internet penetration has several proven advantages including its positive role in economic growth, regional financial development, stock market efficiency, and international tourism",8
Policymakers and administrators should also focus on the next thirty-six countries with internet access in the range of 50–75%,9
"Along with internet penetration, the mobile broadband subscription trend is another leading target and indicator of SDG 9",9
"Higher rates of mobile broad brand subscriptions have positive impacts on energy efficiency, environmental sustainability, and international tourism and have a big role in reducing carbon emissions",7
Performance in the logistic performance index is crucial for the attainment of targets of SDG 9,9
The fourth pillar for better achievement of SDG 9 is related to spending on research and development and ranking of universities,9
Very few non-European countries spend more than 1% of their GDP on research and development,9
"This paper recommends increased funding for research and development, promotion of collaborated research, and academic tie-ups in this regard",9
"This paper recommends developing diversified income streams for universities, along with strong policy measures for ranking improvement, quality education, and research outputs",4
These themes can encourage fresh research and also helps in obtaining sponsorship for better achievement of targets related to SDG 9,9
"The impact of internet penetration and mobile broadband subscription in education, the economy, society, and the environment can also bring positive outcomes for achieving the targets related to SDG 9",9
This paper strongly recommends digital justice and equality including gender equality and fairness in digital space,5
"The researchers can focus on two indicators untouched in the existing literature including rural road access, spending on research and development from GDP, and measures for increased research outputs",9
"This paper is subjected to limitations with very little extensive research in the literature related to individual indicators and due to limitation in literature and data availability, all indicators of SDG 9 is not analyzed, and the research is limited to the four important indicators",9
"“National Council for Scientific and Technological Development” of Brazil and “Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior” or “CAPES Foundation” of Brazil are the leading sponsors in the research related to SDG 9, with three funded projects each",9
National Council for Scientific and Technological Development also funded the research on Logistics 4.0 in Brazil and the achievement of SDG 9 targets,9
"The other leading fund sponsors of SDG 9 are the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the European Commission, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.",9
"Building from two European-level science–policy workshops, this perspective essay discusses the types of risks involved with such sustainability reporting",12
"Such a desire is rooted in a technocratic approach to decision-making, assuming that improving the knowledge base, spelling out the evidence and identifying key risks related to environmental degradation will motivate politicians to make necessary decisions (Slovic 2000; Sunstein 2002)",15
Reporting processes developed by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are among the best-known examples of authoritative science-based assessments addressing sustainability issues (Budescu et al,13
"Despite all efforts, sustainability reporting has so far largely failed in achieving its core mission to inspire and ignite a transformative global change leading to sustainable development",12
A possible explanation is that the expectations for the capability of sustainability reporting to inspire and encourage action have been too optimistic,12
The general aim of this perspective essay is to illuminate the diversity of risk perceptions related to sustainability reporting,12
Measuring and monitoring refers here to the processes of data generation and processing supporting the preparation of sustainability indicators and sustainability reporting,12
"Many industries, banks and insurance companies are among potentially interested users of sustainability information as ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) reporting becomes mainstream (Jebe 2019)",12
Commercial social media applications primarily aimed to collect and monetise user data largely contradict the open data idealism of sustainability reporting and make it harder to maintain easily accessible data repositories,12
"SDG monitoring requires integration across multiple policy domains and various temporal, spatial and functional scales",17
"These processes are often unpredictable, and dynamics of media, social media and policy debates often cast attention away from early warnings, long-term issues and holistic views of sustainability reporting (EEA 2013)",12
"As noted in the workshops, despite the attempts of sustainability reporting to highlight long-term processes, framings of acute crisis and short-term risks dominate public debates and construction of risk awareness (Slovic 2000; Kunelius and Roosvall 2021)",12
Risk of ritualistic or symbolic communication denotes sustainability reporting that aims for a large-scale transformation but makes only nominal societal influence,12
"However, many of the panels have a relatively narrow focus on topics such as climate change",13
"(2021), by claiming that the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) should have ceased publishing new assessment reports because all relevant evidence justifying immediate climate action already exists",13
"In sustainability reporting, risks are commonly framed as unwanted future projections of not reaching a specific SDG or target, as exemplified by the OECD assessments measuring distance to the SDG targets (OECD 2019)",12
They often point out the in-build tension between environmental goals requiring minimisation of material and energy consumption and socio-economic goals leading to consumption increases,7
Changes to the physical environment and especially changes of socially perceived priorities pose a challenge to sustainability reporting since data collection and monitoring may not be able to respond to rapidly changing needs,12
"This means active engagement of sectors, organisations, targeted sections of organisations, stakeholders, politicians and citizens—especially vulnerable groups and those whose voice is not currently heard",1
"The companies report on the core subjects of corporate governance, employees, the environment, stakeholders’ engagement and occupational health and safety",8
"The transition to a low-carbon future, based on the Paris Agreement, indicates a potentially increased demand for certain minerals needed for low-carbon technologies, meaning that the extractive industry has an essential role to play towards sustainable development [11, 12]",13
"Furthermore, by providing revenues to countries, driving economic growth, creating jobs, and enabling infrastructural development mining contributes to the economic dimension of sustainable development [13]",8
"To achieve sustainable consumption of primary materials, the current global metal consumption rates need to be considerably reduced from 63% (copper) to 98% (antimony) [16]",12
Recovering metals from secondary materials through the circular economy model could efficiently contribute to increased global demand for raw materials and reduce the dependency on imported materials in Europe [17],12
"However, as a vital natural resource, mineral extraction, and recycling require global coordination for clear metrics in environmental and economic performance [12]",12
"To adequately address several recycling challenges, harmonized waste legislation, including stronger recycling policies, internationally recognized standards, recovery-efficient product design, and ways to address illegal waste export and trade, is needed [18, 21]",12
"[26] states that none of the analyzed large mining companies support strong sustainability in their reports, especially lacking climate change and natural capital considerations [26]",13
"To address social sustainability, companies must include positive social factors such as good employment opportunities, good working conditions, learning opportunities, gender equality, and diversity of cultural expressions [27, 28]",5
"[39] explored European mining innovation’s contribution to the SDGs, including autonomous equipment and operations, better mine design, enhanced transparency and traceability, renewable energy solutions, and occupational safety",7
"Ranӓngen and Lindman [45] studied the corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities of Nordic mining companies, showing that they mostly complied with stakeholders’ interests, such as labor practices, risk management and sustainable water use",6
"The 17 SDGs, adopted by all UN Member states in 2015, offer a universal framework for navigating the most pressing sustainability challenges of the present and are a call for action to end poverty, protect the planet, and assure peace and prosperity by 2030",1
Sustainability reporting can influence corporate actions and consequently induce the implementation of the SDGs into business strategy [50] and be a significant driver of an organization’s sustainability strategy [51],12
"Due to intensified stakeholder pressure in previous decades and mandatory reporting among the members of mineral associations, sustainability reporting has significantly increased among mining companies [56]",12
"However, to reach a higher level of maturity in sustainability reporting, organizations require more time [61]",12
"Some of the external drivers were national governments, regulations, legislation, society pressure, stakeholders’ expectations, and collaboration with external organizations, while connecting drivers included sustainability reports, license to operate, access to natural resources, and reputation",1
Synthesized by the authors based on the analysis of the data Trends in the sustainability reporting frameworks used by analyzed companies,12
"The findings of the sustainability reports’ content analysis are grouped in the resulting topics: governance, stakeholders’ engagement, occupational health and safety, and environment, together with the SDGs (Fig. 4.)",8
"Some categories, such as biodiversity, climate change in a broader view, and product stewardship, were not part of all the studied reports",13
"Furthermore, companies developed additional policies in terms of health and safety, human rights, anticorruption, environment, and employees",16
Mining companies aimed to achieve better gender balance through a workplace without gender-based discrimination or harassment,10
"However, several companies reported on incidents of discrimination or harassment that occurred in the studied period (Boliden, Hydro, LKAB)",10
"The main environmental material topics in the sustainability reports were energy and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), water management, waste, and air emissions (Tables 3 and 4)",6
"Energy consumption represented one of the significant environmental impacts, with fossil fuels as a highly represented energy source within mining operations, while the share of renewable energy in the energy mix was above average for only a few companies, such as Hydro, Elkem, and Lundin (≥ 50%)",7
Decreasing trends in total GHG emissions were noticeable in the data for five companies due to the implementation of energy recovery from excess heat and the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy sources,7
The share of reused/recycled water ranged from 10 percent (Hydro) to approximately 200 percent (Lundin),6
"Even though diversity is highlighted in the reports, especially gender equality, the results show that the mining industry is still male dominated [27, 42] with a steady low share of women employees",5
"Additionally, cases of harassment and discrimination evidenced in this research confirm other studies’ outcomes [43] that women workers in the mining industry still experience discrimination",10
"These issues could be mitigated through an increased emphasis on social sustainability, including good working conditions, employment opportunities and gender equality [27, 28]",5
"Energy presents a huge part of mining impact [37], and most of the analyzed companies had increased their energy consumption during the study period",7
"Mining companies should not just be the providers of minerals for a low-carbon future but also be leaders in efficient renewable energy use and energy savings in the production and use of secondary raw materials [4, 18]",7
The inclusion of these considerations would ensure a more genuine mining contribution to sustainable development based on enabling a renewable energy transition while mitigating the negative impacts of current mining operations,7
"Half of the studied companies decreased their GHG emissions by using excess heat, recycling, renewable energy sources and improved energy efficiency [32]",7
"Nevertheless, targets for reducing carbon emissions were not ambitious, and moreover, 40 percent of the companies did not have any targets to reduce GHG emissions [35]",13
The findings indicate that companies are far from meeting the Paris Agreement goals [11] and the EU's objective of becoming climate neutral by decarbonizing the energy sector [14],13
"Even though most of the water was recycled and reused in the operations, not all the companies disclosed data on recycled water [34]",6
"To contribute to the SDGs [13], the EU’s Green Deal, and the sustainable supply of raw materials [4], European mining companies could pay more attention to utilizing the generated waste to extract valuable secondary minerals through the circular economy model, as they have great potential to contribute to the limited mineral supply and generate profit [17, 19] while reducing their energy input, environmental risks, and overall environmental footprint [20]",12
"The results demonstrate that the efforts to restore disturbed land area are significantly low; therefore, the implementation of integrated mine closure during the operation phase would result in better environmental protection and transparent stakeholder engagement [84]",15
"Only one Goal, SDG 8 on decent work and economic growth, was common for all companies, which demonstrates that these companies recognize their economic contributions as one of the most crucial segments of their impacts on sustainable development [59]",8
"Despite their progress in the implementation of the SDGs regarding sustainability reporting, disclosed contributions were too general without detailed explanation and set objectives lacked relation with the SDGs’ key performance indicators",12
The lack of previous studies in the field of sustainability reporting within the European mining industry was also a limiting factor in conducting the research,12
"The performance indicators on which companies report differ from using one to several indicators related to the same subject or different measuring units for the same indicators, such as either joules (GJ, TJ) or watthours (kWh, GWh) for energy consumption",7
"For this reason, the two depictions of bioeconomy, a new societal and economic development path as well as an improvement in specific products, should be merged and consequently the two main scales of bioeconomy sustainability assessment as well: a territorial (macro) and a product level (micro) (Bracco et al",8
"Forests can provide increasing but limited resources for renewable materials, e.g., construction materials as laminated veneer lumber (LVL), and have a significant potential to mitigate climate change due to their capability of sequestering and storing carbon (Sahoo et al",13
"However, when sustainable forest management is applied, a fully substitution of the existing material demand is unlikely, making absolute decreasing, optimal, and circular and/or cascading production and use even more critical (Sahoo et al",15
"Long and broad value-added networks can result from a cascade of utilization, recycling, and integrated bio-refineries entailing thermochemical, biochemical, and physicochemical conversion processes with a possible integration of by-products (Smetana et al",12
"Prospectively, this needs to be overcome in regard to circular economy as a basic principle of sustainable bioeconomy (use and recycling/disposal)",12
"For 95 SDG sub-goals, there are no indicators yet, mainly SDG 16, 17, 10, and 3",16
"Especially for SDG 16, there are no direct indicator links in the current literature, and it is more a cross-cutting issue for bioeconomy (Calicioglu and Bogdanski 2021)",16
"Some of the SDG sub-goals and indicators which are not applicable in a LCSA of bioeconomy are excluded from the LCI (criteria b), e.g., policy coherence in sustainable development (SDG 17.14)",17
Only SDG 17 and 10 cannot be addressed at all,17
"IPAT describes effects on economic growth and environment I (Impact), which are generally dependent on population P (Population), per capita consumption A (Affluence), and production technologies T (Technology)",8
"For example, the amount of CO2 emitted when a certain amount of fuel is burned and subsequent effects on the atmosphere and climate change are almost independent of location and, in the short term, time",13
"For this, however, a necessary change of patterns of regulation is necessary in a way that states themselves are not depending on abstract economic growth; besides, the latter was identified as a relatively irrelevant objective by stakeholders (Zeug et al",8
"gricultural land use is transforming rapidly in Southeast Asia, often supported by development policies aiming primarily at economic growth",8
"Here, we systematically review cases of agricultural land use change in Southeast Asia to assess their socioeconomic outcomes and potential trade-off and synergies in these outcomes",15
The results provide evidence that economic gains from agricultural land use change often come at a cost of other dimensions of sustainable development,15
"Agricultural land use change is a dominant transformational trend in Southeast Asia, with different types of land use change taking place concurrently",15
"The eradication of swidden agriculture, for example, and the promotion of permanent agriculture has been supported by the government of Lao PDR by granting of land titles, in order to reduce rural poverty and induce economic development (Lestrelin et al",8
"Similarly, Indonesia’s land policies have promoted economic development through oil palm plantations, both for smallholder farmers and by supporting large-scale land development of private companies (Rist et al",8
"As a socio-ecological system, land use is elementary for a range of different SDGs, making the SDG framework useful for analyzing different outcomes of land use change (Ehrensperger et al",15
"Several studies have investigated the relations between SDGs as a result of agricultural land use change, often finding potential trade-offs (e.g., Scherer et al",15
"These trade-offs indicate that land use change can help to solve several sustainability challenges, but that it does not necessarily contribute positively to the achievement of all SDGs at the same time (Verburg et al",15
"Specifically, while agricultural expansion as well as agricultural intensification often leads to economic growth, it is also frequently associated with negative environmental consequences (Sodhi et al",8
"However, while the relations between socioeconomic outcomes of agricultural land use change and the environment have been studied widely [e.g., Heck et al",15
"In this paper we analyze socioeconomic outcomes of agricultural land use change, and identify potential trade-offs and synergies between these outcomes",15
We base our analysis on a systematic review of case study evidence on agricultural land use change as reported in peer-reviewed scientific literature,15
"Socioeconomic outcomes refer to impacts of agricultural land use change on the economic, social, or human aspects of the SDGs, as relating to local farmers’ livelihoods and wellbeing",15
A subset of the eligible articles included information on multiple cases of land use change,15
"Cases were coded in terms of the publication characteristics, the case characteristics, the type of agricultural land use change, the land governance regime under which these changes take place, and their socioeconomic outcomes",15
"The information on case characteristics includes the time period covered (or year of data collection), location, method for obtaining land use data, and the resulting crop system (rice, oil palm, rubber, aquaculture, conventional forestry/tree plantations, agroforestry, other specific crop types, or mixed/unclear crop composition)",15
"Outcomes were interpreted as being either “positive” or “negative”, based on how they contribute to achievement of the respective goal (e.g., both a reduction in poverty and an improvement in income have been coded as positive for SDG 1)",1
"The analysis of socioeconomic outcomes of agricultural land use changes was based on counting outcomes of all cases per SDG, as well as for each type of agricultural land use change and each type of land governance regime separately",15
"Subsequently, following the Agenda 2030 emphasis on making progress on all targets together, rather than on individual ones, we analyzed the relation between different socioeconomic outcomes of agricultural land use change",15
"This includes a number of cases with ELCs, where the establishment of large-scale plantations include both areas with prior smallholder production and new agricultural land gained through deforestation, as seen in the establishment oil palm plantations on Carey Island, Malaysia (Lai 2011), and of rubber plantations in southern Lao PDR (Kenney-Lazar 2012)",15
"When land use change outcomes are differentiated by their land governance regime, we find marked differences (Fig. 2)",15
"However, the impacts on food security and health are mixed",2
"Economic equality, where reported, decreases because only some households can benefit from development opportunities, and these are typically not the poorest farmers, but the wealthier families instead [as is the case with expansion of cassava production in frontier villages in Cambodia, (Kurashima et al",10
"ELC development also sometimes leads to positive outcomes in terms of income, employment, and food security, typically related to opportunities for smallholders provided by the ELC",2
"Only one study reported a positive outcome on economic equality, showing a reduction in the Gini coefficient for income in the local community after a project promoting rubber and oil palm plantations in degraded areas in South Kalimantan (Hiratsuka et al",10
"An example of this is the Landcare Programme in the Philippines that promoted various land conservation techniques, including use of natural vegetation strips to avoid soil erosion",15
"State interventions yield mixed socioeconomic impacts, mainly depending on the type of land use change that takes place under this land governance regime",15
"However, the loss of agricultural land can also lead to loss of food self-sufficiency, impacting food security negatively for some households (Nguyen et al",2
"Cases reporting positive outcomes on income and poverty alleviation are spread over the entire study region, while the majority of negative outcomes are concentrated in Lao PDR (Fig. 3)",1
"Food security shows a similar clustering of negative cases in the Lao PDR, but with additional negative cases in other areas, including Kalimantan, Indonesia, and on Palawan in the Philippines",2
"Six cases show a trade-off between income and food security, all of which report an increase in income and a decrease in food security",2
"In these cases, the land concessions have increased the availability of off-farm employment, while at the same time having a negative impact on smallholder agriculture, leading to a net loss in income for the local households",2
"Four of the cases describe a trade-off, with improvement in income and a decrease in the local economic equality, while another four cases are equally distributed over positive and negative synergies",10
"These results nuances the understanding that agricultural land use change predominantly leads to positive socioeconomic outcomes as reported elsewhere [e.g., Meyfroidt (2018)]",15
"The positive socioeconomic impacts relate primarily to changes in income and economic development, while other types of socioeconomic impacts are frequently not assessed at all (Joffre et al",8
"In such cases the land use change can yield positive outcomes in income on a household level, for few selected farmers, but negative outcomes on a community level due to increased inequality (Kurashima et al",15
Socioeconomic outcomes of agricultural land use change differ markedly across the different land governance regimes,15
"Negative impacts of ELCs on local income generation seems to stem from displacement and reduction in the access to land and water resources in the impacted areas, including forced displacement of the original farming households [e.g., Kenney-Lazar (2012)]",10
"Yet, while these positive outcomes are reported in relation to agricultural land use change, they are in some cases not causally related",15
"2019), reductions in shifting cultivation (Lestrelin and Giordano 2007), and increases in the area under forest cover (Sandewall et al",15
"However, six cases report a trade-off between income and food security",2
"ELC development stands out as it leads to negative synergies in multiple cases, mostly between food security and income",2
"These characteristics are typical for agricultural frontiers (Hirsch 2009), and while this might not be representative for all agricultural land, these are the locations where most land use change takes place",15
The multiple socioeconomic outcomes of agricultural land use change as well as the relations between these outcomes further confirm the role of land use as a nexus for sustainable development (Verburg et al,15
"2018), and that this trade-off can also exist for agricultural land use change in the Global South (Meyfroidt 2018; Rasmussen et al",15
This suggests a blind spot in our knowledge of the outcomes of agricultural land use change,15
"Only few of the studies analyzed multiple socioeconomic impacts of the same land use change, and therefore only a few explicitly find trade-offs between the investigated SDGs (Vongvisouk et al",15
"Several land use policies in Southeast Asia aim for economic development, by incentivizing a shift toward more market-oriented agriculture, with products exported to urban centers either nationally or internationally",8
This review shows that many scientific studies also limit their assessment of land use change impacts to one single or a few outcomes,15
"Since we identified trade-offs between economic development and other socioeconomic outcomes both in specific studies and across a range of cases, we argue that there is a need for policies to integrate multiple different dimensions of sustainable development instead of focusing primarily on economic growth (Eisenmenger et al",8
"Findings of socioeconomic outcomes of agricultural land use change in Southeast Asia could also be relevant for other world regions, especially in areas with similar land governance regimes",15
"Nonetheless, land use change processes and their outcomes are at least partly context dependent, limiting the transferability of findings from this study to other world regions",15
2014) and food security (Müller et al,2
These findings show the need for development policies and scientific studies to go beyond economic wellbeing and include a broader range of socioeconomic outcomes as a result of agricultural land use change.,15
Renewable resources from agriculture and forestry have significant impacts on land use (change).ConclusionsHILCSA demonstrates to be able to provide comprehensive sustainability assessments as well as aggregated results,15
"However, contributing to a good life for all within PB is not necessarily the case for the currently emerging BE and circular economy in general, and to only focus on ecotechnological efficiency is not sufficient, but societal and economic transformations entailing BE are necessary for effectiveness (Eversberg and Holz 2020; Padilla-Rivera et al",12
"2014), but the replacement of products with high GHG emissions such as steel, concrete, and aluminum with wood-based ones is thus considered as favorable to reduce GHG emissions and important for sustainable development (Asada et al. 2020; Leskinen et al. 2018; IPCC 2018)",13
"APOS integrates the treatment of wastes better than the cut-off system models, and is therefore more suitable for assessing BE and circular economy",12
"From the RESPONSA survey and study (Jarosch et al. 2020), we took the real-world data of RESPONSA indicators for LVL manufacturing and forestry as well as activity variables",15
"However, RESPONSA indicators are gained by surveys to a single company, are only representative for this very case, and consequently could only be applied to the foreground processes (LVL manufacturing, forestry) in this study",15
"Additionally, we added total and renewable cumulative energy demand (CED) for SDG 7.3/1 respectively SDG 7.2/4 (Table 4 in the Appendix)",7
"In this product systems, as a first foreground activity beech saw and veneer log is provided by the “hardwood forestry, beech, UUID: bd06b5b9-0824-44c6-827b-650c59fbdb5f” process, which is then transported to the LVL manufacturing site by the “provisioning of beech roundwood” and “transport, freight, lorry, UUID: 28b69524-cdef-4d3c-93f8-54a48dc8d51a” processes (“provisioning of beech roundwood” only serves for a separate balancing of the transport service but has no additional inputs nor outputs)",15
"For each process of the foreground system, the indicator data is adopted and added from our previous studies (Hildebrandt et al. 2020; Jarosch et al. 2020); however, data for RESPONSA indicators is only available for the forestry process and manufacturing process but not for the transport process or background processes",15
"All other indicator inventory data comes with the processes from Ecoinvent 3.3 with SoCa v.1, especially in case of the background processes as well as the forestry process and transport process",15
"For each process, we have material flow (mf) inputs as well as outputs, with one output flow being the reference flow and FU of this very process (e.g., for the forestry process the FU is 1 m3 saw log and veneer log, measured as solid wood under bark, UUID c00cac00-a885-42b0-88f5-fb5dce2a9a6f)",15
"However, there is no indicator which is assigned to several impact categories (SDGs) in exactly the same way, only if production sites are in urban regions (SDG 11.6), then indicator ID14 is used there instead",11
"On the other side, SDG 7 (energy) as part of economic sustainability in the provisioning sytem, only has a medium risk level and \({f}^{\mathrm{SDG}7}=0.98\), which means there is no advantage of LVL in this regard",7
"As it can be expected, most significant negetive impacts of LVL production come from forestry and its effects on land use (ID83) represented in SDG 15 (life on land) with \({f}^{\mathrm{ID}83}=18.15\) respectivley \({f}^{\mathrm{SDG}15}=2.14\)",15
"Nonetheless, it remains of high importance to reduce land use and negative land use change impacts of forestry and to at least only use FSC certified wood is highly recommended",15
"Our results suggest that the social, economic, and environmental impacts and sustainability of LVL production are very sensitive to the quantity and quality of binder which is applicated, in this case fossil-based phenolic resin, as well as the sustainability of forestry",15
"LVL seems to have a way better social sustainability, having a look at the indicator data and inventory, this is mainly due to the less toxicity of materials, impacts on humans and their working environments, but also higher expenditures for social security and education as well as a lower gender wage gap",1
"When looking at \({f}_{\mathrm{ecological}}=1.01\), we expect a quite limited better ecological sustainability, which is foremost because of the high land use (change) effects of forestry in a way compensating the significant GWP savings and much lower ecotoxicity",15
"In terms of economic sustainability and a moderately good \({f}_{\mathrm{economic}}=0.60\), we can observe mostly low and very low \(f\) in the forestry and manufacturing sector of LVL (except fossil fuel-driven machinery); indeed, the phenolic resin production is responsible for a large share of negative impacts for nearly every indicator",15
"However, the dependency of sustainability from regions does not only apply to fossil industries, but bioeconomy can be very unsustainable as well when renewable material flows reproduce global social and economic inequalities and externalization of effects of sourcing and production (Backhouse et al. 2021; Eversberg and Holz 2020; Asada et al. 2020)",10
"Besides, a significant and well known trade-off is striking and mostly independent from regions: forestry and agriculture use relatively much more land than fossil resources (in our case by factor 18) setting a major barrier for bioeconomy and simple substitution (Bringezu et al. 2020; O’Brien et al. 2017; Liobikiene et al. 2020)",15
"For future developments of HILCSA, the extension to hybrid LCSA entailing multi regional input–output analyses (MRIO) (Asada et al. 2020; Budzinski et al. 2017; Crawford et al. 2018; Teh et al. 2017) as well as implementation of circular economy indicators is aimed at (Calisto Friant et al. 2020; Leipold 2021a, b; D’Amato 2021; Moraga et al",12
"Furthermore, future case studies of HILCSA should aim at the full life cycle of products, including use and end-of-life phase, as well as recycling and cascading use",12
"More specifically, the SDGs were designed to, among other things, provide a basis to end poverty, eradicate hunger, protect the planet, and improve the quality of life in the world, ensuring a balance is achieved between social, economic, and environmental sustainability [4]",1
"Biodiversity loss, for example, generated an estimated cost of USD$ 10–31 trillion per year or 11% to 36% of global GDP in the period 1997 to 2011 [18]",15
"[21], for example, evaluated the costs to achieve SDG 11, which relates to sustainable cities and communities and identified difficulties in its assessment due to the complexity and scope of the urban systems",11
"Despite these difficulties, further research should be carried out to understand the costs of reaching SDG 11, given the need for smart, sustainable, and efficient cities, and the forecast that about 60% of the population will be living in urban areas by 2030 [21]",11
"In turn, Hutton and Varughese [22] analysed SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation) and estimated that an investment of US$13.8 to $46.7 billion per year is necessary to achieve two out of the eight targets (6.1—Safe and affordable drinking water and 6.2—Sanitation and hygiene for all), predicting great difficulties in most low and middle-income countries, as well as in high-income countries with low WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) coverage",6
"Regarding SDG 3 (good health and well-being), Stenberg et al",3
[38] offered a methodology for measuring the contribution of health care companies to achieve SDG 3 linking the goal’s targets with the SASB’s generic ESG issues by adopting the financial materiality perspective,3
This global economic advantage can be higher by considering the whole economic system and the increase in labour and resource productivity [17],8
"Petroleum refinery industry (PRI) projects are inherently unsustainable for the most part, because of their environmentally and socially negative potential effects; nonetheless, their development is inevitable due to their deep positive impact on economic development for stakeholders and the society at large",8
"Petroleum and natural gas, for instance, in the USA hold 69% share of US energy consumption sources in 2019 (EIA 2020)",7
"On the other hand, however, in economic terms, OGI facilities are profitable mega projects that are dominant players in economic development",8
"Although OGI projects are necessary for the energy supply required for economic growth, the development of these facilities has to be sustainable, as much as conceivable, in order to protect the next generations’ ability to meet their own needs",8
"Petroleum is directly or indirectly used for transportation and industrial fuel, electricity generation, heating and cooling, plastic and petrochemical products, etc",7
"Such refineries will then contribute to producing sustainable energy, as the UN goal of ensuring universal access to affordable, reliable, and modern energy services mandates (UN 2016)",7
"A sustainability assessment framework based on indicators is developed, weighted, ranked, and used in urban development (Ameen and Mourshed 2019)",11
"As it is illustrated in the literature review, assessment tools are widely developed for domestic and urban planning systems",11
The following references were mainly used in this part: GRI: sustainability reporting guidelines are developed by an independent party which is called G4 (GRI 2013),12
"Li-Yin Shen with his colleagues, studied an indicator framework for urban sustainability with a comparative study and root-cause analysis manner focused on the drivers, goals, and concerns behind the sustainability factors (Shen et al",11
"(2006); and Stamford and Azapagic (2011) In this sub-step, the US Environmental Protection Agency’s emission estimation protocol for petroleum refineries (EPA 2015) was used to ensure the coverage of environmental pollution types that have to be used in the sustainability assessment of a petroleum refinery project",15
"For instance, “water stress” is indicator No",6
"However, during the session, instead of “water stress,” “the proportion of wastewater contamination in the refinery output to absorbable pollution by water resource (sea, river, etc.)” was proposed",6
"Consequently, the proposed framework in this paper defined an indicator for the diversity of petroleum refinery products in the “economic preferences” indicator under the economic pillar of sustainability to cover the consideration of market and consumers’ demand as an economic development issue",8
"Although development of OGI projects results in gaining economic and some social benefits for the communities, these projects are inherently unsustainable in environmental terms and are usually among the main contributors to environmental degradation, which could have negative social consequences as well",15
"We highlight that despite the rhetoric of vulnerability, the measurement of progress towards DRR remains event/hazard-centric",11
We argue that the measurement of disaster risk could be greatly enhanced by the integration of development data in future iterations of global DRR frameworks for action,11
The main mechanism for promoting and implementing disaster risk reduction (DRR) globally is the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (SFDRR),11
"But in the past six years, the long-established systems and ideological structures, within which we operate, and which hinder development—for example, neoliberalism,Footnote 1 neocolonialism,Footnote 2 patriarchy, globalization, racism—have not been seriously challenged or overturned",10
"Instead, as we “build-in” and “re-build” development, more people than ever are affected by disasters, raising the question whether we are actually making progress towards DRR, and whether the SFDRR acts as an enabler of progress",11
"In this study we explored whether the underlying drivers of increased vulnerability, represented in the development data within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), could be used for measuring how progress towards DRR is defined in the SFDRR",11
"Although the rhetoric of the SFDRR shows an appreciation of the root causes of risk, the measurement of progress (the data collected) towards DRR remains event/hazard-centric rather than being rooted in a vulnerability and development (root cause/risk creation) approach",11
We argue that the measurement of disaster risk could be greatly enhanced by the integration of development data in future iterations of global DRR frameworks for action,11
"But as the World Bank’s place on the international stage grew, its development role began to expand beyond what John Maynard Keynes had initially advocated and began to concern itself with equality, well-being, and social change (Prashad 2012; Mirowski 2013; Beddeleem 2020), remaining within the bounds of capitalism, and tied inextricably to economic growth, inequality, and poverty",8
"The principle of equitable access to resources for sustained growth and the role of participatory decision making in equity are also outlined and key to sustainable development strategies, which the report sought to be achieved by 2000",16
"The MDGs lacked some fundamental dimensions, including environmental sustainability, equality, social inclusion, and governance (Peters et al",10
"A supposed successful implementation of the 2030 Agenda requires a balance across all areas of the social, environmental, and economic pillars of the SDGs, including socioeconomic progress and prosperity, the responsible use of the planet’s finite resources and fragile ecosystems, the response to climate change through adaptation and mitigation, as well as human security",13
"(2021), and others, the SDG agenda runs the risk of following the same route of the sustainable development discourse, as it prioritizes economic growth over social and political goals, and avoids challenging the status quo, norms, and the praxis of growth based on the exploitation of natural resources and human welfare",8
"2012): where R stands for disaster risk, H for the specific hazard probability, V for vulnerability, C for localized and individual capacity for self-protection and recovery, while M “symbolises larger-scale risk mitigation by preventive action and social protection” (Wisner et al",1
"The current DRR frameworks were initiated by the international community through the UN, have guided disaster related policies since 1995, and are intended to do so until the year 2030 (when a new framework will perhaps be introduced)",11
"Development ideas have been prominent in driving the formation of DRR discourse and practice, and gradually have become intertwined",11
"The limits of GDP growth have been apparent for a long time (see, for instance, Piling 2018)",8
Such a hazard-centric approach is reflected in DRR measures that can displace the disaster temporarily but leave the underlying factors that created the risk that leads to the disaster unaddressed,11
These fundamental elements must be considered if DRR is to address the developmental challenges,11
"But disaster risk cannot be addressed without looking at root causes, and the rhetoric of the SFDRR does not filter through to the way it measures progress towards DRR, retaining an event- and hazard-centric approach to risk",11
"To understand what underlying drivers of disaster vulnerability are represented in the development data within the SDGs, and whether such essential data for measuring progress towards the reduction of disaster risk are reflected in the SFDRR, the authors collectively explored each of the 246 SDGFootnote 4 indicators (grouped in 17 goals, 169 targets) and 38 SFDRR indicators to scrutinize the relationship between all SFDRR and SDG indicators",11
"From this perspective, root causes of disaster vulnerability were framed as: [A]n interrelated set of widespread and general processes within a society and the world economy",11
We used this framing to map out the potential of SDG indicators to provide data on underlying causes of disaster vulnerability,11
"In the summer and autumn of 2020, 20 researchers and practitioners from different countries, all experts in disaster studies (but with different academic backgrounds in construction, urban planning, sociology, architecture, politics, human geography) got together biweekly to explore which SDG indicators are explicitly linked to disaster vulnerability and should thus be incorporated into the SFDRR indicators to inform effective DRR progress",11
"As such, there is a lot of synergy between the two policy instruments.” More specifically, according to the UNDRR (2015b), “there are 25 targets related to DRR in 10 of the 17 SDGs.” Three SDGs (Goals 1, 11, and 13, and their targets 1.5, 11.5, 11.b, and 13.1) have been adopted by the SFDRR (UNDRR 2015a), thus for the first time explicitly connecting some of the objectives of both international instruments",11
"However, this does not happen beyond the indicators that measure disaster losses or explicit implementation of DRR strategies at a national level",11
"Our exploration reveals that the relationship between the SFDRR and the SDGs is dominated by an approach, where quantitative monitoring of DRR progress—beyond the conceptual discussion on disaster-development interplay—is not considering available development indicators, represented most prominently in the SDGs (which could have been done, given that the SDGs were implemented 15 years before the SFDRR)",11
"Take, for example, the case of informal settlements in Chile and the SDG 11.1.1 Proportion of urban population living in slums, informal settlements or inadequate housing",11
"Informal settlements represent vulnerability, which is generally expressed in various ways of precariousness—physical, spatial, social, and economic (Sarmiento et al",11
"In Chile, between 2011 and 2018, it was estimated that the number of families living in informal settlements or campamentos grew by 57.1%, from approximately 27,000 to 43,000 households in seven years (TECHO 2018)",11
"Another cadastre by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (MINVU) detected 802 informal settlements where 112,000 people live (MINVU 2020)",11
"Among the informal settlements registered by MINVU as of 2019, 60 were in areas directly exposed to fire, landslides, or flooding (MINVU 2020)",11
"However, in reality, SFDRR does not fully consider what development is—and how the already available data can be used for the development to be reflected in the progress towards DRR",11
We see this clearly in DRR projects,11
"We demonstrated that the current SFDRR approach to measuring DRR is event/hazard-centric—instead of locating the DRR process within broader development, as the rhetoric of the SFDRR makes clear should be the case",11
"Although civil society and experts have been calling for decentralization of DRR efforts, it remains rhetorical under the SFDRR",11
"Instead DRR is largely controlled rigidly by upward accountability (or, in some cases, no accountability at all) to the central state or, alternatively, to a donor country or international nongovernmental organization (Ainuddin et al",11
"After six years, the implementation of the SFDRR does not show significant increased political will to weed out investments that are blind to risk from those that are risk-informed, despite the rhetoric of the SFDRR itself around root causes of vulnerability such as weak governance arrangements and non-risk-informed development",16
"These datasets can be useful, but only when they try to move a critique to the structural foundations of our society, something that has always been present in disaster scholarship",4
We also know that income inequality is relevant in assessing livelihood precarity and hazard risk,10
"If the aim of DRR is to reduce the number of people directly affected without addressing root causes, we are playing a dangerous technocratic game that can easily be thrown off by new hazards",11
This aligns with wider efforts in scholarship and practice to move away from an event- and hazard-centric framing of disasters to one that recognizes that disasters are time-delayed manifestations of structural violence and maldevelopment.,4
"The pursuit of global food security and agricultural sustainability, the dual aim of the second sustainable development goal (SDG-2), requires urgent and concerted action from developing and developed countries",2
"SDG-2 aims to “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”",2
"The eradication of hunger requires SDG-2 targets and indicators aligned with the four pillars of food security: availability (having available sufficient quantities of food, whose continued production also depends on a healthy environment), access (having the economic and physical means to obtain a nutritious diet), utilization (having adequate dietary intake and the ability to absorb and use nutrients in the body), and stability (ensuring the other three pillars on a consistent basis) (FAO 2008)",2
"The triple burden of malnutrition—the coexistence of undernourishment, micronutrient deficiency, and overnutrition manifest in overweight and obesity—is a growing challenge all over the world (Gómez et al",2
2013) and indicates how structural changes affected the pillars of food security,2
"Altogether, they led to the substitution of more diverse, nutritious diets by greater consumption of calorie-rich staples that marked the post-Green Revolution era (Gómez and Ricketts 2013; Popkin 2014), clearly calling for systems-oriented malnutrition alleviation strategies",2
"Sections “Case studies” and “Applying SDG-2 indicators” analyze agriculture and food security in Nigeria, Brazil, and the Netherlands using the revised indicator set",2
"The first five targets (2.1–2.5), the focus of this study, are directly related to food security and agricultural sustainability",2
"Third, targets 2.3 (agricultural productivity), 2.4 (sustainability of food production systems), and 2.5 (genetic diversity) are less clearly defined and not always universally relevant",2
"While the main challenge concerning targets 2.1 (hunger) and 2.2 (malnutrition) is how to achieve them efficiently, targets 2.3–2.5 first require the definition of what they consist of, even prior to answering how to operationalize them",2
"A major challenge when selecting indicators under a specific SDG is to capture areas of overlap with other SDGs, such as the link between agriculture, nutrition, and public health (most directly relevant to SDGs 2 and 3)",3
"For instance, the reduced incidence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is a target under SDG-3 (“Good health and well-being”) but calls for agricultural policies conducive of nutritious, healthy diets",3
"Likewise, newer indicators attempting to explore food access and dietary consumption nationally such as the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) (Ballard et al",2
"While recognizing the relevance of several factors to food security and the limitations of unidimensional indicators (such as anthropometric or biochemical measures of malnutrition), we base our recommendations on the understanding that the simultaneous pursuit of all indicators under SDG-2 (and other SDGs) will naturally prompt integrated solutions among health, food production, nutrition, and other fields",2
"Although the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) has the potential to capture the complexity of actual and perceived food security, FIES data are not yet available for all countries",2
"Both can be monitored through global, readily available databases and are better aligned with the concept of food security and its pillars",2
The new indicators cover the health-malnutrition nexus more comprehensively and are readily available through the FAO database,2
"The text of target 2.3, particularly with regards to doubling agricultural productivity, is not universally applicable",2
"Also, it may be hard to tease out variations in agricultural output stemming from changes in labor productivity vs",2
"The relationship between target 2.3 (agricultural productivity) and indicator 2.1 (labor productivity) is unknown and may not be proportional, posing further obstacles to the calculation of country-specific threshold values",2
As yield gap is a complex concept that involves several factors influencing agricultural productivity (Lobell et al,2
The first refers to the share of the rural population below national poverty lines; the second refers to the share of farmers earning less than the national minimum wage,8
"Thus, indicator 2.4.2 should consider the pressure that irrigation poses on the renewable water resources of each country, complementing SDG-6 (dedicated to water sustainability) and indicator 2.4.3 (which addresses agriculture-related sources of water pollution)",6
"Also, the text refers to the share of households using “eco-friendly” irrespective of their agricultural yields or total fertilizer use, which may be misleading when many small farmers use eco-friendly fertilizers but represent a small share of total food production, or when farmers use eco-friendly fertilizers but that is only a small share of their total fertilizer usage",2
"We also propose the adoption of the Global Adaptation Initiative (GAIN) climate change vulnerability index for food (GAIN 2015), which summarizes a country’s vulnerability to climate change in terms of food production by forecasting the evolution of key elements of food provision (see ESM S1)",13
This has led to a major biodiversity loss and genetic erosion,15
"Target 2.5, aimed at the conservation of agrobiodiversity (i.e., the diversity of living organisms used in agriculture), is not only relevant for the maintenance of genetic diversity but also diet quality, resilience of production systems, and biodiversity conservation at the farm and landscape scales",15
"2009)—and the amendment of 2.5.2, so that it refers to breeds whose risk of extinction is known",15
"Costs of food imports in Nigeria have been growing at 11% per year, on average",2
"The Federal Government is under great pressure to relieve food insecurity and poverty while increasing the production of raw materials for agro-based industries through domestic production, particularly since Nigeria is projected to become the third most populous country in the world by 2050 (Van Ittersum et al",2
Average productivity losses due to climate change are expected to be relatively small (Assad et al,13
"The intensification of livestock production is deemed crucial given the link with potential land sparing, indirect land use change and associated GHG emissions (Nepstad et al",15
"In 2015, Dutch agricultural exports exceeded 81.6 billion euros, placing the country as the world’s second largest exporter of agricultural products (mainly horticulture and livestock) (CBS 2016; Agrimatie 2017)",2
"High rates of fertilizer and pesticide applications have been associated with ground and surface water contamination by nitrogen and phosphorus; although average water quality has improved over the past decade, this remains a challenge (EU 2017)",6
Climate change might pose risks but also have positive impacts on the yields of major crops by 2050 (Reidsma et al,13
"Despite the lack of data on the prevalence of farmers earning less than the minimum wage (indicator 2.3.3), the number of people below the poverty line (indicator 2.3.2) leaves no doubt about the need to improve Nigerian farmers’ income",8
"Reducing the yield gap (Target 2.3) could play a significant role in alleviating food insecurity, both through increased domestic supply and export revenue",2
"In Brazil, food security has improved substantially over the past decade, but nutrition indicators still deserve attention",2
"Also, several farmers earn less than the national minimum wage (especially smallholders)",8
Reducing the yield gap could immediately alleviate the pressure for food imports and improve access to (cheaper) food,2
The Nigerian “Agricultural Promotion Policy—2016–2020” focuses on ensuring food security through reducing food imports,2
"In Brazil, the so-called ABC Plan was established by the Federal Government as part of the country’s National Policy for Climate Change to restore degraded lands through the dissemination of low-carbon agricultural practices",13
"Anti-deforestation plans (PPCerrado and PPCDAM), the adoption of the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR), the creation of protected areas, and voluntary market mechanisms to incentivize environmental protection (e.g., Soy Moratorium) have helped decouple agricultural expansion and deforestation (Nepstad et al",15
"The Brazilian Program “Zero Hunger”, based on conditional cash transfers, as well as support given to family agriculture were key to leverage people above the poverty line and ensure food security (Rocha 2009)",2
"Dutch agriculture is regulated by several EU directives on nitrate pollution, water use and biodiversity protection",15
"Since the 2013 reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy, about 30% of the direct payments given to European farmers are linked to sustainability practices—particularly concerned with soil quality, biodiversity and carbon sequestration (Westhoek et al",2
"Measures aimed at agricultural sustainability include market mechanisms (e.g., higher standards for production, consumption and imports), waste reduction and incentives to the adoption of organic production",12
"According to the Dutch 2014–2020 Rural Development Program, support will be directed at improving landscapes, stimulating biodiversity, and improving soil and water management in farmland",6
"The program also includes incentives to young farmers and innovations, e.g., phosphorus recycling, urban agriculture, and biodigestors (EU 2017)",12
"The newly proposed indicators are still aligned with the core idea behind each target, and their achievement would signal that the four dimensions of food security are in place",2
Recent structural changes in food systems have significantly affected global nutrition (Caballero 2002; Gillespie and van den Bold 2017) and must be considered in the context of the SDG-2 when designing food systems-based strategies to fight hunger and malnutrition,2
"It is important to think of agricultural transformation pathways compatible with a more systemic thinking, where food systems contribute to food security through e.g., food production for own consumption, incentives for greater food availability, higher incomes and lower prices, gender-specific time allocation, as well as changes in consumer behavior (Gómez et al",2
"Yet, no set of indicators can fully capture the link between agricultural interventions, dietary change, and nutrition, which involves several complex factors within and beyond SDG-2 [e.g., food production, diet diversification, biofortification, food safety, gender empowerment, value chains, policy support, etc",2
"Third, agricultural trade among the countries examined in this paper deserves greater attention and has direct implications for nutrition and environmental indicators, especially when food access and availability are considered over the short and long terms",2
Environmental protection has become very crucial in the supply chain process,15
"GSCM practices are not only significant for satisfactory results of sustainability and environment but also present a unique role in the progress of economic growth (Ghanem, 2018)",8
"Green practices including GSCM, green technology, and green innovation are the most appropriate examples of these practices (El-Kassar & Singh, 2018; Wu et al., 2018)",9
"As pointed out by Cervellon and Wernerfelt (2012), communities are now environmentally orientated, and members are interested in sharing information about green practices in manufacturing, supply chain, distribution, recycling, or re-use of materials",12
"Worldwide, SDGs are becoming popular due to several reasons of which the three highlighted benefits, named social propensity, environmental protection, and economic well-being",15
The preliminary findings of this scoping work indicate the feasibility of converting sawdust waste into a novel means for wastewater treatment systems capable of dealing with antibiotic pollutants,6
(2019) have conjectured that wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) may pose a potential rich breeding ground for the pathogens,6
"The sawdust obtained from wood processing and manufacturing activities represents 0.4 million tonnes per year in the UK alone (Community Wood Recycling, 2018)",12
"The heating values of SD constituted 65–90% of those characteristics for the AC (20.5–23 MJ/kg (Bouabid et al., 2013)), indicating its recycling potential",12
"Ash contents were found to be close to zero, 0.01–0.03 wt%, minimising the solid waste quantities left after processing",12
These materials can be potentially translated into working prototypes for tertiary wastewater treatment,6
Sawdust as part of a five-step circular sustainable process Combining pyrolysis with an energy recovery system would maximise energy efficiency by redirecting some of this energy to a nearby facility requiring electricity,7
"Besides, the nominal quantities of bound sulphur and nitrogen, high volatile matter and near-zero ash quantities make the sawdust a great candidate for a wider circular economy, by providing energy at the end of its life",12
"Hence, the ability to direct water production and use as well as climate change mitigation has become a hotspot recently",13
"Hence, this paper builds a core nexus of WC and then analyzes those effects on social and environmental aspects in many areas, including sewage treatment, energy transition, waste treatment, land management, and ocean management",12
"Moreover, uncertainties derived from exogenous hydrology, climate change, and anthropogenic endogenous systems for realistic problems appeal to gradually increasing concern",13
The Kyoto Protocol is the first agreement to emerge from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process that sets binding limits on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Barrett 1994),13
"Later, many developing countries have adopted Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) and concrete action plans to address climate change and reduce GHG emissions",13
"GHGs are known as the main reason for climate change, which also affects water availability and water shortages (Li et al",13
"Hence, water and climate change are inextricably linked to each other",13
"This relationship and heterogeneity should be fully considered; however, they have been less considered by the policymakers and researchers who continue to tackle water and climate change management policies as disjointed issues",13
"Since water-climate change nexus system research is conducted based on resource and environmental management and then extends to assess interrelationships and interdependencies, as well as their transitions and flows, we can improve resource security by integrating management and governance across sectors and regions, reducing multiple conflicting goals, and creating synergies",13
The impacts of climate change and its mitigation have been extensively studied (Gao et al,13
"SDG 6 considers water resource security and appeals for integrated management, while SDG 12 is about climate action, aiming to keep the mean global warming well below 2° above the pre-industrial level; countries have committed their INDCs separately in the Paris Agreement adopted in COP 21 (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 2015)",13
"Figure 1 gives society welfare and environment-related SDGs indexes, such as economic loss, sustainable agriculture share, and mortality rate attributed to unsafe water",2
"In this paper, we aim to review existing papers to better understand the relative technological advances, countries’ policies and actions in terms of water security and climate change mitigation, which further help to find out social welfare and environmental impacts (Rao and Wilson 2021)",13
"Accompanied by energy transition, renewable energy, such as hydro power generation, increases",7
Figure 3 shows the strong correlation relationship between two water security performances and two climate change mitigation indexes separately based on the UN SDGs data,13
"Water-climate change nexus extension Relationship between the water-related index and climate change-related index (based on Chinese data) Meanwhile, several published studies offer directions for understanding the WC nexus, and those research themes are extended to different areas based on the WC nexus, such as the energy provision system and land management system (Gernaat et al",13
"In the next sections, the authors will provide a systematic review that refers to the extension to energy provision, land management, sewage management, waste management, oceans, etc",12
"Energy transition went through three stages—efficiency improvement, structural transformation, and resources treatment and reuse, within which related indicators (such as the proportion of energy intensity, clean energy, carbon intensity) in different aspects, such as national, regional, industry temporal changes, have been used for performance evaluation",7
The energy transition can be represented by the increasing share of renewable energy,7
Lin and Omoju (2017) examined the share of non-hydro renewable electricity in climate change mitigation,13
Only by studying the driving forces of resource-saving and climate change mitigation can we know the speed of energy transition and smart grid construction,13
"Second, the environmental risks of tree planting and other forest management activities should be qualified (Forzieri et al",15
"Agricultural production is inevitable in many countries, especially in China; hence, land productivity, fertilizer utilization, land salinization, and desertification, as well as material inputs, induced carbon emissions (World Bank",15
Arable Land (hectares Per Person) 2017; Arthur et al,15
"Urbanization is projected to affect water availability and carbon sinks, which appeals to a lot of research on landscape design and urban sustainability, aiming to achieve neutrality during the process of urbanization (Zhou and Chen 2018; Su et al",11
"There are three main ways of emitting CO2, including energy consumption, the use of reagents, and aerobic aeration",7
"Table 2 reflects that several energy-neutral operational wastewater treatment plants have emerged in Europe Union regions and the USA, but not much progress has been made toward carbon neutrality",6
"Wisdom makes the concept of “sustainable water quality, energy recovery, resource recycling, and environmental friendliness” comes true; however, progress is still possible in the carbon neutrality of China’s regional wastewater treatment plants",6
"For example, water reuse could save energy and reduce carbon emissions, compared with other traditional potable water provisions, while at the expense of higher economic costs (Stillwell et al",13
Comprehensive utilization of solid waste and improvement of resource utilization efficiency would assist in carbon neutralization,12
"The production and accumulation of solid waste occupying precious land resources, resulting in water-soil-gas complex pollution prominent, has become one of the main factors to induce environmental and safety problems",12
"Correctly understanding solid waste from a scientific and rational perspective, and carrying out comprehensive utilization of solid waste, would have a significant synergistic effect on saving and replacing native resources and effectively reducing carbon emissions",12
Table 4 shows embodied carbon emissions of several types of solid waste,12
"There are also some branches of the WC nexus in solid waste management, which are illustrated as follows",12
(2019) evaluated industrial solid waste metabolism and quantified the environmental responsibilities,12
"In general, a multi-functional waste management system is needed by reusing solid waste on the promise of understanding the interconnectivity of water–waste resources-energy-GHGs",12
Materials input and outputs have been evaluated in the process of waste management (McDougall et al,12
Uncertainties increase the difficulty of waste management,12
"Uncertainties are generally derived from economic development, social progress, and technological advancement",8
"It is vital to strengthen marine and coastal areas to cope with climate change, to defend against high-frequent climate disasters, and to ensure the safety of people’s lives in coastal areas",13
"On the one hand, Madin and Macreadie (2015) measured the carbon footprint of seafood and assessed their eco-labels in terms of sustainability, which helps guide sustainable consumption",12
"Therefore, future research on ocean management should include the impacts of climate change on seawater desalination, marine fishy, and tidal energy",13
"In terms of land use management, soil carbon sequestration and reducing fertilizer could synergistically and simultaneously serve for climate mitigation and adaptation actions and enhance agricultural drought resilience (Bleischwitz et al",13
"Crops and other agricultural products could be reused and recycled at the new utility, such as energy alternatives and nutrition replenishment (Wang et al",2
"Moreover, uncertainties from anthropogenic climate change and hydrology would increase the optimization difficulty",13
(2021) proved that it could be achievable to build a sustainable and equitable offshore community while ensuring environmental protection and social justice simultaneously,15
"In all, those terms, including offshore wind power, sustainable marine food production, and low-carbon seawater desalination, are worth deeply studying toward a sustainable blue economy across coastal, offshore, and high seas (as shown in Fig. 6)",7
WC nexus in ocean system toward SDGs The water-carbon-pollution nexus could seek holistic and integrated solutions to sewage and sludge treatment and waste management,12
"2020), cement waste treatment (Brunner and Rechberger 2015), medical waste treatment (Yao et al",12
"2020), food waste management, and organic sludge management (Cieślik et al",12
"(2021b), the benefits of circular management between natural resources and pollution control can be achieved through waste management and reuse",12
"In the previous studies, water carbon pollution synergies-related policies have been consistent with those co-benefits since the proposal of the circular economy",12
(2020) discussed resource use efficiency and environmental performance of the waste management system,12
"Sources of them include energy-related sources as well as non-energy-related sources such as livestock, solid waste, and manure management",12
"For emission sources with particularly large uncertainties, such as emissions from crop planting, electricity generation, and industrial manufacturing, it is suggested to simulate region-specific emission curves and fluctuation risks",7
"Further studies are needed on sustainable production and consumption, on resource and emission flow in the context of globalization, and on shared responsibility",12
"First, to what extent do production and consumption in a specific sector/region contribute to the global consumption of natural resources and greenhouse gas emissions? For what types of curricular material is full sensory immersion important in different areas, like energy power system, land use, and management? Second, to what extent can the industrial production or agricultural planting or other services provision transferring from one country to another induce greater social and environmental progress in SDGs around the world? Third, to attain integrated sustainable development, what is the optimal blend of transnational cross-sectoral production and consumption? Policy interference has a substantial impact on investment and economic development (Böhringer and Rutherford 2008)",8
"Meanwhile, production optimization could be within a feasible set by incorporating policy constraints, such as renewable energy share and carbon emission intensity",7
An important goal of the massive recovery of COVID-19 is to avoid a return to the old development model of environmental degradation while revitalizing economic activity,15
"While nexus thinking cannot directly solve the security of the resource, climate change mitigation, and social welfare improvement problems, it could uncover the internal and external impacts within a specific area’s management, like energy provision system and land management",13
"Existing research suggests that water security and mitigation of climate change have a contradiction in many aspects; even worse, the uncertainty of exogenous hydroclimate change and the anthropogenic endogenous system add to the difficulty of decision-making due to the inability of stakeholders to identify and deal with uncertainties, as well as the robustness of the promise",13
"Going forward, the following points are summarized to promote scientific research and practice of SDGs achievement under uncertainty",9
"How might we sustain the role universities and colleges play as anchor institutions in place making, contributing to economic development and community service? How might we continue to drive HE’s role in convening private, public and third sector actors to capture the enormous potential HE offers to deliver the SDGs [14]",8
"COVID-19 is challenging everything we do in universities and colleges, from teaching and learning, research and innovation, the students’ experience, faculty and staffing levels, investments in technology and student support, infrastructure projects, fund-raising, internationalization efforts and so much more",9
"From community colleges to liberal arts universities, those focused on adult learners, others offering an immersive on-campus experience, women’s colleges, those in urban or rural locations, public and private sector; each will react and respond to the COVID-19 challenge in line with their vision and strategic priorities, as well as financial health",10
"Alison Davis-Blake demanded that we Improve productivity in higher education, noting the need to both invest and disinvest and learn from other sectors about process improvement",8
"Valerie Roberson drew attention to the important role of HE in recovery of the economy, noting that when unemployment is high more people enter education and called on us to support the new economy after the crisis",8
"Insecurities around food, housing, jobs and health services all served to create high anxiety levels among current college and university students with mental health a growing crisis [37] as people struggle to deal with the shock and social isolation of the situation",3
"Earlier in the year, one in six college bound high school students were rethinking whether to pursue HE in fall 2020 [41], with high unemployment and financial uncertainty meaning that many families may not able to support students and self-funded students will be similarly challenged, so enrollment is predicted to decrease",8
"Rather than months or even years to secure committee approvals, partnerships based on shared interests will support dialogue across cultures and borders in support of SDG 17",17
"COVID-19 is already impacting on graduate recruitment into the workforce, reducing the number of graduates being hired this year by large firms and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) [57] producing some forbidding scenarios for post-crisis levels of global unemployment",8
"Those that are considering a course in the next five years are looking at different providers than before the pandemic, such as trade schools, online-only programs and community colleges—preferring non-degree programs and courses that would help them reskill or upskill in line with the new economy and new jobs that will be created",8
"Universities and colleges need to ensure the Class of 2020 do not become a lost generation [59, 60], and mobilize support for employability through their career services, as well as extending access to mental health support and professional education",3
"From testing kits at the University of East Anglia [23], to the University of South Florida 3D-printing personal protective equipment [61] and vaccine development at the University of Cambridge [22], HE institutions continue to be at the forefront of the fight against the virus",3
"While it is too early to assess the full impact of the pandemic on public health, the economy and society, the HE sector is a critical contributor to finding solutions and needs to act more boldly and collaboratively to demonstrate the value it delivers",3
"The sector can build on existing initiatives, such as the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN,  ), which is promoting integrated approaches to implementing the SDGs and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change through education, research, policy analysis, and global cooperation",13
"( ) to galvanize sector-wide leadership around climate change and sustainability via the Climate Commission [66] that was set up to provide direction, leadership and consensus on confronting climate change",13
"The collective global urgency harnessed to tackle COVID-19 might be contrasted unfavorably with that needed to address climate change, but the pandemic shows us that we have an inherent leadership and change capacity once we gather humanity around the problem and work collectively with a global mindset",13
"Fundamentally, while all universities and colleges are unique given their history, mission and activities of faculty, staff and students, they also share a focus on enabling learning and supporting scholarship [72]",4
"The challenge for society is how to balance economic growth with environmental, social, cultural, and recreational objectives, all while ensuring we can meet “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, p",8
"As these sensors can capture information not visible to the naked eye, they can provide information suitable for a variety of additional tasks, for example, detecting variations in plant health and biomass across a survey area (Wich and Koh 2018), or monitoring water quality (Kislik et al",6
"Quantification of Blue Carbon stores has become a priority of many nations in response to the climate crisis, yet the global coverage of many sizable carbon stores, such as seagrass, remains largely unknown (Röhr et al",13
"(2020) explored how UAVs can be used to manage conflict between swimmers and sharks, while quadcopters with live video streams have been deployed to increase the patrolling of the coastline to detect and enable real-time enforcement of illegal fishing (Howard 2016; Toonen and Bush 2020)",14
"The ability of larger UAVs to traverse up to 500 km over a 2-day period (Toonen and Bush 2020) enables UAVs to be highly effective in the management of this natural resource and is strongly tied to the enforcement and compliance of environmental law, which is further explored in the Environmental Law Enforcement and Compliance Section of this paper",16
Applications of UAVs for ecological monitoring are relevant to SDG 15 and indicator 15.5.1 (Table 3),15
There are several examples of the use of UAV technology for environmental law enforcement and compliance,16
UAVs have also been successfully employed in non-coastal settings for environmental law enforcement and compliance,16
"Nuwer (2017) describes how another conservation group is using thermal cameras, also mounted on fixed-wing UAVs, to combat poaching in Malawi’s Liwonde National Park",15
"Applications of UAV technology for environmental law enforcement and compliance are relevant to SDGs 6, 14, and 15, and indicators 6.6.1, 14.4.1, and 14.6.1 (Table 4)",16
The use of UAVs to combat coastal and marine pollution has been documented in several instances,14
Part of this research is the development of a global marine debris monitoring system that uses data from satellites and UAVs,14
Several citizen science projects have also demonstrated how UAVs can help to address the marine litter problem (Fritz et al,14
Projects such as the Marine Litter UAVT encourage citizen scientists to undertake their own marine litter surveys using a standardised methodology (Kohler 2018),14
"(2015) at the Byzantine church of Panagia Phorbiotissa in Asinou, Cyprus, a UNESCO World Heritage Site",11
(2018) used visible imagery and photogrammetry to record the presence of Aboriginal cultural heritage at a coastal dune site prior to the imminent agricultural development of the landscape,11
SDG goal 11 specifically emphasises the protection and safeguarding of the world’s natural and cultural heritage sites,11
"The applications of UAV technology to for digital heritage documentation, preservation, and conservation are of direct relevance to SDG 11 and indicator 11.5.2 (Table 6)",11
Quick access to information is essential to efficiently plan for disaster management,11
"Besides being used for marketing and promotion, UAV imagery and footage can help to limit visitors to certain areas threatened by excessive human activity, thereby contributing to more sustainable tourism practices",12
"For example, the high number of visitors to the South Ari atoll Marine Protected Area (SAMPA) in the Maldives is posing a threat to resident marine species (Femmami 2019)",14
"For the most part, these areas recorded high (> 2.5 out 4) accessibility criteria for all the applications, with the exception of pollution management and disaster management (Fig. 3)",11
"seaweed resource assessments, mapping of bacterial pathogens for monitoring coastal bathing water quality, automated detection of people from UAV imagery for search and rescue applications)",6
"Several citizen science projects have recently emerged, including the Marine Litter UAVT (Kohler 2018), Open Reef (ESRI 2020), and Citizen Science Coastal Monitoring (Deakin Marine Mapping 2020)",14
"Labour activity in the UPV/EHU is the sub-process with the greatest social impact, followed by processes related to transport, energy, materials, and waste management",12
"Among the socio-economic context which supports the academic activity of the UPV/EHU (indirect impacts), the existence of traces of child labour and illiteracy outside the Basque Country stands out",8
The modelling considers various inflows (supply of energy and materials) and outflows (several hazardous and non-hazardous waste fractions) as well as transportation needs,12
"This equivalence, however, seems arbitrary: for the case of the impact category of “fatal accidents at work,” PSILCA assigns a medium risk level to sectors with a fatal accident rate of between 15 and 25 fatal accidents per year per 100,000 workers, and a high risk level to sectors with a fatal accident rate of between 25 and 40 fatal accidents per year per 100,000 workers (Ciroth and Eisfeldt 2016)",8
"In addition, four social impact indicators show no risk: goods produced by forced labour, which belongs to the forced labour impact category, and three social impact indicators of the workers’ rights impact category, namely, right of association, right of collective bargaining and right to strike",8
"The direct impacts are obtained for the following indicators: frequency of forced labour, fatal accidents, non-fatal accidents, safety measures and violations of employment laws and regulations",8
"However, the risk levels associated with the results of the child labour impact category, i.e",8
"child labour, male and child labour, total, and the social impacts of the minimum wage in the fair salary impact category are higher than the corresponding reference values",8
The social impact indicators for international migrant population and unemployment present a high and very high risk respectively,8
"However, in the Contribution to economic development category, the level of risk associated with the result obtained by SO-LCA is greater than that associated with the reference value for all the indicators",8
Anti-competitive behaviour or violation of anti-trust and monopoly legislation displays the lowest level of associated risk and public sector corruption displays the highest level,16
"In general, for the fair competition and corruption impact categories, the level of risk calculated for the academic activity of the UPV/EHU with respect to the reference value remains the same",16
"The results column in Tables 7, 8, 9, and 10 shows the levels of social risk obtained by each Social Impact Indicator and is represented by superscript y, which, as specified above, ranges between very low risk to very high risk or no risk",1
"Furthermore, as each social impact indicator has previously been linked to an SDG, it follows that those Social Impact Indicators presenting a higher social risk level are related to SDGs 1, 4, 5, 8, and 10",1
"For Quality Education (SDG4), the highest risk level is associated with education expenditure",4
In SDG5 (Gender Equality) the gender wage gap Soca indicator shows a very high risk level,5
The main risks for Decent Work and Economic Growth (SDG 8) are related to a high level of unemployment together with violations of employment laws and regulations and trade unionism density rate,8
"Figures 2 and 3 show the relative contribution of activity hours, weighted by risk level, in relation to Transport, Energy and Materials Consumption, Waste Treatment and Labour Activity in the UPV/EHU, for each of the 11 selected social impact categories for disaggregated analysis, including the cost estimation of the UPV/EHU’s academic activity",12
"In addition, Fig. 3 shows the disaggregated analysis of other selected indirect social impact categories that provide information about the socio-economic context that supports the academic activity under assessment (child labour, gender wage gap, social perception of pollution, international migrant stock, and illiteracy rate)",8
"In contrast, the contribution of the UPV/EHU labour activity to the impact on the illiteracy rate is considerably lower (34%), and barely significant in the child labour category (3.5%)",8
"Thus, it can be concluded that the socio-economic context that supports the academic activity of the UPV/EHU outside its labour activity, shows traces of illiteracy and, above all, child labour",8
"Transport is also the most prominent sub-process in this regard, representing 40.4% of the impact on illiteracy rate and 53.1% of the impact on child labour",8
"Meanwhile, the location of the illiteracy rate is not defined at 55% and that of child labour at 96.9%",8
"Therefore, it seems that the traces of child labour and illiteracy detected in the socio-economic context that supports the academic activity of the UPV/EHU are located far outside the borders of the ACBC, although these are undefined locations",8
"Specifically, data for the presence of sufficient safety measures are not country-specific but an extrapolation from data for US companies to suitable industry sectors worldwide (Ciroth and Eisfeldt 2016), or data for the child labour category are not sector-specific, as data for this category are collected at country level",8
"In fact, the results show that the social risks related to the academic activity of the UPV/EHU are spread worldwide through other economic sectors that indirectly support it, through the supply of energy, materials, waste treatment, and transport services",12
"But the geographical analysis reveals that the UPV/EHU presents a social footprint with impacts that also occur far away from the geographical area of influence of the activity analysed, in this case the ACBC; this is true, for example, of child labour or illiteracy in geographical areas that indirectly support the academic activity of the UPV/EHU",8
A transition to more sustainable transport modes with less harmful social footprints could be one possible way to decrease risks in this regard,11
"This transition may include options such as: increasing the occupancy rate of private cars, moving transport from private cars to public transport, reducing campus attendance by implementing a 4-day week, and promoting the change of the usual residence to places closer to the campus, in order to avoid commuting longer distances; their specific characteristics and potential to reduce environmental impacts are detailed in Zuazo et al",11
"These services are crucial to address global threats and challenges (e.g., poverty, hunger, and climate change) and accomplish the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations (Griggs et al",13
"However, human activities and climate change have caused the dramatic degradation and loss of gulf ecosystem services (Needles et al",13
"For example, excessive pollutants discharged from agricultural and industrial processes into gulf ecosystems and introduction of invasive species have caused severe environmental challenges, such as eutrophication, sediment pollution, and loss of biodiversity (Alexander et al",15
"Increasing population pressure and desire for rapid economic growth have led to overexploitation and consequent degradation of wetland habitats, which in turn causes the decline of fishery resources in gulf ecosystems (Rozas et al",8
"Nutrients, heavy metals, and persistent organic pollutants are common pollutants that cause environmental problems in gulf ecosystems (Hagy et al",12
Human activities and climate change are the most important factors driving the dynamics in gulf ecosystem services,13
"Research in the nutrient and eutrophication cluster mainly concerns with the following: (1) response of plankton (e.g., phytoplankton and zooplankton) and water quality to nutrient, such as nitrogen and phosphorus; and (2) causes (e.g., excessive input of nutrient), characteristics (e.g., phytoplankton blooms), and effects of eutrophication, such as hypoxia",6
"Climate change causes a series of consequences, such as changes in run-off and increased sea surface temperature (Karim and Mimura 2008)",13
"Among the 50 keywords, phytoplankton, zooplankton, water quality, nutrient, biodiversity, ecopath, and eutrophication are more frequent in earlier studies, indicating that previous research has mainly focused on the following: (1) impact of nutrient and eutrophication on plankton and water quality; (2) biodiversity of species and their response to environmental factors; and (3) evaluation of food web structure by using ecopath model",6
"Climate change, ecosystem services, remote sensing, stable isotopes, sea level rise, fisheries, marine spatial planning, sediment, and heavy metals are more frequent terms in recently published articles, suggesting recent research addresses the following: (1) quantification of climate change-induced effects on gulf ecosystems using remote sensing; (2) management of ecosystem services; and (3) heavy metals in sediments and their effects on fisheries and aquaculture",13
"These four categories mainly relate to research on the causes and effects of environmental challenges, such as eutrophication, sediment pollution, biodiversity destruction, and climate change",13
"Major categories of social and management sciences include Economics, Food Science & Technology, Urban Studies, and Public, Environmental & Occupational Health",8
"Research in these categories addresses economic and social benefits provided by gulf ecosystems, aquatic product safety, urban planning, and management policies and practices",11
"Specifically, interdisciplinarity between natural and social and management sciences is conducive to understanding the impact of human activities on gulf ecosystems, assessing economic and social loss caused by environmental challenges, and developing adaptive management in the context of climate change",13
"Interdisciplinarity among natural, social and management, and data sciences is crucial for analyzing the long-term impact of environmental challenges, predicting the dynamics properties of gulf ecosystems under the influence of human pressure and climate change, and exploring best management practices of gulf ecosystems",13
"The interdisciplinary research of natural, social and management, and data sciences should focus on the following: (1) ecosystem services response to human activities and climate change; and (2) the optimization of ecosystem management to cope with environmental challenge and ensure the sustainable provision of ecosystem services",13
"Myanmar, Philippines, and Vietnam have been identified as the countries most affected by climate change, followed by Bangladesh, Thailand, Nepal, Dominica, Madagascar, Cambodia, and Fiji (Fig. 4b) (Eckstein et al",13
"ICAs correspond to the number of collaborations between countries Ranking of coastline length (a) and vulnerability to climate change (b) for countries participating in gulf ecosystem research The NSC and SSC are vital for developing countries, especially for small island developing states and the least developed countries, to tackle environmental challenges, such as climate change (Chirambo 2018)",13
"However, compared with NSC, research on Nutrient and eutrophication in SSC focuses more on effects of nutrient on species and lacks of consideration for eutrophication and its adverse impacts on water quality",6
"Therefore, SSC could also facilitate global data sharing in gulf ecosystems, which is essential for all countries to effectively tackle environmental challenges driven by anthropogenic activities and climate change",13
"On one hand, conserving and sustainably using the resources of gulf ecosystems is an important target of SDG 14",14
"For instance, roughly 40% of the commercial set gillnet permits in Bristol Bay are owned by women, who are also involved in fisheries management (Lavoie et al",14
"Environmental challenges facing gulf ecosystems, such as eutrophication and heavy metal pollution are mainly attributed to increasing urbanization and elevated chemical discharges from various land-based source (e.g., agriculture and waste treatment plant)",12
"Construction of watershed-gulf coupling models that integrate long-term monitoring data of watersheds and gulf ecosystems (e.g., hydrology, water quality, aquatic communities, and sediment transport) are vital for quantifying the relationship between the watershed disturbances and carrying capacity of gulf ecosystems, thereby improving practices for ecosystem management",6
Our human footprint is threatening the health of the oceans and seas—and major threats include: ocean warming and acidification (IPCC 2019); overfishing and bycatch (FAO 2020); pollution and litter (Barnes et al,14
"2007) are indications of overall marine ecosystem health, and these events are sending us flashing red warnings about the state of the seas and oceans (see last revision in UN 2021a, b)",14
"However, tracking the global results of an Ocean Health Index for exclusive national economic zones, results indicate a trend of slow improvement (Halpern et al",14
"2020) also strongly supports the idea that by rebuilding marine life, a substantial recovery in the abundance, structure, and function of marine life can be achieved by 2050 if major pressures including climate change are mitigated",13
"Ocean health was long self-regulated and maintained, but man-made pressures today pose a threat (UN 2021a, b)",14
"Since 2015, a healthy and productive ocean has been the principal consideration addressed in the Sustainable Development Goal 14 (SDG-14 ‘Life Below Water’) in the context of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN 2015)",14
"After valuing the present and traditional ocean economy, a science-based analysis of direct (pressures occurred through a direct interaction of an activity with an environmental component in the sea) and indirect (pressures coming for this interaction but occurring off the sea) industrial pressure on ocean health is presented",14
"First, to assess the relationship between human pressures and the state of the marine environmental component, we will use the European Union (EU) Good Environmental Status (GEnS) as a conceptual framework, “the environmental status of marine waters where these provide ecologically diverse and dynamic oceans and seas which are intrinsically clean, healthy and productive, and the use of the marine environment is at a level that is sustainable, thus safeguarding the potential for uses and activities by current and future generations’’ (European Commission-EU 2008; Borja et al",14
"Secondly, we assess business commitment to the different United Nations Sustainable Development Goals-SDGs (UN 2015) comparing SDG 14 (‘Life Below Water’) to other SDGs as a snapshot of the level of attention among ocean economy companies to this specific SDG",14
"For this paper, ocean economy sectors have been bundled into three groups: extractive renewable (fisheries and aquaculture); extractive non-renewable (seabed mining, offshore oil, and gas); and operational (transportation, ports and warehousing, shipbuilding and repair, coastal tourism, desalination, renewable energy, genetic and medical resources) [See description of all these groups in Supplementary Material 2a]",7
"To target the response of the European Union (EU) to the present health of the oceans and seas, the EU established the goal of achieving GEnS for its marine environment, a goal introduced and defined by the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (2008/56/EC) (Borja et al",14
"Services provided by the ocean make a major contribution to our economic and social development and include food and freshwater supply, renewable energy, benefits for health and wellbeing, cultural value, tourism, trade, and transport",7
Sustainability reporting have become widespread among large multinational companies,12
"the EU Directive 2014/95 on non-financial disclosure, the proposal for a Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) disclosures introduced by the Sustainable Stock Exchanges}",12
"The growing attention to sustainability reporting can be also linked to the development of global standard settings such as Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), and more recently by European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) and the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) (Afolabi et al",12
"In the last decades, also in the academia sustainability reporting has become an increasingly relevant topic for research in disciplinary domains such as management, accounting and finance, business ethics and sustainability (Elkington 1997; Kolk 2010; Lozano and Huisingh 2011; Hahn and Kühnen 2013; Amini et al",12
"Moreover, a broad research stream has focused on investigating sustainability reporting as an important tool to contribute to corporate sustainability (Burritt and Schaltegger 2010; Lozano and Huisingh 2011)",12
"These studies have also offered a critical perspective on sustainability reporting, showing that this practice still requires more standardization, increased transparency, and quality improvements (Dando and Swift 2003)",12
"GRI, SASB, IIRC) and mandatory frameworks (EU Directive 2014/95) have become more diffused, consolidating the utilization of non-financial reporting as a methodology to screen and investigate corporate sustainability awareness and behaviour for the exam of ESG practices in different industries",12
"For example, Weber and Marley (2012) used sustainability reporting to analyse stakeholder salience and corporate social responsibility practices",12
"More recently, Opferkuch et al (2020) analysed circular economy approaches and business models by a sample of international companies, building on the data and information contained in their sustainability reporting",12
"We analysed how many in each sample (1666 in total, 69 in ocean economy sectors) mentioned the word ‘ocean’ (variable 1) and analysed how companies disclose information on SDGs, the “SDG 14” (variable 2), and made a comparison with the rest of the mentioned SDGs",14
"In this case, a combination of more than 200 keywords, reflecting corporate awareness and activation with regard to the marine environment, were selected through several rounds of expert consultation [see Supplementary Material 4a]",14
"We define companies as being ‘active’ when the variable is assigned with a positive binary value indicating that product development, process innovations, and supply chain solutions, even when indirectly related to ocean health, are adopted, and thus can help companies mitigate their pressures on marine ecosystems",14
"marine renewable energy, desalination, seabed mining, and genetic and medical resources) was still limited at around just 0.5% of the total but their potential was considered to be high",7
"From this perspective, the scientific review confirmed the most significant pressures for ocean health as being those related to: Effects on marine biodiversity, including depletion of fish stocks and alteration of food webs, also co-determined by several different causes, such as the modification of the hydrographical condition of waters, pollution, eutrophication, and the alteration of seafloor integrity",14
"Introduction of contaminants in marine ecosystems, including their presence in seafood, either through direct interaction with the marine environment, or indirectly through wastewaters, discharge points, or atmospheric deposition",14
"gender equality, and the main environmental issues)",5
"Despite being one of the least mentioned, the attention given to SDG 14 has more than tripled in two years (comparing 2018 data in 2019 reports with 2016 data in 2017 reports) and the number of companies referring to SDG14 increased from a mere 2.4% (2016) to 7.5% (2018)",14
Different sectors have priorities in reporting on SDGs,17
The lower graph in Fig. 2 shows the percentage of companies reporting on SDGs vs the total sampled for each of the listed industries,17
"Marine litter (mostly plastic), biodiversity, and hydrographical conditions (mostly associated with acidification) are the issues most frequently mentioned",14
"In the first row (in red), we consider fisheries and aquaculture, maritime transportation, shipbuilding and repair, and ports and warehousing The ocean economy sectors follow approximately the same pattern; however, a higher percentage of firms reported on biodiversity, hydrographical conditions, and marine litter (while not properly identifying less publicised issues)",14
"Electric power generation, utilities, and agriculture were the sectors with the highest percentages of active companies, contributing to the development of renewable energy sources and technological solutions for emission reduction (Fig. 5)",7
"Percentage of companies by industrial sector that have actions that can, directly or indirectly, benefit ocean health",14
"Considering that 51% of companies are aware of some of their pressures on ocean health, and the fact that 44% of companies are active on ocean issues, shows that there are still cases where awareness does not correspond to activation",14
"About 5 companies in 10 carry out a carbon footprint assessment and cut their emissions, and more than 7 firms in 10 implement energy efficiency measures, but less than 1 company in 10 links emissions to ocean conditions",7
"Even though marine litter is among the most acknowledged issues regarding ocean protection and one company in two in the chemical industry is aware of it, hardly any report on activities aimed at tackling microplastic dispersion in marine and coastal ecosystems, due to the lack of effective and commercially viable solutions",14
"Significant changes in policies, organisations, and practices will be needed to reverse this tendency to environmental degradation, and this must include the response of corporations",15
"Our findings illustrate early responses about how corporations are knowledgeable about their footprint (pressuring factors) in the marine environment, and they are starting to also recognise the strong dependence of the health of the ocean on their activities",14
Our first overview of the commitment by businesses to SDG 14 (compared to other SDGs) is shown as a snapshot of the level of attention among ocean economy companies to this specific SDG,14
"An in-depth analysis of the 2019 corporate sustainability reports highlighted that 51% of companies were aware to varying degrees of their pressures on ocean health, and 44% of companies were active on ocean issues—and this means that there are still cases where awareness does not correspond to activation",14
"To unlock awareness and activation, businesses must recognise that maintaining a healthy marine environment is a fundamental prerequisite for long-term operations, and that they have a shared responsibility to take the actions necessary to secure a healthy, resilient, and productive ocean",14
A sustainable ocean economy (the newly desired and demanded blue economy) will only emerge when economic activity is in balance with the long-term capacity of ocean ecosystems to support this activity and remain resilient and healthy (The Economist 2015),14
"Similarly, to the initiatives developed to tackle climate change, new instruments designed to support the reporting of pressures on the ocean and business mitigation initiatives would match growing needs for transparency and disclosure by companies, as well as the requests from stakeholders such as investors, consumers, and NGOs",13
"To perform our research, we have used multiples methods and a thorough research path: reviewing secondary sources, and confronting data obtained from scientists and experts with data obtained from the exam of corporate sustainability reporting thanks to lexicometry and NLP",12
"The practice of sustainability reporting has become widespread among large multinationals, also thanks to the diffusion of standard guidelines (e.g",12
"Despite some limitations that refers to the quality of information, the lacks transparency and standardization, sustainability reporting has become a common methodology to detect and analyse the level of awareness of companies and the types of ESG responses in management, accounting and sustainability fields",12
"Our study shows that although sustainability leaders exist (they are aware and have developed innovative solutions to mitigate their pressures on the ocean), most companies are locked-in, either because they are not aware of marine ecosystem problems, or because they are unable to respond with coherent and effective mitigation actions",14
A sustainable ocean economy (the new desired Blue Economy) will only emerge when economic activity should be in balance with the long-term capacity of ocean ecosystems to support this activity and remain resilient and healthy,14
"Companies must acknowledge their interdependence with the ocean by recognising that maintaining a healthy ocean is vital for long-term operations in all industries, not only in ocean-related industries",14
"Short-term economic development has led to limited actions, unsustainable resource management, and degraded ecosystems",8
"There are several reasons for this limited success, including the failure of most developed countries to honor their development assistance promises, political greed or unrest, lack of adequate accounting and monitoring of initiatives, population growth absorbing any progress made, etc",10
"Yet, environmental degradation has been a major barrier to achieve MDGs (Sachs et al",15
There is an increased recognition of the importance of the environment in the SDGs in terms of climate change and sustainable use of natural resources,13
"For a long time, it was wrongly believed that poverty was the major and root cause of environmental degradation and that by reducing poverty through programs like the MDGs, environmental issues would lessen (Adams et al",15
"While poverty may contribute to environmental degradation, issues such as land use conversion and degradation, invasive species, and the overexploitation of natural and mineral resources are more serious and insidious (Adams et al",15
"Overexploitation occurs where corruption, lobbying of some corporations and organizations, and weak environmental policies (or lack of enforcement) enable exploitation of the environment and local communities",16
"It can lead to the implementation of perverse policies, often in the name of economic development (Palmer and Di Falco 2012)",8
"In addition, more specific conventions have been developed such as the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which was adopted to respond to critical changes happening to a particular biome across the planet",15
"WTO promotes global trade but this comes at the expense of the environment such as increasing CO2 emissions and spreading of invasive species, issues not currently addressed by the organization (Liu et al",15
"Only insofar as civil society supports and reaffirms the idea of economic growth, can we blame governments for missing the point of sustainability.” For this challenge, they propose some solutions such as having political tenure lasting for 10 years but with having a tenth of them elected annually to avoid power accumulation or the implementation of coercive legislative framework to ensure all governmental actions have sustainability integrated",8
"Ecosystem governance is defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as “the interactions among structures, processes, and traditions that determine how power and responsibilities are exercised, how decisions are taken, and how citizens or other stakeholders have their say in the management of natural resources—including biodiversity conservation” (IUCN 2004)",15
"The challenge now involves addressing the wicked problems, such as climate change and land use conversion and degradation, using an ecosystem governance approach to reduce current and future vulnerabilities (Pahl-Wostl et al",13
"Much of the attention on governance of ecosystems or a part of them (e.g., water management) over the past several years has focused on the influence that human (social) interventions have had on ecological systems or, alternatively, on the effects of rapidly changing environmental conditions on social systems",6
"2015), and “fully away from a focus on species and protected areas and into a shared human-nature environment, where the form, function, adaptability, and resilience provided by nature are valued most highly” (Mace 2014, p",15
Goal 4 (inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities) is crucial to increasing awareness and knowledge of how to improve ecosystem governance,4
Goal 13 (Take urgent action to combat climate change) recognizes climate change as a wicked challenge that needs to be addressed in order to ensure sustainable development,13
"Tackling climate change as a sustainable development goal demonstrates the need for ecosystem governance, and will require novel approaches based on the recognition that human social and natural systems are intricately interconnected (Cote and Nightingale 2012) and “to overcome the current challenges, one must understand how to connect top-down national policies to … bottom-up development strategies” (Vasseur and Jones 2015)",13
"One interesting example of such an approach (although not included in the reforestation scheme of the country) is a 10 ha forest in Cumanda, Chimborazo, Ecuador, where the owner decided about 10 years ago to attempt to grow a forest that looks more like a natural forest while still being functional, instead of the normal monoculture plantations of his neighbors",15
"SDG 13 must acknowledge that the resilience of complex adaptive SES can flourish only if ecosystem governance is integrated at the national policy level, and also through devolution of rights and responsibilities to communities, “as local communities tend to be culturally more homogenous than communities lumped at regional or national levels and more able to negotiate and resolve differences” (Vasseur and Jones 2015, see also Crona and Bodin 2006)",13
This integrated approach requires governments to accept that economic growth at the national level is not a long-term viable solution (Norgaard 2010),8
"Rather, new approaches are encouraged to refocus on elements such as safe, resilient, inclusive, and sustainable cities and human settlements (Goal 11; see Thornbush et al",11
Adaptive ecosystem governance should lead to greater transparency and inclusiveness and thus reduce the current challenges of corruption and personal economic gain that plague many governments and corporations (Martinez de Anguita et al,16
The integration of ecosystem services and their valuation into an integrated approach to development planning is essential to better understand the complex dynamics of ecosystems and sustainable socio-economic development,8
"Economic growth at the national scale cannot be the sole focus for sustainable development, and does not represent the optimal long-term solution",8
"Governance devolved at new local inclusive institutions, where adaptive ecosystem management can be undertaken, may need national and international policies to support innovation and diversity of initiatives",16
"Funding continues to be needed, especially in the LDCs where environmental degradation is frequently linked to development",15
"We are facing global environmental challenges that threaten to overstep our planetary boundaries, whilst social inequalities have been exacerbated [1, 2]",10
"It is about lifelong learning, and is an integral part of quality education",4
"The ‘Decade of Action to Deliver the SDGs’ by taking action to ‘end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030’ began in 2020 [16], yet on current trajectories, we are unlikely to meet this transformative challenge [17]",1
"Embedding ESD in higher education aligns with and supports other contemporary agendas such as entrepreneurship, inclusivity, decolonisation of the curriculum and civic engagement, all of which require critical thinking, reflexivity and the ability to address real world problems",8
Collaboration based on entrepreneurship for sustainability can provide sustainable solutions and ideas for development related to the SDGs [60],8
"Increasingly, climate transition, inclusive growth and a commitment to sustainable finance are seen as imperative in many sectors [63, 64]",8
"By engaging directly with social entrepreneurs, employers and industry, ESD can align with enterprise and entrepreneurship education to add value to the learner's journey [28]",8
"Statutory requirement for ESD has occurred for teacher training and continuing professional development (CPD) for school teaching in Scotland, but at higher education level there is reluctance to impose regulatory insistence and a greater reliance on higher education providers having the autonomy of choice in how they address ESD",4
"Young people have recently engaged extensively in different forms of activism, especially in relation to the urgency for climate action, with imagination, commitment and determination",13
"For example, by producing graduates who will pursue sustainability in their work and personal lives; by demonstrating how professions can address sustainability issues; by engaging in partnership with local and global partners in sustainability initiatives; by providing mentorship and a leadership example in operational sustainability; and by increasing awareness of and information on sustainability locally and globally",17
Participation in the overall ranking requires universities to submit data to at least four SDGs one of which must be SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals,17
"One of the indicators for SDG 17 is that institutions ‘Have a commitment to meaningful education around the SDGs across the university, in some programmes or in all programmes’ and is equivalent to about seven percent of the overall score [24], though there is limited recognition that the SDGs should be considered as interconnected goals",17
This focus on ESD may continue an erosion of research-teaching-community engagement boundaries and encourage a more integrated form of scholarship [52],4
"Whilst the contribution of bee pollination in promoting sustainable development goals through food security and biodiversity is widely acknowledged, a range of other benefits provided by bees has yet to be fully recognised",2
"2018), and yet biodiversity conservation remains a persistent global challenge (Tittensor et al",15
Bee pollination has been identified as directly contributing to food security (SDG2) and biodiversity (SDG15) (Dangles and Casas 2019),2
"2014), which could potentially help in reducing food waste (target 12.3) resulting from aesthetic imperfections (Gunders and Bloom 2017)",12
"Beyond agricultural landscapes, research in urban bee ecology aids understanding of bee dynamics in our cities and informs urban bee conservation initiatives (Hernandez et al",3
European honey bees can be used as an indicator species for tracking contaminants and monitoring environmental health (target 13.3) in urban areas (Zhou et al,3
"An initiative for sustainable tourism in Slovenia packages bee-related education and healing experiences with bee products, together with opportunities to create and purchase original crafts using bee products (Arih and Korošec 2015)",12
"Indigenous women, who are pivotal to the preservation of cultural heritage and transmission of traditional knowledge down the generations, have been disproportionately disadvantaged by globalisation, with changing sociocultural norms and dispossession of land and natural resources",11
"One systematic analysis reported that due to increased women’s education in the sub-Saharan region, childhood mortality did not increase as a result of the HIV epidemic [10]",3
"In 2013, infant mortality in Attappady was more than fourfold that of the rest of Kerala [15]",3
"In 2015–2016, the equivalent of $56.3 million USD were spent on educational programmes, housing schemes, treatment of tuberculosis, leprosy, scabies, sickle cell anaemia and water-borne diseases, to name a few initiatives [13]",3
"Previous community-based cross-sectional studies in other Indian tribal populations have been conducted to determine childhood immunisation rates [17], cervical cancer screening awareness [18] and maternal health service utilisation [19, 20]",3
"Across these studies, women’s education was highlighted as one of the positive predictors of better maternal and child health outcomes [16,17,18,19,20]",3
"For example, Kerala has the highest life expectancies in India—74.9 years in Kerala compared with 67.9 years in India [21]—and the lowest infant mortality rate in the country which are comparable with those of middle-high income nations, surpassing the SDG target for 2020 [22]",3
"By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round",2
"By 2030, end all forms of malnutrition, including achieving, by 2025, the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age, and address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women and older persons",2
"By 2030, maintain the genetic diversity of seeds, cultivated plants and farmed and domesticated animals and their related wild species, including through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at the national, regional and international levels, and promote access to and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the utilisation of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, as internationally agreed",2
"By 2030, reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births",3
"By 2030, end preventable deaths of newborns and children under 5 years of age, with all countries aiming to reduce neonatal mortality to at least as low as 12 per 1000 live births and under-5 mortality to at least as low as 25 per 1000 live births",3
"By 2030, ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, including for family planning, information and education, and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programmes",3
"Achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all",3
"By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes",4
"By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university",4
"By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations",4
"By 2030, achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all",6
"By 2030, achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations",6
Support and strengthen the participation of local communities in improving water and sanitation management,6
"By 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums",11
"By 2030, provide access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems for all, improving road safety, notably by expanding public transport, with special attention to the needs of those in vulnerable situations, women, children, persons with disabilities and older persons",11
Between 31 and 60% of women from all three tribes were at high risk of malnutrition (Table 2),2
"Mass deforestation led to changes in the crops cultivated in the area, affecting the diversity and nutritional content of their diet",15
The main form of contraception offered by medical outreach camps and health care facilities was tubal ligation as part of the State Government’s family planning initiative (Table 3),3
The success of the family planning initiative was evidenced by the rate of sterilisation—between 47 and 63% compared with the State average of 36%,3
"The issues listed including (1) distance to obstetric facility, (2) frequency of ante-natal care visits, (3) rate of home births with no skilled birth attendants and (4) limited understanding of the importance of maternal nutrition and supplement intake, all provide an overall indication of maternal health in the Attappady tribal population",3
"Although this study did not ascertain maternal mortality rates in the region, addressing these issues could improve maternal outcomes and mortality rates among tribal women in Attappady (SDG Target 3.1)",3
"The absence of skilled birth attendants does, however, increase the risk of life-threatening obstetric and neonatal complications such as post-partum haemorrhage, puerperal infections, obstructed labour and foetal distress, leading to maternal and neonatal mortality [31]",3
"It was difficult to reliably estimate infant mortality in the area as the numbers were self-reported by women, some of whom had first given birth more than two decades ago",3
"Our estimates (infant mortality of 28 deaths per 1000 live births and child mortality of 37 deaths per 1000 live births) could be an under- or over-estimation of the problem and would require access to birth, hospital or childhood records for a more reliable result (even though half of the births were in a health care facility) (Table 5)",3
"For 2015, Kerala’s infant mortality rate was estimated to be 10 deaths per 1000 live births in 2016, with child mortality (under 5) recorded as 12 deaths per 1000 live births [35, 36]",3
The SDGs calls for infant mortality to be reduced worldwide to less than 12 per 1000 live births and childhood mortality below 25 per 1000 live births [7],3
"Kerala is the only State among the bigger Indian States to have achieved these SDG targets, when the national infant mortality rates is 34 deaths per 1000 live births, and the under-five mortality is 48 deaths per 1 000 live births [35, 36]",3
Scheduled Tribes from rural populations like the three tribes in Attappady had an infant mortality rate of 47 deaths per 1000 live births and under-five mortality rate of 57 deaths per 1000 live births [35],3
"In the monsoon season, access to health care was even more challenging",3
It was also suggested from anecdotal experience that “the lack of sanitary facilities in schools for adolescent girls were a major factor in retention of girls at school,6
The conventional tribal mindset was to keep girls at home once they reach puberty and begin the process of looking for prospective grooms”.Footnote 1 Access to clean water and sanitation facilities appears to be an area of need in the Attappady region when comparing State data and the SDG Target 6 (Table 2),6
Safe drinking water should be accessible to all communities by 2030 (SDG Target 6.1) which may involve infrastructural investment,6
"Overcrowding increases the risk of disease transmission, particularly respiratory illnesses such as active tuberculosis which has previously been reported as prevalent in this area [40]",3
"The SDG targets stipulate that maternal mortality rates should be below 70 deaths per 100,000 women",3
"Where there is a shortage of skilled birth attendants, there may be a role for up-skilling and integrating community health workers and traditional birth attendants to provide maternity and newborn services",4
"These maternity homes were implemented in Eritrea in 2007, leading to a 56% increase in facility deliveries and no maternal deaths in the 20 months following its introduction [51]",3
Attappady can be considered a success in terms of the high uptake of female sterilisation as a method of contraception,3
Sexual health education and awareness for men and women regarding other methods of contraception including barrier contraception is required in reducing rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs),3
"With mass deforestation and change in biodiversity, the tribal diet has become impoverished of nutritious content which is particularly problematic for pregnant women and children",15
"The State Government has also invested 68 million rupees in 2017 into a Millet Village scheme to reinvigorate the local production of traditional varieties of millets, pulses and other cereals to improve food security in the area, agricultural economy and nutrition of tribal communities [55]",2
There should be methods for safe disposal and/or recycling of waste and by-products,12
It is not an infrequent occurrence where well-meaning groups and NGOs arrive in local Indigenous communities to install clean water and sanitation facilities and build housing,6
There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to solutions for clean water and sanitation systems,6
The State Government has offered scholarships and subsidies that incentivise girls and young women to seek secondary and tertiary education,4
Vocational training schemes are equally important for girls who do not plan to pursue more traditional professional courses,4
"entrepreneurship, administrative, collaborative, problem-solving skills)",8
Vocational training in priority areas identified by the community (e.g,4
"In Nepal, 43% of Indigenous women reported being unable to access health care services due to cost",3
Indigenous representation in health care will improve access to health care for tribal communities,3
Providing averages for large groups mask discrepancies in health outcomes in vulnerable population sub-groups,1
"It brought together scientists and practitioners from the International Society for Integrated Disaster Risk Management (IDRiM), IASS, and other organizations in Europe",11
The workshop addressed risk governance for a sustainable society with a view to extending and enhancing the mission and scope of integrated disaster risk management and governance,11
Article #7 refers back to the conceptual mission of the special section: to show the new challenges of disaster management in the twenty-first century and develop new governance models to cope with them in the light of sustainable development,11
It provides a conceptual attempt to balance disaster management with sustainable development,11
"We want to highlight the following three points that are seen as key concepts running through these articles: A paradigm shift toward integrated disaster risk management (as proposed by the IDRiM society); A comprehensive framework for adaptive and integrative risk governance as a fundamental prerequisite for transformation to sustainable societies; and Implementation science for bringing a comprehensive mix of natural and social science, engineering, and humanities to bear on risk governance issues",11
"Since then Japan has experienced a series of large earthquakes, floods, and other disasters among which the 11 March 2011 Eastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami was very special, and caused the “unexpected accident” in the nuclear power plants in Fukushima",7
"This disaster provided valuable lessons to add one more important dimension to integrated disaster risk management, that is, “to think the unthinkable” and “to govern systemic risks.” Systemic risks occur when a hazard will not only lead to negative effects in parts of the system, but also to failure of the system as a whole or trigger damages in functionally connected systems (Kaufman and Scott 2003, p",11
"How to recover and then restore innumerable village communities that were devastated by earthquake and tsunami also became an extremely urgent comprehensive policy issue related to integrated disaster risk management, as well as to the sustainable development of communities",11
"That is, how is adaptive risk governance addressed in relation to the needs and well-being of communities? This raises questions of how scientific research, both conceptual and empirical, can be implemented in ways that best serve the needs of the communities at risk",9
The application of disaster risk management and governance approaches has variously formed a part of integrated disaster and societal development studies over decades,11
"With increasing population, requirement for clean water and withdrawal of freshwater for life-sustaining purposes has intensified and thus its access and conservation has become a pressing issue",6
"To tackle this problem, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted as United Nations (UN) Agenda for 2030 introduced SDG 6 (one of the 17 global goals) “to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030” Footnote 2",6
"Commonly known as the ‘water goal’, SDG 6 gives a blueprint to achieve water security and plays a central role in achieving targets of all the SDGs",6
"There are 8 targets under SDG 6 that include- safe and affordable drinking water by 2030 (Target 6.1), services for sanitation and hygiene (Target 6.2), treatment and reuse of wastewater and improved water quality (Target 6.3), increasing water use efficiency and freshwater supplies (Target 6.4), implementation of integrated water resources management (Target 6.5), protection and restoration of water-related ecosystems (Target 6.6), international support and capacity building support (Target 6A), and support and strengthen the participation of communities in water and sanitation management (Target 6B)Footnote 3",6
Target 6.1 aims at achieving universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030,6
"Data from the ‘Summary Progress Update 2021 on SDG6: water and sanitation for all’ reveals that since 2015, over 600 million people have managed to get access to safe drinking water",6
Three out of four people used safe drinking water services across the globe in 2020,6
Target 6.2 is to achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and to end open defecation by 2030,6
Progress report on sanitation by UN shows that 54% of the population across the globe uses safely managed sanitation service (as of 2020)Footnote 5,6
"However, achieving universal access to sanitation and hygiene is still a challenge in many parts of the world",6
UN in a report has mentioned that two out of four people lack basic hand wash facility and over 673 million people still use open defecation practiceFootnote 6,6
"‘Summary Progress Update 2021 on SDG6: water and sanitation for all’ states that world is in line to eliminate open defecation practice by 2028 but to achieve universal access to safely managed sanitation, a fourfold increase is needed in the current progress rate4",6
"In addition, lack of proper sanitation and clean water for girls reaching puberty prevents them from going to schools resulting in gender inequality7",6
"Safely managed water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services are important in order to prevent and protect the population from outbreak of infectious diseases",3
"WHO (2022) report on ‘drinking water’ suggests that contaminated water and poor hygiene can serve as breeding grounds for water-borne diseases such as cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid and polio and are estimated to cause 485,000 deaths each yearFootnote 8",3
"United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) estimates that 27 million people are at risk of facing famine due to lack of safe water access, posing an additional threat in severely malnourished countries like northeast Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and YemenFootnote 9",2
"In the same context, a report published by ‘The Lancet Microbe’ states that rising pace of global warming and increased rate of precipitation also cause outbreak of several infectious diseases ranging from vector-borne diseases, to enteric infections and parasitic diseasesFootnote 10",3
Early preparedness and detection should be the primary focus of the authorities in order to achieve adequate sanitation and hygiene for all,6
Ambient water quality is essential for humans as well as health of ecosystem and has become a global challenge in both developing and developed countries,6
"The main sources of water pollution include wastewater from households, commercial sectors and industries as well as run off from urban and agricultural land",6
"On the other hand, progress report of water quality by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Global Environment Monitoring System for Freshwater (GEMS/Water) (2021) shows that in all the regions of the world including low, medium and high income countries, 45,966 out of 76,151 assessed water bodies (i.e",6
60%) were categorised under good ambient water quality in 2020,6
"But routine data collection for ambient water quality is insufficient, which means water quality for about 3 billion people is still unknown and can pose a risk to the human health",6
"Similarly, data collected from developing countries on water quality lacked details with fewer measurements of quality assessment lowering its reliabilityFootnote 13",6
"Under such scenario, management of freshwater resources will not be sufficient and improving the use of harvested rainwater has become necessary to help coping with prolonged dry spells especially in arid and semi-arid areas of the world (Piemontese et al",6
"Similarly, wastewater recycling is an underestimated aspect, which can be reused as a sustainable source of energy, nutrients and useful by-products",12
"
                     Target 6.4 aims at increasing water-use efficiency across all sectors and ensuring sustainable withdrawals and supply of freshwater to address water scarcity and substantially reduce the number of people suffering from water scarcity by 2030",6
"‘Progress Report on Change in Water-use Efficiency’ by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and UN-Water (2021) suggests that globally, water-use efficiency has spiked from $17.4 per cubic metre in 2015 to $18.9 per cubic metre in 2018, showing an increase of 9%Footnote 15",6
"Report further explains that almost all economic sectors have shown growth in water-use efficiency since 2015, where the industrial sectors account for $32.2 per cubic metre, the services sector $112.2 per cubic metre and the agriculture sector $0.60 per cubic metre",6
"FAO and UN-Water (2021) report on ‘Progress on level of water stress’ estimates that worldwide, 18.4% of the total available renewable resources are being withdrawn for different economic activities and agriculture continues to be the most demanding sector of allFootnote 16",6
Rapid urbanization is also one of the main drivers of increasing water scarcity due to unplanned infrastructure,6
"World Resources Institute (WRI) has listed 17 countries (Qatar, Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Jordan, Libya, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, United Arab Emirates, San Marino, Bahrain, India, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Oman and Botswana), home to one-quarter of the global population, facing extremely high-water crisis",6
‘Summary Progress Update (2021) on SDG 6: water and sanitation for all’ shows that many countries in Northern Africa and Western Asia regions utilize 100% of their renewable water resource every year or sometimes even much more (1000%) and depend on non-renewable sources (e.g,6
"The collective values of water stress at global, regional and local levels hide the variability and differences that exist",6
"Hence, dividing the values by water source at regional, national and sub-national levels will be a critical parameter for locating water stress and in determining mitigation strategies15, 16",6
United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has reported that nationwide household leaks can waste about 1 trillion gallons of water per yearFootnote 21,15
Target 6.5 focuses on implementation of integrated water resource management (IWRM) at all levels including through trans-boundary cooperation,6
"According to the ‘Progress Report on Trans-boundaries Water Cooperation’ by United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (2021), globally, 58% of trans-boundary water area has an operational arrangement for water cooperation",6
"Freshwater ecosystem help in regulation of groundwater recharging, absorption or decomposition of pollutants, carbon sequestration and protection of coastal and low lying areas from extreme weather related events (Vári et al",13
These ecosystems also help in combating and strengthening resilience against climate change,13
Anthropogenic activities have threatened water-related ecosystem causing noticeable changes in hydrological course,6
"Report also recorded the status of 2300 large lakes across the world (in 2019), out of which nearly a quarter showed extreme turbidity indicating water pollution",6
"The main drivers for the loss of these habitats are population growth, changes in land use and land cover and climate change, which in turn results in increased risk of floods particularly in heavily populated coastal areas (Menéndez et al",13
The impact of climate change can also be witnessed on Indus-Ganga-Brahmaputra basins due to global warming in Himalaya-Karakoram Mountains,13
"This can pose threats to the livelihoods of more than 700 million people living in the basins who rely on its water for drinking, food, agriculture forestry, fisheries and raising livestockFootnote 26",15
"Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority stated that the devastating floods have affected lives of more than 33 million people, damaged more than 1 million houses and killed more than 1000 people",11
"Such extreme weather events are increasing throughout the globe, affecting water security and human life",13
With rising global temperature and climate change the water cycle is going to be affected more and more throughout the globe,13
"Hence, climate action is important to achieve target 6.6",13
"
                     Target 6B calls for support and to strengthen the participation of local communities in improving water and sanitation management",6
"According to the Summary Progress Report (2021) on SDG 6, out of 109 countries assessed, two-third reported participation procedures that are defined in laws or policies under water and sanitation sub-sectors, however, very few of these countries have reported laws or policies that particularly mention women’s participation for rural sanitation or water resources management4",6
"For rural drinking water and sanitation and water resources management, most of these countries reported medium levels of user and community participation including reduced financial and human resource back-up4",6
"
                     With a limited supply of funds, fast urbanization and growing population (especially in rural areas), it has become a challenge to achieve the targets of SDG 6, and people in many regions still lack basic water and sanitation facilities",6
"Inadequate supply of water and sanitation is not only an issue of service provision but is inherently linked to many other factors like climate change, water resource management and water scarcity",6
"To reach the targets outlined under SDG 6 a more integrated approach in managing and allocating water resources along with cost benefit approach, escalation of existing technologies, partnerships, and optimization of finances must be taken into account",6
SDG 6 Global Acceleration Framework launched in 2020 coordinated by UN-Water has been set up with aim to deliver faster results,6
It also defines that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) play a crucial role as accelerator for sustainable management of water and sanitation,6
"Some key areas where ICT can make progress include mapping of water resources, weather forecasts, early warning systems for water crisis, improving networks of water distribution, and monitoring irrigation landscaping29",6
"They can act like community-based institutions that are closer to the ground and can respond more swiftly, hence government and researchers must be allies to them recognizing their fundamental right to clean water and sanitationFootnote 30",6
Conservation and sustainable availability of clean water is paramount for the survival of mankind on the blue planet,6
SDG 6 is closely linked with all the other goals and achieving the targets of this goal will go a long way in realizing the targets of all the SDGs,6
"However, there are many challenges and roadblocks which need to be overcome to accomplish SDG 6 and realize the right to clean and accessible water to every organism on earth",6
"Energy crisis, especially the poor access and affordability, demand–supply mismatches, energy inequality, and high dependence on non-renewable energy sources, are the challenges before the attainment of clean energy goals for sustainable development",7
This review is a synthesis of 175 scientific papers on SDG 7,7
"Policy reforms and better funding; technology innovation and inclusion; and economic growth, rapid promotion of renewable, and alternative fuels are the recommendations for the achievement of the energy goals",8
"Future research on energy-related goals should focus on energy justice, policy reforms, energy poverty, poor affordability, off-grid transmissions, renewable energy sources, alternative fuels, reforms in the energy supply chain, and international cooperation for better implementation of projects and for attracting foreign capital and private funds",7
"Global energy mix matters, for the achievement of sustainable energy targets",7
"The global energy mix is dominated by fossil fuels, 84.3% of the global energy production is from fossil fuels",7
"The share of renewable energy is 15.7%, 11.4% from renewables, and 4.3% from nuclear sources",7
The initiatives for change in the global energy mix are progressing but at a slow pace,7
The share of renewable energy in the global energy mix was 6.21% in 1965 and more than doubled in 25 years,7
The clean energy financing amounts to 300 billion dollars,7
"Even in 2021, the world is not free from energy crunch, especially the availability and affordability of clean and sustainable energy",7
"One-third of the global population (2.6 billion people) depends on unsustainable cooking systems; 0.76 billion people are outside the access to electricity and poor penetration of renewable energy for electricity (25.4%), heat (9.2%), and transportation (3.4%) (United Nations 2019) (United Nations 2021)",7
"This high dependence on unsustainable energy sources is a severe threat to the goals of sustainable, clean, and affordable energy resources",7
"However, the modern world focuses on renewable energy sources for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, providing clean and affordable energy, mitigating global warming, and controlling climatic issues (Brazovskaia et al",7
Sustainable energy from clean sources and at affordable rates is the primary target of Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG 7),7
"The targets of SDG 7 focus on access, affordability, and reliability of energy sources",7
It also targets enhancing the share of renewable energy; doubling the energy efficiency rate; developing international co-operations; promoting investments in clean energy; and improving the infrastructure and technological up-gradation for sustainable energy services,7
"The performance of individual countries on attaining clean and affordable energy is tracked through the indicators of access to electricity; access to clean fuels and technology for cooking; share of renewable energy in total energy consumption; measures for improving energy efficiency; international financial flows into research and technology for clean energy; and carbon dioxide emission from fuel combustion for electricity and heating per total electricity output (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2019; Sachs et al",7
"Eleven African countries are with below 40% achievement of electricity access, twenty-six countries with 40–80% category, and ten countries in above 80% category",7
"Thirty-eight countries are in the below 40% achievement of access to clean fuels and technology of cooking, seven countries in the 40–80% category, and six countries in the above 80% bracket",7
"Eighteen countries are with renewable energy share less than 40%, twenty-one countries in the 40–80% category, and fifteen countries in the above 80% category (Chirambo 2018; Adom et al",7
All the European countries were providing electricity access to their whole population,7
The performance of these countries in respect of access to clean fuels and technology of cooking is also satisfactory,7
All the countries of the region have achieved in providing access to clean fuels and technology of cooking for 60% of the population,7
Thirty-nine countries are with the below 40% renewable energy share category and six countries with above 40% share renewable energy share (Annibaldi et al,7
All Asian countries have achieved in providing access to electricity for at least 60% of the population,7
"Seven Asian countries are in below 40% achievement of providing access to clean fuels and technology of cooking to its people, ten countries in the 40–80% category, and twenty-two countries in above 80% category",7
"Thirty-five Asian countries were lagging with a renewable energy share of less than 40%, six countries in the 40–80% category, and one country in above 80% category (Sachs et al",7
"In the Oceania region, nine countries are in above 80% electricity access category and three on below 80% achievement",7
"Four countries are providing access to clean fuels and technology of cooking for more than 80% of the population, five countries in the 40–80% bracket, and seven countries have less than 40% achievement",7
Four countries are with renewable energy share above 40% share and ten countries on below 40% category (Karmaker et al,7
"In the Caribbean region, all countries have above 80% electricity access except Haiti (45.3%)",7
"Similarly, the access to clean fuels and technology of cooking was satisfactory for the region except for the cases of Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, where the achievement is below 60%",7
"The share of renewable energy of thirteen countries is in below 40% bracket and five countries were in the 40–80% bracket (United Nations 2019, 2021; Sachs et al",7
"In North America, the electricity access is 100% for all countries and access to clean fuels and technology of cooking is in minimum 85%",7
"However, the share of renewable energy in the gross energy basket of North American countries is less than 17%",7
"In South America, the access to electricity is above 90% in all countries except Guinea",7
"Similarly, the access to clean fuels and technology of cooking is above 64% for all countries except Guinea",7
"The share of renewable energy of eight countries is in 40–80% and four countries are below 40% category (United Nations 2019, 2021; Sachs et al",7
All ten economies except India (95.2% achievement) have achieved the target of providing access to electricity (100% achievement),7
"In respect of green energy share, Brazil, India, Italy, and Canada are performing relatively better but long way to achieve the targets",7
Performance of top ten economies on the basis of selected indicators of SDG 7,7
"2021) Lower penetration of renewable energy resources among developed countries and the lack of access to electricity, clean fuels, and technology of cooking in African regions should be focused on for the attainment of goals of clean energy (Baptista and Plananska 2017)",7
This argues the urgency in research related to energy-related sustainable goals and the need for reforming strategies for enhancing the reach and affordability of clean energy (Elavarasan et al. 2021),7
"Further research can also be for promoting clean energy in both developed and developing countries, challenges, and potential solutions",7
"Investments, technology, and strong policies can be basic pillars for the attainment of clean energy goals by 2030",7
The existing literature review includes several reviews on clean and affordable energy and SDG 7,7
The application of modern cooking services plays an important role in energy efficiency and controlling greenhouse gases,7
The transitions to clean energy and human well-being in the middle east region were systematically reviewed (Liao et al,7
"The existing literature also involves bibliometric analysis and systematic review on the usage of biofuels for sustainable development, focusing on perspectives, challenges, and recent developments (Nazari et al. 2021); bibliometric analysis of renewable energy policies provides insights on the need for focusing on renewable energy exploitation (Annibaldi et al",7
"The global level analysis of selected indicators on SDG 7, review of initiatives and challenges, and scope for future research were studied in this paper to get a holistic view of the achievements and future scope for research",7
"This review had six chapters, an introduction on SDG 7 and the review at the global level, followed by review methodology, the major themes, and sub-themes",7
"This paper is designed to develop a thematic, methodological, and policy agenda for future research after evaluating the global level initiatives and achievements on universal clean energy access, access for clean and safe cooking fuels, and adoption of renewable energy",7
This paper also aims to consolidate the literature on clean and affordable energy goals from the database of Web of Science,7
"In addition to the focus on the regional achievement status on targets of SDG7, this paper looks into the challenges faced on providing access for clean energy, clean, and safe cooking fuels and improving the share of clean energy",7
"This paper on SDG 7 had taken resources from Web of Science, a professional platform of about 79 million records, covering 256 disciplines",7
The keywords “Sustainable Development Goal 7” and “SDG 7” were used on 11/07/2021 and drawn 175 papers were obtained for the review,7
This is because the indicator-based search would generate papers related to indicators and have no connection with SDG 7,7
Paper identification and screening process Detailed bibliometric analysis on research related to SDG 7 was conducted in this paper,7
"The annual scientific production related to research on SDG 7 is progressing positively, with an annual growth rate of 65.76%",7
"The top journals with articles related to SDG 7 were “Energies”, “Sustainability”, “Journal of Cleaner Production”, “Energy Policy”, “Energy Research and Social Science”, and “Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews”",7
"“Energies” dealt with energy access, mini-grid and off-grid projects, funding and delivery models, renewable energy projects, barriers, challenges, technological aspects, and achievements on energy goals",7
"“Sustainability” published topics on energy usage, implementation strategies, optimization of energy usage, renewable energy innovations, and synergies",7
"The publications on “Journal of Cleaner Production” dealt with topics on energy efficiency, sustainable energy planning, renewable energy, controlling carbon emissions, waste to energy technologies, and technological innovations in the energy sector",7
"“Energy Policy” dealt with topics on energy resources and economic impacts, carbon emissions, energy governance, renewable energy, challenges, and energy initiatives",7
"The SDG 7–related publications in “Energy Research and Social Science” were on topics related to electricity access, energy justice, novel energy projects, and energy poverty",7
"The SDG 7–related publications on “Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews” were on the topics of household energy, clean energy transitions, renewable energy, and energy financing",7
Avik Sinha published five articles related to SDG 7 and got 99 citations,7
"Author impact analysis Shonali Pachauri, of International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria, published four articles on SDG 7 and got 9 citations",7
The publications were related to alternative frameworks for SDG 7 (Pelz et al,7
"2021); energy poverty and energy access (Poblete-Cazenave and Pachauri 2021); energy access, policies, and renewable energy (Dagnachew et al. 2020); and inequalities in electrification in Sub-Saharan Africa (Falchetta et al. 2020)",7
Summary of leading countries researching on SDG 7 Country collaboration The keyword analysis is shown in Fig. 7,7
"The major themes for research related to SDG 7 were the articles related to energy access, affordability, the share of renewable energy resources, and energy efficiency",7
"Key themes, sub-themes, and associated keywords Energy access to all is one of the primary targets of SDG 7 and still the target seems to be a challenge, especially in the case of Sub-Saharan Africa (Herrero et al. 2020)",7
International Energy Agency had the opinion that electricity access to the global population can only be possible through mini-grids and solar home solutions (Kebir and Philipp 2016),7
The importance of mini-grids for universal electrification is unquestionable,7
Private players can fund the electrification projects in Africa and bring a significant portion of the population to electricity access,7
"Social enterprises can play a significant role in promoting energy access in countries like Malawi, where energy access is less than 4% (Eales et al. 2020)",7
The need for policy reforms in respect of access to clean cooking fuels was raised and found ineffectiveness of existing policies in catering the access to clean and safe cooking fuels (Batchelor et al. 2019),7
The initiatives like funding and delivery models for modern energy cooking services can improve access to energy-efficient cooking (Bisaga and To 2021),7
Information Communication Technology (ICT) can be another crucial element for ensuring energy access to people (Bailey et al,7
Modern energy access can reduce the energy demands and the major challenges in this regard are funding challenges and poor household income levels (Dioha and Emodi 2019),7
"The challenges associated with financing, effective regulations, low-level local participation, and limited level usage of renewable energy are to be considered for achieving the targets of SDG 7",7
"Lack of political commitment and political stability, small market size, cost-revenue gap, technical barriers, lack of regulatory controls, educational gaps, and lack of initial investments are the major barriers to energy access initiatives (Numata et al",7
Energy access in rural areas can be promoted by better participation of local communities (Joshi et al,7
"International support and cooperation play a vital role in improving energy access, funding, technical support, and market support (Quitzow et al",7
"2019); similarly, better communication between stakeholders can play a vital role in improving energy access (Sanderink and Nasiritousi 2020; Robinson, Clifford and Jewitt, 2021)",7
Fuelwood is a costly energy resource and access to energy resources can be improved by the usage of alternative fuels,7
The alternative fuels ensuring green energy are biofuels (Adewuyi 2020); perennial grass (Ajieh et al. 2021); and giant reeds for sustainable energy (Bonfante et al,7
"The technological innovations in solar photovoltaic rural electrification can also bring remarkable changes in energy access (Fernandez-Fuentes, Eras-Almeida and Egido-Aguilera, 2021)",7
"Energy access can be improved rapidly and effectively by the combined efforts of using new and detailed data sources (settlement patterns, etc.) with scalable planning frameworks (Fobi et al",7
Policy revisits on the quality of solar energy are essential to improve the energy access of low-income groups (Kebir and Philipp 2016; Groenewoudt et al,7
The promotion of clean and renewable energy should also focus on the affordability of energy resources,7
Cooking is one of the major points of energy consumption and the usage of energy-efficient cooking systems can improve affordability (Dioha and Kumar 2020),7
Funding and delivery models for modern energy cooking services can be a strong initiative towards the affordability of clean energy (Ulsrud 2020; Bisaga and To 2021),7
Heavy investments in technology for ensuring affordable energy thereby improve the quality of life (Nathwani and Kammen 2019),7
"Similarly, the affordability of a clean cooking system can be enhanced by using more energy-efficient systems (Dagnachew et al",7
The global energy mix is highly dependent upon non-renewable energy resources,7
The renewable energy diffusion structure of the world is highly heterogeneous and more focused initiatives are required for better diffusion of renewable energy sources (Bigerna et al,7
The targets of SDG 7 aim to increase the share of renewable resources in the world,7
"Several leading economies have identified the need for enhancing the share of renewable energy in their energy basket, even in the Arctic region (Brazovskaia, Gutman, and Zaytsev, 2021)",7
"However, the usage of renewable energy sources and off-grid connections can bring a lot of environmental and social merits like reduced carbon emission, cost, and fuel-saving (Chand et al",7
"There are several strategies for enhancing renewable energy resources, innovative regulations, and policies (Srikanth 2018; Shahzad et al",7
"The usage of biofuels (bioethanol and biodiesel) can be an ideal strategy in this regard; however, the major constraints for this can be the issues on land tenure, cost of production, waste management strategies, and government policies",12
High-level awareness and suitable policy reforms can be good measures for promoting biofuels in the energy mix (Adewuyi 2020),7
The other challenges in improving green energy promotion can be the issues associated with the energy supply chain and the delayed integration of renewable energy systems with the existing energy systems,7
"The usage of electronic vehicles, especially the case of Dundee’s push for electronic vehicles, can be a good example for the promotion of renewable energy resources (Asekomeh et al",7
Several scientific studies had found that higher energy efficiency can improve the industrial performance like profitability of the banking industry (Adom et al,7
"Similarly, energy efficiency is very important for the construction industry, and the need for energy efficiency management in heritage buildings was studied (Annibaldi et al",7
The improvement in policies should focus on energy efficiency in the usage of electricity and cooking fuels and avoiding overcapitalization and energy wastages (Dagnachew et al,7
"Country-wise study on energy goals in India, China, Iceland, and Sweden had recommended energy efficiency improvement (by using energy-efficient fuels and relying on hybrid renewable energy Systems) as the key for achieving the targets of SDG 7 (Madurai Elavarasan et al",7
The literature on energy-related goals for sustainable development is mainly centred on access and renewable energy,7
The current literature has identified several challenges and barriers in providing access to electricity and cooking fuel and enhancing the share of renewable energy,7
Future research agenda Future research related to clean energy goals can be on regional solutions for challenges and barriers in universal energy access and the development of renewable resources,7
"Future research can be on technological innovations for improving energy affordability, energy justice, and energy efficiency",7
This research domain can be enriched by energy efficiency tests in diversified energy-consuming sectors and industries of the economy,7
Research can also on developing technology for reducing the high initial cost of renewable energy,7
The policy-based solution should be identified for issues of the energy supply chain and delayed integration of renewable energy systems,7
"The policy reform–related research can be on the specification of renewable energy equipment, metering, and technology choice",7
"The research can be for finding out the reasons for using conventional non-renewable sources, despite energy access and affordability",7
Access to clean and affordable energy is essential for the sustainable development of the economy,7
"Six African countries are facing a severe challenge, where more than 80% of the population were outside the access to electricity",7
"Similarly, 25 African countries are with less than 10% access to clean fuels and technology of cooking",7
"However, the majority of the African countries are leaders in respect of renewable energy share",7
"Energy access and affordability are not a serious issue in Europe and North America, but the share of renewable energy in the European and North American energy baskets is still below 20%",7
"The majority of Asian countries were successful in providing electricity connection, and ten Asian countries are lagging in adopting clean cooking technologies",7
The performance of Asian countries in promoting renewable energy is not robust except Bhutan,7
"The Oceanic region is leading in energy access and affordability, but the share of renewable energy usage of the countries in the Oceanic region is below 50% of the energy basket",7
"The Caribbean region is providing electricity access above 88% of the population and satisfactory performance related to access of clean fuel and cooking technology adoption, except Haiti",7
The share of renewable energy sources of the region had a mixed performance structure,7
The South American region is having mixed performance related to SDG 7 performance,7
The region is ahead in respect of providing electricity access but lags in the usage of clean fuels and cooking technology and adoption of renewable energy (detailed analysis in the supplementary files) (Sachs et al,7
"This paper is a consolidation of the literature related to energy access, affordability energy efficiency, and promotion of renewable energy",7
"This research on the status of energy-related goals proposes that the challenges of energy affordability and energy efficiency and the existence of energy poverty and energy injustice, together with poor penetration of renewable energy, are the root cause of challenges for attaining energy-related goals",7
"Policy reforms, international cooperation, local support, economic growth, and income generation are recommended measures for meeting the energy challenges",8
"The lagging performance on energy access, affordability, and energy efficiency is due to poor local support (Joshi et al",7
Unaffordability of clean energy is a serious challenge towards the attainment of SDG 7 (Batchelor et al,7
The affordability of energy can be improved by using modern energy cooking services (Dagnachew et al,7
"Similarly, there is an urgent need for promoting the share of renewable energy resources, which can reduce carbon emission, cost, and fuel-saving (Chand et al",7
The recommended measures for enhancing the share of renewable energy are the adoption of innovative regulations and policies (Srikanth 2018; Shahzad et al,7
There are several instances of energy leadership promoting sustainable energy,7
The role taken by Energy Company X in South Africa is an epitome of energy leadership for sustainable and clean energy for a region,7
"Responsible leadership can also be a solution for improving energy access in Africa, the role played by the UNDP Botswana Biogas Project for improved attainment of energy targets in Botswana (Runyowa and Fourie 2021)",7
"The findings of this paper can be used for developing policy reforms for securing funding, local participation, adoption of technology, and promotion of renewable energy",7
The need for energy efficiency and the promotion of renewable energy had been identified as the key to the attainment of energy-related goals for sustainable development,7
Economic growth and income generation are the key to improving access and affordability of the underserved population in the African region and other regions with energy crunch,8
"This review put forwards several research propositions, policy propositions, and research themes for the attainment of targets of SDG 7 by 2030",7
"Further research is recommended for improving energy efficiency, promotion of alternative fuels, innovative solutions for energy generation, distribution, storage, and implementations",7
"Future researchers can focus on the African continent, where the energy inequality, unaffordability, and poor energy access are severe",7
Scientific and techno-economic studies can be conducted to provide cheap and clean energy to the people,7
"The prominent funding agencies, sponsoring for research on energy goals, were the European Commission, UK Research Innovation (UKRI), and Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)",2
"The research was on alternative frameworks for achieving SDG 7 targets, SDGs, renewable energy in international business, bio-economy-related SDGs, energy vulnerability of small islands, and energy through giant reeds",7
"The themes of funding were on cooking energy policies, energy governance, energy access, decentralized renewable energy projects, and solar home systems for refugee camps",7
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) had funded four research projects and obtained 23 citations,2
"The topic of funded projects was related to load profiles of mini-grids, modern cooking energy services, and cooking energy policies",7
"It was found that stakeholders with higher centrality levels are directly related to SDG 11, encouraging Sustainable Cities; and the public sector is the one who dominates the decision-making process in the local management",11
"These agendas are part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the SDGs, based on a multilateral agreement created at the 1992 UN Summit in Rio de Janeiro that includes the Climate Change and Poverty agreements",13
"Also, there are differences, firstly about SDG 16, related with “strengthen the means of implementation and revive the global partnership for sustainable development”; in this goal, “good governance” is promoted, which is focused on promoting the rule of law, equal access to justice, transparency and accountability, participation in decision-making, and the fight against corruption and illicit financial and arms flows",16
"For municipal services, the issues most tackled are those corresponding to the “public security” subcategory, in particular regarding the attention service; they also attend to specific problems of “streets,” among the most attended are those in the downtown area, as well as “cleaning” and garbage collection (Solid Waste)",12
"Second, a kp-set that is connected to the maximum number of other nodes, with the greatest possible network coverage through their links",9
"The most promoted SDG is 11, which specifies “Sustainable Cities and Communities,” with 33.52%, which corresponds to 659 public actions",11
"The targets specified for SDG 11 are access for all people to housing, essential services, safe and affordable transportation systems, increased inclusive urbanization, participatory planning and management, protection of cultural and natural heritage, reduction of economic losses caused by natural disasters, reduction of environmental impact (putting attention to air quality and waste management), universal access to green areas and safe public spaces, positive links in urban areas, inclusive cities, resilience, and sustainable buildings",11
"Therefore, this objective is directly related to the municipal development agenda, in terms of infrastructure and urban development, as well as the municipal services agenda, which is responsible for providing essential services to the entire population and the nonmunicipal services agenda, in terms of environment and culture",11
"For this reason, SDG 11 is the most approached topic, since what drives the municipality to sustainable practices are projects, studies, and construction of urban and social infrastructure",11
"SDG 16 is related to reduced corruption, social justice, and violence; for this reason, it is related to the subcategory of public security, for which the topics covered in the minutes place particular emphasis on service from the same to the local and tourist community",16
"SDG 17 indicates “strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development,” for this the consultative council addresses issues related to the management of resources and policies with the state and federal government",17
"SDG 8 refers to the subcategories of tourism, economic development, and employment because its goals specify raising economic productivity to create jobs and promote the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)",8
"SDGs 11, 16, and 8 were promoted the most by the private and public sector, mostly because they are related to economic development",8
"In this case, the public and private sectors promote the most actions related with SDG 11",11
"That is why it is relevant to emphasize that, to achieve co-management of the tourist destination, a greater capacity for organization, preparation, and analysis of the issues to be addressed is needed in the meetings, where a constant search for a democratic environment is maintained; based on consensus, every stakeholder has an equal opportunity to intervene",10
"UN aims by reaching goals to end poverty, protect the environment and habitat, and provide prosperity by the end of 2030",1
This is also a global call to foster support for developing environmental policies regarding the climate change challenges and quelling economic concerns by adapting green economic activities,13
"Kelman (2017) explained the interlinkage between climate change, disaster risk reduction, and sustainable development by introducing keypoints from the analysis of the Paris Agreement, ending artificial separations of international agreements",13
Further emphasis on hydro-meteorological disasters was pointed out as the climate change impacts increase (Kumar et al,13
"(2019) examined the influences of SDGs on water, energy, solid waste, transport, digital communication, and all infrastructures to guide the government and related sectors",12
"Damages to infrastructures were found to have more influences on SDG3, SDG6, SDG7 (affordable and clean energy), SDG9 (industry), and SDG11",7
Uzungöl basin is surrounded by high mountains with forest cover and plateaus and is an attraction center for holiday lovers yearlong in terms of its wonderful and inspiring nature and landscape,15
"Readily available releasing zone polygons generated by Geographic Information System (GIS) facilities and provided from General Directorate of Combating Desertification and Erosion (CEM) were obtained by experiences from past snow avalanches, satellite images, aerial photos, and comprehensive field surveys, etc",15
A sustainable transport network aimed by SDG 11 is required for arriving destinations safely,11
Land-use control should be enabled to manage forests and combat deforestation,15
"It is aimed by SDG 15 to protect mountains, and biodiversity and not to cause land degradation",15
"Thus, excessive logging activities can induce deforestation which is a triggering factor for snow avalanches",15
"In this case, SDG 8 and 15 are not conflicting goals since they point out to develop by protecting the environment",8
"Climate change, ongoing degradation of environmental sustainability and social systems have become a significant global business issue, as they can affect value creation (Husted et al",13
"This is the agreed blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all, by tackling global challenges, specifically, those related to poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, and peace and justice (Fig. 1)",15
"From this perspective, economic growth is not the only goal which an organization should focus on to achieve the SDGs; strategic directions need to incorporate and consider multiple perspectives of stakeholders including environmental and social impacts of the organization (Xiao et al",8
"It is also important to study how the MIG can play a role in achieving the SDGs, including SDG9 (build resilient infrastructure promote sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation through its business), SDG12 (ensure sustainable consumption and production) and SDG13 (take actions to combat climate change and its impacts)",9
"Executives of MIG companies recognized the criticality of climate change, effects on their business, and their actions, both in the short term and long term",13
"They acknowledged the problems posed by climate change (SDG13 climate action to combat this) and argued that, it is important to manage and mitigate risks associated with climate change as the company has operations worldwide and is one of the largest carbon dioxide emitters in Australia; represents a significant threat to business continuity and company’s ability to deliver and meet customers’ expectations; possesses some significant physical risks to the business, which have created serious financial impacts on the business; provides an opportunity to maintain the company’s competitive advantage; and is an opportunity for the business to rethink about the business and how it can integrate sustainability into the business",13
"Innovation was supported by continuous experimenting, research and development to improve product development that lowers negative impacts",9
"It is these processes which utilize resources and can create negative environmental impacts such as large quantities of waste generation, pollution of water and air, and negative impacts on biodiversity and eco-systems which companies in the materials sector, for example, mining or chemicals production companies need to consider from the perspective of innovation for improvement purposes and sustainable development",6
"This can provide organizations with a first mover competitive edge, if they are making a shift from the linear economy to the circular economy (Lacy and Rutqvist 2015)",12
"This can better inform sustainable procurement, product development and innovation, green marketing and reporting, and overall sustainability strategy development",12
"There should be more efficient and careful use of productive areas for agriculture, fishing and forestry; and infrastructure development should be carefully planned for this purpose",15
"Each stage from ecosystem manipulations to extraction of raw materials, to production, transport, consumption and waste management phases need to be considered to understand environmental impacts, from upstream to downstream",12
"Research has shown that organizations which conduct LCA of the products/services can potentially increase the value and efficiency of their production and business activities, such as, raw materials utilization, alternative energy consumption (Bourtsalas et al",7
"2018), better waste management (Gong et al",12
"For example, recycling and utilizing waste—used lubricating oil or hydraulic fluid for company’s vital machinery and equipment",12
"For example, blockchain provides accountability and transparency to enhance visibility along complex supply chains to cut food waste (Ahmed and ten Broek 2017) and improve the green electricity market (Keshav 2018)",12
"Another example is Insolar (INS 2017) which is a blockchain-based platform that allows grocery manufacturers to join and sell their products and customers can buy and save up to 30%, while eliminating as much as 130 million pounds of food waste annually",12
"To a greater extent, this can help in achieving multiple targets under SDG12, including, SGD12.2 sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources; SDG12.4 environmentally sound management of chemicals and all waste throughout their life cycle; SDG12.5 reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse; and SDG12.8 provide people with relevant information and awareness for sustainable development and lifestyles",12
"One of the prominent companies in the materials sector, BHP (a major mining company) now requires (as world first) its customers to cut GHGs; is targeting shippers, steel mills and power plants (Toscano 2019)",7
"However, the key weakness associated with the set up at present is the amount of energy consumption per transaction on the Ethereum network (ibid.) Ethereum is planning to transition to a new mining model—proof-of-stake (PoS),which reduce energy requirements by 90% (Moore 2019)",7
Ford is piloting the first blockchain project tracing cobalt supplies from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which produces over 60% of world supply and has major human rights violations issues (Uzsoki and Corneau 2019),16
"Future research may also investigate the barriers of implementing such a blockchain-based LCA, particularly to explore and address the limitation raised in this paper—on implementation of effective governance mechanisms and structure",16
"Water is a critical natural resource which has been severely impacted through groundwater depletion, surface water contamination and ocean acidification resulting in repercussions on human health and biodiversity losses",14
"Likewise, India, a mega biodiversity nation has been critically affected by degradation and drawdown of water resources with far-reaching consequences on environmental vitality and socio-economic development",8
"In order to prevent extreme water scarcity in the near future, the country needs to promote sustainable utilisation of water resources by adhering to the targets of Goal 6 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs)",6
"The present work, therefore, has focussed on the development of a Water Sustainability Index (WSI) for India that would help attaining the targets of SDG 6",6
A total of 12 indicators categorized under biophysical and social development dimensions and synonymous with the targets of SDG 6 have been used for the formulation of WSI and thereby understanding how much water resources are used annually in a sustainable manner,6
The study also highlights the interrelationship between the diverse social development and health indicators (SDG 3) of Indian community,3
It also calls for cautious course correction and restructuring of current Indian policy and operational instruments for effective green governance and sustainable water management,6
"Unprecedented loss of biodiversity, drastic depletion of natural resources combined with climate change-related alterations in temperature and precipitation has catapulted safeguarding the sustainability of social-ecological systems as the top priority of nations world-wide (Ostrom 2009; Griggs et al",13
It has been enshrined in SDG 6 that water is a critical natural resource for the health and well-being of the people and the planet,6
"The PB framework recognizes two earth system processes (freshwater use and ocean acidification) and defines control variables at the global and river basin scale for the former, while the latter is defined in terms of carbonate ion concentration (Rockstorm et al",14
"Based on the definition for freshwater use in the PB framework, India has considerably overshot its national boundary (Priyadarshini and Abhilash 2020) clearly indicating that despite having substantial water resources the country is experiencing water scarcity, affecting more or less 600 million people each year (NITI Aayog 2018)",6
"Water security in India (both surface and groundwater) is pivotal in ensuring robust public health systems, sustained agricultural production and provision of ecosystem services (Yuan and Lo 2020; Ram and Irfan 2021)",3
"Equally important to the overarching goal of sustainable water resource management is the role of effective administrative measures, regulatory frameworks and policy interventions for addressing various drivers, pressures and other stress factors related to the social, economic and environmental aspects of water resource management (Groom and Koundouri 2011; Voulvoulis et al",6
"Though the concept of sustainable management of water resources was infused within modern science, there was no quantitative measurement of it",6
"Therefore, a new water sustainability index for India is needed to be developed based on the natural and socio-economic characteristics, for facilitating water resource management and water security",6
"Additionally the mentioned sustainability indices are only based on demand–supply relationship of water bodies and the socio-economic characteristics of a particular region, factors contributing to water stress and a critical entity like wastewater production of a particular country along with other socio-economic aspects were severely neglected",6
"Hence, the sustainability indices lack the accountability of wastewater production and treatment, making them incompatible as tools to combat with water stress in a country like India, where cities are getting developed with the increase of population",6
"As per Central Public Health & Environmental Engineering Organisation (CPHEEO), it is estimated that about 70–80% of total water supplied for domestic purposes, gets generated as wastewater (Kaur et al",3
India being a developing country is already facing water stress due to its increasing population with high rate of wastewater production,6
"Therefore, taking wastewater production and its treatment into account, the WSI will provide viable data to overcome water stress to some extent and meet the water demand of India’s growing population",6
"The issues related to water resources are very complex, although several researchers have endeavoured to integrate sustainability with water resource management in the form of various indices",6
"Therefore, to incorporate sustainability into water resource management in India, a water sustainability index is urgently warranted",6
"In this context, our work is probably the first of its kind to formulate a water sustainability index for India with a worthy inclusion of targets and ethics of sustainable development goals mainly the SDG 6",6
"With increasing population of India, the country will face more water demand in future, therefore it is the perfect time to implement the water sustainability index to track the usage of water resources and motivate common people for efficient use and recycling",12
WSI has the potential to grow awareness among different sectors and common people to attain the targets of SDG 6 in near future,6
"Therefore, the present work focuses on contributing to the realm of water sustainability by setting the following objectives: (i) downscaling the SDG 6 indicators on a national scale; (ii) formulating a Water Sustainability Index (WSI) to track down the performance of the major socio-economic and environmental indicators of India; (iii) using water sustainability index as a yardstick and guiding force to manage such a critical natural resource for future consumption; and (iv) elucidating the interrelationship between water indicators, social development indicators and relevant health parameters of India to assess the importance of better provisioning of sanitation and drinking water services",6
"Besides, the present policy and institutional setup of the country with respect to water governance was also gauged to assess the role effectual administrative interventions can play in strengthening accessibility related to water and hygiene as well as in conservation of freshwater resources",6
"The current study consists of 12 indicators subdivided into two groups, for the analysis of changes in the dynamics of biophysical and social development dimensions of India based on SDG 6",6
"Data for the present study were primarily retrieved from World Bank (2020, 2021) and FAO (2020, 2021) entitled as ‘World development indicators for India’ in relation to SDG 6",6
"Thus daily consumption of water, the use efficiency, wastewater production, water recycling etc",12
"In this study, the biophysical indicators are represented by four main categories namely, (1) available freshwater resources (billion cubic meter); (2) freshwater withdrawal (billion cubic meter); (3) water stress (%); (4) Municipal wastewater (billion cubic meter)",6
"The indicators also consider the aspects of water pollution, water scarcity, water footprint and other water-related ecosystem services though there are no designated indicators for each of these aspects",6
Poverty manipulates the accessibility of safe drinking water as well practice of sanitation door to door,6
India experiencing water scarcity (World Bank 2021) amplified by poverty is highly dependent on social development indicators to attain sustainability,6
"Here the social development indicators are mainly represented by three indicators; (1) People practicing open defecation (% of total population), (2) people using at least basic drinking water services (% of total population), (3) people using at least basic sanitation services (% of total population) all of which are in coherence with the national targets for SDG 6 (GOI MOSPI 2018)",6
"The selected indicators therefore cover aspects related to sanitation, access to safe drinking water and other wastewater treatment services all of which are pivotal for provisioninga better quality of life (Priyadarshini and Abhilash 2020)",6
"There are several contributing units to the biophysical indicators such as evaporation, precipitation, water stress, treatment of municipal wastewater services, groundwater recharge etc",6
These performance criteria (Fig. 1) are used to evaluate water resource management as they have a greater impact on the data accountability of each indicator annually,6
Significance of major criteria and sub-criteria in formulating Water Sustainability Index (WSI) Freshwater withdrawal reliability is the probability of successful water withdrawal with respect to total freshwater available (Loucks 1997),6
The reliability is concerned towards the annual freshwater withdrawal in India (Table 3),6
"Therefore, the resilience in terms of wastewater treatment can defined as the amount of treated wastewater with respect to total wastewater produced",6
"In case of freshwater availability, the factors such as lack of precipitation, drought, water salinization and acidification, inadequate access of water from confined aquifer can lead to water stress",6
"India, being a water scarce country, faces a wide proportion of water stress especially during the summer season",6
"As a result, a greater part of the country undergoes water scarcity",6
"Therefore, the probability indicating the non-accessible water with respect to total water resource (Table 3) is defined as vulnerability in the form of water stress",6
The WSI represents essential performance parameters related to water resource management in a purposeful and comprehensive manner and has therefore been used at several instances by the scientific community (Loucks 1997; McMahon et al,6
The equation mentioned below represents the water sustainable index of efficient water use for India (adapted from Loucks 1997),6
Hence the level of desirability of WSI should be equal to “1” in order to sustain the water resources for future use as well as to minimize water stress fully,6
"Temporal trend of India’s water sustainability index (WSI) and its constituent water indicators over the period 1975–2017 The unsafe environmental conditions characterized by lack of safe sanitation, want of safe drinking water and open defecation practiced by people negatively impacts human health and well-being, and thereby compromising the environmental sustainability (Feris 2015; Andersson et al",6
"Improper sanitation and hygiene linked with contaminated drinking water poses burden on human health, as a result, disease like diarrhoea is the leading concern behind the mortality of children (Prüss-Ustün et al",3
Although many developing countries have started taking measures to reduce waterborne diseases with provision of safe water resources keeping public health as priority (Li and Qian 2018; Li and Wu 2019),3
"Therefore, to keep a harmony between good human health, safe sanitation and clean water sustainability, SDG 6 (targets 6.1 and 6.2) acts as a guidance with promotion of clean water and sanitation in developing countries like India",6
"In order to further comprehend the interrelationship between social development indicators associated with water, sanitation and the health aspects of Indian population, two indicators related to SDG 3 namely mortality rate, under age group 5 (per 100 live births) and mortality rate of neonatal (per 100 live births) were selected from the several indicators available since they presented consistent data",3
The basic sanitation and other social services in a developing country like India get highly affected by its high rate of poverty (Rani et al,1
"Also, the total water withdrawal had increased by ~ 70% between 1975 and 2010, as there was an increase in freshwater withdrawal by agricultural, industrial, municipal sectors during the same period (Table 1)",6
"Consequently, there was an increase in water stress level by 27.49% (% of total water availability) in between 1975 and 2010 (Table 1)",6
"Simultaneously, during 2010–2017, the maintenance of wastewater treatment to a percentage of 28.5, has restricted water stress level to a value of 66.49%, (World Bank 2021) (Table 1)",6
Although the level of water stress is found to be almost 2 times the water stress level of 1975,6
"It was quite evident that the practice of open defecation in India has reasonably decreased, that is by 67.8%, between 2000 and 2017 (Table 2)",6
"On the other hand, the accessibility of basic sanitation and drinking water services has increased by 42.9% and 13.63%, respectively, during the same time period (Table 2)",6
"Roy and Pramanick (2019) also observed that as of 2017, 35.09% villages of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Goa, Haryana, Kerala, Sikkim were open defecation free in India",6
"Further increasing access to basic sanitation, especially among women, through generating knowledge using mass media about the detrimental health consequences associated with open defecation (Lee 2017) would be pivotal in improving hygiene security within the country",6
WSI (Fig. 2) clearly gets fluctuated by the increase and decrease in the wastewater treatment percentage,6
"Fortunately after 2010, India has maintained the treatment of wastewater to a more or less constant percentage, as a result the water stress has not increased",6
"Hopefully, in the coming years with more advancement in technologies India would be able to eliminate the water crisis to a greater extent with more wastewater being treated and reused",6
"Therefore, a greater percentage of water sustainability is attained whenever a higher percentage of wastewater is treated, thereby indicating that with increase in water demand, a corresponding improvement in technologies for water monitoring and management is required, as the total availability of freshwater resources remains constant (Shahanas and Sivakumar 2016; Sahasranaman and Ganguly 2018)",6
"Hence more than half of the produced municipal wastewater is required to be treated, in order to avoid continued water stress in near future",6
and many more methods can be adapted for sustainable water resource management,6
"Therefore, the worsening of water stress for India can be reducedto a lower levelby the tracking WSI as performance gauge, along with adoption of the above strategies",6
"Figure 3 clearly suggests that due to decrease in open defecation practices over the years, the mortality rate of children under five and the neonatal have significantly declined below 4% and 3% (percentage of live births), respectively",6
"It is evident, that the mortality rates of both the categories have positive correlationwith the practice of open defecation by common people i.e",6
the mortality rates of neonatal and children under age group 5 will always increase if more and more open defecation is practiced,6
"On the other hand with the increase of people using basic sanitation and drinking water services, it is seen that mortality rates of neonates and the children under age group 5 are getting decreased (indicated by the negative values) (Table 4)",6
"Additionally, the differences in values of Table 4 also indicate that the neonates are much more susceptible to people’s unhygienic practices like open defecation, as compared to the values corresponding to children under age group 5",6
Similar studies in Uttar Pradesh (India) stated that households meeting the target 6.1 of SDG 6 were benefitted with improved of health of children through less risk of diseases and underweight (Johri et al,6
"In a country like India with high poverty level, rural areas are highly affected due to poor sanitation and lack of clean water",6
"Absence of toilet facilities, clean water and proper hygiene in rural areas have made open defection a pervasive norm for the women (Khanna and Das 2016)",6
"As gender plays a significant role towards safe sanitation, Khanna and Das (2016) suggested the involvement of both men and women’s consents toward building a sustainable, safe sanitation and clean water programme for health purpose",6
Initiatives such as India’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Gramin) building over 80 million toilets in half a million villages between 2014 and mid 2019 are a boost for Indian community to eradicate open defecation and promote sustainable sanitation (Curtis 2019),6
"Simultaneously, water ATMs (automated teller machine) providing safe drinking water at a low cost of Rs",6
"Furthermore, the improvement in health parameters associated with improved access to sanitation and hygiene bears direct positive implications on social sustainability",6
"Improvement of social development indicators like open defecation, sanitation and drinking water service are an immediate requirement to decrease the risk of negative factors influencing health aspects",6
"(2017), while recognizing the challenges affecting water resource sustainability in China, proposed development of an ‘integrated water policy’, use of subsidies and incentives for encouraging water use efficiency and inclusion of ecological concerns within water policies, as some suggestions for sustainable water management in the country",6
"2012) highlighted the importance of effective policies for sustainable water resource management in Mediterranean countries and Israel, respectively",6
"Fortunately, India has the potential to attain sustainable development of water and sanitation by proper strategies and decision-making",6
"(2017) further concluded nine Central Government institutions such as Ministry of Agriculture, Environment, Forest and Climate Change, NITI Aayog, to name a few, to be highly involved in consultations linking climate change and water",13
Table 5 indicates that the Indian Government has covered multiple aspects dealing with conservation and maintenance of freshwater resources ranging from groundwater and river conservation to provision of water and sanitation facilities for every household,6
"Additionally, earnest government measures have also ensured timely and systematic implementation of all the targets as 90.7% districts of India have been verified as open defecation free, while around 95.5% households have an improved source of drinking water (NITI Aayog 2019)",6
"2020), surface water pollution through effluent discharge from industries (Mekapogu et al",6
"Alternatively, the country is at ‘Medium Risk’ with a score of 2.92 in terms of Regulatory Risk which reflects an enabling environment in terms of governance, institutions, finance, infrastructure and policies related to water and sanitation ( ; WRF 2020)",6
"Keeping SDG 6 as a focus, the Government of India has the opportunity to implement water sustainability indices for monitoring the availability versus usage of biophysical resources of water",6
"Simultaneously, as the results of the present work indicate a direct positive impact of increase in wastewater treatment on water sustainability, developing low-cost decentralized wastewater treatment facilities can serve both economic and environmental benefits",6
"Quantitative measurement of water sustainability through formulation of the WSI indicated that India is facing high water stress of about 66.49% (2010) with respect to total available water resources, which would further increase owing to increasing population",6
"Furthermore, water insecurity and poor hygiene are directly correlated with mortality in children and neonates",6
The proposed index takes into account the resilience based on the amount of wastewater treated; its efficacy and significance can be improved further if water re-use and recycling metrics are co-opted as resilience factors,12
It calls for careful course correction and policy restructuring for sustainable water governance and management,6
"Indeed, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) plays an increasingly important role in global economic and climate change mitigation",13
"Accordingly, the existent study executed an in-depth examination of the spatial direct and spillover effects of foreign direct investment inflows (FDI) and biomass energy consumption (BEC) on greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) for 57 BRI countries (1992–2012)",7
"Also, the nexus between economic growth and GHG emission is an N-shaped curve",8
"In contrast to BEC, Fossil Fuel Energy Consumption (FFEC) and population positively sign for direct and indirect impact",7
"These lead to reinforcement infrastructure, technological progress, energy, and facilitating trade exchange among countries, leading to increased economic growth",8
The problems of climate change have become pressing challenges worldwide in recent decades,13
"As a result of this, global warming occurs, increasing environmental degradation",15
"Beneath the Paris Agreement, BRI countries (52 of 65 countries signed) have set voluntary targets for reducing GHG emissions, based on the consensus reached, which affirms that all countries should alleviate GHG emissions",13
"Third, in 2018, BRI countries consumed more than half of biomass and fossil fuels energy worldwide by 55.33% and 60.43%, respectively (UNEP-IRP-GMFD 2019).Footnote 4 Besides, BRI countries’ energy consumption depends on unclean sources, contributing considerably to environmental pollution",7
"Figure 1 shows an increasing trend in the variables and suggests that the more FDI and economic growth, the more GHG emissions in BRI countries",8
"The EKC hypothesis presumes that pollution emission initially increases simultaneously with the country’s rising economic growth until reaching a certain threshold point; subsequently, environmental quality demand increases, decreasing pollution emission (Grossman and Krueger 1991)",8
"In other phrases, there is an inverse U-shaped nexus between ecological contamination and economic growth (Kivyiro and Arminen 2014)",8
The BRI countries need a massive amount of energy to achieve the SDGs; biomass energy as one of the abundant renewable energy sources in these countries can contribute efficiently to attaining these goals,7
"2019), which can replace fossil fuels and petrochemicals, reduce GHG emissions, and can provide an alternative solution to a number of ecological issues and the depletion of resources resulting from utilized of unclean energy sources; this will lead to enhanced protection and quality of the environment (Solarin et al",13
"In general, many previous studies on FDI and economic growth have been relied on PHH and EKC theories, either individually or two approaches in combination (Gill et al. 2018; Shahbaz and Sinha 2019),Footnote 7 while the P-HH theory was neglected",8
This research goes beyond existing works by including two variables of energy consumption (BEC and FFEC) as additional determinants into the GHG emissions model to accurately estimate their influence on the environment,7
"FDI inflows can increase environmental degradation and ecological regulation violations, especially in sectors that depend on defilement-intensive industries and where environmental laws are indulgently or non-enforced",15
Danish and Ulucak (2020) also showed GDP mitigation of climate change; a recent study by Ozcan et al,13
(2020) assert that GDP is the main contributor to environmental degradation in 12 MENA countries and 12 Arab countries,15
"Thus, it is considered the essential production element for economic growth and boom, which leads to fulfilling SDGs",8
"Over the latest two decennia, considerable studies incorporated the energy consumption indicator to analyze environmental pollution issues by several employed theories such as ECK and PHH",7
"First, in the studies which utilized gross energy consumption in the model, approximately, their findings indicated that gross energy consumption increased environmental pollution",7
"Second, other papers have divided energy consumption into renewable and non-renewable energy",7
"Virtually, all researchers confirmed that non-renewable energy increases environmental defilement while the influence of renewable energy is inverse",7
"Third, some studies utilized specific energy source consumption to analyze environmental pollution; specifically, this segment focuses on the reviews that used biomass and fossil fuels energy consumption in ecological models",7
"Recently, clean, renewable energy demand has grown due to increased environmental pollution",7
"In this scenario, biomass energy is one of the largest renewable energy sources and the most effective remedy for rising environmental apprehension",7
They revealed that energy consumption led to increased CO2 emissions and diminished environmental quality (Abban et al,7
(2020) adopted total energy consumption and renewable energy consumption,7
"They pointed out that energy consumption deteriorates ecological quality, but renewable energy consumption enhances all BRI countries’ ecological quality, excluding the South Asian nations",7
"As demonstrated from the above literature review, the previous empirical findings are inconclusive, and explicit consensus has not been reached for the effect of FDI, GDP, and energy consumption on the environment",7
"(2017), we merged energy consumption in the model",7
"However, this study was distinguished by disaggregated energy consumption into two factors, FFEC and BEC",7
(1997) proposed a cubic nexus between socio-economic variables and environmental degradation,15
These economies usually prioritize achieving sustainable and rapid economic growth accompanied by neglect in enforcing environmental quality laws,8
"These companies commonly used production means that depend mainly on non-renewable energy, mostly fuel fossil and coal, and environmental quality standards do not consider, besides the extensive profiteering of natural resources and the associated erosion of the environment and cover vegetation",7
"These lead to the expansion of desertification, loss of biodiversity, growing polluted waste amount, and high consumption of unclean energy",15
"Thus, it leads to excessive increased GHG emissions and environmental degradation in all cases",15
"Accordingly, their policies prioritize and are inclined to economic growth instead of protecting the environment and its quality",8
"Thus, the GHG emission level rises in the initial phase due to increased economic growth, driven by FDI inflows and other growth sources",8
"Finally, in the third stage, the GHG emissions start to augment again due to technological obsolescence characterized via high-income levels and depressed economic growth percentages (Alvarez-Herranz et al",8
"Moreover, higher income levels tend to be associated with higher and unbalanced energy consumption levels and waste production, thus, leading to more pressure on environmental quality",7
"Accordingly, biomass energy is a more reliable internal energy source at a lower cost and guarantees the nations’ energy security via reducing dependency on fossil fuel energy and polluted inputs imported",7
"In developing countries, biomass contributes significantly to household well-being through energy (such as heating, cooking, electricity production), income, and related food security (Solarin and Bello, 2019), improving society’s consumption methods and environmental awareness",2
"In sum, since biomass energy is abundant in BRI countries, their ability to enhance environmental quality and reduce carbon emissions relies on the efficiency of power generation technology and fossil fuels used in biomass production",13
"In the same context, the POP and FFEC promote environmental degradation in BRI countries, and their effects are opposite and more massive than the corresponding BEC’s impact",15
"Ultimately, meeting the resource requirements of an increasing population demands the land-use alteration to an expansion of food production through deforestation, condensing production on indeed planted land, or evolving the infrastructure and industrial necessary to support the growing population numbers (Hunter 2000)",15
"These statistics confirm and support this study’s findings, which indicated that the BRI countries following the scale effects pattern and the proportion of GHG emissions remain high as a result of the implementation of weak environmental quality systems, and the conventional and non-renewable energy sources are dominant in these nations that are not in streak with the universal sight to achieve the SDGs and CPP",7
"Also, in the BRI countries, the economic growth levels and population negatively affect ecological quality, and these countries also follow the scale effect trajectory to achieve development",8
"Hence, FFEC appeared as a primary source of pollution at a higher rate, while BEC behaves as a source of clean energy and reduces GHG emissions at a lower rate",7
"They must also upgrade the policies associated with FDI to improve its role in promoting the industry sector and technological innovation, leading to heartening the low-carbon conversion of present industries and building a cleaner production pattern",8
"Besides, new FDI inflows should be relying on modern energy systems and renewable sources to reduce conventional energy consumption",7
"Second, these nations must raise real economic growth through changing the scale effects production paths to modern technological production methods to ensure the transition and building of productive sectors according to the technique effects path and the low pollution composition effects trajectory",8
"Third, the governments must also rationalize using natural resources to balance economic growth, decrease environmental pollution, safeguard the community interests, raise the ecological awareness level for environmental pollutants, and push society to adopt a green lifestyle in production and consumption",8
"These policies’ implementations may help achieve high and sustainable economic growth and ensure a high-income level, thus achieving part of the SDGs (SDG7, SDG12, and SDG13) and CPP, resulting in lower GHGs, improved environmental quality, and global warming reduction",8
"Biomass energy production is relatively costly, so governments should encourage households and the industrial sector to transition to cleaner biomass energy consumption and provide service at a subsidized price",7
"Besides grant incentives to invest and consume in clean energy sources, additional fees must be imposed for excessive use of conventional energy",7
"Nevertheless, this transformation at the household and industrial levels should not be accompanied by harm or slackened economic growth path",8
"As a result, high and sustainable economic growth will be achieved, the income level will rise, and expenditures will decrease in the long run",8
"Consumption patterns will also improve, and clean energy security will be conducted for these countries",7
"These will stimulate green developmental sustainability, thus accelerating SDGs’ implementation and achievement (SDG7, SDG12, and SDG13) and the CCP, leading to long-term reductions in GHG emissions and reducing environmental degradation",15
"In 1992, one of the principles in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development was the acknowledgment that “peace, development and environmental protection are interdependent and indivisible” (UN 1992b)",15
"Later, the 2001 Earth Charter affirmed a global consensus on the “principles for a sustainable way of life”, including the promotion of “a culture of tolerance, non-violence, and peace” and the acknowledgment that a right relationship with other life and the Earth is a component of peace (Earth Charter Initiative 2001)",12
"The integration of peace and sustainability in the 2030 Agenda reaffirms that peace is not just the absence of war or forms of physical violence and direct conflict (i.e., negative peace); it is also the presence of conditions necessary for the flourishing of human potential by ending structural forms of violence (i.e., positive peace) (Galtung 1964, 1967)",16
"Positive peace entails social harmony and cooperation, “consisting of freedom from fear, freedom from want, economic growth and development, absence of exploitation, equality, freedom of action, pluralism, and dynamism” (Galtung 1967, p",8
"Specifically, Goal 16 (peace, justice, and strong institutions) is considered to be a “cross-cutting factor” that contributes to the implementation of the other SDGs (Allen et al",16
"While negative peace or the absence of direct forms of conflict and violence enables the implementation of the SDGs, positive peace or the presence of conditions for human flourishing sustains the outcomes of such implementation in the long-run (Werner 2015)",16
"For our purposes, it is also key to systematically reviewing a new but rapidly developing field of scientific research, such as that of the peace–sustainability nexus",9
"Given that the concepts of peace and sustainability are traditionally under the ambit of separate disciplines (i.e., peace studies and sustainability studies, respectively), it is essential to investigate whether the increasing recognition of their linkages is translated into scholarship output",4
The purple cluster (n = 4) concerns water management,6
"Note The red cluster is on conflict, climate, and environmental security; the green cluster is on politics and international relations; the blue cluster is on natural sciences and the environment; the yellow cluster is on sustainability and sustainable development; the purple cluster is on water management; the light blue cluster is on philosophy and social theory; and the orange cluster is on the humanities (too distant to be included in this figure)",6
He has also advocated for transdisciplinarity in peace studies and conflict resolution (Galtung 2010),16
"The red cluster (n = 11) relates to sustainable development, globalization, and economic growth and development and their implications for peace and security (e.g., Jackson and Curry 2004; Richmond 2008; Steen 2006)",8
"The purple cluster (n = 8) consists of studies related to the implications of sustainable development for global peace and security (e.g., Blinc et al",16
"Although sustainability is most related to the environment, economic growth, and economic development, it is also associated with education, public policy, and ethics, among other terms",8
"Similarly, although peace is most related to conflict resolution and security, it is also associated with governance, human rights, and civil society, among other terms",16
"IEP echoes Galtung’s holistic approach to peace and defines positive peace as “the attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies” (IEP 2019a, p",16
"IEP’s eight positive peace pillars are (1) well-functioning government, (2) a sound business environment, (3) equitable distribution of resources, (4) acceptance of the rights of others, (5) good relations with neighbors, (6) free flow of information, (7) high levels of human capital, and (8) low levels of corruption",16
The institutional dimension refers to the institutional framework of and institutional capacity for sustainable development,16
2020 for a review of publications on negative peace and climate change),13
"Other sectors relevant to the publications on positive peace include agriculture, economy, energy, governance, religion, security, urban planning, water, and sports",11
"West Asia consists of Middle Eastern countries facing water scarcity due to the combined impact of groundwater depletion, population pressure, poor management of water resources, and high rainfall variability (e.g., Brooks and Trottier 2010; Öztana and Axelrod 2011)",6
"Goal 16 (peace, justice, and strong institutions) is well ahead of the other SDGs with respect to the number of publications (n = 266)",16
Our analysis also reveals that Goal 13 (climate action) has no link to Goal 1 (no poverty) despite evidence that climate change has a disproportionate impact on poorer populations (IPCC 2014),13
"Although there have been several studies that have examined the implications of environmental degradation for conflict risks as this review has shown, little is known about the peace-promoting potential of sustainability and the sustainability-promoting potential of peace",15
Peace scholars can also contribute a critical methodology to sustainability studies by examining the implications of sustainability initiatives for existing socio-economic inequalities at national and global levels,10
"On the other hand and amidst this burgeoning scholarship, researchers of sustainability have the opportunity to integrate temporal and spatial considerations into peace and conflict studies",4
"lthough the significance of global leadership in combatting climate change has been widely studied, the effectiveness of local government leadership has been neglected in the literature",13
"This study explores the relationships among climate-change belief, resilience to climate change, and local government leadership (LGL)",13
"It also examines local government’s leadership in mediating and moderating the climate-change beliefs (specifically, that climate change is occurring and that it is the result of human activity) and resilience to climate change of victims of river erosion in Bangladesh and uses mediation and moderation analyses to determine the effectiveness of LGL in Bangladesh",13
"The results suggest that climate-change belief, resilience to climate change, and LGL have significant positive relationships with each other",13
"However, while LGL shows a partial mediation on the relationship between climate-change belief and resilience to climate change, no moderation impact was revealed that demonstrated effective LGL influence among the victims",13
The study extends the literature regarding the outcomes of LGL activities and initiatives on climate-change belief and resilience to climate change within a non-western context,13
"While the impact of climate change on coastal areas in Bangladesh has been covered in several studies, less is known about the effects of flooding on the hinterland and its inhabitants (Alam et al",13
The Government of Bangladesh has applied several strategies intended to foster resilience to climate change: The National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) in 2005; the National Plan on Disaster Management in 2009–2010; the Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan; and the 2016–2021 Five-Year Plan (Islam and Nursey-Bray 2017),13
"Prior to the establishment of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, the Bangladesh Government had shown notable progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in several areas, among them alleviating poverty, reducing both infant and maternal mortality rates, increasing immunisation coverage, and reducing the occurrence of communicable diseases (Ministry of Planning 2015)",3
"However, the Government has not yet been able to make substantial inroads into river erosion resulting from climate change",13
"Still, the scholarly literature on climate change does not provide much information on local government leadership (LGL) effectiveness",13
"Adaptive capacity and vulnerability theory (ACVT) (Preston and Stafford-Smith 2009) can shed light on the climate-change scenario in Bangladesh, specifically in relation to the victims of river erosion in Bangladesh and the interrelation between three elements: beliefs on climate change (specifically, that climate change is occurring and that it results from human activity), perceived LGL, and resilience regarding climate change",13
"Considering social, political, and economic constructions, the ACVT clarifies the essential and realistic elements of vulnerability to challenges of environmental or climate change",13
"This study’s research question is twofold: how are beliefs about and resilience to climate change and LGL associated, and what are the mediation and moderation roles of LGL on the relationship between climate-change belief and resilience to climate change among Bangladeshi river-erosion victims? This study is significant for a number of reasons",13
"First, it increases understanding of the effectiveness of LGL and the need for further initiatives for achieving resilience to climate change in disaster-prone areas",13
"Second, this study’s findings help clarify the relationship between climate-change belief and resilience to climate change to explore the current climate-change scenario and the perception of the affected people in the study areas",13
"Third, this study is a step forward to explore future avenues for researching the impact of LGL on multilevel consequences and help policymakers develop initiatives to increase resilience to climate change and uphold sustainable development in Bangladesh",13
This study contributes to achieving SDG 13 (actions on climate change) as a factor in Bangladesh’s achievement of the SDGs by 2030,13
"The SDGs are based on five significant concerns (United Nations 2015): strengthening resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries; integrating climate-change measures into national policies, strategies and planning; improving education, awareness-raising, and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning; implementing developed-country parties’ commitment to the United Nations framework convention on climate change; and promoting mechanisms for raising capacity for effective climate-change-related planning and management in the least-developed countries, including focusing on women, youth, and local and marginalised communities",13
"2013) Structure of local government in Bangladesh ( There is a substantial gap in the literature regarding the role and effectiveness of LGL in guiding belief in and resilience to climate change, and in fostering sustainable development (Rahman et al",13
"Moreover, discussions on climate goals, and specifically actions on climate change, have highlighted the consequences of climate change (such as river erosion or cyclones) as threats to inclusive and equitable development (Islam et al",13
(2015) noted that “climate change impacts will have local variations; much of the adaptation work is presumed to be best handled locally” (p,13
"By addressing this gap LGL effectiveness, this study examines and explains whether and how LGL can make a difference among the river-erosion victims in Bangladesh in terms of their resilience to climate change",13
"In addition, this study highlights the UN’s SDGs, and particularly SDG 13, as a significant motivation for climate action and a foundation for international environmental agreement",13
"Moreover, achieving SDG 13 will require the concerted efforts of LGL not only to provide governmental support and cooperation, but also to coordinate the roles of NGOs, corporate support (through CSR), and the contribution of surrounding societies and individual citizens",13
"Hence, the role of LGL can be considered as essential to ensuring the strategic implementation of SDG 13 in Bangladesh as part of achieving the overall 2030 SDG goals",13
"Accordingly, the agenda of 2030 SDGs has received scholarly attention within various disciplines (Bebbington and Unerman 2018) including management and business (Pedersen 2018), urban development (Barnett and Parnell 2016), and life-cycle analysis (Wulf et al",11
"For example, sustainable development on climate change need further exploration, as some nations have a lenient approach and do not provide enough grounds for implementing and monitoring the Agenda (Saner et al",13
"SDG 13 underscores the demand for national consensus and endorsement of climate-change initiatives, and developed nations’ responsibility to provide leadership and support to developing countries to help them achieve sustainable development goal on climate change by 2030 (Saner et al",13
This study explores whether LGL influences river-erosion victims’ climate-change beliefs and resilience to climate change,13
"Its essential argument is that without allowing LGL more influence in support of climate-migrant victims, the SDGs run the risk of not directing the effective transformation needed to increase capacity for sustainable development and resilience to climate change",13
"Accordingly, this study answers the question: how much does LGL influence climate-migrant victims’ climate-change beliefs and resilience? LGL has a significant role in Bangladesh’s economic development and has the potential to significantly influence the lives of river-erosion victims",8
"It examines how local government leaders such as elected chairmen, vice-chairmen and UP members influence the relationship between beliefs about and resilience to climate change among river-erosion victims",13
"The impact of climate change through river erosion takes away thousands of hectares of household and agricultural land every year in Bogra and Sirajganj, which pushes its residents into the insecurity of becoming climate-change migrants (Rahman et al",13
"The impact — and indeed, the very concept — of climate change are difficult issues to comprehend, as they involve multiple scientific considerations, personal knowledge, and beliefs (Spence et al",13
"(2014) asserted, knowledge about climate change may have additive effects on an individual’s philosophical development, with greater knowledge about climate change potentially supporting stronger beliefs climate change is both real and due to human activity and motivate them to act to mitigate climate change",13
"Hence, both individual understanding and civic responsiveness have been considered as essential elements in an effective response to climate change",13
"The concept of resilience is also used in the social sciences, including studies related to climate change (Coppens et al",13
"Accordingly, several researchers have asserted that resilience to climate change is determined not only by individual traits, but also by victims’ vulnerability and supporting factors from their social environment (Uddin et al",13
"In this study, resilience to climate change has been linked to both individual characteristics (e.g., climate-change belief) and societal support (e.g., LGL) to examine the mediation and moderation of LGL influence on the relationship between climate-change belief and resilience to climate change",13
"According to Preston and Stafford-Smith (2009), ACVT describes the fundamental causes of vulnerability to environmental or climate change challenges, including social, political, and economic constructions",13
"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) described adaptive capacity as “the general ability of institutions, systems, and individuals to adjust to potential damage, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with the consequences” (IPCC 2001)",13
"The elements of ACVT have been well recognised in the literature of climate change as incorporating both environmental and social elements, including social (or political) power dynamics and leadership influences (McLaughlin and Dietz 2008)",13
"In the context of Bangladesh, Long (2009) mentioned that “individuals remain largely unable to connect their personal decisions with broader global consequences — they have yet to convert the warranted assertions of the scientific community regarding climate change into beliefs that have enough value to motivate personal and institutional change” (p",13
"At present, the beliefs that climate change is occurring and is due to human activity are well-established and commonly accepted in the west, and particularly among urban populations; but the comparable figures for Bangladesh are less well known",13
"Researchers have also indicated that climate-change beliefs have a significant impact on the affected victims’ future hazards or risk management, which in turn affect their resilience to climate change (Whitmarsh 2008; Brenkert-Smith et al",13
"Moreover, several scholars have indicated that governments have a significant role in extending local leadership initiatives to enhance awareness about climate change and to increase the level of resilience among climate-change victims (McLaughlin and Dietz 2008; Preston and Stafford-Smith 2009; Coppens et al",13
"First, there is insufficient research into the assertion that climate-change beliefs play a vital role in hazards management and victims’ resilience to climate change, (Whitmarsh 2008)",13
"Long (2009) suggested that “unlike many of the issues addressed by local governments, the most significant effects of global climate change are just that: global",13
"ACVT (Preston and Stafford-Smith 2009) suggests that both tactical (e.g., leadership role) and strategic (e.g., supportive initiatives) measures can help communities to be less vulnerable and to overcome the adverse effects of climate change",13
"Following ACVT, this study considers that when the victims of river erosion more strongly believe that climate change is occurring and is a product of human activity, that will influence their elected local leaders to be more aware of their responsibility for victims’ rehabilitation and social support",13
"In other words, when the river erosion victims of Bangladesh have higher climate-change beliefs and receive support from their local government leaders with higher LGL, their resilience to climate change will increase",13
"Taken together, this study considers the following three hypotheses:
 Hypothesis 1 (H1): There is a positive relationship between climate-change belief and resilience to climate change",13
Hypothesis 3 (H3): There is a positive relationship between LGL and resilience to climate change,13
"First, climate-change beliefs must be related to both LGL and resilience to climate change; and second, the inclusion of LGL in the analysis must reduce the primarily observed relationship between climate-change beliefs and resilience to climate change",13
"As explained in H1, when victims have stronger climate-change beliefs, they are likely to be more prepared for climate change and have better outcomes based on their level of resilience",13
"Similarly, as noted in H3, when victims of river erosion have higher expectations of LGL support, they may be better prepared to manage the negative consequences of climate change and may show higher levels of resilience",13
"However, is LGL making any practical difference to erosion victims’ resilience to climate change? In other words, from the above relationships (H1 and H3), the question arises as to whether a victim’s LGL mediates or moderates the relationship between climate-change beliefs and resilience to climate change",13
"Currently, the role of LGL in aid coordination for managing disasters due to climate change has increased in Bangladesh",13
"For example, the Government of Bangladesh has applied the National Development Strategy through National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction (NSAPR) since 2003 to reduce the poverty and increase the resilience of river-erosion victims (O’Donnell et al",1
"Moreover, in addition to an effective leadership outcome for climate change sufferers, scholars have suggested that having a sense of shared responsibility with local leaders is important for achieving sustainable development goal on climate change (Malalgoda et al",13
"Hence, these considerations call for an examination of relationships to determine whether LGL mediates or moderates the relationship between climate-change beliefs and resilience to climate change",13
"Accordingly, this study includes the following hypotheses:
 Hypothesis 4 (H4): There is a mediating influence of LGL on the relationship between climate-change beliefs and resilience to climate change",13
Hypothesis 5 (H5): There is a moderating influence of LGL on the relationship between climate-change beliefs and resilience to climate change,13
"Figure 2 shows the hypothesised model for this study.
 Hypothesised model proposing the direct, mediation and moderation (dotted arrows) relationships The study was conducted in the northern part of Bangladesh — specifically, in Bogra and Sirajganj — to obtain more insight into how victims living in the affected areas perceive the notion of climate change",13
"In this study, the respondents were selected on the basis of their having experienced multiple natural disasters and having left or planning to leave their homes due to the adverse effects of climate change, such as river erosion",13
The influence of resilience to climate change was measured by four items from Connor and Davidson’s (2003) CD-RISC scale,13
"This study applied confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine the validity, reliability, and goodness of fit for the studied variables (climate-change beliefs, resilience to climate change, and LGL) with the measurement scales",13
"First, a series of CFAs was conducted to test the adequacy of the measurement model for climate-change beliefs, LGL, and resilience to climate change",13
"Second, the four-item scale of resilience to climate change indicated a satisfactory fit: χ2 = 185.98, χ2/df = 1.71, p = 0.000, GFI = 0.90, AGFI = 0.86, CFI = 0.96, TLI = 0.95, NFI = 0.90, RMSEA = 0.022, and SRMR = 0.075",13
"In the second stage, the structural model specified the proposed relationships among climate-change beliefs, LGL, and resilience to climate change",13
"Therefore, both the steps of measurement and the structural models (Anderson and Gerbing 1988) were justified in this study.
 Indirect relationships among climate change belief, resilience and local Govt",13
"e1-e22: errors terms for indicators, r1 and r2 are residuals for latent variables, CCB-1 to CCB-3 are the 3 items of climate change belief, LED-1to LED-15 are the 15 items of PLGL and RES-1 to RES-4 are the 4 items of relisience This study examined the model with three control variables: age, gender, and marital status",13
"Accordingly, this study used a weakly related item as a marker variable in the SEM model (Fig. 2); the results showed that the relationship among the marker variable, climate-change beliefs, LGL, and resilience to climate change was not significant, as the average correlation coefficient was 0.031, with an average significance of 0.458 (p > 0.05)",13
"As shown in Fig. 2, the standardised coefficient for the direct influence of climate-change beliefs on resilience to climate change was significant (β = 0.231; p < 0.011)",13
"Similarly, H3 was developed to assess the nature of the relationship between LGL and resilience to climate change and accepted because of their significant and positive association (β = 0.752; p < 0.001)",13
"H4 was developed to evaluate the mediating influence of LGL on the relationship between climate-change beliefs and resilience to climate change; the results suggest that when LGL was introduced as a mediator in this study, the impact of climate-change beliefs on resilience to climate change increased from (β = 0.12; p < 0.011) to (β = 0.35; p < 0.001)",13
These results indicate that the value of the direct effect of climate-change beliefs on resilience to climate change was β = 0.23; p < 0.01,13
"Finally, H5 was developed to evaluate the moderating role of LGL on the relationship between climate-change beliefs and resilience to climate change, and the results (as shown in Table 4) indicated no moderation effects for the studied relationship.
 In this study, the bootstrapping technique (with 5000 resamples) was applied",13
"For example, climate-change beliefs explain 23% of the variance in resilience to climate change, and 46% of LGL; LGL explains 75% of the variance in resilience to climate change",13
"Table 5 summarises all the results from SEM for the tested hypotheses.
 Based on ACVT (Preston and Stafford-Smith 2009), this study examined the relationships among climate-change beliefs, LGL, and resilience to climate change, and both the mediation and moderation effects of LGL with 200 river-erosion victims in Bangladesh",13
"The results (Table 5) establish the relationships among climate-change beliefs, LGL, and resilience to climate change in several ways",13
"First, as predicted in H1, climate-change beliefs were positively related to resilience to climate change",13
This positive relationship suggests that the river-erosions victims’ climate-change beliefs have a positive influence on their resilience to climate change,13
"In other words, when they believe more strongly that climate change is occurring and is caused by human activity, they exhibit more resilience in managing the impact or consequences of climate change",13
"One of the senior respondents from Bogra’s focus-group discussion admitted, “I see the adverse change of weather when I compare my experiences from our childhood time to current years, as the climate is responding with more natural disasters, including cyclones and repeated river erosion.” Another respondent from the same group added, “Our elders advised us that these [events] are God’s curse, but now we realise that these are also because of our activities such as increasing brick-fields, using chemicals in agricultural activities, or having more factories around us, which are causing negative results for climate change.” According to Kirby and Fraser (1997), this resilience to climate change may come from their societal support (e.g., local government leaders) and social network (e.g., friends or relatives)",13
"(2015), who showed that climate-change beliefs might be a practical and useful element to increase resilience to climate change through higher climate-change awareness, preparation, and risk-reduction arrangements",13
"This result suggests that river-erosion victims in Bangladesh who believed strongly that climate change is occurring and is due to human activities may have increasing expectations of and dependency on their local government leaders (e.g., chairmen, vice-chairmen and UP members)",13
"These expectations and dependency may also be because the local people, who are sometimes severely affected by the effect of climate change such as river erosion and cyclone disasters, directly elect their local government leaders",13
"Third, the study results revealed a positive relationship between LGL and resilience to climate change; thus, H3 was accepted",13
"In other words, this study, similar to other works in the climate-change literature, asserts that LGL has a significant positive influence on resilience to climate change",13
"Similarly, this study found that leaders’ perceived role has a significant influence on river-erosion victims’ ability to maintain or enhance their resilience to climate change in the context of Bangladesh",13
"Fourth, the study results verified H4, finding that LGL partially accounts for the effects of climate-change beliefs on resilience to climate change",13
"Thus, the mediating influence of LGL could play an important role in determining the usefulness of climate-change beliefs to address river-erosion victims’ resilience to climate change in Bangladesh",13
"However, this evidence suggests that LGL has a negligible (+ 0.24) influence on victims’ resilience to climate change",13
"Scholars have suggested partial mediation when the mediating variable (in this case, LGL) accounts for some, but not all, of the relationship between the independent (climate-change beliefs) and dependent (resilience to climate change) variables",13
The mediation results (β = 0.35; p < 0.001) suggest that there is not only a significant partial relationship between LGL and resilience to climate change but also some direct relationship between the climate-change beliefs and resilience to climate change variables,13
"Finally, the study results indicate that, contrary to H5, there is no moderation effect of LGL on the relationship between climate-change beliefs and resilience to climate change (Fig. 5)",13
"In other words, together with the findings regarding H4, these results suggest that LGL did not influence respondents’ resilience to climate change as they worked to overcome the challenges of repeated river erosion in the context of Bangladesh",13
"Therefore, in addition to economic support, the government should focus more on active local leadership to create more opportunities and develop sustainable solutions to overcome the adverse impacts of climate change (Thaker et al",13
"Local government leaders should not only support their constituents’ awareness that climate change is occurring and that it is the result of human activity, but also encourage active participation to overcome the future risk from river erosion, and to mitigate the effects of climate change disasters to ensure sustainable solutions and higher resilience to climate change",13
This study suggests that the focus of Bangladesh’s governmental leadership on better climate-change outcomes include climate-change beliefs and resilience to climate change and should redesign and enhance LGL policies,13
"As a result, Bangladeshis in general, and victims of river erosion in particular, can become more aware of climate-change issues and enhance their resilience to climate change",13
"The results of this study suggest that the government of Bangladesh could reduce the loss of life and resources by implementing training initiatives for both local leaders (e.g., chairmen, vice‑chairmen and UP members) and river-erosion victims to promote acceptance that climate change is occurring and is a result of human activity, and to increase resilience to climate change",13
"As a result, both formal and informal initiatives will also uphold the climate action that seeks to achieve SDG 13, and thus to advance the UN’s SDGs for Bangladesh",13
This study suggests that the local government leaders can make a useful contribution to achieve the significant outcome of SDG 13,13
This study contributes to the literature on climate change in several ways,13
"First, the literature lacked evidence for the associations between climate-change beliefs and both resilience to climate change and the role of LGL",13
"First, it extends the limited understanding of climate-change beliefs and resilience to climate change, and their relationships with LGL in the context of Bangladesh",13
"Second, the study makes a significant contribution to the climate-change literature by considering ACVT (Preston and Stafford-Smith 2009) as an analytical concept to test the associations among climate-change beliefs, resilience to climate change, and LGL",13
"This study explored the relationship between both climate-change beliefs and resilience to climate change with leadership interventions, applying Preston and Stafford-Smith’s (2009) ACVT to enhance the climate-change literature in a non-western context",13
"Third, the current study examined both the mediation and moderation roles of LGL on the relationship between climate-change beliefs and resilience to climate change",13
"By testing these roles, this study extended the theoretical claims relating to these variables (Whitmarsh 2008; Schulte and Miller 2010) and advanced the literature of climate change for LGL effectiveness",13
"Hence, there is an avenue to replicate this study for other Western or Asian countries to explore how their LGL affects the relationship between climate-change beliefs and resilience to climate change",13
"1994) may be considered as a practical element that affects river-erosion victims’ survival, adaptation intentions, and responses to climate change",13
"Fourth, despite having comparable gender parity in the sample, the study did not focus on gender issues to bring out gender-specific trends in developing the research model (Fig. 2)",5
"Finally, this study considered SDG 13 for the proposed research model (Fig. 2)",13
"However, initiatives to achieve sustainable development goal on climate change can have positive influences on other SDGs, such as 3, 6, 12, 14, 15 (Campbell et al",13
"However, this study can still be applied to similar groups of river-erosion victims and can both promote resilience to climate change and contribute to the further advancement of climate-change studies in other developing countries",13
"This study has confirmed that climate-change beliefs, resilience to climate change, and LGL have significant positive relationships",13
"However, the role of LGL as a partial mediator and as a moderator was found to be less influential in promoting river-erosion victims’ climate-change beliefs, and thus their resilience to climate change",13
"These results can help policymakers and global leaders in planning for resilience to climate change and upholding the UN’s SDGs, especially in developing countries like Bangladesh",13
"Local government leaders should emphasise increasing their constituents’ climate-change beliefs and encourage active participation to mitigate the risk of river erosion and other climate change disasters, seek for sustainable solutions, and foster greater resilience to climate change.",13
"2021; Hussain and Dogan 2021), and in order to achieve that, investment in research and development activities can play a crucial role",9
"If it is the case, then it requires restoring environmental quality without disturbing the economic growth pattern",8
"First, it necessitates increasing the production and consumption of renewable energy solutions (Zafar et al",7
"By implementing the clean energy infrastructure, BRICS nations will be able to achieve the goal of affordable and clean energy (i.e., SDG-7), which subsequently will help to achieve the goal of sustainable climate (i.e., SDG-13)",7
"By doing so, the goal of sustainable and resilient industrialization and innovation (i.e., SDG-9) can be achieved, which might subsequently help to reduce the atmospheric pressure and lead to sustainable economic growth (i.e., SDG-8) (Hussain and Dogan 2021)",8
"For doing so, these nations need to promote research and development so that green technologies and low carbon–intensive production processes across industries can be employed",9
"To mitigate the negative consequences of industrialization, the UNFCCC has also mentioned the need for technological innovation",8
"IEA (2020) in its report also mentioned that energy consumption at the industrial level could be reduced by 26%, if the advanced techniques of production to be adopted for large-scale production",7
"To carry out the research and development agendas, these nations have increased their import bills (Tian et al",9
"That is the reason the UNDP committee emphasized the need for quality education (i.e., SDG-4)",4
"In this circumstantial setting, our objective is to investigate the impacts of industrial development, export diversification, and technological innovation on the carbon emissions in the BRICS nations",8
"While examining the impact of technological innovation on environmental quality, we constructed a technological index, so that the impact of research endeavors on environmental quality could be examined",8
"As mentioned earlier, if industrial and export growth are major drivers of environmental pollution, then we need to develop a multipronged strategy so that these nations can shift from unsustainable to a sustainable growth track, and SDGs can be achieved within 2030",8
"By spawning research and development atmosphere, these nations may be able to achieve the targeted SDGs, as the United Nations’ (2018) latest report also earmarked the urgent need for technological up-gradation in the developing nations to reduce the economic and environmental negative externalities",9
"Considering industrial value-added as a possible driver of environmental pollution, we departed from the previous studies, as most of the empirical studies have carried GDP growth as a proxy for economic growth and industrialization (Sinha et al",8
"Therefore, we introduced income inequality and natural resource rent in the carbon emission function",10
"Furthermore, the study found that the increased consumption of natural gases has also led to an increase in carbon emissions, whereas hydroelectricity and renewable energy fortified the air quality in the country",7
"For calculating the trade policy index, both exports and imports are considered in their study",17
The literature confirms that economic growth may contribute to damaging the environmental quality of a country (Shyamal and Rabindra 2004; Kasman and Duman 2015; Adom et al,8
(2021) and Altinoz and Dogan (2021) confirmed a harmful impact of economic growth on the ecological quality in their respective studies during the study period,8
The results of this study confirmed the long-run harmful impacts of industrial value-added and economic growth on carbon emissions during the study period (1970–2015),8
"The widespread usage of modern techniques of production reduced the energy consumption in manufacturing industries, which in turn, reduced carbon emissions",7
"Besides environmental pollution, income inequality is another challenge for policymakers in developing regions, as a wider income gap in society may lead to consumption and production distortions (World Social Report 2020)",10
The empirical studies support that income inequality may invigorate environmental pollution in the long run,10
"For instance, the results of Chen et al.’s (2020) study confirmed that income inequality led to a reduction in carbon emissions in developing countries, whereas in the developed nations, the income gap has an insignificant effect on carbon emissions",10
The computed results revealed that income inequality not only directly deteriorated the environmental quality but also influenced the turning points of the environmental Kuznets curve significantly,10
"Furthermore, the study confirmed that the relationship varied at the different levels of income inequality",10
This kind of contradictory results motivated us to look at the association between income inequality and carbon emissions in the BRICS nations,10
"The need to strengthen the research and development to fortify the environmental quality is discussed through the literature in recent years, as modern production techniques may reduce all sorts of emissions in the long run",9
"By promoting green energy, the country may address two issues simultaneously",7
"In conformity with this, the UNCTAD (2019), in its report, acknowledged that technological advancement might enable developing nations to reduce production inefficiencies, environmental pollution, and income inequality",10
"(2020b), by considering the sample of MENA countries, established an association between technological innovation and environmental quality",8
Industrial and economic growth not only exerts negative pressure on human beings but also on natural resources,8
The possible harmful environmental impact of natural resource rent may be due to the overextraction of the natural resources to realize the economic growth targets,8
"Therefore, it is necessary to develop a sustainable growth path so that the SDG-7, SDG-13, and subsequently SDG-4 can also be achieved",8
(2021) provided directions to achieve sustainable growth where environmental conservation is also considered,8
"Thus, in the present study, the policy void for addressing the environmental pollution led by export diversification and industrialization to be intended to bridge through technological innovation",8
"2021), and income inequality (Chen et al",10
"In this case, it is worth examining their potential impact on air quality so that economic growth could help in reducing environmental challenges in the coming years",8
"Here lies the caveat, because the additional usage of machinery and energy resources may widen the scope for environmental degradation, especially when these techniques and energy resources are carbon-intensive",15
"If this is the case, then these nations need to strengthen their research and development, so that the widespread usage of advanced techniques of production and low carbon–intensive energy solutions can be promoted across industries",9
"At the same time, it might have widened energy consumption, overutilization of natural resources, and environmental pollution",7
"Another distinguishing feature in these nations is widening income inequality with the increased industrialization, which might be the outcome of a distorted socio-political environment",10
"To break this sequencing, the investment in technological innovations can work as a savior provided all the stakeholders would share the benefits of the R&D",9
"To be more specific, the effective usage of research and development may enable these nations to generate cost-effective, cleaner, and energy-efficient production processes",9
"Besides, by generating green energy infrastructure in the far-flung areas, the negative pressure exerted on the natural resources can be reduced and new job opportunities in the rural areas can be created",7
"In failing so, industrialization led to additional fossil fuel consumption, export promotion, and income inequality that may impose new challenges in the coming years",10
"(1), EMI, IND, EXD, TEC, RRE, and INQ are carried to represent carbon emissions, industrialization, export diversification, technological index, resource rent, and income inequality, respectively",10
(1c) whether the interaction between technological innovation and industrialization fortified the environmental quality in the BRICS nations,8
"As we know, the majority of Asia Pacific countries have not invested a sufficient amount in strengthening the research and development environment",9
"Thus, instead of relying on nonrenewable natural resources such as oil, coal, and metals, the BRICS nations need to develop a sustainable growth strategy where the usage of renewable natural resources should be promoted",8
"It is evident from the association between the Gini coefficient and CO2 emissions, as in all models the coefficients of income inequality are found positive and significant",10
"Now, a relevant question arises that why income inequality raises carbon emissions",10
"Therefore, income inequality with a mass population base may generate a departure from environmental conservation",10
(2020) in their study revealed that income inequality has invigorated the carbon emissions in the G-20 nations in the long run,10
"Similarly, by considering the case of India and China, Wolde-Rufael and Idowu (2017) reported the harmful impact of income inequality on environmental quality in the long run",10
"However, this approach may generate an exodus from environmental conservation drive because the existing techniques may intensify the energy consumption, which in turn may lead to an increase in carbon emissions",7
"Therefore, the results of the study are vital to frame a synchronized strategy for the newly industrialized nations, as these nations often witness a tradeoff between economic growth and environmental pollution, renewable and nonrenewable energy solutions, and domestic trade and international trade",8
It is evident from the joint coefficient that technological advancement combined with industrialization unable to reduce carbon emissions in the BRICS nations,13
"In other words, investment in research and development might have driven industrial expansion",9
"However, the usage of advanced technologies in the industrial sector unable to reduce carbon emissions significantly because the value of the joint coefficient (−0.023, p-value = 0.428) is found negative but insignificant",13
"It means the BRICS nations have to increase their R&D activities so that the industrial development, export diversification, and subsequently environmental conservation drive can be carried out",9
"From these results, we can ascertain that the growth in industrialization and widening income inequality contributed to raising the carbon emissions in the long run because coefficients of these two variables are found positive across models",10
"On the other hand, across models, the impact of technological innovation on carbon emissions remained negative in the BRICS nations",8
"Similarly, an increase in new exports (i.e., extensive margin) helped to reduce carbon emissions during the study period",13
"However, it appears that the industrial expansion might have exacerbated the environmental quality in these nations because the R&D endeavors to reduce industrial pollution are not initiated seriously in the BRICS nations",9
"Otherwise, the tradeoff between economic growth and the established ecosystem may continue to prevail in the coming years as well",8
"In this setting, in the present study, firstly, we intended to investigate the impact of industrialization, export diversification, and technological innovation on carbon emissions for the period of 1990–2018",8
Income inequality and natural resource rent are carried as the controlled variables,10
"The computed results revealed that the industrial growth pattern, income inequality, natural resource rent, export diversification, and extensive export margin are harmful to the environment in the BRICS nations",10
"However, the increased R&D and intensive export margin are found environment-friendly during the study period (i.e., 1990–2018)",9
"Hence, by allocating additional budget for human capital development, policymakers need to uplift the literacy level in the BRICS nations",4
"At the same time, these nations should imbibe vocational education in their curriculum",4
"Along with this policy initiative in place, policymakers need to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and so, the widespread usage of renewable energy solutions across all industries need to be promoted",7
"However, first of all, the firms with higher carbon footprint need to be encouraged to adopt renewable energy–based techniques, provided such production techniques are available against easy availability of credit",7
Here comes the need to invest in technological innovation,8
"After shifting these firms towards renewable energy solutions, other firms gradually need to be shifted towards renewable energy",7
"At this juncture, it needs to be remembered that a sudden shift from existing practices to new technology may disturb industrial growth, and then it may lead to unemployment",8
"At this level, a country requires a sufficient supply of renewable energy resources",7
"With the help of skilled labor force and technological advancement, new renewable energy plants can be started in rural areas",7
This will help in reducing labor migration and income inequality,10
"At the same time, the labor force displaced from the nonrenewable energy sector to be adjusted in the renewable energy generation",7
"To sum up, the goal of sustainable growth (SDG-8) and environmental conservation (SDG-13) is difficult to achieve if people are not contributing positively in the long run",8
"Brazil is a territory that centralizes many of these discussions, as it still faces both political and economic obstacles in achieving a sustainable growth model as it was agreed through the United Nations 2030 Agenda",8
"Recently, in Europe, it was released a final report listing several concerns related to climate change, the environment, and global health, which in the next decade should motivate research and the development of technologies in the context of the European Union, and as an extension, the whole world (Drakvik et al",13
"People’s physical and mental health, economic and social progress, the overall image of the cities, as well as people’s livelihood and happiness index are all affected by the quality of the atmosphere",3
"Air pollution’s position in SDGs is cloudy, and while climate change was highlighted in one of the goals (SDG13), there is no headline goal on air pollution",13
"Considered a holistic, transdisciplinary, and multisectoral concept, which encompasses human health, environmental health, and animal health, it is directly connected to aspects of public health, urbanization, legal framework, ecotoxicology, multifactorial diseases, and cultural practices, which in turn have direct influences on the quality of life, human rights, and institutional policies of companies and nations, although some of these aspects are often neglected (Destoumieux-Garzón et al",3
"Dye (2022) indicated that the OH approach is the most appropriate for achieving the complex and multiple aspirations of the SDGs of the 2030 Agenda, as this approach seeks to anchor health and development, demonstrating that social justice, environmental protection, and economic prosperity depend on and contribute to global health",15
"(2021), Brazil already has the necessary instruments to carry out interventions in the OH approach, but professional alienation, lack of financial resources, and lack of recognition of the intersection of human, animal, and environmental health remain obstacles to its articulation",3
"Despite that, Brazil is still a very heterogeneous country in terms of economic development and key environmental variables in its regions (Swart and Brinkmann 2020)",8
2020); Brazilian cities and their managers are more interested in positioning themselves as smart and technological cities than as sustainable cities (Machado Junior et al,11
"Therefore, in this work, we selected several bibliographies in order to draw attention to issues concerning air pollution and climate change, based on the way in which these themes are covered by the SDGs, adapted to the Brazilian scenario",13
"In the second, a similar approach is given to climate change, building its parallel in relation to air pollution",13
"This discussion is intended, then, as a subsidy to foster reflections and raise awareness on the interconnections between human and environmental health in order to better address the gaps that are still found in sustainable development actions",3
"In a broad study involving all 26 Brazilian states and the Federal District in a 20-year historical series (1995–2014) to estimate the different types of territorial changes arising from crops, pastures, and forestry and crossing these data with the associated CO2 emissions, it was noticed that both the highest emissions occurred in the surroundings of the Amazon Biome, as well as the productive models of territorial use that expanded the most in the region, are the ones that most contribute to this type of pollution (generation of greenhouse gases) (Novaes et al",15
"2, 3, and 4, of the report that deal with: suppressing energy production from burning coal, reducing illegal deforestation to zero by 2030 (as well as carrying out reforestation practices and reducing the burning of biomass) and developing a personalized Brazilian version of air quality index, with online messages that alert the population to the increased risk of pollutants in certain scenarios, respectively",15
"(2021), in their turn, when analyzing numbers of hospitalizations for respiratory diseases between 1998 and 2020 in the city of Manaus — AM and the data on atmospheric pollutants obtained in the same period, denoted a strong correlation between them, in addition to obtaining an annual calculation average of more than BRL 19,000.00 (approximately US$3900.00 in May/2022 quotation) per hospitalization by the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS), evidencing a high cost per patient admitted",3
"(2022) also showed that the levels of pollution found in São Paulo probably contributed to the increase in deaths due to the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing that reducing pollution levels is also essential from the perspective of coping and improving the chances of death survival in future respiratory disease pandemics",3
"(2022) who studied the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic (lockdowns and mobility restrictions) on pollution levels and noticed very heterogeneous results, concluding that the economic, health and vehicular traffic particularities of each city or region in the state of São Paulo should be taken into account in the search for emission mitigation strategies",13
"(2017) used studies involving ozone (O3) emissions and the Metropolitan region of São Paulo — SP, over three decades (1980s-2010s), and demonstrated that challenges still remain for the Companhia de Tecnologia de Saneamento Ambiental (CETESB, Environmental Protection Agency) to the control of pollutants of secondary origin such as O3 and particulate matter, especially by vehicular sources and emissions",15
"Studies also show frustrated alternatives that have already tried to reduce the emission of vehicular pollutants in the region, such as the one by Araujo and Araujo (2020) who analyzed the impact of the Vehicle Inspection Program on public health in the city of São Paulo",3
"Cubatão — SP, a notorious city for having already been considered by the UN as the one with the most polluted atmosphere in the world, in a recent study (Sarra and Mülfarth 2021) that evaluated the historical series 2010–2020, showed, mainly in the years 2015 to 2017, a 62% reduction in the number of exceeding the Air Quality Standard for PM10, which reflected, for example, a 30% drop in the infant mortality rate, a 95% drop in hospitalizations for acute bronchitis and bronchiolitis in children under 4 years of age and a 60% reduction in deaths of individuals over 60 years of age from diseases of the respiratory system, which allows us to conclude the positive impacts of the recovery and sustainable measures that have been effectively adopted and carried out in this municipality",3
"Similar to concerns about air pollution, attention to climate change, given the great affinity between the topics, has intensified in the last four decades",13
"In addition, these authors emphasize that people could already perceive environmental changes, such as deforestation, would alter the rainfall regime, and this became a strategy of domination, even though there was no understanding of atmospheric pollution or global warming",15
"Following the historical line of important points directly related to the understanding of climate change, as illustrated by Sheehan (2019), in 1824, Fourier described the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect and, in 1861, Tyndall proved in the laboratory that water vapor in combination with other gases was capable of producing the greenhouse effect",13
"Brazil has been identified as a key country when it comes to global climate change (Lahsen and Ribot 2022), but the organization of climate services in the country is diffused, and this seems to be a major national challenge facing the 2030 Agenda (Escada et al",13
"Spatially, a study displayed the Brazilian hot-spots sensitive to climate change, based on the regional climate change index (RCCI) and the socioclimatic vulnerability index (SCVI) (Torres et al",13
"The first index is directly related to meteorological variables, while the second incorporates regional and social factors, including the availability of water resources and agricultural vulnerability",6
"In addition to the heterogeneity of vulnerability associated with climate change, policies related to its risks, at the level of cities and states, are diffuse and supported by non-governmental stakeholders, organizations of civil society, the private sector, universities, and research institutions",13
Only 14 of the 27 federative units and 6 cities have climate change policies,13
The study by Barbi and Da Costa Ferreira (2017) evaluated these policies based on five main points of analysis: (1) mitigation goals and intentions; (2) adaptation actions; (3) stakeholder participation; (4) policy implementation; (5) participation in transnational climate change networks,13
"The authors also comment that the establishment of climate policies is an important step, but that law enforcement mechanisms are fundamental to ensure that mitigation and adaptation actions are taken",16
"Returning to the national sphere, two important elements can (and should) be used as a basis for expanding health care in a scenario of a changing climate: Law 12,187/2009, which establishes the National Policy on Climate Change (Brazil-NCCP), and the country’s national adaptation plan (Brazil-NAP)",13
"Still, the absence of explicit references to the right to health shows that the country has considerable room to improve its engagement with the human rights framework, particularly through the establishment of mechanisms to promote transparency, monitoring, and participation of marginalized groups, aiming to increase access and reduce inequalities (Viveros-Uehara 2021)",10
"2021), and the country has been identified as one of the places with the highest rates of mortality from heat waves attributed to human-induced climate change (Vicedo-Cabrera et al",13
"In addition to respiratory and circulatory diseases, studies have detailed the relationship between infectious diseases and changes in the climate, including dengue, malaria, and arboviruses",3
"Table 1 presents the global goals related to the mitigation of impacts directly or indirectly related to air pollution and climate change, adapted for Brazil, and was prepared with information obtained from the website <   > , maintained and updated by the Brazilian Federal Government, in order to allow public monitoring of the goals of the 2030 Agenda",13
"This is certainly cause for concern, as studies show that there is an intimate relationship between air pollution, climate change, and natural disasters, whether in Brazil (Marengo et al",13
"(2017) evaluated the impacts of climate change on 95 species of pollinators in 13 different types of crops in Brazil, and in the projections (considering the worst scenarios until the end of the twenty-first century), about 88% of Brazilian municipalities will face loss in the number of pollinating species, which can reach 100% of the species for some crops, such as sunflower",13
"This scenario clearly contributes to the increase in food insecurity, with the municipalities with the lowest GDP being the most affected, putting more than 6 million people at risk",2
"And, as also demonstrated by Asere and Blumberga (2020), the level of energy efficiency and quality of a country is directly linked to the progress of its GDP",7
"This type of action can easily be adapted to the particularities of companies in the public and private sectors, creating a network of contributions that combine efforts (integrity, diversity, human rights, efficiency, prevention of corruption, natural resources protection) to reach the different SDGs established",16
"(2017), less than 60% of the collected waste has an adequate destination in Brazilian municipalities and, especially in small municipalities, there are important difficulties in adapting to the Brazilian National Policy on Solid Waste (NPSW) (Pereira and Fernandino 2019)",12
"(2021), in their review on the subject in Brazil, drew attention to the fact that inadequate management of solid waste is directly linked to the contamination of all environmental compartments (especially soil and water) and that, on a national scale, many of these impacts have gone unnoticed",12
"There is great lobbying both by sectors that ignore the pressures caused by agribusiness on ecosystems, as well as by initiatives that establish a conflict between small producers, large-scale producers, universities, and research centers, instead of realizing that everyone efforts should be on the same side of the discussion (Lahsen et al",9
"The indicators related to SDG13, on the other hand, are mainly about the need to improve policies, initiatives to prevent climate change and the introduction of environmental education content in the training of teachers, students and in the construction of national curriculum matrices",13
"Regarding the advancement of public policies in relation to environmental health, Brazil has not shown conclusive steps for some years",3
"Government positions, especially since 2016, represent steps backward in several areas of environmental health (Freitas et al",3
"Key lessons are summarized in the concluding section, which explore the importance of (1) educational governance (on critical decision making) during the pandemic as well as with cascading risks; (2) enhancement of school-community-family linkages as pandemic response commonalities between ESD and DRR education; (3) risk communication and citizen behavior; and (4) use of technology",11
"We argue that integration of health and DRR education is important, that resilience needs to be redefined in terms of sustainable development goals (SDGs), and that education plays a vital role in achieving these ends",11
"2016), DRR education links school, community, and home",11
The ultimate goal of DRR education is to internalize risk perception and enhance preventive/preparedness actions,11
(2009) proposed the KIDA (Knowledge Interest Desire Action) model as the example of process-based DRR education,11
"Japan has been in the forefront of DRR education, be it in the formal sectors like schools or informal sectors such as communities",11
"After the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, the Japanese government has started focusing on DRR education related to the importance of life",11
"In DRR education, the traditional focus has been on “how to evacuate” as exemplified in emergency drills",11
"The impact is more prominent in poor and vulnerable communities, although several developed countries have also felt the disruption with a certain amount of increased dropout rate in the schools",1
"Educational disruptions have impacted the mid-day, in school meal, which is often considered to be the only nutritious food for school-age children in poor neighborhoods",2
"The prolonged pandemic has also increased violence against children, especially girls",16
"The past few months of pandemic experiences have not only changed the course of education as a whole, they have also impacted the meaning and realization of DRR education",11
"Within this context, this article analyzes the biological hazards perspectives of the Sendai Framework and draws a few key lessons",11
"An analysis of DRR education in the new risk landscape follows, as well as analysis of ESD, DRR education, and the link to SDGs",11
Key issues of DRR education and COVID-19 impacts in Japan are also described,11
"Finally, the article proposes key learning for DRR education in the “new normal” condition by analyzing the case of Omuta City, Japan",11
"In this article, we argue that the new perspective of integrated DRR education can implement the lessons learned from the pandemic as well as enhance reduction of systemic, cascading risks",11
The Sendai Framework reinforces the scope of disaster risk management by expanding beyond natural hazards to include biological hazards such as epidemic and pandemic diseases,11
"The Sendai Framework also places strong emphasis on the need to build resilient health systems through the integration of disaster risk management into the provision of healthcare at all levels and, in particular, “to enhance cooperation between health authorities and other relevant stakeholders to strengthen country capacity for disaster risk management for health” (UNISDR 2015, p",11
Risk communication is also an essential element of disaster risk management (DRM) because it shapes people’s perceptions of risk and influences their actions with respect to disaster preparedness and disaster response,11
"Priority Four of the Sendai Framework (UNISDR 2015) specifies the importance of investing in disaster risk communication along with multi-hazard forecasting and early warning systems, developing these systems with participatory process, tailoring them to the needs of users, and broadening release channels for disaster early warning information",11
The education sector can help reduce local impacts by generating health education that increases student and community awareness of disease ecology and preventive public health practices,3
"A biological hazard also may often be an opportunity for higher education institutions and research organizations to engage in developing new tools, encourage research and innovation, and find new funding opportunities",9
Isolation of children from schools could also affect their mental health,3
"Governments and public health agencies in each country have been informing the public about what the COVID-19 virus is, what the symptoms of the virus are, how to avoid catching the virus, what measures to take when the suspicion of infection arises, and so on",3
"Public health education also involves multiple messages, not strictly about risk, that express concerns, opinions, or reactions to risk messages or to legal and institutional arrangements for risk management (Natural Research Council 1989)",3
"The goals of risk communication in public health are to share information vital for saving life, protecting health, and minimizing harm to self and others throughout a society",3
"ESD, DRR education, and SDGs are inter-connected, and often considered as the part of the same coin",11
"As a lesson learnt from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami and ESD practice in Kesennuma City, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, ESD brought new innovations to DRR education from the perspective of the sustainable development concept",11
"This achievement was attained by improving the quality of DRR education, fostering DRR ability and attitude, and building networks and partnerships for DRR (Oikawa 2014c)",11
"In the context of DRR and ESD values, such concepts as respect for lives, human security, life together (coexistence), and building a sustainable society (Build Back Better) emerged",11
Adoption of those ESD learning methods into DRR education should further improve the quality of DRR education,11
"As a result, through the improvement based on ESD, DRR education can foster DRR abilities and attitudes that become the building blocks of disaster management (Oikawa 2014b)",11
Sustainable development goals ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all at Goal 4,4
"To realize this, education, especially DRR education based on ESD, should make a great contribution through capacity development",11
"Source Left: Japanese National Commission for UNESCO ( -japan.go.jp/htm/jpcommissionunesco.htm); right: UNESCO ( ) Sustainable development goals mention DRR at Goal 1, 11, and 13",11
Yet DRR education should not be limited to SDGs 4 and 11,11
"Disasters have serious impacts on other issues such as poverty (Goal 1), food and hunger (Goal 2), clean water and sanitation (Goal 6), energy (Goal 7), infrastructure (Goal 9), and so on",6
"Therefore, promoting DRR education centered on DRR (Goal 11) and education (Goal 4) in relation to other goals can contribute to achieving all SDGs",11
"The COVID-19 pandemic is also related to many other SDG goals, such as poverty, food, health, sanitation, economic growth, among others",8
Thus responses to prevention of infection are congruous with the aims of DRR education,11
"These educational efforts could energize participatory disaster risk management by any local community trying to find, through discussion, solutions that reduce disaster risk",11
"From the experience of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami disaster, participatory disaster risk management by the local community has been proven to be an effective way of communicating risk",11
"When a local community was involved in planning for disaster preparedness, and people took ownership of their own safety plans, they were better prepared and better able to take the necessary actions to protect themselves",11
"During a state of emergency period, the Japanese people obeyed the stay-home request without any law enforcement (Shaw, Kim et al",16
But discrimination and stigma against hospital workers and hoarding certain products also occurred in the society; these behaviors were assumed to be caused by fear of contamination and rumors about potential shortages potentially caused by the unknown and the invisible coronavirus,10
"Working closely with the schools, local communities, academics, and nongovernment organizations, as well as business sector, the city has established a collaboration scheme for DRR, ESD, and SDG",11
"Today, utilizing the coal mine-related resources, which are World Heritage sites, Omuta is advancing its own Omuta-brand SDGs to enhance education that promotes sustainable communities",11
"The Omuta City Board of Education (BOE) has built an ESD Consortium comprising local companies, nongovernment/nonprofit organizations, the University of Teacher Education Fukuoka, and others",4
Schools in the city also promote DRR education utilizing their linkage with local communities (Omuta BOE 2018),11
"Omuta City has been learning the lessons of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in Kesennuma City, such as the disaster management and recovery process (Oikawa 2012)",11
"Throughout the response, the BOE received advice from specialists, such as a doctor in the public health center, on the best practices available to avoid COVID-19 outbreaks at schools",3
"Although the Sendai Framework has expanded the scope of hazards to biological hazards, NaTech (natural hazard induced technological disaster), and so on, this is the first time in recent history that we have faced such a prolonged biological hazard in terms of pandemic, which has affected different parts of global society",11
New learning of DRR education can be summarized below in terms of (1) governance and decision making; (2) school-community-family linkages; (3) risk communication and citizen behavior; and (4) use of technology,11
But a proper integration into DRR education is desirable,11
"The connection between school and community, including families, is very critical for promoting DRR education",11
"As a lesson of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, it was reported that disaster management, including evacuation and management of shelter, was remarkably successful in those schools that have good linkages and collaborations with their communities and outside institutions through high quality DRR education within the community (Oikawa 2013)",11
"Thus, the key essence of ESD and DRR education as school community linkage is reestablished through the lessons from pandemic responses, and this leads to achievement of sustainable development goals and emergence of a more resilient society and community",11
"For DRR education, providing appropriate information through schools to community and family is effective",11
Health surveillance using a thermal camera was common in most of the schools,3
"All these technologies have implications for DRR education as well, which can also be used for education continuity through online classes (when schools are used as evacuation shelter after a disaster) or safety notification after a disaster through health related apps, as well as regular health checks, and so on",11
"Focusing on the Sendai Framework priority, understanding that risk includes all its dimensions of vulnerability, capacity, exposure of persons and assets, hazard characteristics, and the environment",11
The current concept of single hazard DRR education also needs to be changed,11
"Thus, traditional DRR education is significantly challenged and we need new cycles of learning for holistic DRR and resilience education",11
"The Sendai Framework has expanded the scope of hazards, and thus DRR education needs to incorporate new learning from COVID-19 responses in the education sector",11
"The case of Japan presented here has drawn the lessons from the evolution of DRR education, previous learning from the 2011 East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, and the current pandemic",11
Informed and science-based decision making by the Board of Education and schools are critical both in the pandemic as well as in DRR education,11
"School-community-family linkages, risk communication, and responsible citizen behavior are key variables to reduce the impacts of the pandemic disaster and can be adapted to other disaster risk management needs",11
"Technology has played a critical role in the COVID-19 pandemic, which can also be used in future DRR education",11
New realization of DRR education lies in the fact that it offers an essential lens through which to understand a complex emergency with cascading risks and differential levels of uncertainties,11
"Also, health education and DRR education have complementarities, but still need to promote more synergies",11
"Decision making and risk communication for complex emergencies needs to be incorporated in DRR education, so that it becomes a comprehensive risk reduction and resilience education, leading to a safer and sustainable society and community.",11
We use nonlinear auto-regressive distributive lag model (NARDL) approach to detect the short-term and long-term effects of undermentioned macroeconomic variables on economic growth of Pakistan,8
"Similarly, in short term the foreign direct investment inflow, infrastructure, and green energy transition coefficients are significantly positive related to sustainable development goals",7
"Additionally, bidirectional causal relationship is found between FDI and infrastructure towards economic growth which shows that the increase in foreign investment has the potential to boost the economic growth",8
"Finally, all the estimated indexes are considered as important sources towards the economic growth",8
The sustainable development efforts are considered to contribute to economic growth without affecting the green environment of the society,8
It is indispensable to address interconnected pillars of economic growth through supportive policies to attain sustainable economic growth,8
The education at both levels industry and society are very important in the way to build green environment and make economic growth,8
"In contrast, it has been observed by Seetanah (2009) that education fosters economic development and increases human livelihoods by boosting the quality of the workforce, promoting democratization, better life, decreasing fertility, and boosting equality",8
"In adopting the green energy, the study uses the adaptation of natural gas, which is considered as crucial clean energy source as comparison with other petrochemicals such as petroleum and coal",7
Achieving targeted economic growth is one of the critical challenges of government policymakers in case of developing countries like Pakistan,8
"According to UN Agenda-2030 the SDG-8 support the sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth; productive employment; and clean environment for all",8
"For measuring economic growth, current study has adopted the same proxy used by (I",8
(2020) documented that most economies aspire to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) because of its recognized benefits as a catalyst for economic growth,8
"Likewise, this research looks at the empirical association between FDI and economic growth in Pakistan, as well as the factors that influence FDI into the Pakistani economy",8
These SDGs are selected form current stream of United Nations Agenda-2030 of green energy transitions,7
This paper contributes to existing efforts for economic growth narrative in several ways like introducing new statistical measurement of nonlinear auto-regressive distributed lag (NARDL) model which is considered as most superior to the conventionally used auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) model,8
b Historical trending in the economic growth of Pakistan,8
Source: Author’s calculations a Trend in the economic growth of Pakistan with respect to Bangladesh and Iran economies,8
"First, we assess the economic impact of inclusive and equitable quality education to encourage possibilities for lifelong learning",4
"Third, we analyze the effect of resilient infrastructure, sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation on economic growth",9
"The government subsidizes and spends more on higher education to produce skill full labors where the impact of such spending is negative on economic growth, which is against the previous research studies and opposing the general theoretical support",8
"On the other hand, government failed to provide jobs to graduates so skillful labors are contributing negative to economic growth in the long term",8
"Additionally, the FDI inflow into the developing economy has vast substantial impact of economic growth",8
"However, at the same time the defense spending throughout the late 1960s slowed the country’s economic growth and caused it to stagnate (Looney 1991)",8
"During 1958–1973, increased defense spending harmed economic growth, particularly during the conflicts with neighbor country in 1965 and 1971 (Looney 1994)",8
"The second phase of economic expansion emerged in 1980s, with the most significant annual GDP growth of 10.2% reported in 1980 and a yearly growth rate of 6.1% over 10 years of 6.1% on average (Tehsin et al",8
"Despite this progress in economic development, Pakistan may perhaps be not maintained it until miliarial administration",8
"Similarly, following the previous regime the military acquired the country administration and several structural changes were enabled, accepted globalization, and welcomed international trade and investment; Pakistan’s economy progressed toward sustainable economic growth",8
"Based on the lessons learned during the miliarial administration, it can be predicted that the social and economic consequences of another effort at economic development will manifest themselves in the structure of extreme right-wing violence in society",8
"Ultimately, due to the worldwide coronavirus outbreak, Pakistan’s GDP growth fell to 1.9% in 2019, down from a decade-high of 5.8% the previous year when the new elected administration took the charge",8
"According to Looney, the miliarial administration did not adhere to the effective governance indicators set forth by the World Bank (Looney 2004)",16
"These include political freedoms, the efficiency of government, and anti-corruption (Kaufmann et al",16
This part will assist the readers in fully understanding the bridge and connection between SDGs and the economic growth of Pakistan,8
"In the perspective of economic growth of Pakistan, it has been facing number of challenges like high fiscal deficit and low investment, rising rate of poverty and unemployment, and heavy external and domestic debts",8
(2020) concluded that the economy needs to improve the political stability for promotion of investment form of domestic and foreign investors and suggested the openness to international trade and private foreign investment,17
(2021) documented that the manufacturing sector contributed its share in economic growth and played a key role,8
It helps the nation to achieve the objective of poverty reduction,1
Sustainable development goal comprises the ensuring of inclusive and quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all (Seetanah 2009),4
"Similarly, Kingdon (2007) stated that the education quality in Pakistan is different from other developing countries and needs a serious attention; it is concluded that certain economies with a high educational level (for example, Taiwan) also have a thriving economy",4
"Self and Grabowski (2004) examined the determinants of education on economic development, that the educational attainment is accountable for fluctuations in a financial product",8
Chowdhury (2022) investigated the internationalization of education on economic growth; the main findings revealed significant disparities between education levels in terms of their effect on economic growth,8
The tertiary education does not appear to have a causal effect on development,4
They examined the association between level of education and economic growth and conclude that when the population is separated into groups based on the gender of the individuals then education has a significant causal effect on the nation’s economic growth in the long term,8
"Many other experts have concentrated their efforts on investigating the relationship between education and the economic prosperity of a country, but in developing economies, this is considered as first time to examine the effect of education on economic growth",8
"Lin (2003) studied the association of economic growth, education, and technical progress and confirmed the long-run association of parameters",8
Hassan and Rafaz (2017) study the association between gender’s education and economic growth in Pakistan,8
"(2021) employed a generalized method of moments (GMM) to investigate the link between economic growth and several factors such as education, poverty, and unemployment in Pakistan",8
"The question is if the connection between educational factors and economic growth in Pakistan has altered over time, and whether there are any other factors that are associated with these variables",8
"As a result, explanation and specificity of the association between education and economic growth may be regarded valuable information",8
 The theoretic basics of the foreign direct investment (FDI) to economic growth is founded on the neoclassical and endogenous growth models,8
(2020) deliberate that the FDI has an optimistic effect on economic growth by growing investment level,8
"However, in the endogenous growth models the FDI increases total economic growth in host countries by familiarizing new inputs, technologies, and products; augmenting managers and labor skills; and increasing local competition",8
They suggested that they would have a significant impact on Pakistan’s economic growth,8
"Thereby, FDI provides a number of benefits to the host country, including the formation of new jobs, technical progress, resource optimization, and competitive merchandise",8
"This FDI creates new job opportunities, technology transfer, increased productivity, and contest",17
(2022) scrutinized the impact of FDI and imports on economic growth; they discovered a dual-directional relationship between output and FDI and imports,8
" The sustainable development goal in UN Agenda-2030 is to create resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and inspire innovation",9
"Reliable infrastructure is required to connect supply chains and efficiently move products and services across the borders (Sohail et al., 2021)",9
" The purpose to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all depicts that sustainable goal is included in UN Agenda-2030",7
Natural gas is considered a reliable source of green energy transition,7
"Increased NGC can contribute to the achievement of the twin dividend, i.e., economic growth and emission reduction (Feng et al",8
"Much academic research has been undertaken on the causality relationship between NGC and economic growth, most of which have been conducted at the national level and compared the results of other countries",8
"For example, the research from 67 nations over the period 1992–2005 revealed that NGC and economic growth were linked in a two-way causal manner both in the short and long terms (Apergis and Payne 2010b)",8
"Among G7 member countries, there were three types of causality between NGC and economic growth (unidirectional causality, reverse causality, and bidirectional causality) (Apergis and Payne 2010b), the first being the most common (Ozturk and Al-Mulali 2015)",8
The evidence from the Gulf Cooperation Countries throughout the period 1980–2012 demonstrated that NGC was beneficial to long-term economic growth,8
"Depending on the outcomes of their research, different experts have come to different conclusions about the connection between natural gas use and economic development",8
"As a result, while numerous studies have established that NGC has a favorable effect on economic growth (Ozturk and Al-Mulali 2015), others have claimed that economic growth has a detrimental impact on NGC (Sari et al",8
"Furthermore, there was a mismatch among regions regarding the association between NGC and economic growth (Fatai et al",8
"In this aspect, the association between NGC and economic growth was statistically insignificant in Australia and New Zealand",8
"According to the findings from different OPEC member countries, there were growth, conservation, and neutrality correlations between NGC and economic development, in other OPEC member countries",8
It was shown that the association between NGC and economic growth differed significantly between China and Japan,8
For batter examination we are considering the GDP per capita as the proxy of economic growth (EG),8
We scrutinized the influence of four SDGs on economic growth along with the indexes,8
The present study is using the NARDL model that covers the optimistic and pessimistic partial sums and also the short- and long-run effects on economic growth,8
"Thus, using an error correction model the NARDL model studies the resultant equations for
 where EGt is the economic growth in Pakistan in year t; EDIt shows the education index in year t; FDIt presents the foreign direct investment inflow in year t; INFRIt stands for the infrastructure index in year t; NGCt shows the natural gas consumption in year t; \({\hat{e} }_{t-1}\) shows the error correction term; α1, αij \(\left(i\right)\), and β1 are the parameters; and \({\varepsilon }_{\mathrm{log}egit},{\varepsilon }_{\mathrm{log}ediit},{\varepsilon }_{\mathrm{log}fdiit},{\varepsilon }_{\mathrm{log}infriit}, \mathrm{and }{\varepsilon }_{\mathrm{log}ngcit}\) are the white noise disturbance terms that may be correlated with each other",8
"At the moment, the cointegration test is used to determine whether there are any long-run equilibrium relationships between the four variables EDI, FDI, INFRI and NGC and economic growth",8
"Additionally, the study established that the education index has a favorable effect on economic growth in nine remittance-receiving countries",8
"At a 1% significance level, this optimistic effect of education on economic development is highly noteworthy",8
The coefficient of EDI implies that increasing the EDI by 1% increases economic growth by 0.08 percent,8
"In comparison, other studies showed that increasing educational levels boosts economic growth (Habibi and Zabardast 2020; Hanushek and Woessmann 2020; Kousar et al",8
"Likewise, numerous studies have also demonstrated a beneficial correlation between education spending and economic growth (Glewwe et al",8
The FDI coefficient affirms that a 1% augmentation in FDI will boost economic growth by 0.504 percent,8
A 1-percent drop in FDI will conversely influence economic growth with the same quantity,8
Modern studies examining the relation between FDI influx and economic growth indicated that FDI inflow increases economic growth (e Ali et al,8
"In addition, the VECM model’s long-run fallout shows that INFRI (infrastructure index) also leads to an essential positive connection in the direction of economic growth at a 1% significance level",8
"The coefficient of INFRI increases by 1%; economic growth will also augment by 0.757, respectively",8
(2020) showed a significant positive association between economic growth and infrastructure,8
Another study conducted in India also authenticated our results that increasing infrastructure enhances economic growth (Mohanty and Bhanumurthy 2019; Chakamera and Alagidede 2018),8
"Finally, the selected VECM model shows that NGC also helpfully manipulates the economic growth in the chosen country",8
"As NGC is raised by 1%, it boosts economic enlargement by 0.460%, while declining NGC by 1% will move down economic growth with the identical percent in the case of Pakistan",8
2013; Solarin and Ozturk 2016) showing that economic growth can be improved with the increase of NGC,8
"The short-run consequences of the nominated VECM model display that FDI inflow has an essential positive connection with economic growth, indicating that a 1% increase in FDI inflow will enhance economic growth by 0.315 percent in the short run",8
"During the short-run term, EDI has a significant pessimistic association with economic growth, which means that increasing education by 1% reduces economic expansion by 0.460 percent",8
"In the near run, a 1% increase in INFRI boosts economic growth by 0.149 percent and vice versa",8
"NGC demonstrated a substantial negative link with economic intensification in the short run, indicating that a 1% increase in NGC causes economic growth to decelerate by 0.321 percent",8
"We examined that there is cointegrated and significant association between economic growth and education, natural gas, and infrastructure",8
"In line with this, we have proposed our estimation as basic model for economic growth (EG), model 2 represents the secondary economic growth (EG-S), model 3 the primary growth (EG-P), and model 4 indicates the tertiary economic growth (EG-T) for making such supposition we follow (Shin et al",8
"Additionally, the economic growth is based on cointegration consequences and VECM is organized to recognize the path of causality",8
The results from short-run NARDL represent that education and infrastructure have no effect on secondary and tertiary economic growth (EG-S; EG-T),8
"However, in the long run the education has significant and positive impact over primary economic growth (EG-P)",8
"Similarly, in all models the FDI has vital role in determination of economic growth at every level",8
"The outcome shows the unidirectional causality from EDI to economic growth (EDI ≥ EG), natural gas to economic growth (NGC ≥ GCF), and EDI to infrastructure (EDI ≥ INFRI)",8
Bidirectional causality is found between economic growth and FDI (EG < = > FDI) and economic growth and infrastructure (EG < = > INFRI),8
"In summary, EDI has a noteworthy consequence on economic growth in Pakistan, owing to its bidirectional causation",8
"More specifically, we examined the association of several important SDGs on economic growth with regards to previously missing links of sustainable economic development",8
"Interestingly, this study is considering several new dimensions through the influence of SDGs: firstly the education (SDG-4) which is found in opposing to the theoretical approaches, secondly the foreign direct investment (SDG-17) which is found to more contributive to national economy, thirdly infrastructure and technological development (SDG-9) which is found as an important factor to boost the economy, and lastly the clean and green energy of increasing usage of natural gas (SDG-7) on the economy of Pakistan",7
"Moreover, the policymakers should provide attention over the existing infrastructure to make it more sustainable business environment for industrialization and foster innovation",9
"Similarly, usage of natural gas and education are found contributions to economic growth",8
The existing policies related to quality education especially in the long term need to be revised to obtain the projected goals,4
This study can be extended to examine the relationship among sustainable development goals by analyzing the influence of other SDGs towards economic growth for other developing economies with fresh date data set.,8
"Sustainable development is ""development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs""; requiring ""meeting the basic needs of all and extending to all the opportunity to fulfill their aspirations for a better life"" (WCED, 1987) [1]",1
"In the Brazilian Amazon there are 346 Protected Areas (PA), covering 28% of the territory [8]",15
desertification) were not considered,15
"Goal 1 aims to “End poverty in all its forms everywhere”, with targets such as: (1.1) eradicate extreme poverty; (1.3) implement social protection systems; and (1.4) equal rights and access to economic resources, basic services and technology [2]",1
"Despite the low family income, the monthly values are higher than the Brazilian national minimum wage, and also higher than the average from the municipalities in the region [7, 11, 12]",8
The management projects implemented in the Mamirauá and Amanã SDR (such as the Fisheries Management and Community-Based Tourism) have increased incomes over the years (Table 1),14
"Goal 2 aims to ""End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture"", with targets such as: (2.1) ensure access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round; (2.2) end all forms of malnutrition; and (2.4) increase sustainable food productivity [2]",2
"Although Brazil has left the “Hunger Map” and hunger is not the main problem for the local riverine population, food security issues are critical in Central Amazonia",2
"The Brazilian protected areas, including the SDR, aim to protect the natural resources necessary for the livelihood of traditional populations [9]",15
The regulation and management of subsistence hunting are imperative to ensure food security to the forest inhabitants and the wildlife resources on which they depend,2
"Thus, the main challenge to improve the food security in this region is to avoid malnutrition (Target 2.2) through the incentivization of small-scale sustainable food production (2.3 and 2.4)",2
"Goal 3 aims to ""Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages"", with targets such as: (3.2) end preventable deaths under five years of age; (3.3) end epidemics and neglected tropical diseases; and (3.7) universal access to sexual and reproductive care, family planning and education [2]",3
"Infant mortality is an indicator related to educational, health, and sanitation policies; while this rate in the region of Mamirauá and Amanã SDR was almost twice the Brazilian figure in 1991, the values equaled it in 2010 [12]",3
In 1991 the infant mortality rate was 86 per 1000 live births; this rate dropped to 28 per 1000 in 2011 [12],3
Together with the reduction in infant mortality there was also a reduction in the number of children per woman; from an average of 10 in 2001 [22] to five children per woman in 2018 [11],3
"Those improvements were a result of the continuing health-care education, such as adequate breastfeeding, immunization, and other sexual and reproductive information [12], by working with traditional midwives in the region",3
"A vast diversity of biological species is found in the Central Amazon; many of them are vectors of pathogens or microbial species and parasites associated with human diseases—such as malaria, leishmaniasis, schistosomiasis, helminthiasis, and Chagas disease",3
Deforestation and land use and environmental changes affect the dynamics of these diseases [23],15
"Thus, Clean Water and Sanitation (SDG 6) improvements help to avoid associated health problems [25]",6
"Thus, the main challenge is to combat especially the water-borne and other neglected tropical diseases (Target 3.3) that are so common and associated with this region",3
"Goal 4 aims to ""Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all"", with targets such as: (4.3) equal access to affordable technical, vocational and higher education; (4.4) increase in the number of people with relevant skills for employment; and (4.6) universal literacy and numeracy [2]",4
"Thus, residents from the communities in the region that work in the Uakari Lodge receive training to improve their experience with the guests (including many foreigners), such as English language skills; food and beverage preparation; birdwatching and photography skills; and solar energy maintenance [27]",7
"The “Social Technologies of Amazonian Floodplain” CVT was created in 2013, in the Central Amazon, and aims to train young people on the sustainable management of natural resources in the protected areas, and to implement improvements in the quality of life of the residents of their traditional communities (including the river dwellers)",15
"The candidate students are nominated by their communities or organizations, receiving a scholarship for their maintenance in the town during their studies—and returning to their communities by the end of the program to implement their projects (Table 1)",4
Promoting quality education in the rural areas is a world challenge,4
"The Fisheries Management is an artisanal, family-centered, and sustainable activity that has been historically associated with male labor in the Central Amazon",14
Eliminating all forms of discrimination (Target 5.1) and ensuring equal opportunities for leadership (5.5) are constant challenges,10
"Goal 6 aims to ""Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all"", with targets such as: (6.1) safe and affordable drinking water; (6.2) achieve access to sanitation and hygiene and end open defecation; and (6.B) support and strengthen the participation of local communities in improving water and sanitation management [2]",6
Open defecation (or untreated) is still common and cultural in riverine communities in Central Amazonia,6
"However, to end open defecation (Target 6.2) it is necessary to improve public policies, sensitizing residents, and developing adapted technology",6
"Goal 7 aims to ""Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all "", with targets such as: (7.1) universal access to modern energy; (7.2) increase in global renewable energy; and (7.A) promote access to research, technology and investments in clean energy [2]",7
"Thus, solar energy has been recommended for this tropical region as early as in 1998 due the benefits outweighing the cost of installation [32]",7
"Solar energy also improved schools and allowed access to the internet in some communities [35], beyond the photovoltaic pump used in the water supply [32]",7
"Goal 8 aims to ""Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all"", with targets such as: (8.2) economic productivity through diversification, technological upgrading and innovation; (8.7) eradicate forced and child labor and modern slavery; and (8.9) promote sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products [2]",8
The current challenge is to maintain this sustainable economic growth (Targets 8.1 and 8.2) to improve the quality of life of these forest people,8
"Goal 9 aims to ""Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation"", with targets such as: (9.1) develop sustainable infrastructure; (9.2) promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization; and (9.C) increase access to information and communications technology [2]",9
"To facilitate wildlife exploitation (fish and caiman), floating processing structures have been developed in the Mamirauá SDR, adapted to the reality of the local setting by using solar energy and treated rainwater",7
"Goal 10 aims to ""Reduce inequality within and among countries"", with targets such as: (10.2) empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion; (10.3) ensure equal opportunities and end discrimination; and (10.B) encourage official development assistance and financial flows [2]",10
"As previously mentioned, Brazilian SDR aim to promote biodiversity conservation, while ensuring the conditions for improving the quality of life of traditional populations [9]",15
"In the fisheries management initiatives, the sharing of the quotas is carried out by fishers' associations and obey criteria collectively defined in assembly meetings",14
"Goal 11 aims to ""Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable"", with targets such as: (11.1) ensure access to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services; (11.4) strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the natural heritage; and (11.C) support sustainable and resilient buildings utilizing local materials [2]",11
"Until few years ago, those houses had no power, no water supply system, and no sanitation improvements; energy was limited to generators, water was taken directly from rivers, and open defecation was a common practice",6
"Goal 12 aims to ""Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns"", with targets such as: (12.2) achieve the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources; (12.5) reduce waste generation; and (12.A) support scientific and technological capacity for sustainable consumption and production [2]",12
"Agroforestry systems have been evaluated in the Amanã SDR (upland) to reduce the impacts of this management, while maintaining local production [15]",15
"In good production practices for Uarini manioc flour, the use of pesticides is prohibited and agroecology practices are encouraged [38]",2
"Following great past social and ecological successes with fisheries management [17], the region is working on developing management programmes for caiman and terrestrial wildlife; the pilot management of wild black caiman Melanosuchus niger was undertaken in March 2020, with 28 animals, resulting in 600 kg of meat sold in the town of Tefé",14
"To develop these management schemes it is necessary to determine sustainable hunting rates through researching fundamental biology such as generation lengths [20], develop safe meat preparation processes, encourage participatory mapping and management area zonation, conduct biological population monitoring [55], and train the riverine people in the practicalities of terrestrial wildlife management, which aims to support local food security [56]",2
"Goal 13 aims to ""Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts"", with targets such as: (13.1) strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards; (13.3) improve education, awareness-raising and human capacity on climate change adaptation; and (13.B) promote mechanisms for raising capacity for effective climate change [2]",13
"Records indicate changes in the Amazon River discharges over the last decades, associated with El Niño and La Niña anomalies and climate change [58]",13
"Although the riverine residences in the Amazon floodplain are typically well adapted to the water flood pulses (stilt-houses or floating-houses), climate change may increase the water level and the natural erosion of the banks – locally called terras caídas (""fallen lands"")",13
"Some of these Amazonian communities already report perceptions of climate change; this fact can influence local farming practices, such as their agricultural calendars are based on hydrological seasons [60]",13
"Climate change would also threaten mammal species of the Amazon floodplain, such as the Black-headed squirrel monkey (Saimiri vanzolinii), an endemic species which whole distribution is within Mamirauá SDR [61]; this primate will need to adapt to sudden changes in their habitat or migrate to other areas—otherwise could be extinct [62]",13
Climate action is a world challenge,13
"The Central Amazon rainforest is one of the most protected areas, especially within the reserves, such as Mamirauá and Amanã SDR",15
"Goal 14 aims to ""Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources"", with targets as: (14.2) sustainably manage and protect ecosystems; (14.4) regulate harvesting and end overfishing, illegal and destructive fishing practices and implement science-based management plans, in order to restore fish stocks; and (14.A) increase scientific knowledge and research capacity [2]",14
"Despite this wealth, less than 10% (200 species) of the listed species are commercialized—with 6 to 12 species representing more than 80% of fish landings to the main ports of the region [64]; this has resulted in overfishing of some species, such as the tambaqui (Colossoma macropomum) [51]",14
Participatory fisheries management has promoted (since 1999) an increase of wild stocks of pirarucu of the order of 68 times in the Central Amazon managed areas,14
"Currently the Central Amazon has many protected areas and management programs, as in the Mamirauá and Amanã SDR",15
The main challenge now is to maintain this protection and combat illegal and unregulated fishing (Target 14.4 and 14.6); either by economic benefits (14.7) and/or better access to markets (14.B) for those species that support it,14
"Goal 15 aims to ""Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss"", with targets such as: (15.2) promote the implementation of sustainable management; (15.5) reduce the degradation of natural habitats, halt the loss of biodiversity, and protect and prevent the extinction of threatened species; and (15.C) combat poaching and trafficking of protected species, including by increasing the capacity of local communities to pursue sustainable livelihood opportunities [2]",15
"The Brazilian Amazon holds a significant biodiversity, and has 28% of its territory designated as protected areas [8]",15
"The black-headed squirrel monkey constitutes an example of extreme endemism, with one of the smallest geographic distributions of all Neotropical primates—around 870 km2 [61]; thus, it is listed as Vulnerable on national and international threatened species lists [65, 66]",15
"Twenty-one medium and large sized terrestrial mammals were recorded in the area of Mamirauá and Amanã SDR—among the 51 species registered in the entire Amazon; the presence of these species demonstrates the effectiveness of wildlife conservation in large protected areas [75], as nine of these are considered Vulnerable on national and international threatened species lists [65, 66]",15
"Goal 16 aims to ""Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels"", with targets such as: (16.7) ensure inclusive and participatory decision-making at all levels; (16.10) ensure public access to information, and protect fundamental freedoms; and (16.B) promote and enforce non-discriminatory laws and policies for sustainable development [2]",16
"The SDR concept [9] was a novelty when created (in 1996), since protected areas traditionally remove the people who live within them",15
"Goal 17 aims to ""Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development"", with targets such as: (17.7) promote the development, transfer, dissemination and diffusion of environmentally sound technologies; (17.16) enhance global partnership to support the achievement of the sustainable development goals; and (17.17) promote effective public, public–private and civil society partnerships [2]",17
Sub-Saharan Africa faces an enormous challenge in meeting the basic needs of a population that will nearly triple between now and the end of the twenty-first century,1
"Our key finding is that green water management at the landscape-scale constitutes the best entry point for providing leverage at both smaller and larger scales, in terms of time, space, and policy",6
"We conclude by highlighting the urgent need for much more resilient, cross-scale green water systems that can accommodate the impending, nonstationary changes related to climate change",13
"Water development in western countries has historically focused on surface runoff and groundwater, so called blue water management",6
"In the world of water management, it is often assumed that water in the soil is the same as water flowing in a river, and that most of the water used for food production comes from irrigation (i.e",6
"goal #2), despite water scarcity being the largest constraint for reaching food production goals -- truly a fateful blindspot",6
"2c, d) makes its water scarcity a fundamental development problem",6
"Savanna landscapes, hydroclimate and population prospects: a Undernourishment is highest in sub-Saharan Africa; b sub-Saharan Africa will experience some of the highest population growth in the world through 2050; c sub-Saharan Africa is dominated by dry-subhumid and semiarid savannas; and, d Precipitation as compared to crop water requirements (plus/minus one standard deviation) in arid, semiarid and subhumid zones, and population 2010, 2030 and 2050",2
"2012): green water is essential for production of biomass (food, fiber, timber); blue water for direct water use in drinking water supply, industry, and energy generation",6
"Simply put, good green-water management (Wani et al",6
"2007) leads to food security, leaving blue-water to help sustain cities, economic modernization, and aquatic ecosystem health (Falkenmark and Rockström 2010)",2
"Bad green-water management would require blue water to also be used for irrigation – as well as for cities, industry, energy, and aquatic ecosystems",6
"In this paper, in an effort to characterize ‘good’, or sustainable, green water management, we explore key insights related to green water to refine the possibility-space for policy and practice",6
"Based on these individual green water insights, we will synthesize how they interact with one another in the context of hydrology generally, and green water management specifically",6
"Likewise, we examine the cross-scale interactions of these insights to reveal entry points or levers of change for water management",6
"We begin by highlighting three key insights from the broad academic study of green water systems: 1) improving food production via the vapor shift, 2) understanding green water from the landscape perspective, and 3) moisture recycling connecting distant locales",12
"Adapted from Rockström and Falkenmark 2000 The key implications of the vapor shift for water management overall are: More water (volumetrically) could be used for producing biomass-based goods for human use, with minimal impacts to the hydrological environment, Minimal reliance on blue water (which can be diverted easily and quickly) reduces vulnerability in food-producing systems, and ‘Additional’ green water that is captured with the vapor shift can support crop diversification, allowing for both subsistence food crop production as well as cash-crop production for sale at market",6
Given that the process-scale of green-water management is small (e.g,6
"A secondary or tertiary benefit of the vapor shift could be that by increasing food security at farm-scales, the accelerating flow of migrants from rural-to-urban communities may be reduced, consequently relieving pressure on urban resources and retaining key cultural knowledge to manage landscapes for subsequent generations",2
"In terms of cross-scale relations, management options, and policies, this typology facilitates the categorization of different landscapes, and makes it possible to zoom out from the farm-scale, and highlight the hydroclimatic realities of what types of agriculture are appropriate for meeting food security goals in different landscapes",2
"sand dams), the overwhelming emphasis on water management ought to be on how to maximize the productive use of soil water",6
"In a subsistence or smallholder farming context, land-use decisions are made to gain food security",2
"2016), and ecosystem service trade-offs (Bennett et al",15
"There are benefits of improving the landscape-scale understanding of green water management, not least considering that much of sub-Saharan Africa is a ‘pure-green’ where land management is water management (Falkenmark and Rockström 2010)",6
"For example, sustainable management of water and ecosystems in a ‘pure-green’ region is going to emphasize activities that are rainfed, and not activities that utilize irrigation, given the lack of run-off",6
"Schematic representation of atmospheric branch of water cycle, emphasizing moisture recycling that occurs over land",12
Used with permission from Keys (2016) Some recent work has highlighted the important connection between land-use and the recycling of water vapor from one location to somewhere else,12
"These feedbacks could be fast and small, such as land-use policy driven by drought events or floods, or much slower and larger, occurring at the scale of a country and its long-term forest management policy, such as Brazil’s deforestation policy ‘The Forest Code’ (Keys and Wang-Erlandsson 2017)",15
They found that human modifications to moisture recycling have the potential to significantly impact both green and blue water partitioning in important ways,12
The implications of these moisture recycling-related findings are that changes to vegetation in one location can lead to large changes in (a) distant rainfall and subsequently soil moisture (i.e,12
"Moisture recycling as a physical process operates at weekly to monthly time-scales, i.e",12
"However, to modify moisture recycling requires significant changes in land-use and subsequently evaporation, which would likely take place across decadal time-scales (i.e",12
Moisture recycling constitutes a necessary condition for water resilience in biomass production (Falkenmark 2017),12
Not only large scale but also landscape-scale recycling is essential for the generation of rainfall,12
"Perhaps unlike farm-scale vapor management and landscape ecosystem decisions, moisture recycling is biogeophysically emergent",12
"This means that moisture recycling changes are unlikely to be planned, simply due to the large spatial scales at which they occur",12
"However, that does not imply that it cannot be governed, and recent work has speculated on how institutional and legal options could address the challenges of anthropogenic changes to moisture recycling (Keys et al",12
"Likewise, given that terrestrial moisture recycling relationships can be simulated in both simple and complex models, it is possible for SDG goals and programs to respond to changes in moisture recycling, as well as anticipate potential scenarios of land-use change that could impact SDG attainment",12
"Food production change processes (red loops) occur at the farm-scale and across individual years; landscape and ecosystem processes (green loops) occur at the catchment scale, and over multi-year time-scales; and, moisture recycling change processes (blue loop) occur at regional to continental scales and the longest decadal time-scales The nested reality of these processes also suggests that changes can propagate, but only in certain directions",12
"Thus, if green water management aims to leverage these different scales and interactions, it is important to note how these processes do (and do not) interact",6
Modifying large-scale moisture recycling patterns will take time and extensive land-use change,12
"So, year-to-year farm changes are unlikely to have a discernible impact on moisture recycling",12
"However, landscape-scale policies that take many years to implement (and manifest in a tangible way) are more likely to have traceable impacts and interactions with moisture recycling",12
"Thus, if an entire region or landscape of farming communities collectively introduces significant changes to how they manage green water, this ought to interact in a noticeable way with moisture recycling patterns",12
"This technology has improved storage of monsoon rainfall, supported infiltration, and subsequently contributed to the doubling of crop yields, increased forest cover, and improved water security",15
"For example, for every single cycle of moisture recycling, we see three landscape-scale cycles, and nine farm-scale cycles",12
"For food production there is a maximum of 12 cycles of potential adaptation till 2030, for landscape and ecosystem processes, there are probably about 3 or 4, and for moisture recycling there is likely one",12
"This means that the impacts of changes in both (a) food production and (b) landscape ecosystems, will not be detectable in moisture recycling, likely until 2030 or beyond",12
"This potentially complicates continued achievement of the SDGs beyond 2030, because it is impossible to measure how agricultural and landscape changes will impact moisture recycling",12
"We finish the discussion with an overview of how these insights specifically, and green water management in general, ought to be brought to the fore in discussions of not only sustainable water management, but sustainable development in general",6
"It is critical to manage green water in such a way to reduce ecosystem harm, reduce interference with the hydrological cycle (notably the partitioning of green and blue water, and the volume of water that is sent via terrestrial moisture recycling), and maximize productive human uses (e.g",12
"As such, ‘good’ green water management will preserve the blue water flows which must be allowed to provide aquatic habitat as well as provide the foundation of urban modernization, industrialization, and economically-robust nations (Falkenmark and Tropp In press)",6
"This is especially important for nations that must achieve food security via imports, foreign aid, or financial instruments (e.g",2
"These sorts of efforts could be achieved by engaging different blue water actors, ranging from international NGOs that are implementing irrigation projects to national water management organizations that are building dams",6
"Likewise, linking land management efforts explicitly to water management may seem obvious or mundane, but it remains far from common practice in many countries",6
Thinking multi-laterally as well as outside-the-box will be critical to integrated success across land and water management,6
"Recent analysis finds that much more than just subsistence agriculture will be needed to meet food security goals, and that cash crops for sale at market will also be needed (Frelat et al",2
"This means roads and other infrastructure, as well as institutional innovation, will be needed to achieve food security",2
"Thus, the key insight here is that market forces that are ostensibly needed to drive food security goals, must (a) prioritize green water-based food production (rather than blue water systems), and (b) not infringe on the off-farm ecosystem services that are needed for livelihoods, including regulating services such as pollination, as well as complementary sources of income such as livestock forage (e.g",2
"Scientific evidence clearly shows the need for a sustainable, resilience-based agricultural revolution in the vast water-scarce regions in Africa to avoid large-scale famine and food insecurity (Kotir 2011)",2
"The 2016 Stockholm call for an African Water Revolution highlights the need for a Green Water Initiative for Africa, to lead the path towards achieving the food security and hunger alleviation SDGs, which in turn are preconditions for achieving all the other SDGs (Mugagga and Nabaasa 2016)",2
"We base our conclusions on three key insights: farm-scale improvement in evaporation management, landscape-scale partitioning of water between green and blue flows, and regional scale monitoring of moisture recycling patterns",12
"Economic recovery is now an opportunity to rebuild natural capital alongside financial, physical, social and human capital, for long-term societal benefit",8
"To mitigate health, unemployment and other socio-economic impacts, Governments quickly responded with increased resources for health care, followed by economic support packages for economic rescue to ease the impacts of national lock-downs and disrupted supply chains",8
"More recently, Governments moved to economic recovery spending, aiming to restore employment and economic activity to pre-pandemic levels",8
"Dasgupta (2021) highlighted that investment in natural capital is an investment in the economy and society, but governments have not yet translated this understanding into economic recovery spending",8
"Around 24% of announced recovery spending is ‘green’ (contributing to environmental objectives) and most is targeted at climate change mitigation, with 3% positive for natural capital, and up to 17% negative (O’Callaghan and Murdock 2021)",13
"In this analysis, a “green” policy is one which advances any of the following priorities: climate mitigation, climate adaptation, natural capital, or air pollution reduction",13
"Nevertheless, there is increasing recognition that recovery efforts should not only address economic recovery, but should also be green, inclusive and resilient (Lucas and Vardon 2021)",8
"Inadequate attention to the environmental dimensions of economic recovery spending makes achieving international goals, such as in the Paris AgreementFootnote 1, the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity FrameworkFootnote 2 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)Footnote 3  harder to reach",8
"While business has a role in Green Recovery, and has adopted various forms of sustainability reporting (e.g",12
"Economic recovery spending aims to increase aggregate demand and employment through direct capital investments, as well as expansionary fiscal and monetary policies and targeted sectoral policies, with high economy-wide spill-over effects (Lucas and Vardon 2021)",8
"Green Recovery builds on notions of green growthFootnote 6, green economyFootnote 7, circular economy (Stahel 2016) and sustainable development (WCED 1987), notions which have been broadly harmonised in the five principles for “inclusive green economies” facilitated by the Green Economy Coalition (Partners for Inclusive Green Economy, undated)",12
"Spending on natural capital has two components: (1) enhancing natural capital through improved management and restoration to increase ecosystem extent and condition and the flow of ecosystem services, which is represented by the flow of investments from society for environmental protection and restoration at the top of Fig. 2, and (2) reducing environmental degradation and resource depletion through economic restructuring, as represented at the bottom of Fig. 2",15
"The integration of environmental and economic data serves to identify the dependency of people on the natural capital and ecosystem services they need for wellbeing and economic growth, and the impact of people’s activities on the environment (Fig. 2)",8
"NCA has been used by several countries for analysing issues aligned with Green Recovery, including biodiversity conservation and restoration (Coates et al",15
"2022), tackling climate change (Pizarro 2020), integrated land management (Meijer et al",13
2020) and SDG monitoring (Ruijs et al,17
"In 2019, tourism services were by far the largest source of foreign income for Rwanda, with much of this tourism related to iconic species, such as the Gorilla (Gorilla beringei) (Benitez et al",15
"Survival of this iconic species, hence the tourism industry, is reliant on conservation measures (Fig",15
"NCA played a prominent role in developing Rwanda’s recovery plan, providing the evidence needed to ensure the protection of ecosystems while demonstrating their role in economic development (Benitez et al",8
"While the resources needed are not fully available, the accounts and the recovery plan provide a strong basis for seeking additional resources from development assistance agencies",10
"Going forward NCA could also be used to monitor the effectiveness of expenditures in achieving environment and economic objectives, in this case the conservation of iconic species and employment and income from the tourism industry",15
"Photo credit by Mike Arny and unplash   Iconic species like gorillas and the forests they inhabit can be managed so that they achieve social, economic and environmental benefits",15
Natural capital investments provide benefits for climate change mitigation and adaptation (Klenert et al,13
"For example, many ecosystems sequester and store carbon while some ecosystem types provide resilience against climate change (e.g",13
The 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow attempted to bring the climate change and biodiversity agendas closer together,13
"Its final outcome document, the Glasgow Climate PactFootnote 18, emphasised “the importance of protecting, conserving and restoring nature and ecosystems to achieve the Paris Agreement …” (paragraph 38)",13
"For climate action, accounts of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon can show progress towards achieving the aim of the Paris Agreement to hold the increase in the global average temperature to “well below” 2 °C above pre-industrial levels",13
"The GDP projections account for the impact of environmental pressures, which grow under a baseline scenario and decline when climate mitigation and adaptation interventions are implemented",13
"In up to 11% of these cities, investing in natural capital for climate mitigation and adaptation (green infrastructure) was determined to reduce costs (51% less), and to generate additional benefits (28% more) when compared to equivalent “grey” infrastructure (produced capital) (Bassi et al",13
"Outside of urban areas, investments to address climate change have other additional benefits",13
Implementation of NCA is itself an indicator for SDG target 17.9 on capacity building and for SDG target 17.19 on supporting statistical capacity building in developing countries,17
"For example, in Colombia water accounts and modelling were used to assess catchment management costs to provide clean water to support basic human needs and economic production (SDG 6: clean water and sanitation) (Romero et al",6
"Understanding trends in the quantity, quality and value of assets and the services they deliver helps identify investment priorities and aids the design of incentive mechanisms that support green and fair outcomes",3
"Specific policy objectives vary between countries, but governments generally focus on growth (for job creation and improving living standards) and financial stability",8
Public spending on economic recovery is funded by current taxes and debt,8
"On the expenditure side, accounts record spending on environmental protection and restoration, resource management and subsidies (or foregone income) which may harm or benefit nature",15
"Some natural capital debts, like species extinction, cannot be repaid",15
"For example, green bonds are intended to finance environment-friendly investments in low-carbon infrastructure, flood management, ecosystem restoration and biodiversity conservation",15
"NCA can reveal declines in natural capital that increase the risk of climate change, which could to lead to the downgrading of sovereign credit in many countries—or it could demonstrate net natural capital gains (Klusak et al",13
"Authorities in charge of recovery stimulus and reform instruments can use NCA across the policy cycle (from policy design, planning and financing to implementation and monitoring) to ‘reset’ the economy to deliver Green Recovery, simultaneously reinvigorating economic growth, arresting environmental decline and achieving a more equitable society",8
"Without an understanding of the fundamental features of both, uptake of either will be hindered and ‘nature-negative’ GDP growth will likely prevail",8
"The imperative now is to turn the combined adoption of the new NCA standards and the unprecedented levels of government spending for economic recovery, to move along the sustainable development pathway",8
Sustainable agriculture is extremely critical for sustenance of all the life forms owing to the exceedingly demand of food products for an ever-increasing population across the globe,2
"Essentially, sustainable agriculture involves holistic management of livestock, crops and fisheries, so as to make the farming process self-sustaining for a longer period",2
Sustainable growth in the field of agriculture can be achievable by the intervention of advanced technologies such as nanotechnology,8
"Applications of nanotechnology in the field of agriculture will lead to improved plant growth, stabilization of soil and microbes, targeted usage of chemicals and most importantly nanotechnology contributes profoundly for waste management",12
"Overall development of agriculture depends on several factors such as climate change, natural resources and ecosystem processes [7,8,8]",13
Innovative technologies like nanotechnology play a vital role in supplementing the cause for sustainable growth of agriculture,8
"Pesticides and fertilizers severely impair the environment and ultimately elevate the health risk [19, 20]",3
"Biosensors in the form of dendrimers, thin films and enzymes have been implemented in the agricultural sector, primarily to record the biological processes The nanotechnology can play a vital role in enhancing the productivity and can also impart sustainable development through controlling several associated factors such as monitoring the water quality and reducing the use of pesticides (Fig. 3) [55, 60, 61]",6
Nanotechnology can offer a better opportunity to enhance the agricultural produce in a sustainable approach Nanofertilizers are widely used to enhance the agricultural productivity,2
"To accelerate the process of smart agriculture, nanofertilizers can contribute immensely and may minimize the productivity loss caused due to climate change [74]",13
Nanoparticles exhibit immense transduction property which can contribute in the analytical processes of agricultural products [74],2
"Nanopesticides effectively reduce the use of conventional eco-hazardous pesticides and thus protect the human beings from severe ill effects and at the same time increases the crop productivity [80,81,82,83]",12
"Use of nanoparticles synthesized by green technology process would be a superior choice over chemically synthesized nanoparticles [130, 131]",9
Sustainable agriculture practices are a key requirement for achieving sustainable development,2
"Nanotechnology plays a critical role in achieving food security, particularly in the agricultural sector",2
"It is also important in food processing, food modification, stability, sensing, extended shelf life, reduced food losses and providing safe food",2
"Goal 2 targets ‘end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition as well as aims at promotion of sustainable agriculture’",2
"SDG 2 is composed of eight targets where the first five targets (2.1–2.5) are directly linked to food security and sustainability of agriculture, whereas the last three targets (2A- 2C) are based on market related measures focussing on increasing agricultural investments and lowering market disruptionsFootnote 1",2
"Target 2.1: to ensure universal access to safe and nutritious food for all round the year, especially to poor and those living in vulnerable areas by 2030 and Target 2.2: to end all kinds of malnutrition by 2030 are the foremost targetsFootnote 2",2
"The current estimates of a report by UN reveals that after a continuous decline over a decade, number of people suffering from hunger crisis (data estimated under prevalence of undernourishment) have gradually increased since 2015Footnote 3",2
"On the other hand, there are an estimated 2 billion people who lack access to safe, nutritious and adequate food and are exposed to food insecurity",2
"The report explains that if the present trend persists, the number of people affected by hunger and undernourishment will exceed 840 million i.e",2
"In case of malnutrition, the same report claims that in 2019, there were nearly 144 million children under the age of five who suffered stunting, of which three quarters were found living in Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa",2
"This clearly suggests that the world is neither advancing towards securing access to safe, nutritious and adequate food for all nor eliminating malnutrition",2
"This also denotes that any danger to food security worsens diet quality and results in malnutrition, undernourishment, overweight and obesity, resulting in a more unhealthy population affecting world economy",2
"Target 2.3 aims at doubling the agricultural productivity and income of small scale food producers in particular women, indigenous people, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers by 2030",2
Sustainable Development Goals Report (2021) explains that small scale food producers account for majority (of food producers) as per survey done in 37 countries,2
"Food systems have a major impact on environment as they are responsible for 70% of the water withdrawal from nature, cause 60% of biodiversity loss and produce up to a third of green-house gases (GHGs)Footnote 7",15
A recent report by World Bank- ‘Addressing Food Loss and Waste: A Global Problem with Local Solutions’ (2020) states that about one-third of global food produced i.e,12
"approximately 1.3 billion tonnes is either lost along the supply chain or wasted by consumers or retailers and that by 2030, the annual food loss and waste will reach 2.1 billion tons i.e",12
Poor and developing countries are the hardest hit due to climate change and increase in natural disasters,13
"This target also mentions about improvement of land and soil quality, both of which are vital to humans",2
Soil salinization is another major cause of land degradation that is affecting agro-ecosystems around the world (particularly in arid and semi-arid regions) and is growing at a rate of 1–2% each year (Sunita et al,15
It is a global and dynamic problem which has exacerbated under impact of climate change,13
"While the other targets of SDG 2 are focussed for 2030, target 2.5 has a deadline for 2020",2
"Using diversity of local breeds, species and varieties, integrating indigenous crops, livestock, forest and aquatic biodiversity and by promoting habitat diversity, local population can support their livelihoods and lead to food security, simultaneously helping in improving their socio-economic conditions",2
"Loss of genetic diversity, including local varieties and breeds of domesticated plants and animals, poses risk of food insecurity and undermine the targets of SDGs",2
"However, these causes also open opportunities for sustainable agricultural practices like adoption of climate smart agriculture, use of organic farming and bio-based agriculture",2
"Target 2.A is to invest in rural infrastructure, agricultural research, technology and gene banks by 2030",2
"Moreover, as a result of this, rural people are experiencing decrease in natural resources (largely due to over exploitation), heightened impacts of climate change, as well as impact of epidemics and pandemicsFootnote 14",13
"The last two targets of SDG 2 are Target 2B: to prevent agricultural trade restrictions, market distortions and export subsidies by 2030; Target 2C: to ensure stable food commodity markets and timely access to information by 2030",2
"The recent Ukraine-Russia conflict has affected the food supplies and prices across the world, jeopardizing global food security",2
"Both Ukraine and Russia being major exporters of several leading cereal crops (such as wheat and barley) and vegetable oil (such as sunflower oil) will have far reaching consequences on those countries that are net importers of such commoditiesFootnote 17 and in coming time may plunge the world, particularly the poor countries, towards food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition",2
"Apart from this, the current heat wave situation in South Asia including India and Pakistan has also affected the agriculture production jeopardizing the food security not only in this region but around the globe",2
The present estimates establish the fact that the targets of SDG 2 are far from reach,2
"Also, improved landscape approaches by forest governing bodies, sustainable peri-urbanization, innovations in agricultural management are also critical for achieving targets of SDG 2 (Garrett et al",2
"It is important to adopt sustainable agricultural practices such as organic farming, and use of green alternatives e.g",2
"World Bank Group is promoting CSA that will contribute to SDGs including Goal 2, and has also tied up with research programs like Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centres (CGIAR) that looks after climate-smart technologies and management methodsFootnote 20",2
"Subsidies resulting in exploitation of natural resources must go but there should be support system for vulnerable population, particularly in economically poor regions, to ensure food supply and availability",1
"This can be achieved by eating sustainably, improving food production plus minimizing food waste (Soergel et al",12
Decreasing high import tariffs and removing tariff rate quotas are also necessary so that secure and equal access to food and agriculture markets can be made availableFootnote 23,2
SDG 2 has intricate linkages with other SDGs and influence targets covered under other goals,2
"Although there is enough food available at present to feed the world population but the threats created by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, increasing impact of climate change, conflicts that affect the sustenance of supply chain and trade, future energy demands and looming economic crisis have to be tackled in unison",13
The only way-out to achieve sustainability and food security for all is by cutting across the boundaries of inequality,2
"Acknowledging that the full SDG agenda is of much broader multidimensional scope than the COVID-19 pandemic, the SDG examples focus on environmental sustainability.1.1 Work across silosTo manage the pandemic through public health responses such as physical distancing, policymakers had to pivot from ‘silo’-based approaches to coordinating a collective response across multiple fields including science, business, health, social sciences and technology [1,2,3]",3
Green recovery supports achieving the SDGs and the Paris Agreement through dedicated budgetary commitments considering such interlinkages,13
"While the total green spending announced in 2020 was USD697bn, it is only a fraction of total overall annual spending; just 23.4% of overall ‘recovery’ spending and a mere 4.2% of overall announced spending globally is likely to reduce GHG emissions [13].1.3 Work across silos: suggested actionsNow, with existing and new vulnerabilities brought into view by the pandemic, is the moment to embed governance and transdisciplinary research as new ‘business as usual’ for dealing with complex challenges",13
"Political leaders regularly stand side-by-side with scientists delivering COVID-19 information and promoting public health messaging [23, 24]",3
"Terms such as ‘flattening the curve’ became everyday language in 2020 and science-based public health measures including physical distancing and mask-wearing continue to impact day-to-day living [23, 25].1.5 Visibly use science in policy: examplesCOVID-19 has placed a spotlight on how citizens understand and engage with science",3
"Science literacy—understanding probability, risks and cost–benefit—is required to understand COVID-19 data and the rationale behind public health measures [23]",3
"Building on at least two decades of evidence-informed policy science [28, 29], the evidence community has responded to this demand through initiatives such as the COVID-19 Evidence Network to support Decision-making (COVID-END)—an international research synthesis, policy and public health effort to systematically identify, appraise and map best-available COVID-19 research syntheses to a broad array of COVID-19 response and recovery decisions [27, 30, 31]",3
"This culminated in a recently-released report documenting recommendations for improving use of science in policy and practice [32]. Perhaps the most powerful recent example of visible connection of SDG science to policy is the ‘Code Red for Humanity’ report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) [33] which provided an alarming backdrop to the Glasgow COP26 Summit in late 2021.1.6 Visibly use science in policy: suggested actionsHigh visibility of science-informed policy and calls for greater application of science-based policy to both COVID-19 and sustainability [34, 35] create arguably the most favourable conditions yet in which to elevate the role of science [36, 37]",13
"First, some habits—for example handshakes, standing close to people and touching our face—have been disrupted by public health measures [42]",3
"Finally, there are negative aspects of habit disruption including quarantine-related weight gain, depression and increases in domestic violence [46, 47]; and disproportionate impact of austerity and containment measures on disadvantaged groups, for example due to increased energy bills and exposure to food poverty [48]—effects which are more widespread in low- and middle-income countries with less access to government safety nets [49].1.9 Harness simultaneous global interruption to habits: suggested actionsClearly, embedding positive and mitigating negative outcomes is the key to optimising pandemic-imposed habit discontinuity",5
"Positive reinforcement should include and move beyond climate change, which is already on the sustainable COVID-19 recovery agenda [50, 51]—albeit with variable alignment between rhetoric and action at a country level [52]",13
"However, the ‘stickiness’ of habits is a double-edged sword—it works against the breaking of bad habits such as weight gain, which has been shown to be associated with mental stresses arising from COVID-19 [46].Policymakers can reinforce positive and reduce negative habits in several ways—first, by reducing ‘friction’ associated with sustainable habits (for example by retaining active transport lanes on roads) and increasing friction for less sustainable alternatives (traffic zones, reduced speed limits for cars); second, by harnessing context-specific cues (recycling signs, reminders); and finally, through (dis-)incentives (plastic bag charges, smart energy meters) [53]",12
System-level considerations include strengthening of social safety nets to address widening inequalities resulting from COVID-19 and consideration of how global habit change can contribute to global reduction of poverty and food insecurity,2
"To manage the pandemic through public health responses such as physical distancing, policymakers had to pivot from ‘silo’-based approaches to coordinating a collective response across multiple fields including science, business, health, social sciences and technology [1,2,3]",3
Green recovery supports achieving the SDGs and the Paris Agreement through dedicated budgetary commitments considering such interlinkages,13
"While the total green spending announced in 2020 was USD697bn, it is only a fraction of total overall annual spending; just 23.4% of overall ‘recovery’ spending and a mere 4.2% of overall announced spending globally is likely to reduce GHG emissions [13]",13
"Political leaders regularly stand side-by-side with scientists delivering COVID-19 information and promoting public health messaging [23, 24]",3
"Terms such as ‘flattening the curve’ became everyday language in 2020 and science-based public health measures including physical distancing and mask-wearing continue to impact day-to-day living [23, 25]",3
"Science literacy—understanding probability, risks and cost–benefit—is required to understand COVID-19 data and the rationale behind public health measures [23]",3
"Building on at least two decades of evidence-informed policy science [28, 29], the evidence community has responded to this demand through initiatives such as the COVID-19 Evidence Network to support Decision-making (COVID-END)—an international research synthesis, policy and public health effort to systematically identify, appraise and map best-available COVID-19 research syntheses to a broad array of COVID-19 response and recovery decisions [27, 30, 31]",3
This culminated in a recently-released report documenting recommendations for improving use of science in policy and practice [32]. Perhaps the most powerful recent example of visible connection of SDG science to policy is the ‘Code Red for Humanity’ report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) [33] which provided an alarming backdrop to the Glasgow COP26 Summit in late 2021,13
"First, some habits—for example handshakes, standing close to people and touching our face—have been disrupted by public health measures [42]",3
"Finally, there are negative aspects of habit disruption including quarantine-related weight gain, depression and increases in domestic violence [46, 47]; and disproportionate impact of austerity and containment measures on disadvantaged groups, for example due to increased energy bills and exposure to food poverty [48]—effects which are more widespread in low- and middle-income countries with less access to government safety nets [49]",5
"Positive reinforcement should include and move beyond climate change, which is already on the sustainable COVID-19 recovery agenda [50, 51]—albeit with variable alignment between rhetoric and action at a country level [52]",13
"Policymakers can reinforce positive and reduce negative habits in several ways—first, by reducing ‘friction’ associated with sustainable habits (for example by retaining active transport lanes on roads) and increasing friction for less sustainable alternatives (traffic zones, reduced speed limits for cars); second, by harnessing context-specific cues (recycling signs, reminders); and finally, through (dis-)incentives (plastic bag charges, smart energy meters) [53]",12
System-level considerations include strengthening of social safety nets to address widening inequalities resulting from COVID-19 and consideration of how global habit change can contribute to global reduction of poverty and food insecurity,2
"Climate information services are meant to provide the science-based and user-specific information for managing risks and exploiting opportunities created by climate variability and change, thereby helping society to become more resilient in coping with the increasing impacts of climate change [5]",13
"The 2030 agenda’s ambition to ‘leave no one behind’, put the worst off first and help the most vulnerable and extremely poor to reach their full potential is not just a foundational equity principle to ending poverty in all its forms everywhere for every person [8]",1
"Poor climate information services (see Table 1) can expose vulnerable groups to new risks and worsen pre-existing vulnerabilities and drivers of marginalisation resulting in deeper marginalisation, poverty and inequalities [10]",1
"Moreover, the constellations of multiple disadvantages that extreme poor and excluded groups face predisposes them to be even more vulnerable to external shocks, or suffer from the adverse impacts of poorly managed climate information services and less integrated climate knowledge systems, making the ‘leave no-one behind’ agenda more unlikely to be achieved",1
"Finally, climate information services need to build in them, a resilience factor at which point they can predict near-term climate change from seasons to decades while timely and correctly disseminating this data and suggesting means for people to prevent, cope, adapt and transform in the wake of externalities of climate variability [4]",13
"The direct effect of the FDI is increased CO2 and environmental degradation, and the spatial spillover effects are statistically insignificant",15
Such policies may contribute to the achievement of some SDGs and balancing economic development and environmental sustainability according to the cleaner production practice perspective in the Arab countries and other states with similar conditions,8
"Thus, they have striven to achieve rapid and sustainable economic development in recent decades",8
"FDI has become an important driving force in the last decades, with host countries relying on FDI to achieve sustainable economic development (Wang and Chen 2014)",8
Arab states are developing countries that are undergoing economic development,8
"On the basis of the outcomes, this study is expected to provide useful suggestions to policymakers in achieving sustainable economic development and formulating effective environmental policies",8
The conclusions and policy recommendations are provided in “Conclusions and recommendations.” Increasing scientific research attention has been given to studying the FDI effect on EP,9
"2017a, b; among others) adopted an opposite view to the PHH and they emphasized that FDI improves the local environmental quality in host countries (i.e., states that have a negative relation between FDI inflow and environmental degradation)",15
"Pao and Tsai (2011) tested the effects of EG and FDI on environmental degradation in BRIC countries by applying the panel cointegration technique presented by Johansen, Fisher, Kao, and Pedroni",15
(2018) utilized data from 285 Chinese cities and the spatial econometric mechanism to examine the impact of FDI on environmental degradation,15
"The STIRPAT model reflexes the effect of human actions on the economic development of any country, and is based on IPAT model (where is I represents pollutants emitted, P is population, A is affluence, and T is technology)",8
"The high population density of any region results in the expansion of urbanization and increased human activities, which then increase the population’s need for large amounts of diverse, uninterrupted energy",7
"However, not all forms of economic growth are damaging to the environment",8
"Several variables, such as FDI, energy consumption, and industrial structure, can act as agents of technology",7
"The positive impact is embodied in the P-HH theory, which suggests that foreign companies have administrative expertise and advanced technologies that consume less energy and that they also use renewable energy resources, thus contributing to the reduction of CO2 emissions and to the improvement of environmental quality",7
"Moreover, dirty extractive industries are not subjected to adequate environmental control, thereby leading to environmental degradation in these countries",15
"Hence, in this study, CO2 is used to measure the environmental pollution (I), population density (POPD) is used as an index of the population (P), and economic growth and domestic capital stock (DCS) is utilized to capture the affluence (A) of an economy",8
"Therefore, in this study, T is disaggregated into three factors: FDI, energy consumption (EC), and industrial structure (IS)",7
"Thus, the Arab states have been attempting to attract additional FDI and prioritize and facilitate investment in capital-intensive productive sectors to achieve rapid and sustainable economic development",8
"This approach leads to the excessive usage of resources in the dirty industries, thereby increasing the CO2 emissions through the diffusion effect and promotes environmental degradation",15
"Thus, the majority of foreign firms operating in these sectors have not been using energy-saving systems and require high energy consumption, which in turn increase the demand for EC",7
"These countries thus have to adopt and enforce global environmental standards; direct, stimulate, and assist FDI in adopting and importing cleaner production technology; and rely on modern and renewable energy systems to save energy",7
"Thus, these countries should use modern and renewable energy systems as an alternative to conventional energy systems by adopting a gradual and balanced substitution policy, especially because of the low and negligible use of renewable energy sources in these countries despite the appropriate environment",7
"In addition, renewable energy sources are energy-efficient and can help reduce energy poverty in the Arab countries",7
"Therefore, policymakers in these countries should direct and stimulate (e.g., tax exemptions, financial subsidies, investment facilities, and training) both population and companies to use renewable energy systems to generate and consume energy from clean sources, whether in household or in production processes",7
"Furthermore, governments should promote public–private partnerships in this area to raise community awareness of the benefits and efficiency of clean renewable energy solutions and of concepts associated with the environment and to encourage the adoption of a modern green lifestyle based on economy and low-carbon consumption",7
"These implications may guide these countries toward achieving the 2030 SDGs, with cleaner production processes as the main catalysts, thereby improving environmental quality, increasing energy efficiency, and increasing professional opportunities, which in turn will increase the per capita income of these countries (Shahbaz et al",7
"Thus, they lack efficient institutional capacity and effective financial systems, which hinder the efforts of governments to enact and implement effective environment laws",16
"Given that most the Arab countries are developing and less developed and are experiencing fluctuations in their economic growth, they are strongly driven to achieve high and sustainable growth",8
"As a result, unclean energy is in high demand and the exploitation and consumption of natural resources have increased, thus increasing CO2 emissions and aggravates environmental degradation",15
The industrial sector should also be encouraged to adopt modern production technologies and low-carbon energy systems and rely on renewable energy sources,7
The energy sector in the Arab countries is a traditional sector that relies mainly on fossil fuels and coal for electricity generation,7
"The sector suffers from low energy efficiency and does not exploit renewable energy sources, which are available in this region",7
"This situation results in increased CO2 and worsened environmental degradation, which leads to higher expenditure and delayed implementation of SDG strategies because of the focus on addressing the pollutants’ adverse effects",15
"Governments should impose a customs and consumption tax on companies and sectors that want to continue importing or using conventional energy production systems or provide facilities, tax, and customs exemptions if they have switched to renewable energy production systems",7
"Renewable energy is an appropriate alternative to fossil fuels and coal, especially if supported by government initiatives",7
"They must also embrace and support the transition to renewable energy systems and sources, increase energy production efficiency, and guide and stimulate community awareness, which will lead to the local and regional adoption of a green lifestyle and sustainable green development to create an attractive environment for clean FDI",7
"To provide insight on the relationship between socio-economics, and ecology, the current study examines the effectiveness of environmental stringency and green energy to mitigate the effects of fossil energy and greenhouse gas emissions on human well-being and income for 12 emerging economies",7
The outcomes from dynamic heterogeneous panel estimators of cross-sectional–based auto regressive distributed lag and cross-sectional–augmented distributed lag indicate that: (i) green energy consumption and electricity consumption have a substantial positive effect on well-being and per capita income,7
(iii) Fossil energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions have a negative effect on well-being but a positive impact on income,7
"Based on our findings, we may argue that it is necessary to prioritize human well-being over economic growth, and suggest several policy implications to achieve sustainable development goals",8
"According to the report of WHO (2015), 41% of the world’s population, or almost 2.8 billion individuals, rely on solid fuel-based energy to perform economic activity; consequently, WHO (2019) attributes 7 million casualties due to environmental degradation and air pollution",15
"On the other hand, Emerging market Economies (thereafter EMEs) oversee this detrimental effect of fossil energy usage and continue to race for speedy economic development",8
"(2020) believed that the use of fossil fuels and limited access to clean energy, poses a threatening impact on human well-being, causing high mortality rate and respiratory diseases, and proposed access to green energy and improvements in per capita income to decrease health problems in EMEs",7
"However, the Renewable Global Status Report (REN21, 2017) also includes a rating of the five top green energy investor nations, as well as a rating of five top green energy capability and investment countries up the 2016",7
It needs to be noted that one of these initiatives’ core priorities is the use of clean and green energy sources (Hodbod and Tomei 2013),7
"However, green energy could help achieve some SDGs, such as it helps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and affordable clean and green energy",7
"Numerous scholars observed green energy as an environmentally friendly form of energy, and they believed that producing green energy is an ideal alternative for maintaining ecological sustainability (Alper and Oguz 2016)",7
"Furthermore, contemporary and green energy technologies allow for the substitution of carbon-intensive sources of energy",7
"Unlike conventional energy sources such as traditional biomass and coal, green energy does not damage the environment (Bekhet and Othman 2018)",7
"The transition toward low-carbon energy resources increased access to electricity, a safer and healthy climate, and increased investment in green technologies are all expected to occur due to achieving sustainable energy",7
"As a result, any attempt to achieve the SDGs would boost renewable energy demand",7
"Some legally enforceable contracts, such as the Kyoto Protocol, stimulate the production and use of green energy since it cuts carbon emissions",7
"Historically, the GHG emissions decrease over time due to increased use of green energy in EMEs, while fossil energy consumption decreases from 2008 to 2013 and gradually increases over time (see Fig. 1)",7
"Besides green energy, environmental stringency is among the most crucial environmental policy measures used to combat the looming danger to environmental efficiency and sustainability",7
"Many countries, such as EMEs, have adopted strict environmental rules and promoted green energy as a fundamental goal of their energy strategy",7
"In recent decades, these economies have witnessed exceptional economic growth",8
"Apparently, in emerging economies where resources are underutilized, and human development institutions are not yet fully developed to cope with the repercussions of environmental degradation, it poses a severe threat to human well-being as objectified by SDGs",15
"Greenhouse gas emissions by sector (percentage of total) in emerging economies, 2018 Source: (CAIT database) Figure 4 shows country-wise per capita consumption of fossil energy in EMEs for 2019, whereby South Korea tops the list of fossil energy users having 58,323 Megawatt-hours following Russia, the Czech Republic, and so on, signifying rapid economic development process",8
These economies need to drastically increase energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions while restraining excessive use through strict environmental regulations,7
These economies should concentrate on enhancing human well-being while drastically decreasing emissions by shifting to decarbonization,13
"Source: (WDI and CAIT databases) Based on the above discussion, we may conclude that the EMEs contribute a significant amount of pollution to the environment, which is consistent with their total economic productivity",8
"Therefore, it is critical for EMEs throughout the world to establish sensible measures targeted at improving green economic growth while also protecting ecological integrity",8
"First, this research fills the gap in emerging economies by introducing stringent environmental policy and green energy in a two-dimensional framework as policy instruments that can enhance environmental quality to improve human well-being and income",7
"Upon employing the EPS index, reducing emissions, green energy promotion, and maintaining environmental sustainability, human well-being, and income can be detected",7
"However, the aim of this study is to examine the effectiveness of environmental stringency and green energy to mitigate the effects of fossil energy and greenhouse gas emissions on human well-being and income for 12 EMEs",7
"(2021), investigated for Latin American and Caribbean economies to reduce ambient air pollution death rates by clean energy usage and applied panel quantile via movement model conditional quantile model for 1990–2016",7
"At the same time, clean energy sources on CO2 emissions and mortality are adverse",7
Their estimations showed that energy consumption and CO2 emissions are jointly correlated with income,7
"Besides, their results also support sustainable development goals through clean energy sources in emerging economies",7
"(2022) and Usman and Balsalobre-Lorente (2022) stated that in the long run, however, the abundance of natural resources and renewable energy greatly reduces environmental pollution and suggested that it is vital to minimize the use of fossil fuels in order to reduce environmental deterioration and should increase green energy consumption",7
"Therefore, enhancements in per capita income and green energy are crucial in reducing health hazards in developing economies",7
"Air contaminations such as SO2, PM2.5, and PM10 had been negatively associated with public health (Perera 2017; Xing et al",3
"(2016) conducted a similar conceptual study, claiming that many interventions could be caused by environmental deterioration, including carbon emissions, population density, water pollution, and urban diseases",6
Saidi and Hammami (2015) observed that carbon dioxide emissions had a significant adverse effect on economic growth in a panel of 58 countries,8
"The study maintains that economic growth in the environment depends on energy contaminations such as CO, CO2, and SO2 discharges, adversely affecting health and the environment",8
"In different activities linked to economic development, human beings use fossil energy, respond to high GHG emissions, and economic growth is extensively recognized as a path to improving human well-being (Jorgenson 2014)",8
The nonlinear regression model showed that primary energy is nonlinear inverted U shape on CO2 emissions and economic growth,8
"Lawson (2020) argued that CO2 emissions are not caused by human development, but primary energy consumption can cause CO2 emissions in sub-Saharan African countries",7
"(2014) presented the long-run bidirectional causality from primary energy to economic growth of emerging economies, though unidirectional in the short run",8
The result shows a positive impact on green energy consumption by introducing a more stringent environmental policy,7
"The third gap is that most previous studies focused on environmental regulation on emissions, economic growth, and human development in linear form",8
"Furthermore, this study also tried to improve human well-being and income by enhancing environmental quality with policy instruments of green energy and environmental policy stringency",7
(Data CAIT 2020) The main reason behind selecting emerging market economies (EMEs) is the rapid economic development process in these countries,8
These economies are also crucial for meeting sustainable development goals like decreasing greenhouse gas emissions and slowing biodiversity loss,15
"Since the 1900s, it has been confirmed that human activities associated with economic growth cause greenhouse gas emissions; nature is in a dangerous state, and it also has a harmful effect on the health of human beings (Matthew et al",8
"Agriculture, deforestation, and fossil energy use are examples of human activities that contribute to environmental degradation (Akhtar et al",15
"We measured as life expectancy as a proxy of human well-being, FEC denotes fossil energy consumption, GHG denotes greenhouse gas emissions, EPS is environmental policy stringency, GEC denotes green energy consumption, and ELC denotes electricity consumption",7
"It includes green energy, fossil energy, GHG emissions and environmental as well as electricity consumption as additional factor of economic growth",8
"According to certain research, such as OECD (2016), Botta and Koźluk (2014) and Omri and Belaïd (2021), green energy seems to be more labor-intensive than conventional energy sources, whereas others indicate that green energy technologies are much more capital-intensive than traditional ones",7
"It is evidenced that there is cross-sectional dependence in GDP per capita, life expectancy, environmental policy stringency, greenhouse gas emissions, fossil energy, green energy consumption, and electricity consumption",7
"(2020) argued that the GHG emission does not directly cause an increase in income, but fossil energy consumption can cause",7
"Moreover, in both periods (long run and short run), we found that the fossil energy consumption is positive and significant",7
"Moreover, the study also shows that clean energy significantly increases per capita income at a 5% level in the long run and insignificant in the short run for EMEs",7
Our findings validate the study theory that non-renewable and green energy usage has a considerable impact on per capita income and indicate that green energy contributes less to the per capita income than fossil energy in the EMEs,7
Green energy can contribute to economic sustainability in the long run when fossil energy sources are restricted due to more strict environmental policies over time,7
"The perfect solution is to encourage additional green energy sources, more strict environmental policies, and increase environmental pollution-related text and subsidize green energy sources",7
The energy level and pattern of environmental pollution depend on the economic development process of an economy,8
"Results of fossil energy consumption (lnfe) coefficient is − 0.2186 and enormously significant in both long- and short-run implying an increase in fossil energy consumption reduces 0.21% human life expectancy in EMEs, in line with and supported by Ibrahim et al",7
"During this stage, demand increases for energy consumption due to changes in the income-related consumption pattern, which may escalate emission level, consequently reduce life expectancy",7
"According to the findings, consuming clean energy positively affects well-being in EMEs, with an increase in consumption of green energy would increase well-being by 0.03% in the long run",7
These results highlight the importance of having access to green energy sources because improving the availability of green energy sources will reduce health risks by reducing the symptoms of chronic infections and lowering mortality rates in EMEs,7
"Further, moving from fossil energy to clean energy also helps to reduce greenhouse gases",7
(2020) who studied sub-Saharan Africa and suggested resolving these serious health concerns through international agreements to shift economies from fossil energy toward green energy sources,7
Identifying which is more important for living a healthier and longer life should prioritize energy access policies (de Serres and Murtin 2016),7
"The findings demonstrated from the income model that there is two-way causations between clean energy and income, fossil energy and income, and greenhouse gas emissions and income",7
"According to the feedback mechanism, growing energy consumption can promote per capita income and vice versa",7
"On the other hand, increasing fossil energy usage can raise greenhouse gas emissions related to extreme climate change",13
"Besides, it also showed the unidirectional causality between EPS and well-being, green energy and well-being, and electricity and well-being",7
"This study adheres to United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) by integrating six crosscutting SDGs that reflect the conflict between human well-being, economic growth, and environmental issues",8
"The main purpose of the research was to focus on long-run equilibrium as well as the presence and trajectory of causal relationships among greenhouse gas emissions, fossil energy combustion, stringent environmental policy, green energy consumption, human well-being, and income in a two-dimensional framework (well-being and income) for 12 emerging economies",7
"The long-run results demonstrate that fossil energy consumption, green energy consumption, and electricity consumption have a substantial positive effect on per capita income, whereas greenhouse gas emissions do not affect",7
The long-run result from the well-being model showed that greenhouse gas emissions and fossil energy consumption have a negative impact on life expectancy,7
"In contrast, the net effect on well-being is positive from environmental policy stringency, green energy consumption, and electricity consumption",7
Some policies should be introduced to ensure a market for clean energy technology to achieve inclusivity,7
"Because green energy cannot compete in the energy market due to current barriers, energy suppliers may be obliged by rules and regulations to include green energy as part of their supply mix",7
These policies may provide a framework for increasing green energy use and creating a favorable ecosystem for encouraging more investment in clean energy sector,7
Land use policies and planning in Latin America have been partially successful in halting deforestation yet have not stopped forest degradation,15
"Here, we study the different stakeholders’ perspectives of the drivers of forest degradation",15
Cross-scale governance is necessary to improve the design and implementation of policies for forest management at the subnational and local levels and to ensure that we move toward sustainable development without worsening existing inequalities,15
"Efforts to halt deforestation within SDG 15 included Target 15.2 (under Goal 15)—“By 2020, promote the implementation of sustainable management of all types of forests, halt deforestation, restore degraded forests, and substantially increase afforestation and reforestation globally” [Department of Economic and Social Affaris of United Nations (DESA) 2021]; Target 15.5 on “reducing the degradation of natural habitats and halting the loss of biodiversity”; and Target 15.9 on integration of biodiversity values into national and local planning development",15
"Progress toward SDG15 has fallen short for achieving the protection, restoration, and sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems along with the sustainable management of forests, combating desertification, halting and reversing land degradation and halting biodiversity loss [Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations (DESA) 2021]",15
"Several SDGs interact inevitably with SDG 15, which can be linked to deforestation and forest degradation",15
"For instance, property rights and market access are associated with poverty reduction (SDG 1), which strongly supports forest conservation",1
"The continued demand for forest products and food drives agricultural productivity, a sector that often competes with forests for space and resources (SDG 2, SDG8)",2
"While the annual rate of deforestation decreased globally, forest area loss in some regions is still very high (Seymour and Harris 2019), with the largest forest loss between 2010 and 2020 in Africa (3.9 million ha), followed by South America (2.6 million ha) (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) 2020)",15
Deforestation and forest degradation are still some of the main drivers of biodiversity loss and an increase in global carbon emissions (Simula 2009; Sasaki et al,15
"The two terms deforestation and degradation represent different states, processes, and concepts (Sasaki and Putz 2009)",15
"In the context of international climate change policies (i.e., REDD +), degradation is defined as a loss of carbon stocks within forested areas that nevertheless remain wooded after the disturbance that caused the degradation (GOFC-GOLD, 2009)",13
Regardless of the lack of consensus on the definition of forest degradation (Ghazoul et al,15
"There is a recognition that degradation has an anthropic origin that is tightly linked to local conditions (Simula 2009), but other drivers such as climate change can also have some impact",13
"Overall, causes of forest degradation can be classified as direct or proximate and indirect or underlying threats (Kissinger et al",15
"Selective logging, forest fires of anthropic origin, and grazing are the direct causes most commonly reported in the literature as sources of forest degradation (Lund 2009; Simula 2009; Bustamante et al",15
"Previous research has focused on the listing, description, and in some cases quantification of deforestation and degradation (Kissinger et al",15
"SDG 10 calls for reducing inequalities and the representation and recognition of different actors, including forest-dependent populations",10
"Climate change negatively influences forests, and SDG 13 calls on a stronger commitment to local actions of climate finance to support the much-needed local implementation of climate action",13
"As such, it is important to know how a wide range of state and nonstate actors at multiple scales feel about forest degradation, particularly when potentially conflicting visions that correspond to distinct values and interests arise",15
"This paper reports an analysis of a case study in Colombia of the interested parties’ perspectives on the concept of forest degradation, drivers or causes, and trends",15
"These five regions have clear differences in terms of socioeconomic and demographic conditions, biodiversity, and land use (IDEAM, IGAC, IAvH, INVEMAR, SINCHI, IIAP 2007) and have experienced different deforestation dynamics in the past (Etter et al",15
"The Amazonian region contains the largest extent of forest in Colombia, but at the same time, it experiences the fastest deforestation rates and has several of the most active colonization fronts in the country (Armenteras et al",15
"For instance, we asked for the type of products and production (e.g., agricultural, forestry, ranching) as well as the scale of activity (small, medium, or large scale)",15
Respondents were asked to give a rating from 1 to 10 on the incidence of each driver in forest degradation and its tendency (reduction or increase),15
"As an illustration, we provide examples of two drivers, ""selective extraction of wood for domestic use,"" which had a rating of 8 in importance as a degradation driver, but this activity has diminished in the last 5 years, or “livestock,” with a rating of 10 and a strong increasing trend The second component of the survey aimed to capture trends and causes of forest degradation",15
"To ensure that participants had a collective understanding of forest degradation, we provided the following definition: “Forest degradation is a process of human-generated change that negatively affects the characteristics of the forest such as a significant reduction in the number of trees per hectare.” After this definition, we asked the participants to identify the direct (forest extraction, livestock, and fire) and indirect (invasive species) causes of degradation in their regions",15
We left a space for the participants to include other activities that from their perception could contribute to forest degradation,15
"Activities that were finally considered by the respondents to be direct causes of forest degradation were classified as a) extraction of forest products according to type (wood, firewood, charcoal, and nontimber forest products), use (domestic or commercial), and frequency of production (selective or persistent), (b) livestock activities related to mostly forest grazing, and (c) uncontrolled fires",15
We evaluate the concordance of responses to key questions to determine if stakeholders envision forest degradation as a process regulated by the same drivers,15
"Specifically, we assessed the concordance between the results of two questions from the survey (Page 9 of the Survey: or “Assessment and Trends for Natural Forest Degradation,” Supplementary Information S1): A first question asking to rate the relative importance of degradation drivers from 1 to 10, where ten corresponds to a perception that the X driver had the strongest influence on forest degradation; and a second one asking to rate the relative importance of degradation drivers in the last five years (2012–2017)",15
"In turn, we expected stakeholders acting at the same level and region to be closer in the two-dimensional map, as they envision similar drivers underlying forest degradation",15
"In general terms, the main drivers perceived as factors of forest degradation were selective logging (mean 6.71 ± STD 2.85), persistent logging (mean 6.70 ± STD 2.71), grazing (mean 6.66 ± STD 3.06), and uncontrolled fires (mean 6.36 ± STD 3.02)",15
"For other causes of forest degradation, 145 of the survey participants indicated alternate causes in addition to those previously mentioned, while 84.82% associated degradation with direct drivers and 15.17% with indirect drivers (Fig. 3)",15
Mean values of stakeholders’ perceptions of the importance of forest degradation,15
"C-coal; F-fire; G-grazing; IS-invasive species; P_NTFP-persistent extraction for domestic use of NTFP, PC-persistent cutting, S_NTFP-selective extraction for domestic use of NTFP, SC-selective cutting, WC-wood for commercial use, WD-wood",15
"This map reveals that stakeholders working at distinct regions and levels (local and national) perceived distinct drivers as factors of forest degradation (e.g., if perceptions are similar, labels will concentrate in a single part of the map)",15
"All of them agreed that selective and persistent cutting (SC and PC) of wood for commercial and domestic uses (WC and WD) are important causes of forest degradation, assigning scores of four to them",15
"In contrast, Orinocan workers did not perceive any cause relevant to forest degradation",15
"Abbreviations represent the score (1–5 in Q1 and 0–3 in Q2) given by stakeholders to the importance of each driver in forest degradation (C-Coal; F-Fire; G-Grazing; IS-Invasive Species; PC-Persistent Cutting, SC-Selective Cutting, WC-Wood for Commercial Use, WD-Wood for domestic use) As evidenced in Fig. 4a, b reveals that stakeholders working in distinct regions and levels (local and national) perceived distinct drivers as factors of forest degradation in the last five years (CA: 59% of variation explained by the first two axes, total inertia = 0.38)",15
"On the other hand, in the Amazon region, national-level stakeholders perceived an increased impact of selective and persistent cutting (SC3 and PC3), grazing (G3), fire (F3), and invasive species (IS3)",15
Among the goals of SDG 15 is to sustainably manage forests by halting deforestation and recovering degraded forests,15
"These promises have led to a number of zero-deforestation policies (Furumo and Lambin 2020), but efforts to prevent degradation have been minor, possibly due to the challenges of identifying the reasons for degradation by maintaining forest cover",15
"The extraction of forest products, mostly wood, was identified by respondents as a key driver of forest degradation",15
Part of the problem is associated with the forest management regulatory framework since it is typically asymmetrical in relation to the dynamics of local communities (Franco and Moreno 2019),15
"For the promotion of forest governance, it is necessary to also address SDG 16 for peace, justice, and solid institutions that as one of its goals ensures that institutions adopt inclusive, participatory, and representative decisions at all levels, responding to the needs of society, the lack of norms, control, and governance in Colombian logging",16
"Pasture conversion for grazing and the use of fire are major concerns for forest degradation, and have previously been linked to forest loss and forest degradation due to institutional absence and weak forest governance (Armenteras et al",15
2019) and incentives for the adoption of best forestry practices and for sustainable use are in place and focus particularly for smallholders with greater proportions of natural forests,15
The bad use of fire for non-permitted deforestation and land use changes should be addressed,15
Participants also pointed out the high frequency with which intensive agricultural crops are a direct driver of forest degradation that could be associated with another indirect driver associated with economic incentives,15
Incentives for intensive agricultural production systems have been associated with forest loss and ecosystem degradation,15
"We propose the adoption of best agricultural practices based on the main processes and management known by local communities accompanied by an improvement of supply chains where all actors, including final consumers, whether local, regional, or global, are responsible for costs associated with deforestation-free practices",15
"In a way, this can include a strategy for the diversification of income to reduce vulnerability to drought or market price variations",1
"This reveals the need for governance around forest management, where the general principles of governance can be applied, involving collective and participatory consensus, the establishment of formal and/or informal transparent rules, democratization, and the vision of horizontality",15
Forest governance has already been proposed as a necessary approach to prevent deforestation and forest degradation (Garzón et al,15
"Therefore, we believe that to meet SDG 16 ""Peace, Justice and Solid Institutions,"" which would undoubtedly contribute to the correct governance of forests, countries need to implement responsive, inclusive, and representative participatory decision making",16
"There is a need to promote better practices both at the local and national scales and promote the reduction of pressures for expansion into forest areas, to reverse environmental degradation and to increase the quality of production and income that local stakeholders receive",15
Scale must be considered in developing further policies and mechanisms to halt drivers of forest degradation,15
"Whereas the different initiatives initially focused on specific domains, such as biodiversity (IPBES 2019) or climate change (IPCC 2021), it has been progressively acknowledged that the interconnected nature of environmental and societal issues makes a broader perspective mandatory",13
explicit mapping between SDG targets and the goals of the Sendai framework (UNDRR 2019b),11
"To this aim, this prospective paper bridges SDG/DRR literature with knowledge and practices of the snow avalanche community and formal risk modelling",11
"For instance, the disaster risk concerns mostly human populations (to a lesser extent, forest and wildlife), whereas the risk for life on land due to excessive grey protection is for ecosystems",15
"Forest management policies as well as defence structures modulate hazard levels, either by preventing avalanche initiation or by modifying the magnitude (runout distance, impact pressure, volume, etc.) of released events",15
to landscape or biodiversity conservation) rather than from a holistic analysis of the different aspects of long-term avalanche risk,15
Avalanche hazard and land-use planning maps resulting from current disaster risk management approaches in the vicinity of Taconnaz avalanche path,11
"We also identified how the knowledge specific to the snow avalanche field relates to broader literature on environmental risks, notably within the DRR community.Footnote 8 This analysis first confirmed that methods currently developed and used in long-term snow avalanche risk management are clearly well suited to reduce the disaster risk and related death tolls and direct costs",11
"For example, Ammann and Bebi (2000) assessed the efficiency of land-use planning strategies to limit the impact of the exceptional 1999 winter, and different studies demonstrated the cost effectiveness of existing mitigation strategies (e.g",13
reduction of avalanche hazard with warming and afforestation),15
"Also, rising real estate pressure may render additional mitigation strategies useful to restrict the corresponding rise in total risk",13
"Also, even in the most risk-oriented approaches of snow avalanche long-term risk, the systemic risk conceptualization (Renn 2016; UNDRR 2019a), which is arguably the main novelty raised by Sendai’s framework for DRR remains largely ignored",11
"However, no specific SDG/target/indicator really fits all the different aspects of snow avalanche risk and the potential conflicts and trade-offs that it encompasses, notably the competition between safety and other goals (development, biodiversity conservation) which is at the heart of the problem",15
"Also, non-sustainable trajectories for a mountain community through the choice of excessive land-use restrictions or building of too large defence structures refer to some targets of SDG 11, but with conflicts with other targets of SDG 11 (development with limited restrictions versus protection)",11
"As a consequence, the SDG perspective may be seen as not specific enough to support the elaboration of mitigation strategies more efficient than those currently in use and monitor the evolution of the overall risk on the long range",13
"2001) and connects with major environmental policy guidelines and their ongoing convergence: SDGs, Sendai framework and the explicit mapping between their targets (UNDRR 2019b), the “disaster risk, global change and sustainability nexus” (Peduzzi 2019), and “the challenge of achieving risk reduction across Sendai, Paris and the SDGs” (Handmer 2019)",11
"1999) Despite existing progresses, operationalizing our paradigm is still a tremendous task that includes numerous difficult questions amongst which: (i) the assessment of past and future changes in mountain socio-environmental systems, (ii) the accurate evaluation of the multivariate probability distribution of avalanche hazard at the slope scale, (iii) the definition of risk measures and mitigation strategies accounting for non-stationarity and/or for various behaviours towards risk / levels of risk awareness and (iv) the determination of acceptable compromises between precision and computation times, etc",13
"Hierarchical Bayesian framework (HBM) is a straightforward way to handle such issues, and existing examples already demonstrate its ability to share information between different paths at a regional scale and to account from time trends resulting from climate change to perform spatio-temporal assessment of avalanche hazard and risk (Grêt-Regamey and Straub 2006; Eckert et al",13
"Combining relations inferred at the local scale between avalanche risk and its drivers with future socio-environmental scenarios and different land-use solutions should result in the desired future risk trajectories and may allow the choice, amongst competing mitigation strategies, of an optimal solution (Fig. 7)",13
"Global Circulation Model—GCM, Regional Circulation Model-RCM, impact model and risk measure) and (ii) when in the future different mitigation strategies will lead to significant differences in risk (which is sometimes denoted as the time of emergency)",13
"2003) and how, in details, climate change affects certain critical processes such as snow drift and weak layer formation remains largely unknown (Mock et al",13
"Agro-pastoral activities have rapidly declined, resulting in land abandonment and afforestation, whereas favourable locations for winter tourism have seen the installation of increasingly large ski resorts",15
"A similar decrease in risk could be attributed to land abandonment and afforestation in the Asturian range, North-West Spain (García-Hernández et al",15
"However, existing risk assessment and mitigation approaches remain more oriented towards physics, and, therefore, less interdisciplinary, holistic and formalized than in other fields of DRR, e.g",11
"This pleads for, in the future, better connect the research efforts within this specific community with the broad DRR and risk modelling literature and community and the various disciplines these encompass",11
"Moreover, even if the systemic vision is now well shared amongst the DRR community (UNDRR 2019a), we highlighted that long-term snow avalanche risk includes aspects that require an even wider perspective and we tried to answer this need with an analysis based on SDGs",11
"Yet, they were helpful to provide a broad “look outside the box”, which allowed reconsidering certain practices of the field and contributed to better identify linkages, trade-offs and interactions that shape long-term snow avalanche risk beyond the sole DRR perspective",11
Conclusions of the analysis also highlighted the need for a specific holistic framework able to both (i) grasp the complexity of the processes at play and (ii) support the elaboration of efficient mitigation strategies usable in practice for land-use planning in avalanche-prone terrain,13
"2016), sometimes even in operational risk management, such as risk-based assessment with destruction or casualty rates, integration of the protective effect of forest cover within risk management, “full” probabilistic modelling of avalanche activity or co-construction with concerned parties of better accepted mitigation solutions",15
"Water security is the capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality of water for sustaining livelihoods, human well-being, and socioeconomic development, for ensuring protection against pollution and waterrelated disasters, and for preserving ecosystems in a climate of peace and political stability",15
"This paper discusses the developments in water management within the last 30 years, which eventually led to the above concepts",6
"The key concepts within the last 25 years in water management have been sustainability, holistic approach to management, and integrated water management and protection",6
"Accordingly, water management was considered as an important component of environmental management as water is essentially a part of the environmental continuum",6
"Due to rapid population growth, urbanization, industrial and agricultural development, water scarcity had become a significant problem in most parts of the world",6
"Overuse or misuse of land resources resulted in land degradation, particularly in the form of deforestation, and desertification",15
There were further environmental challenges due to ozone depletion and climate change which still affect various components in a number of interactive ways (Tyson 1995; Harmancioglu et al,13
"Before discussing the key events that have shaped water management policies up to recent times, we may mention two conferences that precede even the Rio Congress of 1992",6
Early 80s started with the declaration of the “International Drinking Water and Sanitation Decade” (1981–1990),6
"The idea here was that, although countries failed to meet quantitative goals, they also realized the importance of comprehensive and balanced country-specific approaches to the water and sanitation problem (Harmancioglu 2014)",6
The year 1990 marks the end of the “International Drinking Water and Sanitation Decade” (1981–1990) and the beginning of the “International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction” (1990–2000),6
"The Conference ended with the Rio Declaration, which stressed “establishing a new and equitable global partnership through the creation of new levels of cooperation among States, key sector societies and people”",17
"In particular, Chapter III of the resulting document focused on “Interrelationships between population, sustained economic growth and sustainable development, C- Population and Environment, Programme of Action” (UN 1994)",8
"Certainly, MGDs initiated new goals and perspectives for the twenty-first century, covering not only environmental management but also other global problems such as poverty and hunger, education, gender equality and health",5
"This meeting was among the first events to focus on water security and defined 7 challenges: Meeting basic needs, Securing the food supply, Protecting ecosystems, Sharing water resources, Managing risks, Valuing water, and Governing water wisely",1
"The year 1990 marks the end of the “International Drinking Water and Sanitation Decade” (1981–1990) and the beginning of the “International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction” (1990–2000), finally leading to the MDGs of 2000",6
"Since then, UN-water has continued to focus on all major water issues such as ( ): Freshwater resources - both in terms of their quality and quantity, their development, assessment, management, monitoring and use; Sanitation - both access to and use of sanitation by populations and the interactions between sanitation and freshwater; Water-related disasters, emergencies and other extreme events and their impact on human security",6
"Following right after the Millenium Declaration and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, this report stressed the following: The world’s available freshwater must be shared among individuals, economic sectors, intrastate jurisdictions and sovereign nations, while respecting the need for environmental sustainability",6
"River water quality objectives, which through discharge/treatment/quality standards, ensure water of quality fit for downstream purposes",6
"Water management choices should emerge from informed consultation and negotiation on the costs and benefits of all options after considering basin interconnectedness, relationships between land and water resources, and the consistency of decisions with other government policies",6
"Sectoral conflicts oppose users from different sectors (domestic, hydropower, irrigation, industries, recreation, etc), including ecosystems, whose sustainability depends on environmental flows",7
"Population growth, urbanization and climate change are forcing the water domain to adapt",13
"There are many shortcomings in how water is managed today in terms of increased scarcity: low efficiency, environmental degradation, and inequity",15
"The report shows that “improved wastewater management is as much about reducing pollution at the source, as removing contaminants from wastewater flows, reusing reclaimed water and recovering useful by-products",6
"Together, these four actions generate social, environmental and economic benefits for all society, contributing to overall well-being and health, water and food security, and sustainable development” ( -sciences/environment/water/wwap/)",2
"to recognize the basic human needs to have access to clean water and sanitation, to establish an effective mechanism for management of shared waters, to support and preserve ecosystems, to encourage the efficient use of water.” (WWC 1997)",6
"The second World Water Forum was held in The Hague in 2000 with the theme “From Vision to Action” and proposed to: Involve all stakeholders in integrated management, Move to full-cost pricing of water services, Increase public funding for research and innovation, Increase cooperation in international water basins, Massively increase investments in water",9
"The main issues of this forum were: water for growth and development, Implementing IWRM, water supply and sanitation for all, water management for food and the environment, risk management, responsibility of governments, and increased financial commitments",6
"At the 5th World Water Forum, the main obstacles to reaching the MDGs were identified as a lack of effective management, investment, institutional capacity and political priority",16
"The major themes were then noted as in this synthesis report: 
Water Security for All
 Enough Safer Water for All Integrated Sanitation for All Adapting to Change: Managing Risk and Uncertainty for Resilience and Disaster Preparedness Infrastructure for Sustainable Water Resource Management and Services 
Water for Development and Prosperity
 Water for Food Water and Energy Water and Cities 
Water for Sustainability: Harmonizing Humans and Nature
 Green Growth, Water Stewardship and Industry Managing and Restoring Ecosystems for Water Services and Biodiversity Ensuring Water Quality from Ridge to Reef SMART Implementation of IWRM 
Constructing Feasible Implementation Mechanisms
 Economics and Financing for Innovative Investments Effective Governance: Enhanced Political Decisions, Stakeholder Participation and Technical Information Cooperation for Reducing Conflict and Improving Transboundary Water Management Water Cultures, Justice and Equity Enhancing Education and Capacity Building Essentially, it was the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), Rio + 20, 2012 (UN 2012), mentioned earlier in Section 2 of this paper, that led to the above themes",6
"Next, at the Rio + 20 Summit in 2012, “the commitment to formulate a number of goals on sustainable development was clear, along with an acknowledgement of the central role that water and sanitation play in sustainable development” (UN-Water 2015)",6
"UN-Water and other contributors within the UN System suggested that the Global Goal for Water should be: “Securing Sustainable Water for All” (UN-Water, 2014)",6
"UN-Water (2014) claimed that “The framework for this global goal for water is designed to promote
human well-being
,
economic prosperity
and the
preservation of environmental capital
",15
"
TARGET A: Achieve universal access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (Water Allocation)
 
Element 2: Basic Access: “to achieve universal access to basic drinking water, sanitation and hygiene” 
Element 4: Equality
: “to progressively eliminate inequalities in access” 
TARGET B: Improve by (x %) the sustainable use and development of water resources in all countries 
TARGET C: All countries strengthen equitable, participatory and accountable water governance (Water Allocation) 
Element 1: Implement integrated approaches to water management at local, basin and national levels including participatory decision-making 
Element 2: Deliver all drinking water supply, sanitation and hygiene services in a progressively affordable, accountable, and financially and environmentally sustainable manner 
Element 3: Ensure regulatory frameworks are in place for water resources, infrastructure and services and enhance the performance of responsible public authorities and their water operators 
TARGET D: Reduce untreated wastewater by (x %), nutrient pollution by (y%) and increase wastewater reuse by (z%) 
TARGET E: Reduce mortality by (x %) and economic loss by (y%) from natural and human-induced water-related disasters",6
"Achieving the development objectives of ending poverty, overcoming inequalities, realizing human rights for all and boosting and sustaining economic development is reliant upon healthy freshwater systems",8
"Thus, we consider the following areas to be related to water security (UN-Water 2013; WWAP 2014; UN-Water 2015): 
Human security: a good level of health and well-being, adequate and safe food, a secure and healthy environment, means to a secure livelihood, and protection and fulfillment of fundamental rights and liberties",2
"This link between water, food and energy is referred to as the “Water-Food-Energy Security Nexus” and is an important issue of the Post-2015 Development Agenda (UN-Water 2013; WWAP 2014; UN-Water 2015)",7
"2007): Increasing complexity due to population growth, development pressures, and changing needs; 
Unequal distribution of water due to political changes, resource mismanagement, and climatic anomalies and thus water scarcity",6
"It is a process made necessary when the natural distribution and availability of water fails to meet the needs of all water users – in terms of quantity, quality, timing of availability, or reliability",6
"With water now a limiting factor to food production and economic growth, a vital input to power generation, and with the rapid decline in the health of aquatic ecosystems, how water is allocated has taken on increasing significance”",8
"Scenario development
 Identify different supply and allocation options Modeling to develop scenario water balance Assess and consider variability/uncertainty 
Step 3: Assess implications of different scenarios
(
Sustainability dimensions
)
 Environmental Economic (development) Social (equity) 
Step 4: Decision and approval (decision on preferred options)
 
Step 5: Final plans and implementation
 Infrastructure, development and operation plans Water allocation plans (national, basin, regional, sectoral plans) Water efficiency plans On the other hand, efforts towards basin water allocation must be based on adaptive management approaches to account for major variabilities and uncertainties",6
"(effects of climate change)
 
The second uncertainty relates to our inability to predict future water demands and uses.
 
The third uncertainty relates to the risk that our institutions may not be addressing the real issues, or might take decisions that they later come to regret",13
"The goal that directly relates to water is Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, ‘Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all’, which includes targets and indicators that will be used to measure and track global progress on water and sanitation through to the 2030 deadline (UN-Water 2015;  -development-goals/;  )",6
"Sustainable development goals ( ) At present, efforts in the water community are focused on SDG 6 to investigate how water management plans can be revised or improved to meet the Goal",6
A synthesis report is prepared by WWAP under the working title “SDG 6 Synthesis Report: Water and Sanitation in the 2030 Agenda” ( -sciences/environment/water/wwap/sdg-6-synthesis-report/),6
This report “will provide the global status of SDG 6 and explore the linkages within SDG 6 targets and the interlinkages between SDG 6 and the other SDG targets and indicators,6
"The report will provide Member States with the ‘big picture’ on water and sanitation issues as well as policy recommendations on how to accelerate the achievement of SDG 6 within the broader context of Agenda 2030”.
 The first version of this report will be available to UN Member States in 2018",6
"Some inputs to the above report were formulated at the recent Budapest 2016 Water Summit ( -water-summit/news/) where the targets of the Clean Water and Sanitation (Sustainable Development Goal 6) are disclosed as ( -water-summit/overview/overview-of-sustainable-development-goals-542/): 
by 2030, achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all;
 
by 2030, achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all, and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations;
 
by 2030, improve water quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping and minimizing release of hazardous chemicals and materials, halving the proportion of untreated wastewater, and increasing recycling and safe reuse by x% globally;
 
by 2030, substantially increase water-use efficiency across all sectors and ensure sustainable withdrawals and supply of freshwater to address water scarcity, and substantially reduce the number of people suffering from water scarcity;
 
by 2030 implement integrated water resources management at all levels, including through transboundary cooperation as appropriate;
 
by 2020 protect and restore water-related ecosystems, including mountains, forests, wetlands, rivers, aquifers and lakes;
 
by 2030, expand international cooperation and capacity-building support to developing countries in water and sanitation related activities and programmes, including water harvesting, desalination, water efficiency, wastewater treatment, recycling and reuse technologies;
 
support and strengthen the participation of local communities for improving water and sanitation management.
 The overview presented in this paper on water policy development within the last 30 years starts essentially with Agenda 21 as the first international document to introduce the basic concepts of sustainability and integrated (holistic) water resources management (IWRM)",6
It is clear that we still experience water crisis basically due to mismanagement of the resource,6
Summarized below are some of the important problems that Turkey experiences towards sustainable water management (Svendsen et al,6
The results show that (1) the innovation environment and economic growth are the core factors influencing the sustainable development level,8
Research on urban sustainability is also becoming crucial [4],11
"As an underdeveloped area in China, the western region lags behind the central and eastern regions owing to backward economic development, poor natural conditions, and unreasonable industrial structures",8
"From the perspective of sustainability, urban sustainability should include the continuous improvement of living standards and continuous optimization and upgrading of urban industrial structures and urban development quality [5] (p.291)",11
"As populations move to urban areas, residents’ quality of life and cities’ livability are becoming important parts of urban sustainability research [8]",11
"At the same time, the relationship between urban innovation capacity and urban sustainability has become increasingly close [10], and technological development as an important part of innovation will be gradually integrated into urban sustainability [11, 12]",11
"Furthermore, urban sustainability should focus on issues such as rationalization of government subsidies, urban productivity and efficiency, and balanced regional development [15]",11
"This indicator system also covers population and social conditions, sports and culture, urban agriculture and food safety [17,18,19]",2
"Compared with other countries, China experiences more complex problems in the process of urban sustainability because Chinese cities have large populations and various types of distributions [24]",11
China’s urban sustainability is also inclined to reduce inequality and promote the redistribution of wealth [26],11
Urban agglomerations have become mainstream and the trend in urban development [27],11
"Currently, most evaluations of China’s urban agglomerations and urban sustainability focus on central cities’ livability, innovation ability, and sustainability, such as in Beijing, Tianjin, Guangzhou [30], and Shanghai [31], or on the Yangtze River Delta (centered around Shanghai) or Middle Reaches urban agglomerations (centered around Wuhan) [32,33,34,35]",11
"May 17, 2020, The CPC Central Committee and The State Council issued The Guidance on Promoting the Development of the Western Region to Form a New Pattern in the New Era, which means that promoting a new round of sustainable development of the western region will become an important regional strategy of China in the future",11
"The development of the Chengdu–Chongqing urban agglomeration is crucial for promoting the interaction of the central and western regions, thereby expanding space for economic growth in the western region [42]",8
"Located in the inland center of China, the Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration has valuable historical and cultural heritage [43]",11
"This paper selects Growth Regional Product (GRP)/resident population (\(X_{1}\)) to reflect the value creation of economic growth, as expressed in SDGs 1 and 8; selects total investment in fixed assets/GRP (\(X_{2 }\)) to reflect urban investment efficiency, the lower it is, the higher investment efficiency is, which is a negative indicator, which reflects SDGs 8; selects the total retail sales of consumer goods/total population (\(X_{3}\)) to reflect cities’ consumption level, as highlighted in SDGs 8 and 12; selects the general public budget revenue/total population (\(X_{4}\)) and disposable income of households/total population (\(X_{5}\)) to reflect the degree of economic achievements sharing",8
This paper uses expenditure for science and technology/general public budget expenditure (\(X_{8}\)) and number of employed persons in scientific research and technical service/number of employed persons in urban units (\(X_{9}\)) to reflect urban innovation input,9
"Industrial sulfur dioxide emission/GRP (\(X_{22}\)), industrial waste water discharged/GRP (\(X_{23}\)) and ratio of industrial solid wastes utilized (\(X_{24}\)) are used to reflect the resource utilization efficiency and environmental protection degree in the process of urban industrial production",15
"Among the top 10 weighted indicators, there are two indicators used to measure economic growth, three indicators from the urban innovation environment, two measures of residents’ quality, and industrial structure optimization",8
"This shows that the sustainable development of the western region relies mainly on economic development, and economic growth and innovation have a great influence on the sustainable development level evaluation indicator system",8
The reason for this phenomenon is not that the environmental development of the western urban agglomeration has reached its upper limit but that most western cities are unable to take ecological environmental development into account while maintaining economic growth,8
"In terms of the eight dimensions of secondary indicators, the Hohhot–Baotou–Ordos–Yulin urban agglomeration’s sustainability levels of economic growth and industrial structure optimization over 10 years are much higher than those of the other three urban agglomerations, but its urban construction (0.0802), residents’ quality (0.0559), and energy conservation and emission reduction (0.0066) are all at the last",8
Its energy conservation and emissions reduction scores are 58 times lower than those of the Lanzhou–Xining urban agglomeration (0.3925),13
"Energy and chemical enterprises account for a large proportion of the industrial structure, and industrial pollution is serious, indicating that the current economic growth of Hohhot–Baotou–Ordos–Yulin is still at the expense of the environment",8
"The economic growth (0.1912) and innovation environment (0.0645) of the Lanzhou–Xining urban agglomeration are the lowest among the four urban agglomerations, and its innovation environment is 6 times lower than that of the Chengdu–Chongqing urban agglomeration (0.4433), so its innovation environment needs to be improved urgently",8
"Mianyang, China's science and technology city known as the ""Silicon Valley of the West"", is also a major research and development base for China's defense technology and electronics industry",9
"As the main research and development production base of China's equipment manufacturing industry, Deyang has a very high innovation capacity in the whole western city cluster and even the whole of China",9
Both the economic growth index and the living environment index dropped significantly in 2018,8
"For the Hohhot–Baotou–Ordos–Yulin urban agglomeration, the main drivers of urban development are the stockbreeding and mining industries",11
"The main industries are the upstream industries of manufacturing, with high pollution, high energy consumption and low scientific and technological content",7
"Thus, the economic growth rate, consumption level and innovation capacity decide the sustainable development level to a certain extent in Western China urban agglomerations",8
"Therefore, to achieve coordinated and shared sustainable development in the future, the cities in Western China's urban agglomerations need to enhance the innovation spillover among cities, drive the urban agglomerations to realize innovation-driven development, narrow the economic gap between cities, and improve the economic growth rate of poorer cities",8
"The evaluation indicator system of sustainable development is constructed from eight dimensions of Economic Growth, Industrial Structure Optimization, Urban Innovation Environment, Urban Construction, Residents' Quality, Coordinated Development of Urban and Rural Areas, Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction, and Living Environment, using the panel entropy value method, estimates the 2009–2018 sustainable development index of urban agglomeration in the west of China",8
"First, the innovation environment and economic growth are the core factors influencing the sustainable development level of urban agglomerations and cities",8
"At present, western urban agglomerations can no longer maintain a high level of long-term sustainable development through a single economic growth",8
"Western cities should promote the continuous transformation of industry to technology-intensive and environment-friendly, encourage enterprises to carry out green technology innovation to improve urban innovation capacity, and improve urban energy conservation and emission reduction to make innovation the main driving force for sustainable development of western urban agglomerations",9
"The sustainable development level of the Hohhot–Baotou–Erdos–Yulin urban agglomeration decreases year by year, and the development model of relying only on economic growth to maintain the sustainable development index has failed",8
"It should promote exchanges and cooperation between the various urban agglomerations, lessen the level of economic development between cities, reduce the spatial heterogeneity sustainable development levels of the western urban agglomerations, strengthen the urban agglomeration spatial interaction, break the administrative barriers, and promote the flow of resources so that the western region achieves coordinated sustainable development.",8
"In a developing country like India, it is also an utmost need to assess the environmental impact and economic performance of such technological innovation and its possible synergistic effect.Graphical  Since the genesis of industrial revolution and urbanization, the emission of carbon di-oxide (CO2) accounts for about 76% to global GHG emissions (IPCC 2014a, b)",8
"The atmospheric concentration of CO2 exceeded 419 ppm in 2021 — way above the pre-industrial level of 278 ppm as a consequence of fossil fuel combustion and deforestation, predicting 2021 to be the first year on record that exhibits CO2 levels of more than 50% above pre-industrial levels in the last 35 years ( ,  -change, accessed on 20.05.2021)",15
"In this context, the Paris Agreement, signed by 196 nations to reduce their CO2 emissions by nationally determined contributions (NDCs), aims to keep global warming below 2 °C by 2100, with 1.5 °C as a target (UNFCC 2015)",13
"Furthermore, to accelerate the action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and UNFCC, the UK hosted the 26th UN climate change COP 26 in Glasgow (Glasgow Climate Pact 2021), which intends to secure global emission to net zero by 2030 and keep 1.5 °C within reach",13
The COP 26 produced new “building blocks” to advance implementation of the Paris Agreement through actions that can lead the world to a more sustainable and low carbon pathway forward,13
"Amongst conventional fossil fuels, coal, the second largest source of primary energy, accounts for 30% of total energy consumption globally",7
"Though in 2020, global coal demand experienced its largest drop (falling 5% from 2019 levels) since the Second World War due to Covid-19 crisis, it can be forecasted based on the presumption of a global economic recovery in 2021 that a rebound in global coal demand of 2.6% will be dominated by China, India, and Southeast Asia ( -2020, accessed on 20.05.2021)",8
"About 8 BT of coal combustion occurred annually worldwide for electricity generation that is responsible for being second largest share (approximately 62%) of the world’s CO2 emissions ( -greenhouse-gas-emissions, accessed on 20.05.2021) and concerned as a contributor to global warming",7
"Despite of having different pros and cons, coal mining industry is indispensable worldwide for socio-economic development",8
"Carbon sequestration potential is linked to not only global climate change, but also changes in other ecosystem processes that are significant to human welfare",13
"Surface mining, the most common coal mining technique worldwide, causes extreme perturbation to the soil profile that leads to loss of soil fertility, carbon stock, disruption of carbon equilibrium, destruction of carbon sink, carbon deficit in natural soil, and reduced ability to provide ecosystem services (ES) (Ličina et al",15
"Complete destruction of forest cover, removal of topsoil, generation of overburden (OB) dumps (used for backfilling of mine voids), and land use changes due to mining operations (enhanced mineralization, erosion, and leaching) cause depletion in global biodiversity, carbon cycle, visual aesthetics, and augmentation of GHG emissions (del Mar Montiel-Rozas et al",15
"In the USA and other European countries, perennial vegetation has been applied on degraded land to boost up the SOC content and to limit soil erosion (Cortina et al",15
"grasses, understory vegetation, and trees), five-tier plantation (trees, shrubs, herbs, grass–legumes, climber), and indigenous and diverse species composition that could influence carbon dynamics and soil quality, improve genetic diversity, and accelerate the recovery to a self-sustainable ecosystem (Yuan et al",2
"Under this paradigm, concerns are increasingly dominated by one of the most significant challenges of the twenty-first century “to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts” (Stern and Stern 2007)",13
"Although, the efficacy of carbon sequestration is affected by climate variability, post-disturbance land use dynamics, biophysical factors, and degree of land degradation",15
The importance of restoration science in understanding environmental moderation through carbon sequestration potential and ecosystem service generation cannot be overemphasized,15
"How could the sustainable management (restoration) of post-mining ecosystem be essential for achieving the target of post-2020 framework of UNSDGs (SDG-13)? How could this target relate with the sustainable mining during UN decade of ecosystem restoration (2021–2030)? The carbon sequestration accounts to reverse adverse impact of land degradation in the tropics and sub-tropics through revegetation approach, a green and sustainable technology, which affords win–win effects in terms of environmental and economic sustainability, higher biodiversity, and enhanced environmental management to empower global environment conservation framework",15
"The present study aims to review (1) the potentiality of post-mining ecosystem (PME) restoration towards achieving UNSDGs (SDG-13) during 2021–2030, (2) the factors affecting carbon sequestration potential in PME, (3) the global potential of carbon sequestration in RMS, (4) the carbon budget for PME, and (5) probable benefits of carbon sequestration towards achieving the SDG-13 target (6) to propose sustainable land management (SLM) in PME to partially mitigate global climate change",13
“TS = ((restoration OR restored OR reclamation OR reclaimed OR reforested OR revegetation OR reforestation) AND (soil carbon sequestration OR soil carbon stock OR soil carbon pool OR soil carbon storage OR atmospheric carbon di-oxide sequestration) AND (coal mine spoil* OR coal mine tailing* OR technosol OR anthrosol OR reclaimed mine soil))” was entered in the basic search option of WoS core collection for obtaining data for the present study,15
"Ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss jeopardize ecosystem function, resilience, and its ability to provide a continual flow of ecosystem services to present and future generations",15
"Evaluation of the economic value of EGS due to deforestation is thus obligatory to support proper LULC decision-making policies for restoration of coal mine degraded land that can comprehend the trade-off among ecosystem services (ES) provision, biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration, and mine restoration",15
"The economic valuation (TEV, NPV) of EGS due to deforestation (loss of forest ecosystem due to anthropogenic LULC change) is listed in supplementary table 1",15
"Being a multi-dimensional concept, sustainable mining accompanied with a consolidative approach combines institutional and socio-economic development with environmental upliftment",8
"With the increasing significance of global climate change in the SDG scenario, the mining sector has gradually started to involve with this issue (Grist 2008)",13
"The documentations on climate and mining by ICMM demonstrate the compliance of the mining industry to play “a constructive and pragmatic role in climate change policy discussions”, which could be a positive symptomatic shift towards attaining the SDGs (Hirons et al",13
Payment for ecosystem service (PES) schemes based on the carbon market have proliferated under this paradigm (Olsen et al,15
"There are several examples of carbon-based PES schemes, including the reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD +), clean development mechanism (CDM), and voluntary carbon market",15
These initiatives might theoretically intensify CSR agendas by contributing to climate change mitigation and local development,13
"Miners can help by planning investments, identifying hazards, designing possibilities, and disseminating transparent report to mitigate the effects of climate change, particularly by monitoring the mine land of different microclimatic conditions so that decision-makers can take steps to do the needful",13
"Furthermore, a collaboration between industry, government, and stakeholders is required to synchronize corporate strategies worldwide to combat climate change",13
"Plant-assisted restoration (phytoremediation) of those abandoned post mining ecosystems is thus an effective option to prevent soil erosion, fix toxic compounds (i.e",15
"heavy metal, PAH), and recover soil fertility and vegetation structure (Ahirwal and Pandey 2021)",15
"Therefore, native plants species are often selected to obtain the most efficient growth and also the metal accumulating properties because of their adaptability to the conditions and are sometimes required by local regulatory agencies due to concerns over invasive species",15
"Furthermore, carbon storage associated with plant growth and microbial population contributed ex situ carbon sequestration in vegetation biomass of phytoremediator species that partially mitigate global climate change (O’Connell and Hou 2015; O’Connor et al",13
"Factors affecting soil properties, SOC dynamics, microbial activity, soil aggregate stability, nutrient availability, soil fertility, and soil horizon development must be incorporated for better understanding the possible interventions for good biomass production and potential sequestration of atmospheric CO2 towards achieving self-sustainable post-mining ecosystems",15
Soil microbial biomass (SMB) is an influential indicator that could provide rapid and accurate statistics of revegetated soil quality and productivity (Xiao et al,2
"To mitigate the adverse impact of mining and initiate ecosystem recovery, self-sustainable revegetation or forestry reclamation strategy is a significant PME management option (Pietrzykowski 2014; Józefowska et al",15
"In this regard, proper land use management strategies in reconstructed mine soil (technosol) play a decisive role in recuperating soil properties, ecosystem carbon pool and partially mitigating global climate crisis over chronosequence reclamation age (Frouz 2017)",13
"Precisely, vegetation diversity has been regarded as a significant index to indicate recovery of soil carbon pool in mine degraded area",15
"Organic soil amendments which are commonly used include mulching, grass–legume seeding, and fossil fuel combustion by-products (fly ash)",15
"The primary roles of surface mulches in reclamation of mine spoils (after seeding of desired vegetation species) include the following: (a) minimization of soil water loss through improvements in infiltration rate, soil moisture holding capacity, surface wetness, and reduction in evaporation; (b) enhancement of soil stabilization by reducing surface soil erosion by wind, water, and raindrop effect; (c) increase in SOM content and SOC stock; (d) reducing soil surface temperature; (e) improvement of soil structural stability and permeability in technosol; (f) reducing weed germination and improving microclimate conditions for desired species used for revegetation and increases plant stand; (g) serving as substrate for beneficial soil microbial organisms; (h) increases soil nutrient dynamics (N, P, K) and CEC; and (i) minimization of surface crust formation (Ussiri and Lal 2005)",15
(2022) reported an 145% increase of much density (Mg ha−1) in reclaimed waste dump under subtropical climatic conditions over 5 years of revegetation with grass–legume seeding that substantially enhanced the soil fertility with organic matter input,15
"Agroforestry, eco-restoration parks, and fruit orchards are the most often used postmining land uses in India (Ahirwal and Maiti 2016)",15
Legume species are one of the significant options for soil C sequestration in PME and plays a critical role to mitigate climate change (Lal 2015),13
"Globally, different research institutions, ministry projects, non-governmental organizations, state reforestation programmes, and federal agencies are involved in enhancing C sequestration potential in RMS through the revegetation approach with or without amendments that can offset CO2 emissions due to mining to some extent",15
Forest landscape play a critical role in partially mitigating climate change through C sequestration and provide a broad range of ecosystem services,13
"Forest landscape restoration (FLR) is a long-term process to regain ecological functionality, enhance human well-being in deforested or degraded landscapes, and deliver a broad range of goods and services for a wide range of stakeholders and across different land uses",15
The PME under sustainable land use planning (forestry reclamation) that improve carbon sequestration potential have a comparatively large capacity to off-set CO2 emissions from mining,15
"In other words, sustainable mining practices and proper PME management offer significant mitigation potential for global climate crisis (Xie et al",13
"Thus, SLM, in terms of introducing forest restoration approach (FRA), forest and landscape reclamation (FLR), and Miyawaki afforestation approach, could be one of the recognised options for restoring ecological functionality, soil carbon loss, and carbon sequestration potential due to deforestation or forest degradation during mining",15
This method is known as the forestry reclamation approach,15
"Few important methods are: Planting of seedlings Transplanting Habitat transfer Natural recolonization Forest and landscape restoration addresses landscape restoration, frequently involving some ecosystems and land uses, as a means of permitting users to attain trade-offs between contradictory interests and harmonizing social, cultural, economic, and environmental benefits",15
Forest landscape restoration (FLR) is a continuous procedure of restoring ecological functionality and improving human well-being across degraded forest landscapes,15
"Reclamation strategies should improve genetic and species diversity and be balanced over time to represent climate change and other environmental factors, experience, capacity, needs of shareholder and social values",13
The idea of sustainable afforestation has been revolutionized by transforming polluted land into mini-forests,15
"The analysed soil quality and biomass which would help to improve the perforation capacity, water retention capacity, and nutrient in it",2
"The primary aim of carbon sequestration are as follows: Off-setting anthropogenic emission of GHG by fossil fuel combustion, industrial process, and deforestation Reduction in net increase of atmospheric CO2 concentration and carbon pool Improving SOC pool in degraded ecosystem Development of soil quality and associated ecosystem goods and services (EGS) Improving nutrient (N, P, K) and water retention capacity Reduction in risk of soil erosion and non-point source pollution Increasing sustainable productivity and ecological security The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol recognizes the significant potential of carbon sequestration through forestry reclamation as a way forward to mitigate global warming and to offset carbon emission by developing countries through investing in forestry reclamation project (FRP)",15
"Thus, proper management plans in restored sites are required to recover SOC and increase carbon sequestration potential to combat partially with global climate crisis",13
"food and nutritional security, climate change mitigation, and water security) and (ii) the UNSDGs by recarbonization of the terrestrial biosphere",13
"According to Pietrzykowski and Krzaklewski (2010), forestry reclamation approach plays a pivotal role in carbon sequestration in soil, vegetation biomass and equivalent absorption of carbon dioxide (CO2) from atmosphere",15
"Forest ecosystems, by accumulating carbon in vegetation biomass, also play an important role in global carbon recycling (Pietrzykowski and Daniels 2014)",12
"Because of the relationship between SOC stock and atmospheric CO2 concentration, recarbonization of the terrestrial biosphere (soil and vegetation) could be an essential technique to minimize anthropogenic climate change (ACC) and boost other ecosystem services",13
The 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) appeared as guidelines for an action plan designed for pursuing an environmentally sustainable future accompanied by economic growth and societal well-being,8
"Reforestation in PME boosts up the carbon storage recovery both in plant biomass (AGB, BGB, Litterfall, root biomass) and soil (SOC, MBC) by developing technosol quality parameters coupled with improvement of ecosystem functions",15
"Through the research in the scientific literatures, it is evident that mining sectors have the potential to combat global climate crisis and to evaluate carbon budget with the implementation of sustainable land management (such as forestry reclamation approach, forest landscape restoration approach, Miyawaki method of afforestation) through collaboration among miners, government and local communities in practical way over a longer period of time",15
"In a developing country like India, it is also an utmost need to assess environmental impact and economic performance of such technological innovation and its possible synergistic effect.",8
"A notable share of the world population faces at least one of the three forms of malnutrition—undernutrition, micronutrient malnutrition, or overweight and obesity (e.g",2
(2016) propose multidimensional indicators to quantitatively characterize the performance of food systems through seven metrics of sustainable nutrition security,2
"(2014) on assessing sustainable nutrition security, Prosperi et al",2
"Based on elaborated discussions in the context of the CGIAR research Flagship “Food Systems for Healthier Diets”, this paper defines food systems broadly as the full set of actors, resources, processes and activities that encompass the domains of food production, processing, distribution, consumption and food waste disposal, and the outcomes of these activities, including nutrition and health, socioeconomic wellbeing and environmental quality, as well as the feedbacks, tradeoffs and synergies between these outcomes",12
"Food systems are multifaceted and complex—with sociocultural, economic and environmental aspects (e.g., farming, food access and equity, food sovereignty) (Pinstrup-Andersen et al., 2011)",2
"First, given the focus of this paper on healthier diets, we separate the nutrition element from the broader concept of food security to create a new outcome category",2
We group the remaining elements of food security under socioeconomic wellbeing,2
"In addition, we include food loss and waste management explicitly as an activity (Jurgilevich et al., 2016; Chaboud and Daviron, 2017)",12
"Food systems activities lie at the center and include food production, processing, distribution and marketing, consumption choices, and food loss and waste management",12
"For example, avoiding overconsumption and dietary changes, such as reducing the consumption of animal-sourced food and adopting diets with more plant-based products, serve not just dietary outcomes, but can also lead to improved environmental outcomes and reduced risk of diet-related non-communicable diseases (Tilman and Clark, 2014; van Dooren et al., 2014; Springmann et al., 2016)",3
"While all actors may agree that improved health and resource sustainability are positive long-term outcomes, present-day choices of consumers and businesses are still determined by costs, prices, convenience and cultural and social values, among other factors, all of which may not reflect good health or sustainable production practices (Nesheim et al., 2015)",12
"The principal activities of the food system encompass food production, processing, distribution and marketing, consumption, and food loss and waste management",12
"Table 1 shows, however, that on the other hand, the SDGs make limited reference to food production: indicators are limited to the use of improved seeds and breeds and organic farming",2
"Income levels, tastes, preferences, social values, health status, socioeconomic status, ease of access to food and commercial advertising and prices are among the main factors that drive the type and nutrient quality of consumers’ food choices (Ericksen, 2008; Nesheim et al., 2015)",2
"Food losses and waste play a key role in affecting global food and nutrition security by directly reducing the total food available for consumption and by indirectly increasing natural resource use (FAO, 2013)",2
"Food losses can occur along the value chain, but most food waste is recognized to occur after consumers purchase it (FAO, 2013; Lipinski et al., 2013)",12
"Delgado et al., 2017), and post-consumer food waste is considered to be higher in high-income countries (FAO, 2013; Gustafson et al., 2016)",12
"Table 8 shows that data availability on those issues is limited, and the food loss and waste indicators from the SDGs and the data available do not overlap",12
"While the SDGs propose to record the total percentage of food lost or wasted and the percentage of food waste that is recycled, data are only available on food losses at farm level",12
"In measuring food loss, Delgado et al",12
(2017) emphasize the need to identify where food loss occurs in the food system along the various stage of the value chain and causes of food loss,12
"They propose alternative methodologies that aim to reduce food loss measurement error and that allow to account for both quantitative and qualitative losses from the pre-harvest stage through product distribution, as well as discretionary losses among the processing, large distribution, and retail sectors",12
"Diets provide a key link between the food system and health and nutrition status, as varied diets are essential to support individual physical and mental health",3
Food safety is another key factor affecting nutrition and health outcomes of food systems,2
"The primary focus of food safety efforts is the reduction of health hazards and risks related to microbial and food-borne pathogens (Hoffmann and Harder, 2012)",2
"Inclusive food systems could in turn provide sustainable livelihoods in the different sectors of the system, particularly for vulnerable groups like smallholders and women",1
"In theory, food systems can also provide equitable access to food, thus improving global food security",2
"Major environmental impacts of food systems include water pollution and depletion, soil degradation, desertification, biodiversity loss, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions contributing to climate change (Ericksen, 2008; Ingram, 2011; Vermeulen et al., 2012; FAO, 2011; Gustafson et al., 2016; Westhoek et al., 2016)",15
"The four study countries are large countries with high diversity in terms of agroecology, geography, rural-urban gradients, population, and multiple food sub-systems (Gebru et al., 2018; Raneri et al., 2019)",2
"In addition, many indicators, such as food safety, diet diversity, and food losses and waste, can in theory be measured at local or sub-group scale and traced throughout the food system",2
"Data on food processing, food distribution and marketing, and food loss and waste appear less complete and thus require additional data collection efforts",12
The consumption questionnaire could also be extended to include food waste at the consumer level,12
Focusing on the microscale consequently becomes a preferable way to reduce inequalities in sustainable human development,10
"At this juncture, spatial equity plays a crucial role at the lowest scales through the targeting and positive discrimination of small, needy communities",10
"In Morocco, varied efforts to achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs) through concerted and targeted support bring added value to national efforts for the achievement of strategic priorities, which are advanced regionalization, democratic governance, inclusion, a reduction in socioeconomic territorial and gender inequalities, and equitable education and health [4]",4
"Several studies have analyzed the challenges and opportunities of the SDGs at the local level and the need for political and economic upscaling through good governance by equipping local communities with the necessary funding to implement the SDGs [10,11,12,13]",16
"The gap between local and national scales is explained by the degree of decentralization, good governance, and coordination between local actors [14]",16
"Indeed, economic inequalities are only one component of territorial inequalities in Morocco",10
"Inequalities in access to basic education, basic health care, housing, decent work, cultural services, etc",8
"Second, regarding job creation at the local level, reports have verified that the most resilient labor markets are locally managed [19]",8
"Health, education, access to clean water, electricity, etc",6
"The main features of the ‘advanced regionalization’ reform can be categorized into three areas: governance issues, finance and regional planning [29], which will be discussed in the following subsections",11
The infant mortality rate was 149% in 1956,3
"The standard of living was alarming, with a relative poverty rate of 53% [30]",1
"In 1983, the implementation of structural adjustment plans significantly reduced the state’s efforts in the area of human development with a remarkable disengagement from the social services offered to citizens",1
"There are eight goals, and their objective is to promote human rights and fight poverty",16
"In 2004, the National Initiative for Human Development (NDHI) constituted a new approach to land use planning through an integrated vision of development based on the fight against poverty and exclusion, putting the Moroccan people at the center of concern",1
"This new form of land use planning through spatial equity with optimal categorical and territorial targeting aimed to support the least equipped territories, to revalorize landlocked rural areas, to support people in precarious situations and to ensure equal opportunities in education, health and access to employment, i.e., representing a new form of reconciliation between national unity and regionalist aspirations",8
" (Source: author’s, DB from [30, 35]) Evolution of human development indicators Extreme poverty and hunger have been virtually eradicated",1
"The absolute poverty rate has been reduced by more than two-thirds nationally, from 21% in 1985 to 4.2% in 2014",1
Infant and child mortality has decreased over the past 20 years,3
The maternal mortality rate reached the target by the end of 2015,3
"The prevalence of HIV-AIDS remains relatively low and indigenous malaria has been eradicated, with relatively few imported cases",3
"The incidence of tuberculosis was reduced to 82 new cases per 100,000 in 2014 from 113 in 1990",3
"The population’s access to drinking water and electricity has been generalized at a sustained rate, while liquid sanitation is being provided in urban areas with a rate of more than 90% in 2014 in a context where the proportion of the urban population living in slums or in summary dwellings has fallen from 9.2% in 1994 to 5.6% in 2014",6
"The proportion of the population unable to reach the minimum level of calorific intake, measured by the food poverty rate, was reduced from 4.6% in 1985 to 0.1% in 2014 [36]",1
"The main design of the proposed division distinguishes two types of new regions with clear boundaries: the first includes specific destinations based on large poles or the two urban poles whose influence extends over areas of economic development, and the second class relates to remote regions in the Atlas Mountains, steppes, and deserts, which are cut off to various degrees and require the strong support of national solidarity",8
"In this study, we use the methodology of the High Commission for Planning [8] based on data from the General Population Census [41] regarding health status, education level, and standard of living [8]",17
"These are the following: The health situation according to the infant mortality rate, i.e., the number of infant deaths per 1000 live births during the reference year of the 2004 and 2017 census",3
"Indeed, these isolated territories do not have access to basic services",1
"As a territorial unit, it plays an essential role in proximity to the population (Housing and urban planning, Education and culture, Safety, Infrastructure and transport, Health, Social welfare)",11
"Moreover, sociocultural constraints have an important impact on access to basic services (education and health)",1
"Recent studies show that a local government's policy response to global issues, such as those highlighted in the SDGs, is often influenced by the need for political and economic decentralization through good governance by equipping local communities with the necessary funding to implement the SDGs [10,11,12,13]",16
"In this region, Tunisia ranks first with a score of 66.01 points, followed by Mauritius with a score of 65.95 points and Algeria with a score of 65.55 points, according to African achievement of the SDGs report (Fig. 4), Morocco is on the right track to eradicate poverty in all its forms everywhere (G 1) and ensure access to sustainably managed water supply and sanitation services for all (G 6)",1
"Second, the acceleration of the generalization of the social protection system, particularly in favor of the poor and vulnerable populations",1
This observation opens the debate on disparities in social services in Morocco,1
"The analysis of the spatial distribution of committed projects shows that 53.3% of projects concern the rural environment and 43.6% concern the urban environment, the rest being intercommunal projects",11
"This distribution is reversed when considering the project financing: 54.4% of NHRI credits are allocated to urban areas, against 41.4% for rural areas",16
"From this perspective, a territorial approach to economic development must be highly context-dependent, and this requires tailored interventions for spatial entities, such as remote or congested rural areas and degraded urban neighborhoods, characterized by strengths and weaknesses",8
The common goal of human development and the SDGs is to reduce inequalities that remain concentrated in the micro scales in Morocco,10
"Moreover, the additional cost of this growth may exceed the flow of additional welfare benefits [5, 6] especially for the poorest if an unfair GHG mitigation burden is allocated to regions with low access to other basic needs, such as health, wealth and education",1
"Responsible production and consumption are key factors to achieve local and global sustainable development in diverse aspects, including, but not limited to, economics, ecology, and social sciences [7]",12
"According to the report “Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication” from United Nations Environment Programme—UNEP [10], green economy is an important tool for sustainable development; one that is inclusive and can drive economic growth, employment, and poverty eradication, whilst maintaining the healthy functioning of the Earth’s ecosystems”",8
"They propose a framework where only developed countries should reduce emissions, enabling developing ones to maintain development based on more emission intensive activities without compromising global mitigation targets if they prefer or require such activities",13
"Moreover, it has to account for specific notional policies, such as the Brazilian National Police on Climate Change [24] and its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) [25], as they play a major role in the national mitigation pledges",13
"We also demonstrate how to balance economic development with environmental responsibility, extending prior cross-country modeling to apply within Brazil, where different regions are developing at different rates",8
"Although emissions from deforestation are huge in Brazil [30], this sector historically does not correlate with human development measured at state level [31]: −0.2 in 1991, −0.15 in 2000 and −0.31 in 2010 (Supplementary File 1)",15
"However, both have been used to compare the social and economic development within and among societies over time [32,33,34]",8
"By adopting this approach, we ensure that emissions are consistent with our emissions reduction’s proposal (described in the following sections), which is also geographically distributed",13
We used IPCC’s global scenarios [1] and Brazilian NDC [25] to determine some Brazilian commitments to reduce emissions (next section describe these commitments),13
"After 2020, microregions with MicroHDI of at least 0.8 are required to reduce emissions proportionally to their human development level (Eqs. 4 and 5)",13
"By doing this, we provide more ground for developing microregions to freely decide over the activities required to achieve higher MicroHDI and facilitate their capacity to adapt to climate change, as recommended by some studies [14, 16,17,18]",13
This domain must be avoided because the resulting emissions would be inconsistent with any national climate mitigation goal in a region with already reasonably high human development,13
"However, both conclusions should be considered in the context of not taking into account emissions from deforestation, since extensive agriculture expansion and extractive activity are relevant for some of those microregions [41, 42]",15
"However, such economic growth is associated with high environmental demands in the region, and may be unsustainable in the long run [43]",8
"In general, Rondônia state is one of the deforestation leaders in Brazil [44], but apparently has not translated its resource depletion into regional development",15
"But on the other side, given the current slowdown in the economic growth [45], some environmental and structural dilemmas in Brazil [46] and the recent global recession from 2020, our result may be understood as one of the several potential scenarios of socio-economic development",8
Increases in living standards are commonly associated with increased environmental degradation [6],15
"According to UNEP [10], in a green economy, growth in income associated to the high level of human development “should be driven by public and private investments that reduce carbon emissions and pollution, enhance energy and resource efficiency, and prevent the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services”",13
"This might be related to mechanisms of technology transfer, governmental policies and a local economy not based on activities intensive in emissions",17
The values from EDGAR v4.2 FT2010 [28] represent the basis for determining the mitigation needed to achieve the goals established by IPCC and NDC,13
Brazilian NDC [25] presents commitments to reduce GHG emissions in 2025 and 2030 according to emissions in 2005,13
"We took two mitigation goals from Brazilian NDC, namely NDC25 and NDC30, having 2025 and 2030 as target years to achieve mitigation, respectively",13
"The NDC states GHG mitigation of 37% (NDC25) and 43% (NDC30) related to 2005, but does not relate it to any probability of global increasing temperature",13
"Both NDC’s goals are short term (5 and 10 years) but their mitigation commitments are high (37% and 43%), as well as their mitigation related to expected emissions in 2020 (53.3% and 57.8%)",13
"It makes NDC’s commitments more audacious than IPCC’s, which is reflected as high f values (7.6 and 10.6)",13
"Although we intended to include NDC’s goals in our analysis, we understand that its short time to mitigate and its high mitigation commitment are features that would impair its application",13
"This would lead to decreases in the growth rate, to less GHG emissions, and would make the NDC’s goals easier to achieve while impairing improvements in human development",13
"This way, there would be no difference in constant f to achieve the 2050 goals, but some microregions would have to reduce emissions earlier",13
The red bar at the right edge of the frame illustrates the range of cumulative emissions reduction achievable under the proposed reduction goal a (~ 135 Gt CO2eq),13
Figure 4a and b demonstrate that if Brazilian emissions remain as in the past (DAU trajectory) the country is not progressing towards meeting SDG 13,13
CO2eq emissions reduction framework based on MicroHDI for Brazil (1992–2050),13
Annual CO2eq emissions (2000–2050) and CO2eq emissions reduction framework based on MicroHDI (1992–2050) for some contrasting Brazilian microregions,13
"Annual change in CO2eq emissions over the years under DAU approach and under the emissions reduction framework for Vale do Ipanema—PE (d), Teresina—PI (e) and São Paulo—SP (f)",13
"In addition, new accomplishments in development (increasing MicroHDI) are not related to greater efforts to reduce GHG emissions (increasing \(r_{i,t}\))",13
"Overall, results demonstrate that Brazil is progressing towards higher socioeconomic standards (SDGs 1, 3, 4 and 8) but not regarding to climate change (SDG13) if MicroHDI and CO2 emissions evolve in the future as it was in recent years",13
"Even though according to the CBDR principle it could be fair for a developing country like Brazil to base its development in emission intensive actives [12, 17], it is also expected that societies assume a proactive role regarding mitigation of climate change",13
"Brazil has taken this active role by pledging robust emissions mitigation in its NDC, but the allocation of mitigation burdens and the effects of sub-national inequalities have been only minimally discussed [21]",13
"On the one hand, this can be a major constraint to the Brazilian context, as one of the main sources of emission reduction refers to the reduction of Amazon and Cerrado deforestation [30]",15
"In contrast, some authors consider that historical deforestation data is still highly uncertain [44, 51,52,53], which could lead to less accurate estimates",15
"Because mitigation in the land use change sector has been the most vigorous one in Brazil [30], our results are conservative estimations in terms of potential mitigation",15
"Therefore, we seek to analyze the connections between green economy and climate mitigation by developing an analytical reference for policy makers on how to allocate mitigation burdens timely and geographically, based on regional human development",13
This dynamic crosstalk between GHG emissions reduction and development level is likely to encourage the adoption of policies that favor both issues,13
"Literature on material flow accounting has increasingly emphasized the need for an equitable resource allocation for least developed countries (LDCs) considering their future growth and the social outcomes (e.g., poverty alleviation) they intend to deliver",1
"In these circumstances, we suggest policy measures that can leverage present consumption-oriented remittances as a source of investment in up-scaling small-scale modern renewable energy technologies across the residential sector, particularly in rural areas",7
"Due to the higher share of biomass in the DMC and the total energy consumption, the share of renewable energy in the energy mix is usually higher (over 50%) than the global average of 18% (World Bank 2021)",7
"However, if we exclude the traditional use of biomass, renewable energy shares drop to less than 10% for countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Nepal (IEA 2021)",7
"Thus, reflecting on the lack of access to modern renewable energy technologies (e.g",7
"hydroelectricity, solar, wind, and bioenergy), coupled with the anticipated future economic growth of today’s LDCs, whose middle-class population is expanding (Steckel et al",8
"2017), SDSN (2014) had suggested sustainable economic growth that should allow all LDCs to graduate by 2030",8
"However, what level of economic growth in LDCs is sustainable is far from being understood, mainly reflecting the common trend of a relatively higher economic growth rate in most LDCs (World Bank 2021)",8
"In the absence of a common understanding about the environmentally sustainable economic growth pathway for LDCs, we can assume it as achieving the environment-related SDGs 7, 12, and 13 by 2030 while continuing to improve their GNI per capita figures to seek promotion from the LDC status",8
Murshed (2020) empirical findings pertaining to the trade liberalization policies in low-income countries suggest an alignment with the renewable energy policies that can contribute to achieving the SDG 7,7
Achieving the SDG 7 via renewable energy transition in oil-importing South Asian countries (e.g,7
"In an intuitive sense, the most important aim for LDCs is poverty alleviation, which has become more prominent after the economic fallout from COVID-19 (Valensisi 2020)",1
(2018) implicitly support the notion of poverty alleviation in LDCs by stating that reductions in consumption should not be indiscriminate and that the consumption of people living on a low income can increase,1
"Therefore, in theory, if we assume LDCs go beyond sustainable economic growth to reduce widespread poverty, DMC will likely be unsustainable and increase rapidly to cater to the consumption need of the households jumping out of poverty",8
"In LDCs, resource-based economic growth is needed to overcome poverty (Giljum et al",8
"The lack of understanding about the sustainable growth pathway in LDCs and the entailing DMC motivates this research to investigate the future DMC, its structure, and its key economic determinants in Nepal’s case",8
(2018) analyze forty years of evidence on global material use and resource productivity to discuss growing wealth and consumption as drivers,8
"2010; Baynes and Musango 2018), renewable energy utilization (Alola et al",7
"(2021a) found that the change in GDP, even under the low economic growth scenario, can significantly swing the future DMC",8
"(2018) analyzed the metabolic inequality among countries of different income levels and geographical locations to find that LDCs, together with the middle-income countries, increased their material intensity and material use between 2000 and 2010 because the affluence grew faster than material efficiency",10
"Similarly, the recent literature focuses on variables such as globalization, trade, population growth, foreign investment, innovations, primary products (forestry, livestock, and crops), and fiscal policies to study the resource consumption-environmental sustainability-development nexus (Rehman et al",15
"The traditional use of biomass for cooking in rural areas drives its consumption, and the urban transport system is mainly responsible for the use of fossil fuels in Nepal (Parajuli et al",11
"In contrast, secondary scenarios consider the nation’s aspiration to achieve the LDC graduation status of the United Nations and meet their climate mitigation and SDGs commitments",13
"In an intuitive sense, the remittance inflow reduces the traditional use of biomass for cooking as the households with increased income have better access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking",7
"Between 2000 and 2016, the percentage of the population with access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking increased from 15 to 25% in Nepal, and the access to electricity increased from 20% of the rural population to 90% in the same period (World Bank 2021)",7
These figures indicate that most of the progress in the percentage of the population with access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking occurred in urban areas and that the major fraction of the rural population still prefers biomass as a cooking fuel over electricity,7
"Figure 4 shows the projected values of the DMC by material types up to 2050 for the six scenarios—normal economic activity scenario (NEAS), low economic activity scenario (LEAS), high economy activity scenario (HEAS), least developed country graduation scenario (LDCGS), climate mitigation scenario (CMS), and the sustainable development goal scenario (SDGS)",13
"In the SDGs, fossil fuels will decrease as the government targets to curb some of the increasing fossil fuel consumption, together with the biomass via a renewable energy transition across the residential sector that contributes to the majority of energy consumption",7
"This implies that the biomass and fossil fuels will likely achieve absolute decoupling from the economic growth in the SDGs, and a strong relative decoupling in the CMS and the LEAS",8
"They ponder whether to focus on economic growth or sustainable development objectives, including SDGs 7, 12, and 13",8
"Thus, the understanding of sustainable growth as a growth pathway that helps LDCs achieve LDC graduation by 2030 (SDSN 2014) appears to be confusing",8
"2014), it is natural to give more weightage to the economic growth and social outcomes in the LDCs, including Nepal",8
"However, the important question is as follows: Can equitable allocation of material use help LDCs achieve their social outcomes? In the current state, equitable allocation of material use may not help LDCs achieve their social outcomes because of the weak correlation between GDP growth and biomass consumption (Steinberger et al",8
"2010) means a better chance to achieve social outcomes (e.g., poverty reduction) from the equitable allocation of materials",1
"Thus, reflecting on the seemingly dormant role of the remittance, a significant contributor to Nepal’s GDP, in the biomass consumption, and the negative elasticity of fossil fuel consumption from remittance in the ARDL model indicates the role it can play in the clean energy transition",7
Remittance is found to have a direct causality relationship with renewable energy consumption (Das et al,7
"2020), can be utilized for upscaling of the modern renewable energy technologies, share of which is below world’s average in most LDCs, including Nepal",7
The small-scale household and community level modern renewable energy technologies (e.g,7
"Therefore, considering the contribution of biomass in the total DMC in future (Fig. 4) and the role of remittance in household consumption, policies targeting the dissemination of the small-scale modern renewable energy technologies in the rural areas can help reduce the DMC in the long run",7
"We suggest this policy measure keeping in mind the increasing demand of non-metallic materials as the rate of urbanization grows and given Nepal’s weak material use efficiency, which will likely increase as the energy sector transition from being biomass-based to being based on small-scale modern renewable energy technologies",7
We interrogate our evidence to explore whether CMs could widen the range of participants involved in the urban planning process and deliver a transformation in inclusion,11
"Finally, we consider whether using CMs could overcome SDG delivery challenges, by achieving localised development gains for vulnerable communities in specific contexts and places",1
2018b) building transformative urban development capacity (Wolfram et al,11
"Of all urban areas, cities and their decision-making processes have a great opportunity to re-direct urban design and investment into sustainable infrastructure that improves liveability for residents (United Nations Environment Programme 2011) whilst addressing poverty (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI)—Local Governments for Sustainability 2018) and equity issues",9
"For LMICs, this is a particularly pressing concern as road traffic fatalities are surpassing those due to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and diarrhoeal diseases",3
"These impacts are particularly skewed towards the vulnerable: those who walk, cycle or rely on public transport, who make up most urban residents",11
"Solutions that enable liveability and take into account the requirements of the poor, elderly, young and other vulnerable groups need to be a critical part of future city development (Rajé et al",1
On the other side the silent majority—the walkers and commuters who use public transport,11
"But the methods used of drawing and painting, it aids their memory, so children will remember those messages to keep themselves safe”",3
"Critically, the results indicate increasing agreement amongst key experts that CMs have a useful role to play in achieving wider inclusion in urban planning issues [S12, 8]",11
Three key governance challenges identified for the SDG delivery include (i) cultivating creative action by creating inclusive decision-making spaces; (ii) making trade-offs to achieve equity; and (iii) accountability of decision makers in relation to outcomes (Bowen et al,16
"By enhancing the inclusion of vulnerable communities, CMs could assist in delivering robust, equitable development plans, meeting an element of the ambitions for transformative change embedded in the SDG agenda",1
"Further CMs’ experimentation is required to evaluate impacts when used by formal agencies, where no prior groundwork has been undertaken, and around explicit conflict resolution issues",16
"However, if used for inclusive dialogue, increasing CM use could contribute to improving direct citizen participation in policy-making, and aligning outcomes with those of the wider public, to enhance legitimacy and offset governance failures (Fung 2015)",11
Institutional quality largely influences the ways in which economic agents align their production and operational behaviors towards expanding the share of renewable energy in the total energy mix and enhancing environmental performance,7
"This study therefore explores the panel data for the EU-28 countries to assess the dynamic effects of institutional quality, tourism development, financial development, and renewable energy on environmental performance over the period 2002 to 2014",7
"Using a two-step dynamic system generalized method of moments (GMM), the empirical results broadly suggest that institutional quality can be explored to dampen the potential negative effects of tourism and economic growth on environmental performance",8
"In addition, financial development and renewable energy are positively related to environmental performance",7
This suggests that financial stability and energy consumption transition to renewable energy are necessary requirements to improve environmental performance,7
"The policy implication for this study is that strengthening of institutional quality, financial stability, and adjusting to alternative and clean energy systems are the surest ways to achieve a cleaner and sustainable environment in the EU region",7
"One of the major goals of the European Union member countries (EU-28) in recent times is to mitigate environmental consequences of carbon dioxide (CO2) accumulation and other greenhouse gasses (GHGs), which led to global warming and climate change",13
"Following the Kyoto Treaty, the Paris Climate Conference (COP 21), and other wider global initiative to reduce the country-level greenhouse gasses (GHGs) emissions, EU countries as signatories to these agreements and conferences, have initiated a series of environmental policies and energy use strategies to reduce the usage of fuel oil and other traditional energy consumption patterns related to environmental issues in the region (see Ummalla et al",7
"A weak institution creates a fertile ground for environmental degradation, while a strong institution strengthens environmental improvement through total compliance with environmental laws",15
"(2020a) reveal that the level of environmental performance is positively dependent on institutional quality such as good governance, degree of democratization and accountability, rule of law, corruption control, and political stability",16
(2019) that environmental performance responds positively to the reduction in corruption,16
"Moreover, the region has promoted renewable energy consumption over the years",7
This agrees with the position of literature that increasing the share of renewable energy in the energy mix improves the quality of the environment through a reduction in CO2 emissions (Paramati et al,7
"Theoretically, institutions can increase energy efficiency, which in turn improves environmental quality",7
"Furthermore, our study combines five core measures of institutional quality indicators published by the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) via the principal component approach in analyzing the moderating role of institutions in the tourism–financialization–renewable energy and environmental performance nexus in EU-28 countries",7
"Applying Granger causality based on the vector error correction model (VECM), Ben Jebli and Hadhri (2018) found evidence supporting the negative effect of tourism on CO2 emission, suggesting that tourism improves environmental quality despite its huge contribution to economic growth",8
"Using a battery of econometric tests that are robust to heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence, Danish and Wang (2018) examined the dynamic nexus among tourism, economic growth, and CO2 emissions for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) countries",8
The empirical results reveal that tourism degrades environmental quality via economic growth,8
Financial development also influences the environment through economic growth (Shahbaz et al,8
"That is, an increase in economic growth due to financialization is closely linked to an increase in energy use, and it may contribute to environmental deterioration",8
"(2019), stated that institutional quality (good governance, the extent of democratization, rule of law, corruption control, effective tax system, political stability, etc.) has a positive influence on economic agents in adhering to environmental laws and operating in ways that do not harm the environment severely",16
(2016) reveal that environmental performance responds positively to the reduction in corruption,16
2021) show that a sustainable energy mix with a reasonable proportion of renewable energy leads to economic and environmental sustainability,7
"The independent variables include institutional quality index (IQ), economic expansion measured by real gross domestic product (EG), tourism development (TRD), broad-based financial development index (FD), and renewable energy (RENE) as tabulated as shown in Appendix Table 8: real GDP, tourism, financial development, and renewable energy are in their natural logarithms while EPI and IQ are not",7
"Theoretically, the link between economic growth and environmental quality has been well-established in the literature following the empirical works of Grossman and Krueger (1991) (see Ozturk et al., 2016; Dogan and Turkekul 2016; Apergis 2016; Ike et al",8
This region has also experienced an energy transition from fossil fuel energy consumption to renewable energy consumption as well as the development of financial institutions and markets,7
"The environmental performance also correlates positively with tourism, financial development, and economic growth with evidence of statistical significance",8
"Similarly, the correlation between all other variables with renewable energy is negative and only significant in the cases of environmental performance and financial development.
 The results of the Pesaran (2004) test for cross-sectional dependence are presented in Appendix Table 9",7
"(2020) who aver that the Environmental Performance Index provides more reliable results compared to other measures of environmental degradation.
 To check the validity of the GMM model, we employ two principal informational criteria",15
Institutional quality could also enhance environmental improvement through a fall in the level of corruption,16
(2019) who attribute a decline in environmental pollution to a decline in corruption due to improvement in environmental quality,16
(2020) that institutional quality increases fossil-based energy consumption,7
This becomes obvious in a regional economy such as EU countries where the region has heavily invested in renewable energy in the past two decades,7
"Therefore, the energy growth effect of financial development is pollutant free because the share of renewable energy in the total energy consumed by this region is high",7
This finding is in line with Dogan and Seker (2016) who reported that financial development improves the quality of the environment in the top countries listed in the renewable energy attractiveness index,7
"(2016, 2018) who documented that financial development is inversely related to environmental degradation",15
The results also provide that renewable energy promotes environmental improvement,7
"As reported by the European Commission (2020), the primary production of renewable energy from all sources in the EU countries accounts for about 1029 TWh, that is, 37.5% of its total primary energy production in 2019",7
(2020a) that renewable energy promotes environmental quality in G7 countries,7
(2020) that increasing renewable energy would reduce CO2 emission in the EU member countries in the long run,7
(2010) who submitted that renewable energy has no substantial role in reducing environmental pollution in 19 advanced and emerging economies,7
(2015) that the role of renewable energy on carbon emissions for sub-Saharan African countries is mixed,7
(2019); and Dogan and Inglesi-Lotz (2020) who found that tourism demand would deteriorate the environmental quality through its positive effect on economic growth,8
"Generally, the implication for the finding is that the pursuit of tourism and economic growth hurts the environment and consequently hinders the realization of sustainable development goal (SDG) targets by the United Nations in the EU region by 2030",8
"Moreover, the negative effects of tourism and economic growth on environmental performance can be dampened by the quality of the institutions",8
"First, the consumption of fossil-based fuels which has been the major driver of tourism development and economic growth in the region should be reduced",8
"To this effect, government and energy policymakers need to adopt alternative and clean energy systems such as renewables and other alternative uses of energy to sustain environmental quality in the EU region",7
"Third, in transitioning to renewable-based energy consumption, it is recommended that the principle of comparative advantage should be considered as a priority to minimize the cost of acquiring renewable energy",7
Farming on the rooftop of office buildings and skyscrapers not only maximizes space usage but also adds greenery to the urban landscape against pollution while harvesting solar energy for food production and generating renewable electricity with solar panels,7
"Beyond that, workforce-upskilling initiatives are timely to be deployed via technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and micro-credentials for all sectors and industries",4
AI can contribute to personalized learning [2]for quality education,4
"While developing technology to increase food production with efficient farming, green citizenry should also be cultivated through awareness campaigns to reduce consumption and food waste",12
AI can help to reduce waste with a more efficient supply chain [3],12
Automated food delivery to predict daily orders based on consumer big data for ingredient logistics and food-waste minimization promote a more sustainable food system,2
"In particular, implementing the circular economy in the food system is of extreme importance [4]",12
Such a food-tech disruptor can not only save the environment but also ensure food security for the future,2
Agriculture is a critical component of national security and world health because food shortages will lead to famine and political unrest,2
"It is possible to infer poverty and food-production situations in the Middle East and North Africa for pre-emptive food aids in times of crop failure to prevent famines months before they happen, especially in troubled areas",3
"In case of a crisis, every nation needs a future-ready food hub for global coordination to assess and regulate food security and safety to ensure reliable sources of food supplies and accountability within the intertwined global foodsupply chain",2
It serves as a hidden park ranger that works 24/7 tracking wildlife poachers with an automated alert system connected to the control center to prevent poaching before it happens,15
It is inevitable for an accelerated trend of digitalization and AI applications to achieve the SDG indicators,9
"Here, it is important to note that such guidelines should focus on concrete AI applications, rather generally on AI technology; this would both enable an adequate framework to enforce legal consequences and the proper environment for AI research and development",9
"However, the labor market has been greatly impacted by reduced dependency on laborers, resulting in the unemployment of low-skill workers and widening the gap of society, which needs urgent attention in many countries [20]",8
We must acknowledge that not all countries can afford to provide a social-safety net for the foreseeable income inequality between AI technology haves and have-nots,10
Countries participating in the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization have few options for the environmentally appropriate final disposal of municipal solid waste,12
"Thus, sustainable practices aimed at reducing the negative effects of such a disposal on the environment are complex and hard to accomplish, since solid waste generation per capita proportionally increases as populations grow (≈ 2.7% > world average), mainly in countries inserted in Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization",12
"Simple regression results recorded for variables “IAC” and “Gini index” were significant (RIAC2 = 60.09%, RGini2 = 30.83%), with emphasis on “Amazon biome” (DF = 33, p < 0.01, RBiome2 = 5.34%)",10
"In conclusion, waste per capita estimation models can present variations and geographical interdependencies due to different variables and factors that reflect the current public policies and municipal solid waste management practices",12
Global municipal solid waste (MSW) production by 2016 was approximately 2.010 million t.year−1,12
"Nevertheless, it is important emphasizing the Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG11), which aims at promoting the integrated MSW management and at mitigating the effects of its non-application (PNUD 2015; United Nations in Brazil 2018)",11
"The main contributing factors for the increased amount of generated waste lie on population growth and, consequently, on urban development; both factors are intensified by local economic performance, changes in lifestyle, and consumption patterns (Adamović et al",11
Studies about waste management have shown improvement in populations’ quality of life and in the economy of places where this issue is properly addressed (Moustakas and Loizidou 2019; Vardopoulos et al,12
"On the other hand, new approaches aimed at addressing this specific issue, such as the ones suggesting WPC assessment methods, can be extremely useful to help in managing and mitigating MSW-related effects on both public and environmental health (Vergara and Tchobanoglous 2012)",3
"ACTO Countries and Amazon surface The current research has followed three different stages: (1) selecting IACs presenting statistical data; (2) defining measurable variables published by governmental agencies (see Tables 1 and S1, for more details), namely, total population (Ptot), urban population (Purb), rural population (Prur), regional population density (PD), latitude (Lat), longitude (Lon), region, IAC, region surface (Area), human development index (HDI), Gini index (GINI), family income (Inc), income per capita (Inp), SDG11, waste production in weight (Wton), number of municipalities presenting some management system (MWM), and presence/absence of landfill (MLf); and (3) statistical analysis based on hypothesis tests focused on geographical WPC variations (p < 0.05)",10
"This classification was unified in the variable defined as “region.” Each region has its respective management and policy, which potentially contribute to National Waste Management Policies in these countries (Sánchez-Muñoz et al",12
"In addition, the number of municipalities presenting some waste management system (MWM) and the number of landfills per geographical region (NLf) were defined",12
"km−2, at regional level per IAC), latitude (Lat), and longitude (Lon), in compliance with Sustainable Development Goal 11.6 of SDG11, as well as ecological variables (Biom), were analyzed in the current study",11
"Table S1 presents further details about the reference sources used for data collection, as well as their respective regulatory framework for solid waste",12
Colombia has applied a highly effective recycling policy in comparison to other countries,12
"On the other hand, few financial resources invested in this sector appear to have direct impact on the management and provision of these services, as well as to have led to harmful consequences for the environment and public health (ABRELPE 2020)",3
HDI is represented by a continuous dark green line; Gini index is represented by a continuous light green line—scale values are shown on the right vertical axis,10
"WPC variations in HDI and GINI indices per IAC and per region Gini index had not yet been explicitly used as variable or independent factor to explain WPC variations, unlike HDI and income (Inc and Inp), which have often been used as reliable variables to estimate MSW generation (Kawai and Tasaki 2016)",10
"(2020) have developed an aggregated indicator (geometric average of standardized indicators of MSW generation, CO2 emissions, energy consumption and quality of the final disposal place)",7
"Countries, GINI index, and HDI associated with the Amazonian biome (Biom, p value < 0.05) were the variables that stood out in spatial differences (Kruskal–Wallis test, p < 0.05)",10
"However, this trend also appears to be determined by Gini index, despite its negative correlation to WPC",10
"Thus, the higher the HDI and the lower the Gini index, the greater the trend to increase WPC generation",10
"In other words, factors such as economic growth, increased income, population growth, rapid urbanization, and growing demand for goods and services appear to significantly contribute to WPC increase (Minghua et al",8
"The current study observed interdependence between variables “population” (Ptot) and Gini index (GINI), since the greatest inequality between people, and between regions, was correlated to greater WPC production",10
"Therefore, it was possible concluding that WPC production has multiple and significant dependencies on Lon, population parameters (Ptot, Purb, Prur), Gini index, and HDI, regardless of whether the place where it is produced is located in the Amazon, or not",10
"Thus, Gini index can still be considered a variable of significant interdependence with WPC, when it interacts with other socioeconomic and management variables (Inp, Inc and Wton) (Table 3) (Passarini et al",10
"On the other hand, variables and models can be useful tools to develop a baseline for studies focused on investigating the solid waste sector in developing countries",12
"Since the 1990s, according to Roberts (2004), the donors and recipients of development assistance have committed themselves to results-oriented public expenditure management",10
"This paper empirically examines the effects of energy, natural resources, agriculture, political constraint and regional integration on CO2 emissions in four ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries of Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand",11
We distinguish between renewable and fossil fuel energy consumption to see their individual impacts on CO2 emissions,7
The findings show that renewable energy consumption has a negative impact on CO2 emissions while fossil fuel energy degrades the environment,7
"Globally, the rapid increase in population growth and economic activities such as consumption, industrialization and deforestation continue to threaten the fixed supply of environmental resources which has led to environmental degradation (Dar and Asif 2020)",15
"Of consequential importance is climate change and global warming, as the resultant effect of greenhouse gas (GHG) which comprises 72% carbon dioxide (CO2) and constitutes a threat to humanity (Ahmed et al",13
"The products and activities of the agricultural sector majorly responsible for GHG emission include biomass incineration, fertilizers and manures, wetlands and machineries as well as fossil fuels, particularly in the processing, packaging and transportation of agricultural products (Dar and Asif 2020)",2
"Apart from livelihood and direct and indirect employment purposes, agriculture also serves multiple roles in these economies such as a vehicle for inclusive growth, source of export and foreign exchange earnings as well as achievement of ending poverty (SDG 1) and zero hunger and food security (SDG 2)",2
These attest to the prominence of agriculture in poverty reduction and growth processes in the region (Teng and McConville 2016),1
"Furthermore, Cambodia is well endowed in terms of agricultural resources like arable land, water, forests and livestocks; natural gas both onshore and offshore; and other natural resources like gold, iron ore and copper (Sawe 2018)",15
"Therefore, if ASEAN countries can effectively harness their natural resources through the aforementioned four countries — Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia — then they can effectively mitigate CO2 emissions and combat climate change (SDG 13)",13
"Biogas can also be netted from palm oil mill effluent to obtain power while the waste sector, which contributes massively to GHG emissions, can also be influential not only in lowering CO2 and methane emissions, but also contribute to renewable energy by generating electricity (Salleh et al",7
"Thus, through efficient biomass waste management and substantial enhancement of combustion of palm oil mills, huge potentials exist for the region to turn waste to wealth in this viable industry",12
"With the above background, it is pertinent to empirically examine the effect of energy, natural resources, agriculture and regional integration on CO2 emissions and ascertain the role of political constraint in four ASEAN countries of Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand",11
(2019) have been conducted in the area of CO2-agriculture-renewable energy nexus,7
(2018) relate these to economic growth (e.g,8
"This study therefore considers energy, natural resources, energy and regional integration on CO2 emissions in order to investigate the problems and prospects as well as the interaction of political constraints mechanism among these variables",11
"2022; Nathaniel and Khan 2020), all of which have important implications for environmental degradation and sustainable development",15
"Furthermore, we also focus on variables such as energy since energy can induce environmental degradation and also contribute toward damaging the ecosystem (Ahmed et al",15
"Thirdly, this paper also contributes to empirical literature by investigating the moderating effect of political constraint on the relation between energy, natural resources, agriculture and regional integration and CO2 emissions",11
The increasing consumption of energy has significantly affected the climate change dynamics across the world (Wang et al,13
Energy transition from increasing renewable energy sources and reducing the use of fossil fuels have been found to be one of the reliable methods to reduce CO2 emissions and improve environmental quality (Tang et al,7
"From the several studies conducted concerning the renewable energy-CO2 emission dynamics, Chandio et al",7
"Adopting the ARDL bounds testing and Johansen cointegration test with FMOLS, they discovered that using renewable energy and forest area mitigate CO2 emissions",7
"(2020) explored the link between renewable energy, financial improvement and industrial and service value added from 1990 to 2015 in 102 countries",7
They observed that improvement in renewable energy mitigates CO2 emissions in the countries under study and for lower middle-income countries,7
"Dogan and Seker (2020) show a similar result in the analysis of the effects of renewable and non-renewable energy, trade liberalization and CO2 emissions in the EU study of 1980 to 2012",7
Results revealed that trade and renewable energy decrease emissions while non-renewable energy increases it,7
"In terms of causality, the Dumitrescu-Hurlin non-causality test indicate that a bidirectional causality exist between renewable energy and CO2 emissions and a unidirectional causality from non-renewable energy, trade and income to CO2 emissions",7
"(2008) and Omer (2007) are studies that observed uni- and bidirectional association between renewable energy, trade and CO2 emissions",7
A positive and significant effect of renewable energy on CO2 emissions was discovered by (Bekun et al,7
"Also, a positive and significant relationship between renewable, non-renewable energy and CO2 emissions was found in ASEAN (Liu et al",7
"In addition, the study of Shafiei and Salim (2014) for 29 OECD study from 1980 to 2011 using AMG and GMM techniques reveal that renewable energy worsens CO2 emissions",7
"Employing a panel cointegration analysis, renewable energy was found to have an increasing long run effect, in addition to exerting a negative influence on CO2 emissions",7
Rapid industrialization and urbanization in the process of economic growth generally lead to depletion of natural resources according to Hassan et al,8
"This is the case with Nathaniel (2021) who investigated natural resources, human capital, economic growth and ecological footprint nexus in ASEAN between 1990 and 2016 using the Augmented Mean Group (AMG)",8
Findings show that economic growth deteriorates the environment in all of the countries and natural resource has the same effect in all countries studied except Laos PDR and Thailand,8
"(2021) assessed the natural resources, globalization, urbanization and environmental degradation dynamics in Latin America and the Caribbean Countries (LACC) using a sample from 1990 to 2017",15
(2019) in Pakistan who established a feedback causality between natural resource and environmental degradation and showed that natural resource degrades the environment,15
"In assessing the relationship between economic growth, renewable electricity consumption, trade, natural resource and energy on CO2 emissions in five EU countries, Balsalobre-Lorente et al",8
"(2018) found that renewable electricity consumption, natural resources and energy innovation reduce CO2 emissions while trade and the interaction between economic growth and renewable electricity consumption worsen it",8
"This could be through deforestation, agriculture or mining; all of which will influence the CO2 emission effect (Balsalobre-Lorente et al",15
"Belonging to the first category is the study of Dar and Asif (2020) who examined the impact of agriculture, renewable energy consumption, income, trade and urbanization on CO2 emissions in five South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries using data ranging from 1990 to 2013",7
"Adopting the Pedroni and Kao cointegration approach, agricultural activities and renewable energy were found to reduce CO2 emissions while income and urbanization increases it",7
"Results revealed that higher agricultural activities and renewable energy reduce CO2 emission, thereby exhibiting a positive relationship between agriculture and the environment",7
"Jebli and Youssef (2017) examined the causal relationship among agricultural value added, renewable energy and CO2 in North Africa from 1980 to 2011",7
"Furthermore, Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) and Granger causality were used to analyse the link among per capita renewable energy, agriculture and CO2 emissions in addition to output and non-renewable energy",7
The findings show output and renewable energy negatively affect CO2 emissions while non-renewable energy and agriculture positively affect emissions,7
"(2021) examined the impact of economic growth, international trade and urbanization on CO2 emissions in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) using panel quantile regression analysis",8
"While Keho (2015) found trade to lead to environmental degradation in the long run for 11 ECOWAS countries, Naranpanawa (2011) only found a short run relationship between trade activities and the environment using ARDL and Johansen cointegration approach",15
"In consideration with energy consumption, urbanization and industrial development, Al-Mulali and Ozturk (2015) observed trade liberalization degrades the environment in the MENA countries",7
Regional integration which has enhanced economies of scale can also be a culprit (Li and Lin 2017),11
"Also, Thombs (2021) assessed the extent to which political equality influences the economic growth-CO2 emission relationship in 106 countries from 1990 to 2014",8
"The paper found that while political equality in itself reduces emissions, its interaction with economic growth increased growth-induced CO2 emissions",8
(2021) in their study of the BRICS economy indicated that geopolitical worsens environmental degradation by increasing CO2 emission,15
Supporting this argument is the study of Laegreid and Povitkina (2018) which indicated that CO2 elasticity of GDP becomes constant and waning the higher the GDP per capita for democratic countries that have low corruption and high civil participation,16
2019) have been conducted in the area of CO2-agriculture-renewable energy nexus,7
(2018) relate these to economic growth (e.g,8
"The empirical model is described as follows: where CO2 is the carbon dioxide emission per capita, REN is the renewable energy consumption, RES is the natural resources rents, AGR is the agricultural production, INTG is the regional trade integration, POLC is the political constraint index and finally, FOS is the fossil fuel energy consumption",7
"β0 is the slope intercept, and β1, β2, β3, β4, β5 and β6 are the coefficient estimates of renewable energy consumption, natural resources, agricultural production, trade integration, political constraint and fossil fuel energy consumption, respectively",7
"The amount of carbon dioxide emitted has been used as a dependent variable, while renewable energy consumption, natural resource rents, agricultural production, fossil fuel energy consumption, political constraint and regional trade integration are independent variables",7
"The data for CO2 emission per capita, natural resource rents, renewable energy and fossil fuel energy consumption come from the WDI database",7
The data for regional trade integration (trade integration with ASEAN) comes from Asian Development Bank’s Asia Regional Integration Centre (ARIC),11
"We therefore built up the following 4 models: where lnPOLC*REN, lnPOLC*RES, lnPOLC*INTG and lnPOLC*FOS refer to the interaction term of political constraint index with renewable energy, natural resource rents, regional trade integration and fossil fuel energy consumption, respectively",7
"The stationary qualities of natural resource rents, agricultural production, fossil fuel energy consumption, political constraint, renewable energy consumption and trade integration have all been tested using the second-generation panel unit root test provided by Pesaran (2007)",7
"After confirming the existence of cointegration among variables, the Common-Correlated Effect Mean Group (CCEMG) estimation technique Pesaran (2007) was used to find the long-run coefficient estimates of natural resource rents, agricultural production, fossil fuel energy consumption, political constraint, renewable energy consumption and trade integration for carbon emission for panel data that is robust to cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity",7
"The findings show that renewable energy consumption has a negative influence on CO2 emissions, meaning that renewable energy consumption negatively affects CO2 emissions in the long run",7
"This is expected since renewable energy is free of pollution and therefore, hailed as a remedy for environmental risks (Shah et al",7
This study supports the research work of Dogan and Seker (2020) who revealed that trade and renewable energy decrease emissions while non-renewable energy increases it,7
(2022) also found evidence of the similar effect of renewable energy on CO2 for China,7
(2020) who stated that improvement in renewable energy mitigates CO2 emissions in the countries under study for lower middle-income countries,7
"(2022a, b, c, d) also discovered that the use of clean energy promotes environmental sustainability",7
"(2022a, b, c, d) who discovered that natural resources give rise to environmental degradation in China",15
(2022) have also found that agriculture has positive association with the environmental degradation,15
(2022) who also found that regional integration helps lower carbon emissions,11
"Table 6 also indicates a positive influence of fossil energy consumption on CO2 emissions, demonstrating that widespread exploitation and use of fossil energy has resulted in an increase in CO2 emissions in these four economies",7
The AMG result reveals significant positive impact of this variable on environmental degradation as well,15
(2020) who found that non-renewable or fossil fuel energy consumption degrades the environmental quality in Middle East and North African region,7
"If we look at model 2, we find that the interaction between renewable energy and political constraint is positive",7
"In our original model, we found out that renewable helps improve environmental quality, but if there is political constraint, model 2 reveals that the positive effect of renewable energy gets cancelled out",7
"This supports the fact that when there is too much corruption and administrative difficulties in implementing policies, natural resources get exploited too quickly and this adds to the degradation of the environment all over the country",16
"Lastly, we find no significant impact of interaction term between fossil fuel energy consumption and political constraint",7
"The objective of this study is to see the impact of energy, natural resources rents, agricultural production, regional integration as well as political constraint on CO2 emissions in selected countries of the ASEAN — Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia",11
The findings show that renewable energy consumption has a negative impact on CO2 emissions while fossil fuel energy degrades the environment,7
The result from the interaction terms revealed that political constraint invalidates the negative effects of renewable energy and natural resources on CO2 emission while trade integration can offset the negative influence of political constraint on degradation of the environmental quality,7
"Investing in renewable energy sources like hydropower, bioenergy as well as solar should be scaled up to benefit from the double-barreled possibility of having spillover effects on other aspects of the economy as well as achieving clean and affordable energy (SDG 7) and climate action (SDG 13) (Sinha et al",7
"Third, we argue for a more sophisticated trade integration to enhance environmental protection and pollution reduction rather than cutting down on trade integration",15
"This will also propel the countries under study toward attaining decent work and economic growth (SDG 8) and industry, innovation and infrastructure (SDG 9)",8
"Rather than being considered as a constraint, political forces need to be employed as aids in the transition to a low-carbon future as Ahmed et al",3
"(2022a, b, c, d) indicate that democracy mitigates environmental degradation",15
"With flexible policies, increasing energy productivity through energy efficiency, energy-saving projects and energy infrastructure becomes easier",7
"More so, countries can offset political constraints through regional integration as recent trends involve the inclusion of democracy clause in regional integration policies and organizations",11
"With active inter-trade activities among the ASEAN nations, where each country abides by the various principles and conditionality, regional integration is bound to consolidate democracy and promote political stability",11
"Following efforts to define and quantify safe planetary boundaries in areas such as climate change, biosphere integrity, and freshwater use, this paper modifies the methodology to propose boundaries from a city’s perspective",13
"Through use of natural resources, aided by scientific discovery and technological innovation, humans have evolved to predominantly live in urban environments",8
"Residents of cities are significant drivers of environmental degradation, e.g., city residents are responsible for about 80 % of global greenhouse gas emissions (Hoornweg et al",15
"2011), and a similar share of GDP in the global economy; thus city-residents purchase the bulk of threatened and endangered species",15
"(2013) extend the initial physical boundaries assessment with the addition of hunger, inequity, and water stress",6
"These are mostly service level targets, e.g., percent of population with solid waste collection and electrical service, that influence quality of life globally or specifically within the analyzed city",12
"Some researchers suggest upper limits for several of these targets, e.g., caloric intake, energy consumption, and GDP (Raworth 2012)",7
"They include: youth opportunity, economy, access to energy and energy intensity, mobility and connectivity, institutions, basic services, and security and public safety",7
"Where possible selected data sources are already collected by cities, e.g., ISO 37120 sustainable communities indicators, and potentially third-party verifiable",11
"Rightly so, as broad issues such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, and stratospheric ozone depletion are global manifestations of unsustainable actions",13
For example “access to clean energy for cooking” is an indicator of greater sustainability in a city,7
"If 100 % of a city’s population has access to clean energy for cooking, the sustainability status (for the related indicator) is higher in that city than compared to the global average",7
"For example, solid waste discharges to oceans (plastics), black carbon, and trace organics from waste combustion",12
"Pollution is presented as a hybrid boundary, reflecting the complexity and inter-connectedness of local air pollution in large cities of China and India where, for example, any global effort to reduce GHG emissions will need to be developed in concert with local air quality improvement",13
"The boundaries for climate change are common with current planetary boundaries (a total city-wide per capita GHG emissions value is used—using Scopes 1, 2 and where available, 3, WRI and WBCSD 2011a, b)",13
"A biodiversity index is needed to account for vicarious impacts a city-dweller may have on biodiversity, e.g., buying products from endangered species",15
"‘Youth opportunity’ performance is based on under 5 mortality, gender equity, percentage of females in school, youth unemployment, life expectancy",8
The proposed socio-economic boundaries are consistent with a hierarchy of sustainable cities and reflect discussions with more than 300 representative cities (Hoornweg and Freire 2013) and largely define the foundations of urban service delivery,11
Youth opportunity includes metrics targeted to girls to reflect the critical nature of gender in economic growth (The World Bank 2011),8
"In addition to per capita GDP (city-based) the economy boundary includes Gini coefficient and population in slums to capture general equity, as well as the overall city unemployment rate",8
"Access to energy, and energy intensity, measure service provision, especially for the poor, and overall efficiency of energy use as measured through energy intensity (energy used per unit GDP)",7
"These five cities were selected to meet regional representations, data availability and represent various rates of populations and economic growth",8
"The cities and their populations are (Hoornweg and Pope 2013): Toronto (Greater Toronto Area, GTA): 6.3 million (2012); 7 million (2050) Sao Paulo (Metropolitan Region, SPMR): 21 million (2012); 22.8 million (2050) Shanghai (Metropolitan Area, SMA): 18.4 million (2012); 21.3 million (2050) Mumbai (Metropolitan Region, MMR): 18.8 million (2012); 42.4 million (2050) Dakar (Metropolitan Area, DMA): 2.8 million (2012); 8.5 million (2050)",3
Measuring the rate of biodiversity loss at a city level is challenging as both local and global impacts need to be quantified,15
"Figure 3a (Bio-Physical Boundaries) highlights that the Toronto Area follows common traits of more affluent cities with a disproportionate contribution to climate change, nitrogen cycle, change in land-use, and fresh water consumption",13
"Of the 44 838 species assessed in the IUCN ‘Red List’ (IUCN 2014), 16 928 are listed as threatened, of which 180 are local to Ontario, Canada, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry",15
"Canada’s ecological footprint is used to estimate biodiversity loss in Toronto, as these numbers are reported at country scale in the WWF’s 2014 Living Planet Report (WWF 2014)",15
"Mumbai also has disproportionately high impacts on biodiversity loss, fresh water use, and land-use change (Fig. 4d)",15
"Compared to the global average, only Shanghai has a better level of youth opportunity; Toronto’s youth unemployment is highest of the five pilot cities, yet it has the lowest Gini coefficient",8
"Nearly 20 % of Shanghai’s residents do not have access to solid waste and wastewater collection, while this number is more than 60 % for the people who live in Mumbai Metropolitan Region",12
"On average, compared to the global values, Toronto has a larger per capita economy, full energy access, and higher public safety and security indicators (Fig. 4a)",7
"Mumbai also lags in providing basic services such as waste collection and improved sanitation (Fig. 4d, e)",12
"Many are coastal, threatened by increasing sea levels and storm intensities associated with climate change",13
"For example, Toronto and Shanghai’s required contribution to climate change is seven times greater than Dakar or Sao Paulo",13
Similar trends are observed with rates of biodiversity loss and change in land-use,15
"This is followed by ‘low water quality and its availability’, and ‘spread of water-borne and vector-borne diseases’",6
"These countries have been facing some of the most rudimentary challenges related to sustainability, social indicators, and economic growth.Footnote 1 Most of their challenges pertain to inherent supply-side constraints",8
"Although climate change has severe impact on all the SIDS countries located across the planet, the condition of Pacific SIDS countries is more prone to vulnerabilities",13
"A major geographical challenge that the SIDS countries face is their small size, which has deprived them of the benefits of efficient resource use and economies of scale",12
"In most cases, this has become a barrier for their economic growth and rendered them fragile as an economy",8
This creates a difficult situation for implementing climate change adaptation measures,13
"These challenges are related to the precipitation pattern, sea level rise, water security, natural disaster, coastal inundation, oceanic acidification, climate refugee, coral reef damage, and exclusive economic zone (EEZ) exploitation and overfishing, among others",14
"To drive the climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts in the SIDS countries, several multilateral institutional frameworks have been initiated",13
"For instance, a study by Virto (2017) considers one of the goals i.e., SDG 14 to highlight the anthropogenic pressures on the marine environment in ocean-dependent coastal communities",14
It leads to marginalization and limitation of resources and render these small economies prone to global economic shocks and climate change threats,13
"Most of the SIDS countries have limited natural resources because of their small size, which is a barrier to their economic growth",8
(2016) and Hay (2013) have argued that the small size of SIDS is a major hurdle in their economic growth,8
"Storms and rising high tides (Snow and Snow 2009), increasing climate refugees (Church et al",10
2008) and degrading marine ecosystem (Saleh and Haddoud 2013) are the key effects of rising sea level,14
"Moreover, because of climate change, there is a rise in the CO2 emission, which is one of the major environmental challenges facing the SIDS countries (Betzold 2015; Hay 2013; Slade 2007)",13
Robinson (2015) has discussed the vulnerability of SIDS countries caused by climate change,13
2013) and terrestrial ecosystem (Barry 2014; Betzold 2015) are yet other crucial issues for the Pacific SIDS,15
"Mace and Verheyen (2016) have discussed the issues of loss and damage in the SIDS countries due to climate change in the context of Paris Agreement, simultaneously emphasizing on WIM",13
He further explained that change in the agriculture pattern and urbanization are also leading to declining terrestrial ecosystem in the SIDS countries,15
"Also, there are several studies which have deliberated upon increasing global temperature and greenhouse effect as being the indirect causes of damaging the terrestrial ecosystem in SIDS countries (e.g., Jugurnath and Emrith 2018; Speelman et al",15
(2013) have suggested a management review system under four categories: preventing ocean acidification; strengthening ecosystem resilience; adapting human activities; and repairing damages,14
"SIDS inhabitants are mostly dependent on their fragile marine ecosystem, in particular on coral reef, for their livelihood and living space (Ghina 2003)",14
"(2015) argued that political instability, level of income, economic growth, educational standard, small size, and limited natural resources of SIDS countries are the major factors of fragility",8
"Additionally, they argue that a low level of institutional capacity and weaker policies are the accelerators of fragility in SIDS",16
"To overcome these vulnerabilities or adapt to such climate change-related challenges in SIDS, there have been global efforts through various institutional mechanisms to help SIDS countries overcome these deterrents and sustain livelihoods",13
"In 1994, at the first International Conference for sustainable development of SIDS in Barbados, BPOA was formulated with 14 priority areas including climate change and rising sea level.Footnote 8 It recommended the strategies for SIDS in the form of capacity building and institutional development at national, regional and international level",13
Paragraphs 31–33 discussed the vulnerabilities of SIDS due to climate change,13
"Nonetheless, SIDS countries continue to face challenges related to health, education, and unemployment coupled with other socioeconomic vulnerabilities",8
"For instance, Kumar and Singh (2013) have argued that health is a major problem among the population in SIDS countries, apparently because of global climate change, and it requires utmost policy attention",13
"For instance, Virto (2017) assessed the indicators of SDG 14 on oceans and argued that various targets envisaged under SDG 14 cover anthropogenic pressures on the marine environment of the SIDS and the ocean-dependent coastal communities",14
Climate change is making the socioeconomic condition more vulnerable in the Pacific SIDS countries,13
He discussed how changing precipitation pattern affects the people who are heavily dependent on freshwater resources to sustain their livelihood,6
Studies have also suggested that rising CO2 and changing precipitation pattern are damaging the livelihood of oceanic species in the marine ecosystem,14
"They have discussed about the greenhouse effect in these island countries, which eventually cause soil erosion because of rising sea level",15
"In fact, as per the World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal, “temperatures in the Pacific are projected to increase between 1.4 and 3.1 °C",13
"But owing to climate change, the Pacific islands especially Nauru, Kiribati, Tonga, and Tuvalu are facing acute scarcity of groundwater.Footnote 19 The worsening situation is making their population vulnerable to associated risks including vector-borne diseases",13
"Also, the low water quality continues to be a major challenge",6
Lack of an effective and efficient water storage infrastructure has been adversely affecting agricultural production and water availability for human consumption in Samoa,6
"These natural disasters result in infrastructure loss, soil and beach erosion, loss of habitat, coral reef damage, loss of marine ecosystem, and many other related challenges",14
"However, in the Eastern Pacific countries such as Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu, ENSO can cause heavy rainfall and flooding.Footnote 21 Also, more frequent El Nino is also responsible for increasing the intensity of tropical cyclone on the coast of Pacific SIDS, and thus immensely impact their disaster management preparedness",11
"The World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal predicts that the Pacific islands would experience more drought and more floods in the future, with the intensity of cyclones expected to increase by 5–20%",13
"Moreover, it estimates that coastal flooding will affect up to 90,000 people in the Pacific islands by 2050.Footnote 23 Weathering and soil erosion are common phenomena in the coastal states, and Pacific SIDS are no exception to it",15
"Although soil erosion hampers the coastal areas more than the land-locked areas of the globe, owing to the inter-connectivity, it has an overall negative effect on both",15
"Soil erosion is one of the most significant and widespread forms of soil degradation with environmental and economic consequences, especially in agricultural areas (Prasannakumar et al",15
"Further, soil erosion also affects tourism and terrestrial ecosystem",15
Sovacool (2012) and Nurse and Moore (2005) have examined the context of human settlements and the mitigation and adaptation measures in the context of soil erosion,15
"In Fiji, for instance, the coastal erosion devastated 120 people from 26 households in Vunidogoloa in February 2014, causing severe damage to their homes and crops.Footnote 24 Climate change and its related parameters, especially rising temperature and irregular precipitation patterns, have been largely responsible for water-borne and vector-borne diseases",13
The Pacific islands are also witness to several non-communicable diseases,3
"Moreover, other climate-sensitive health issues like respiratory infections, skin conditions, eye diseases, mental health disorders and traumatic injuries and deaths are classified as having “medium risk”.Footnote 28 Also, a study by Hales et al",3
"Roper (2005) has discussed the prevalence of water-borne diseases due to increased acidification of water in Kiribati, Tuvalu, Samoa, Fiji, and Tonga",3
"A report in The Guardian suggests that climate change “will create world’s biggest refugee crisis”.Footnote 29 Climate refuge will not only affect the land of immigrants, but will also cause cultural loss",13
Climate change is leading to the economic slump in SIDS,13
"According to Fiji’s Attorney General Aiyaz Sayed Khaiyum, Fiji is investing US$50,000 to develop a legal framework for the relocation of climate refugees.Footnote 30 Additionally, Kiribati has bought 6,000 acres of forest land in Fiji to incorporate their own population who are facing the danger of becoming climate refugees.Footnote 31 Coral reef is generally used by the residents of SIDS as a building material, especially as a substitute of cement",10
"It is largely found in the marine areas, which is now in a state of danger because of the fragile conditions caused by climate change",13
"The population of SIDS countries is mostly dependent on their fragile marine ecosystem, in particular on coral reef, for their livelihood and living space (Ghina 2003)",14
"(2012) cited the examples of Palau, Micronesia, Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Fiji to establish the facts related to coral reef damage due to climate change",13
"Most of the coral reefs have died in Samoa, and as per current state, the live coral reef share is merely 10% among the 80% of Samoan coral reefs.Footnote 32 Another cause of concern is the challenge of ocean acidification",14
"In fact, any activity of a country which is related to climate change will eventually affect the oceans too",13
The role of UNFCCC in mitigating ocean acidification is also commendable (Craig 2016),14
"For instance, Kiribati is more vulnerable to tropical storms if ocean acidification continues to increase.Footnote 33 SIDS dependence on ocean resources make them more vulnerable to ocean acidification",14
The present rate of absorption is around 22 million tons per day.Footnote 34 Overfishing results in depletion of the species and damages the marine ecosystem too,14
"Fishing sector along with the tourism sector is the major contributor of national GDP in the SIDS countries, because fisheries help not only in maintaining the marine ecosystem, but is also a source of livelihood",14
"A report in ‘The Guardian’ by Fiona Harvey states that the bluefin tuna population witnessed a drop of 96% to overfishing in the Pacific Ocean.Footnote 35 Moreover, overfishing damages the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) of the SIDS as well",14
"Because of overfishing, the catch loss of fisheries is evident, and it is not a new phenomenon",14
(2010) mentioned that overfishing was done in 36–53% of the commercial species in 55–66% of the EEZs between 1950 and 2004,14
"Illegal fishing is also apparent in the SIDS and has been noticed in Palau’s EEZ.Footnote 36 To prevent these types of unsustainable activities, the Government of Kiribati has taken initiatives to protect its marine ecosystem and to generate revenue",14
"The findings of this paper reveal that the most immediate challenge is the rising sea level (10.65), followed by low water quality and its availability (10.5) and spread of water-borne and vector-borne diseases (10.47)",6
"Also, for water security, Pacific SIDS countries, which have been facing problems such as irregular precipitation patterns and poor access to groundwater, have focused on initiatives for integrated water resource management",6
The challenges related to SDG 3 pertaining to health and well-being need to be addressed throughout the Pacific SIDS both by employing necessary technology and ensuring developmental aid,3
"Moreover, overfishing and unsustainable exploitation of EEZ have a relative weightage of 10.2 (medium immediacy level) and continue to be a major challenge for the Pacific SIDS",14
A major strategic mechanism for controlling overfishing is to adopt fish zoning in these islands,14
"Climate change is affecting the whole planet, but SIDS population is more vulnerable owing to its small size, remoteness, and huge dependence on natural resources",13
"Moreover, the economic activities in the SIDS countries are largely primary in nature focusing on agriculture and forestry, and in some countries on mining as well",15
"To mitigate the climate change effects, strategies such as coastal surveillance, building of sea walls, technical capacity building, land reclamation, and the achievement of SDGs with global participation are among the most relevant ones",13
"Similarly, China, the USA and Australia and some other countries have been contributing immensely to support the SIDS countries in their climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts",13
"Challenges including coral reef damage and ocean acidification (9.487), climate refugee (9.307), and changing precipitation pattern (9.246) have been found to possess relatively lower immediacy among the nine challenges, but, howsoever, remain significant in terms of policy attention",14
Climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts are already in progress in the Pacific SIDS,13
"Tropical forests are important worldwide since they balance the ecology, providing different environmental hotspots to society, such as oxygenation, water sources through groundwater and rainwater, animal or plant diversity, and soil fertility that provide different raw materials",15
"Thus, anaerobic digestion can be a good alternative for waste processing due to the possibility of using different substrates, the low capital cost, and the potential for supplying energy to the communities",12
"On the other hand, the processing residues of both fruits were also contemplated as the substrate for biogas production in raw material integration stages for good waste management to mitigate the environmental impact and enhance the economics of the value chains",12
The digestions were performed using an anaerobic sludge from the wastewater treatment of a local coffee factory (Buencafé Liofilizado de Colombia),6
"5–8) comprise specific energy consumption, resource energy efficiency, overall energy efficiency, and self-generation index",7
"However, all substrates have a composition below the limit (< 1000 ppm) for thermochemical applications, such as combined heat and power plants [46]",7
"Although Sc2 has a low SGI, it is the scenario that can supply energy to more local households (considering the average annual energy consumption of LPG), especially in rural areas which are not energy interconnected",7
"Concerning utilities, Sc2 is the most expensive (0.084 M-USD year−1) due to the high energy consumption of freeze-drying",7
The climate change generated by the fruit crops (agronomic stage) is illustrated in Fig. 4,13
"SDG 1 is classified in the people sphere; SDGs 6, 12, 13, and 14 are in the planet sphere; and finally, SDGs 8 and 10 are classified in the prosperity sphere",1
"Considering the Departmental Development Plan, the impact is related to employment generation since the proposed processes could be an alternative for regional entrepreneurship",8
"These considerations would lead directly to a positive impact on the fulfillment of SDG1 since the economic development of the community would benefit, reflecting the overcoming of poverty",8
"This goal is based on ten targets focused on achieving sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources, as well as achieving sustainable development and strengthening lifestyles in harmony with nature [50]",12
The experimental results of the proposed products from annatto and açai are precisely proposed to safeguard the resources of the region and generate a potential for responsible consumption of the products,12
"In the scenarios proposed in this study, the defined raw materials, processing schemes, and products do not jeopardize food security or biodiversity",2
"Therefore, the conceptual design stage of these processes could benefit the region’s economic growth",8
"Involving value chains specific and special to Chocó, equity and inclusion are considered essential pillars in supporting entrepreneurship initiatives",8
"This work demonstrated the potential of tropical forests as a source of sustainable raw materials to produce an annatto dye paste, dried açai pulp, and biogas from both fruit processing residues",12
Pollution haven hypothesis (PHH) has been investigated extensively in the existing literature due to global environmental issues such as global warming and climate change,13
The increase in foreign direct investments (FDI) increases environmental degradation in these countries,15
There is an inverted U shape between economic growth and CO2 emissions,8
"In addition, energy consumption exacerbates CO2 emissions",7
"Global economic growth has increased people’s living standards in many ways such as technological development, increasing life expectancy, higher income per capita, and better education opportunities",8
"Increasing the production and consumption process, the activities of countries toward achieving rapid economic growth have led to a dramatic increase in CO2 emissions throughout the world",8
"In this process, countries have ignored the negative environmental impacts in order to realize economic growth, and CO2 emissions have increased over the years",8
"According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, human-induced warming reached approximately 1 °C compared to the pre-industrial level",13
"The results of the current 1 °C global warming have been already experienced as extreme weather events, rising sea levels and melting of Arctic sea ice and other changes",13
"Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), especially CO2 emission, are considered as the main reason for global warming and climate change",13
"As the negative effects of environmental damages started to be felt on a global scale such as global warming and climate change in time, this situation has led the countries to search for a common solution, and many meetings were held on sustainable development in both national and international platforms",13
"Global society, especially living in developed countries, began to pay more attention to these environmental issues through increasing environmental awareness and some international treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol and Paris agreement",13
Recent researches show that climate change is happening much faster than expected and that not only the developed or developing countries are affected by the negative consequences but the whole world (United Nations 2019),13
"Therefore, almost all countries have started to develop action roadmaps not only on economic and social development but also on tackling climate change",13
"According to the SDGs’ report (2019), climate change is the most urgent area to take action (SDG13)",13
"Over the period covering 1998–2017, approximately 1.3 million people lost their lives due to climate change and geophysical disasters, and these disasters caused a direct economic loss of 3 trillion dollars (United Nations 2019)",13
Focusing only on economic development-related goals may corrupt achieving other goals needed to improve the quality of life,8
"In ASEAN-5 countries, one of the most significant engines of economic growth is foreign direct investments",8
"In 2017, the share of ASEAN countries in total foreign direct investments to developing countries reached 33%",17
"ASEAN-5 countries show different performances in the context of economic growth, and only Singapore is in the category of high-income countries",8
"Thus, multinational companies may invest in these countries, especially in the primary and secondary sectors that have a higher risk of causing environmental degradation",15
The aim of this study is analyzing the impact of FDI on environmental degradation in ASEAN-5 countries,15
"Due to global warming and climate change, the pollution haven hypothesis and environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis are considered two of the most significant issues in the literature",13
"In addition, governments of the developing countries support foreign investment inflows to reduce the foreign trade deficit",17
Understanding the effects of foreign direct investments on the environment is very important for revealing whether the environmental sustainability-related SDGs and economic growth and employment-related SDGs that can be realized through foreign direct investments are contradictory,8
"Finally, energy consumption increases CO2 emissions, and this effect is significant at 1%",7
They argued that foreign direct investments are mostly driven by multinational firms using advanced technology that cause less environmental degradation,15
"Despite their positive effects on economic growth, foreign direct investments may lead to negative externalities on the environment",8
Our additional findings show an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between economic growth and CO2 emissions,8
"The composition of foreign direct investments is expected to change in favor of the tertiary sector, and the reduction of carbon CO2 emissions is expected in ASEAN-5 countries with economic growth and strict environmental regulations",8
"Foreign direct investments, which are an important tool in achieving the goals of reducing poverty, increasing employment, and ensuring economic growth, can lead to irreversible environmental problems if the necessary importance is not taken",8
"The contradiction between those SDGs highlights another SDG to reduce this contradiction: peace, justice, and strong institutions (SDG16)",16
"A strong institutional structure leads to a more predictable economy and, therefore, increases foreign direct investment inflows and accelerates economic growth (Busse and Hefeker 2007)",8
"In addition, it can ensure the enforcement of legal regulations that prevent dirty investments that will lead to environmental degradation",15
The SDGs related to economic growth (SDG1 and SDG8) and environmental sustainability (SDG13) may be contradictory,8
"According to Durbin-Hausman cointegration test results, there is a significant long-run relationship between FDI, real GDP per capita, the squares of the real GDP per capita, energy consumption and CO2 emission in ASEAN-5 countries under cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity assumptions",7
"According to our additional findings, energy consumption increases CO2 emissions",7
Foreign direct investments are the engines of economic growth in ASEAN-5 countries,8
"For sustainable economic growth, environmental deterioration must be prevented",8
"In addition, incentive policies such as tax reductions can be applied to investments that produce high-technology products with low energy intensity",7
"Finally, investments with higher use of renewable energy in the production process should be promoted as well",7
"mong the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), increasing infrastructure resilience (SDG9) and combating climate change and its impacts (SDG13) have been vital goals",13
"So far, economic growth and the environment have remained a controversial matter for researchers and practitioners (Pata and Mucahit 2020; Patrícia and António 2020; Ugur and Abdullah 2016; Bekun et al",8
"The economic growth-ICT nexus has also been the subject of extensive empirical research by several scholars (for an inclusive literature survey on the ICT-economic growth nexus, see Vu et al",8
"Recently policymakers have started paying close attention to the potential linkages between climate change and ICT, particularly in developing nations",13
A critical part of SDG9 is making internet access affordable to all and universal for less developed countries and significantly increasing access to ICT services,9
"Internet access has become a fundamental human right in contemporary society because of its increasing importance in our daily lives, as proclaimed by the United Nations (2016)",9
"Similarly, electricity generation from producing and using ICT products and services will inevitably result in excess CO2 emissions",7
"Røpke and Christensen (2012) stated that ICT directly affected energy consumption and equipment production and management, including server parks and data centres",7
"By raising awareness of environmental matters and utilising modern, environmentally friendly technology, ICT can also help mitigate environmental degradation (Plepys 2002; Lashkarizadeh and Salatin 2012)",15
"Indeed, this specific measure of pollution is only one element of the problem of environmental degradation, and it cannot be relied upon as an accurate assessment of ecological quality",15
Considerable effort has been made to use the EFP to analyse environmental degradation empirically since it perceives human wants on the world as an indicator of environmental degradation (Bibi and Jamil 2021; Ajanaku and Collins 2021; Musah et al,15
"The effects of ICT itself are considered a first-order effect or a direct effect—for example, the energy consumption and generated waste during the production of the ICT product or service itself",7
"The possibility that rebound effects may revoke the gains caused by the first-order effects, such as boosted power consumption caused by cheap energy costs obtained through increased energy efficiency",7
(2017) examined how ICT supplemented carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) to influence human capital development,4
(2020) investigated the role of ICT and innovation in pushing CO2 emissions and economic growth in 13 of the G20 nations between 2000 and 2014,8
"As part of his research, Walid (2020) investigates how ICTs can influence CO2 emissions associated with road freight transport",9
"By employing two-step GMM techniques, the findings suggest ICTs can decrease road freight transport’s negative effects on the environment",9
The use of mobile phones and fixed telephone networks in conjunction with road freight transportation reduces pollution more efficiently than using internet networks,9
Ibrahim and Waziri (2020) examined the impacts of non-renewable energy on the quality of life through the conditioning role of technology on a panel of 43 SSA nations between 1990 and 2019,7
"(2021) inspected the relationship between internet usage, electricity consumption, economic growth, and CO2 emissions for 16 EU economies between 1990 and 2017",8
"EFP, ICT, ICT2 REN, EDU, Y, and Y2 refer to the ecological footprint per capita, ICT index, the square of ICT index, renewable energy consumption, education, real per capita GDP (constant 2010 US$), and the square of the real per capita GDP, respectively",7
"Renewable energy consumption was the share of renewable energy in total final energy consumption.Footnote 1 Education was measured using the education index, defined as the average mean years of schooling (of adults) and the expected years of schooling (of children)",7
"Furthermore, it proved that the variables were cointegrated, which established the linkages between environmental quality, ICT development, education, renewable energy consumption, and real per capita GDP in the long term.
 Since the long-run relationship between the variables was confirmed, the next step was to examine the relationships among the underlying variables",7
"Following Pesaran and Pesaran (1997), the presence of a long-run relationship indicated that all the selected explanatory variables (ICT, ICT2, education development, renewable energy consumption, real per capita GDP, GDP2) were long-run forcing variables for the ecological footprint",7
"For these countries to overcome poverty and create sustainable economic growth, which is a top priority for policymakers, ICT infrastructure is essential",8
"Thus, as described in the first-order effect or a direct effect, energy consumption and generated waste during the utilisation of existing ICT services will lead to environmental deterioration",7
"Furthermore, it is also possible that the country and to stimulate growth and development might import dirty technology or allow foreign investors to introduce polluted technology, as described in the pollution-haven hypothesis",17
"By raising awareness of environmental matters and utilising modern, environmentally friendly technology, ICT can also help mitigate environmental degradation",15
"Likewise, ICT facilities increase renewable energy consumption (% of total final energy consumption)",7
"Aggregate data from the World Bank has shown that by 2015, renewable energy consumption (% of total final energy consumption) in SSA was about 70% compared to 16% in East Asia and Pacific, 7% Europe and Central Asia, and 28% in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 3% in the Middle East and North Africa",7
"However, the latest report by the ITU (2020) revealed that Africa lacked ICT skills",4
"Thus, improving and upgrading ICT skills will facilitate obtaining the maximum benefits from ICT services to support the quality of the environment",4
"Likewise, the results supported the United Nations (2016) call that internet access should become a fundamental human right in contemporary society because of its increasing importance in daily lives",9
The current study relies on macrodata to assess the impact of ICT services deployment on economic growth in SSA countries,8
"However, the lack of high-quality data on ICT in developing countries, as suggested by the World Bank (2012), may account for the insignificant impact of ICT on economic development in these countries",8
"It can also inform decision makers and other impacted stakeholders on policies on agriculture, food security, pollution and international conflict",2
"Thus currently, P is both angel and demon: it is vital for agricultural productivity, yet it is one of the most widespread water pollutants, causing ecosystem devastation",2
The study starts from the idea that public knowledge on all aspects of the P supply chain should be basic knowledge for a basic right: access to food (Wellmer and Scholz 2015),2
"In Discussion section, we use systems thinking to build our arguments about the implications and relevance of reporting on the global P supply chain in terms of global sustainability and global food security",2
"In general, more leadership by the UN as the ultimate global partnership platform can lead to a more transparent and accountable reporting",17
"At the very end of the yellow block is the waste from food shops/supermarkets and consumers, which comes in the form of both food waste and wastewater",12
"This includes companies involved in mining PR deposits, the food industry, fertilizer companies, state departments, environment agencies, municipal authorities but also “consumers”, such as farmer associations or wastewater treatment plants",6
Freshwater basins covering 38% of the global land cover have P water pollution levels higher than those basins can assimilate (Mekonnen and Hoekstra 2017),6
Most of the PR-rich countries score low to very low in the Corruption Perception Index,16
"When it comes to the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators, all the above countries score low or very low on the control of corruption, rule of law, political stability/no violence and the voice and accountability indicators (World Bank 2019)",16
"As such, public knowledge about phosphorus, which is an essential fertilizer, should be basic knowledge for the basic right of access to food",2
"In general, reporting on the P supply chain allows a better reporting on food security, pollution and human well-being (Cordell and White 2015) and all of these sectors are at the core of most of the SDGs",2
"Public knowledge on the P supply chain is needed because of the essential role of P in food production, global food security and the human right to food",2
"We directly linked the global P supply chain to seven SDGs, showing the interlinkages between the different impacts of the P chain and food security, pollution, environmental status, management of water resources as well as peace and justice",2
"This intransparency poses a fundamental threat to food security worldwide, influencing the price of P fertilizers and the ability of those in the food production system to sustainably plan for the future",2
Working towards quantification of P losses and inefficiencies in the supply chain can lead to more sustainable production and consumption,12
"Exposing P losses can not only translate into more accountability by all stakeholders involved in the chain, but it can also better inform policy makers across a variety of sectors, from agriculture, to waste management, innovation, pollution control and human rights protection.",12
"Small-scale inland capture fisheries provide an important source of nutritious food, employment and income to millions of people in developing countries, particularly in rural environments where limited alternatives exist",2
"The study responds to the call for more local level assessments of the impacts of climate change on inland fisheries in data-limited environments, and the value of the sector in underpinning the Sustainable Development Goals",13
"Wild fish harvested from inland waters, such as lakes and rivers, have an important role to play in food and nutrition security and sustainable development (Funge-Smith 2018; Halpern et al",2
Fish can contribute to food and nutrition security through a myriad of pathways,2
"Evidence has shown multiple nutrition and health benefits in consuming fish, including reduced stunting rates in children (HLPE 2014; Headey et al",2
Livelihoods underpin food security and are the means through which people can economically and physically access food (Connolly-Boutin and Smit 2016; FAO et al,2
"Inland fisheries experience multiple threats, such as climate shocks, altered water flows, infrastructure, land-use change, overfishing and pollution (Jul-Larsen et al",14
"A photovoice assessment is applied for the first time in the context of inland fisheries to specifically investigate: (1) How important is a fluctuating, climate-driven, inland fishery viewed for livelihood activity, income, and food and nutrition security for the riparian communities? (2) How and where do the reported global challenges in a climate-driven inland fishery correspond with the stakeholder’s own local perceptions? The Sustainable Livelihoods Framework is adopted which readily describes fishers’ livelihoods within vulnerability contexts, and the range of strategies, capabilities and outcomes achieved",2
"Within the lake’s catchment, thousands of people depend on its natural resources, including fisheries, for their livelihoods and food and nutrition security, where people often adopt mixed livelihoods of fisher-farmers (Allison and Mvula 2002)",2
"However, Malawi is experiencing challenges in long-term progress on almost half of the SDG indicators, including SDG 1 (Eradicating Poverty and ending all its forms)",1
"fisher-farmer) and choices made in pursuit of livelihoods; and, (5) livelihood outcomes—including changes in human well-being, income, vulnerability, and food security (DFID 2004)",2
"Despite challenges in the sector, generally all participants expressed positive views relating to livelihood outcomes achieved: improved income and food security, reduced vulnerability, and wellbeing (Tables 2 and 3)",2
"The majority of participants (n = 12) outlined that through their fish-related livelihood activities, they were able to meet their household needs specifically in relation to improving food and nutrition security through direct (fish as food) and indirect (fish as income) pathways (Fig. 4E)",2
"In addition to meeting the basic needs of the household, most fishers (n = 13) also highlighted the value of fish-related income in improving the financial capital of the household and reducing vulnerability",1
"A range of assets were outlined which included basic needs such as clothes, household goods (e.g",1
One female fisher outlined the immediate effect of seasonality and winds causing low fish availability on day-to-day household food security,2
"First, photovoice was a useful process for understanding the pathways through which inland fisheries contributes positively to livelihoods, including direct and indirect pathways to improved food security and well-being",2
"In addition, the contribution of fish-related livelihoods to food and nutrition security was shown via direct—fish as food, and indirect—fish as income pathways and purchase of staple foods, which is increasingly being found in other contexts where inland fisheries can increase dietary diversity (Darling 2014; Hartje et al",2
"However, there were also differences found in the utilisation of income beyond food security, with participants investing in material and productive assets, such as natural (e.g",2
"house) assets to increase wealth and security, and to diversify livelihoods and reduce vulnerability",1
"Gender is known to have a significant role in determining the different mechanisms and processes that generate livelihood outcomes such as improved food security, wellbeing and increased income (Kawarazuka et al",2
Further research is needed on women’s empowerment in the sector and also the power relationships and decision-making between men and women in the sector and within households (Manyung-Pasani et al,5
"dams), land-use change, overfishing and pollution (Jul-Larsen et al",14
"However, the sector is the most under-valued and neglected food production systems, and its contribution towards food and nutrition security and resilience in vulnerable regions in not fully explored",2
"Overall fishers perceived fish-related livelihoods as generating positive outcomes relating to improved income, food security and wellbeing, and reduced vulnerability",2
These reasons call for cross-sectoral research and development approaches to overcome the constraints of each of the industries with the knowledge and experience of the others,9
The more profound knowledge and technology development of the aerospace industry in the use of composite structures along with the extensive experience of lower risk industries such as the automotive and wind energy can be utilised in favour of less developed industries such as the civil and naval,7
"In particular, this paper provides a cross-sectoral overview of the potential and limitations of different maintenance technologies and operation strategies for thin-walled composite structures through the analysis of their role in four key industries, namely: aerospace, wind energy, civil and naval",7
"Aircraft’s composite participation in weight [24] These weight reductions translate into fuel savings which, apart from the monetary savings for operators, directly impact SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production)",12
"Despite the fact that the first steps of electric power generation from wind date from the late nineteenth century, it was in the 1970s when the production of wind turbines experienced a rampant increase",7
"Moreover, in response to the 1973 oil crisis, NASA started a program in 1975 to develop wind turbines [40] with composites as primary blade materials based on the knowledge gained from the application to the aerospace industry",7
"Since then, the production of wind turbines has experienced an unceasing increase which still continues nowadays",7
The growth of this tendency has been accelerated during the last decades since the world is moving towards greater utilisation of renewable energy due to its environmental and economical advantages,7
"Indeed, the wind is one of the most efficient renewable energy resources for its numerous advantages [41], and today it is becoming strongly cost competitive in relation to other power generation methods [42]",7
"For example, the EU goal is to increase the use of renewable energy to 27% of the total energy generation by 2030 and to cut greenhouse emissions by 80–95% by the year 2050 [43]",7
"Notwithstanding, some research groups such as the Sandia National Laboratories have developed several projects such as the Continuous Reliability Enhancement for Wind (CREW) database [68] that aims to provide data-driven tools for the industry to self-assess the performance of wind turbines and adapt the operation and maintenance accordingly",7
Evolution of wind energy capacity by region,7
"In regards to the lack of regulatory design codes, the NIST (the US National Institute of Standards and Technology) has recently warned about the lack of design codes and standards as one of the barriers against the adoption of composites in sustainable infrastructure [82]",9
"A shift from the initial-construction-cost viewpoint to a holistic lifecycle approach considering the higher durability of composite materials in a circular economy context would help; however, these lifecycle methods are still not widely adopted in civil engineering practice [80, 88]",12
"Three main benefits drive the interest in the use of FRP in this industry, namely weight reduction, good fatigue resistance, and high durability in the marine environment [113]",14
"Some authors have reported that expected weight reduction with FRP could reach up to 30% and could result in fuel consumption savings up to 15% ([112]), which directly impacts SDG 12",12
"Notwithstanding, this type of damage is less severe than the experienced by metals (e.g., corrosion [115,116,117]) and repairs are easier and less expensive [116, 118], providing FRP an overall better suitability for the marine environment",14
"As with other industries, these reasons are predominantly centred on the shortage of knowledge and lack of reliable data about FRP performance in the marine environment [120]",14
"These results show that a wider use of composite structures across the different industries can significantly contribute to SDGs 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) and 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure)",7
"After damage has been detected and evaluated (e.g., corrosion in concrete structures), structural retrofitting is the natural step towards the life extension of the damaged component",9
"In this regard, FRP composite materials have proven efficiency for retrofitting or rehabilitation of civil engineering structures [94, 205,206,207], as explained before",9
The majority of the structural components of the wind turbine can be easily recycled except the composite blades since the recycling of composite materials is still difficult with the current technology [8],12
"To address this problem, Jensen and Skelton explored the possibility of using composite waste in a circular economy context by using different alternatives (reusing/repurposing, recycling and recovering); notwithstanding, they note that the experience in reusing wind turbine composite materials in new applications such as bridges, fibres in concrete, playground, urban furniture, etc",12
Their reuse for public infrastructure presents the main difficulty of verifying its state and strength whilst recycling and recovering technologies are not ready for all composite materials,12
"In this context, elongating the lifespan of turbine blades can be considered the only feasible choice today to postpone and control the future explosion of composite waste, thus, offering the opportunity and time for finding better recycling solutions for this problem",12
"In regards to the offshore wind turbines, the impact of one or another maintenance strategy on life-cycle costs is even more accentuated, especially when considering end-of-life scenarios and the possibility of life extension [246, 269]",7
"Contrastingly, if the influxes of remittances are used to finance green energy and ecologically harmless technologies, then, remittances would have a beneficial influence on EQ via low CO2 secretions (Usama et al",7
"For instance, by improving the living standards of households, remittances help to attain SDG 1",1
"Also, SDG 2 will be achieved if remittances are used to reduce hunger, promote lasting agriculture, improve nutrition and ensure food security",2
"Moreover, SDG 3 will be attained if remittances are used to promote healthy lives and the well-being of individuals of all ages",3
"Furthermore, remittances facilitate the attainment of SDG 4 if they are used to boost lifelong learning opportunities and promote inclusive and equitable quality education",4
"Also, if remittances are used to empower women and girls and promote gender equality in our society, the motive of SDG 5 will be accomplished",5
"Additionally, SDG 6 will be attained if remittances are used to support sustainable water and sanitation in various economies",6
"Moreover, if remittances are used to promote access to modern and sustainable energy, then SDG 7 will be achieved",7
"Furthermore, SDG 8 will be accomplished if remittances are used to support investments in activities that promote sustainable economic growth",8
"Also, if remittances are used to back sustainable industrialization and eco-friendly innovations, then SDG 9 will be attained",9
"Moreover, the aim of SDG 10 will be met if remittances help to eliminate intra-and inter-country inequalities",10
"Additionally, SDG 11 will be attained if remittances are used to finance activities that promote sustainable cities and societies",11
"Besides, if remittances are used to fund activities that support sustainable production and consumption patterns, then SDG 12 will be accomplished",12
"Also, SDG 13 will be attained if remittances are used to support activities that minimize climate change and its adversities",13
"Furthermore, the target of SDG 14 will be met if remittances are used to protect and sustainably utilize oceans, seas and marine resources for long-lasting development",14
"Moreover, SDG 15 will be attained if remittances are used to fund initiatives that help to battle desertification, maintain forests and terrestrial ecosystems and prevent land pollution",15
"Finally, if remittances are used to support peaceful and inclusive societies for long-term development, SDG 16 will be accomplished",16
"Though remittances are key drivers of the majority of the SDGs, numerous explorations have identified them as a potential source of environmental degradation",15
"(2021) averred that, if the influxes of remittances are spent on clean energy and ecologically-harmless technologies, the effect of remittances on the effusion of carbon could be negative",7
"(2017) that technology surrogated by patents aims to minimize sustainable development, and is therefore considered as a barrier to climate change abatement",13
"It is, therefore, critical for the country to adopt renewable energy technologies to help improve its EQ",7
"Also, energy consumption caused CO2 effluents, but there was no causality between technological innovations and the exudates of CO2",7
"For instance, the influence of energy consumption on ecological quality could differ at different quantiles, and it is the only estimator that can provide such information.",7
"Covid-19, one of the most critical and widespread global pandemics, has resulted in extraordinary risk corollaries engulfing millions of people's lives and has caused an unprecedented economic downturn while amplifying food insecurity",2
"The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of existing literature on the adverse effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on agricultural food systems, as well as potential strategies for building robust, resilient, and sustainable food systems to ensure global food security, safety, and endeavors regarding future global emergencies, as well as new research policies while achieving SDG targets",2
"Covid-19 demonstrates how human, animal, and environmental health are all interconnected, emphasizing the need for one health legislation and a paradigm shift in planetary health",3
"According to our findings, the COVID-19 posed unavoidable impediments to achieving SDG targets for food security and household poverty.Graphical  Approximately 60% of diseases that emerged between 1940 and 2004 are infectious [1]",2
"The World Health Organization quickly declared it a pandemic that required a public health emergency on March 11, 2020 [20, 43]",3
The Covid-19 pandemic is a consequence of climate vulnerability with long-standing historical roots in antagonistic anthropogenic activities [45],13
"SARS-Cov-2 and bat coronavirus have genomes that are 96.2% similar, according to scientific research [18, 34]",9
"Due to food scarcity, insecurity, and malnutrition, it posed a serious threat to agriculture and the global food supply chain systems [49]",2
"IMF, World Bank, and OECD forecasts assert that a recession will hit the world economy in 2020, resulting in 495 million people being forced to work without pay and a GDP loss of 3 to 7.5%, with 2021 GDP growth forecast to range from 2.8 to 5.8% [56]",8
A systematic literature review was carried out to develop a comprehensive conceptual framework for ensuring global food security and developing innovative pandemic resilient food systems in order to accomplish SDG targets,2
“Covid-19 pandemic” AND (“global food security” OR “food system resilience” OR “global pandemics” OR “agroecosystems” OR “build back better” OR “systematic thinking” OR “potential response mechanisms” OR “policy instruments”),2
Further the studies that were not relevant to Covid-19 pandemic but were relevant to global food security or vice versa were excluded,2
"Systematic article selection procedure Food security is defined as the economic and physical accessibility of all people to sufficient amounts of wholesome food to meet their dietary needs and maintain an active and healthy lifestyle [67,68,69]",2
"According to the benchmarking pillars for the global food security index [29], food security has six dimensions: availability, access, utilization, stability, quality, and safety, as shown in Fig. 2 [16, 65]",2
"Source: [16, 65] Dynamics of food security and nutrition",2
"Due to malnutrition and a lack of micronutrients, Covid-19 and its effects have had a number of detrimental effects on food safety and nutrition [22]",2
"People with diabetes, hypertension, and obesity are more susceptible to COVID-19 [5, 70]",3
"Inadequate nutritional intake: Inadequate macro and micronutrient intake (protein, vitamins, and minerals), which impedes children's growth and development, resulting in stunting and wasting [71]",2
"Poor food consumption: high calorie nutrient food, cheap and low-quality fast food, reduced consumption of perishables and pulses, highly processed food, high sugar food, higher consumption of sodium, saturated and trans-fats, and high energy fatty acids all contribute to obesity, diabetes and are risk factors for Covid-19 mortality [5, 48, 68, 72, 73]",3
"According to Global Food Security Index developed based on 59 indicators considering the issues of food affordability, availability, quality and safety, and natural resources and resilience across 113 countries; global food security is deteriorating over decade primarily due to climate variability and intensive farming further, the conditions were aggravated by Covid-19",2
"The graph (Fig. 3) represents the global food security index ranking of the year 2021, where Ireland secured top position with highest level of food security",2
Data source [74] Global Food Security Index Ranking 2021,2
"The Covid-19 epidemic has exacerbated global food insecurity [75] and has significant consequences on agri-food system channels [21, 76] particularly in developing countries than in developed countries [70, 77]",2
"Food system inequalities increase food insecurity cases from 83 to 132 million globally, while in the United States, it has tripled since 2019 [78]",2
"The World Food Program predicted that 265 million people will be suffering of severe food insecurity by the end of 2020, up from 135 million before the Covid health crisis [17]",2
"The results of the scenario analysis explicitly demonstrate the prevalence of chronic food insecurity and the highest level of susceptibility to food supply shocks in Africa, with pandemic consequences cascading [58]",2
"A potential strategy to maintain food security is to include underutilized crops that are frequently grown on marginal lands in agricultural production [85], as well as nutri-cereals and smart foods that are adaptable to a variety of environmental contexts, have higher nutritional quality, functional foods with bioactive ingredients/antioxidants, are resilient to environmental stress, pests, and diseases, have enhanced water and nitrogen usage efficiency, and have improved agroecological traits [18, 85]",2
The transformation to agroecology is a difficult and risky process,2
"Figure 4 depicts the impacts of Covid-19 on agri-food system resilience specifically on agricultural productivity, supply chain, and global food security while revealing the potential measures to deal with the pandemic in short and long run",2
"Source: [6, 8, 22, 51, 82, 84, 114] Impacts of Covid-19 food system dynamics on six dimensions of food security, and coping strategies to tackle the pandemic",2
"Lin and Zhang’s [14] study findings provided insights on the effects of the pandemic on agricultural exports in China, confirming that although international exports were sharply declined (by 17.2% in Feb 2020 compared to 2019) during the pandemic, exports of certain essential products such as grains, herbal items, and oil increased more than the prevailing levels with increased potential demand in the global market [14]",2
Agricultural trade in Canada is predicted to decline by 12–20%,2
"Due to international border closures and trade prohibitions, this proscribed food security [52]",2
"This is because it can increase production, create large numbers of jobs, reduce food insecurity, and is crucial for increasing agricultural production and reestablishing global food supply systems",2
"It led to a rise in the use of organic fertilizers, which significantly reduce the harmful effects on the environment through resource efficiency, waste recycling, nutrient recovery, and circular economy",12
More than 195 nations around the world implemented social protection measures during the Covid-19 pandemic to shield citizens from decreased household income [22],1
Table 4 shows the different potential response mechanisms in practice across the nations to combat pandemic,3
"In sustainable food transformation, nexus thinking considers social, economic, and environmental forces to offer a new framework for assessing the complex link between food, nutrient, health, agriculture, and economic growth",8
"Supportive policy frameworks, investment in research, innovation, and development activities, capacity building of farmers and institutions, regular monitoring and updates, customary and consistent assessments, dissemination of new knowledge, practices, and experiences, appropriate technological advancement, and strategic action plans are essential tools in facilitating a positive transformation with social inclusion [73, 92]",10
"Research with small-holder communities has revealed similar findings that diverse food environments in homes and communities enhance food security, diet, and the resilience of the food system",2
Covid-19 has brought to light the necessity for socio-technical development and innovation in agroecosystem management in order to achieve agri-food system resilience and global food security [50],2
"It is a prospective approach to combat pandemics [124], that reorients the agricultural system in order to improve food security in the face of extreme contexts [122]",2
"Diversification strategies implemented at the field, farm, and landscape levels result in greater production to satisfy global food demand [44, 71, 85, 129]; Crop diversification techniques involve crop rotation, poly culture, intercropping, and integrated farming systems such as intensive silvopastoral systems, mixture of local varieties, agro-forestry systems (e.g., Kihamba agroforestry system in Mount Kilimanjaro’s southern slope in Tanzania in Africa)/crop-livestock-fish-poultry-pond-swan integrations [61, 107, 110, 130]",15
"Agricultural value chain needs to be protected with public private partnership and international funding through global networks, innovative business startups, and mechanization of agricultural productions [57]",17
Achieving food security and nutrition in the context of sustainable development and pandemic entails inclusive and integrated policy making across multiple disciplines breaking conventional silos,2
Climate change is the primary factor influencing food production because agriculture is highly climate sensitive,13
"The advancement of food security, food availability, food affordability, and distribution equity depend on responsible policy mechanisms",2
"As travel and export restrictions were put in place locally and across trade boundaries to reduce price instability and increase business transparency, trade digitalization, online shopping, and e-business became more common",9
"Improving local food production necessitates better access to land, water, and other physical and human resources, as well as social inclusion, traditional knowledge and skill transfer, marketing, cold chain storage facilities, and a change in public preference [47]",10
"With the onset of the pandemic, home gardening in Canada experienced a surge in interest as a viable solution to the country's food shortage, as demonstrated by Mullins et al",2
"Self-provisioning is supported by gardens of different types, agroforestry systems, and in particular fruits, vegetables, grains, cereals, legumes, and dairy products [50, 107]",15
[80] discovered that women’s empowerment improves self-provisioning at the local level,5
"The existing food governance need to be reviewed in respect to effectiveness and efficiency considering of available local and international policies, treaties, standards, guidelines, norms, strategies, programs, and legislations related to food security and nutrition [118]",2
"Despite significant advancements in lowering poverty rates and ensuring that everyone has access to food, the Covid-19 pandemic shock caused a reversal in the situation and saw the first increase in poverty rates in decades [142]",2
"The United Nations Covid-19 Response and Recovery Fund raising mechanism intended to tackle health emergency, socioeconomic response, and recovery, and build back better system through integrating shared responsibility and global solidarity in finding urgent solutions to address the needs of confronting population [143]",3
"With the help of world leaders, global poverty projects are attempting to eradicate poverty in order to combat the pandemic [145]",1
"As of today, the Covid-19 outbreak is classified transitory food insecurity, which is temporary and short-term but has the potential to cascade into persistent long-term/chronic insecurity [58, 99]",2
"In order to meet global demand, decreased yield and productivity are frequently cited as obstacles to achieving SDG 2",2
"Additionally, it has a close connection to the development of community resilience, climate change mitigation, and natural resource management [77]",13
"The sustainable consumption and production are strongly linked to the development of a resilient food system framework, since responsible transformations in people's food behavior and consumption have a substantial influence on converting food production systems based on potential consumer demand [73]",12
"The substantial changes such as online working, e-learning, local productions, responsible consumption, circular economy as a central theory for production, resource efficiency, decoupling production from resource consumption, as well as choices based on lifecycle perspective are all heading to accomplishing SDG 12 targets and are inevitable in the post governance as well [138, 147]",12
"Public health guidelines, national health policies, and emergency laws such as curfews, lockdowns, border closure, banned air travels, limited-service provision, international trade restrictions, closure of public facilities, and prohibited public gathering are implemented globally to prevent the spread of Covid-19 and safeguard public health [15, 57, 58, 63, 115, 120]",3
"Although the laws addressed the public health vulnerability, they gradually lost support, as was demonstrated in Germany by a decline in Covid cases, disruptions to livelihoods, and a severe decline in the economy [4, 148]",3
"The “One Health Legislation” policy, an interdisciplinary law that links health issues to produce better health outcomes, aids in the prevention of pandemics by recognizing the interdependence, indivisible nature, and total conservation of the health of the environment, soil, plants, and abiotic and biotic communities [13]",3
"Apart from business as usual, a self-sustaining nation requires strong policy implications to preserve food security and sovereignty even in times of epidemics and pandemics",2
"To deal with unexpected crisis situations, world countries had shifted their focus away from developing and modifying existing food safety policies [78]",2
"The biodiversity for food and nutrition initiative in Sri Lanka, Brazil, Kenya, and Turkey has incorporated agricultural diversity into national policy changes to enhance human health and food security that are highly beneficial to deal with pandemic [8]",2
"Solvency measures encompass cash transfers, unemployment insurance, equity injections, subsidies, and government guarantee while, liquidity measures include loan or deferrals such as suspension of mortgage loans, extension of maturity period, credit guarantee, and credit provision",8
"Central Bank of Sri Lanka had eased its monetary policy with historically low interest levels, concessional financing, subsidy schemes, refinancing, and credit guarantee schemes while, emphasizing the need of robust monitoring and market regulation for liquidity measures to ensure food security and better functioning of food system governance due to the market power of intermediaries [152]",2
A conceptual framework (Fig. 7) for future perspectives on ensuring global food security and building pandemic resilient food system towards accomplishing SDG targets has been developed,2
"A number of social, economic, environmental, cultural, technical, and management factors were taken into account when developing the framework, and the literacy in the food system, agriculture, climate change, resilience, and policy development was also included",13
There are three stages in the development of framework; first is the identification of existing global food system failures that create substantial barriers in coping with Covid-19 pandemic and achieving global food security through extensive literature survey,2
"Malnutrition, a deficiency in micronutrients, climate vulnerabilities and extremes, gaps and limitations in policies, plans, strategies, and capacities, as well as social and economic inequality, are the root causes that have been identified",2
These narratives prioritized for a holistic food system transformation are not only to deal with the bounce back from pandemic but also to ensure sustainable future with zero hunger and no poverty,2
"In the final stage sustainable and climate resilient food system is built ensuring global food security, food safety, and nutritional requirements for a healthy living through bridging the gap in accomplishing SDG targets",2
"Conceptual Framework on ensuring global food security and building pandemic resilient food system: towards accomplishing SDG targets To ensure global food security and the sustainability of the food system, special attention is also required in the following areas",2
"Increase the effectiveness of specific social protection programs to enhance access to healthy and nutritious foods [22, 51]",1
Improve safeguards for nations that rely on food imports [124],2
"Encourage more robust food production systems based on agroecology and other sustainable food production methods [3, 70].",2
"The adoption of the SDGs would see the global population come together to realize the urgent call for action to end poverty, safeguard the planet, and ensure peace and prosperity",1
"It has also led to high rates of mental health, suicide, and life dissatisfaction for many, where these factors are compounded by living through environmental devastation brought by the same system of over-consumption and over-population [46]",3
"The red cluster centres on ecosystem management, such as forest management, incorporating explicitly, social values and sustainable development",15
"Similarly, sustainable forest management is a practice in which protecting and maintaining forests’ values is balanced with forests’ sustainable development in a way in which various, sometimes competing, social values come into play [6, 26]",15
"The green cluster is focused on rural development, such as privately owned forestry, which suggests that some sustainability development researchers could be interested in the social values of rural development settings",15
Mainstream society can learn from traditional knowledge holders to better understand and strengthen location-specific adaptive practices for sustaining biocultural diversity and reducing land degradation (Pretty et al,15
"2010), since they need this knowledge for ensuring family food security (Ellena and Nongkynrih 2017)",2
"(2012), we conceptualized Adi biocultural resources as “a plant-animal-cultural continuum contributing to resilience and sustainable livelihoods”.
 Conceptual framework on biocultural resources helping to sustain food security and subsidence livelihood, and contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals Development approaches relating to food and environmental security for those having predominant biocultural resource bases require a different lens for understanding people’s worldviews and practices for sustainability (Davidson-Hunt et al",2
"Altogether, the state’s forest cover is 81.22%",15
Forests comprise 10.03% of India’s total forest cover (DoEF 2010),15
"For example, ongin (Clerodendrum colebrookianum) is recommended for controlling diabetes and high blood pressure (35.8 % in remote and 39.8% in transitioning villages)",3
"The intended outcomes of these practices were to enhance soil fertility, to strategically use residual soil moisture and to avoid ecological and climatic risks associated with particular species (Fig",15
"Controlled burning (82.4%), applying activator material (62.5%) (elephant and deer excreta) to enrich soil fertility, and active seed dispersal (69.2%) were key agronomic strategies for women of remote rural areas",15
"These play a significant role in regulating hunting and fishing, and harvesting of forest resources, with violators being fined",15
"(2013) reported that wild plant foods are typically higher in calcium, iron, magnesium, and vitamin C, for example, than cultivated plants",2
"However, the National Biodiversity Strategy Action Plan and Greening India policies, in which women’s participation and knowledge are being incorporated in planning and programs on biodiversity conservation (GOI 2019) show promise",15
"The Indian policy of “Sustaining Himalayan Ecosystems”, which considers land use change and other environmental factors as challenges to biodiversity conservation, may draw insights from these findings to improve conservation outcomes (GOI 2010)",15
"One target of SDGs, “No Poverty”, calls on giving equal rights and opportunity to vulnerable people, including women, for management of land and other natural resources to enhance resilience against several environmental stressors (UN 2019)",1
Engaging women and using their knowledge about access to food resources and their conservation practices thus become crucial inputs to various agencies in order to meet targets for sustainable development (Turner and Clifton 2009; UNESCO 2016b),2
"Our results also hold practical utility as knowledge and practices for plant and animal biodiversity management reported herein can be used for formulating location-specific conservation and genetic improvement programs (e.g., selection for diverse traits) and agronomic manipulations for halting biodiversity erosion and land degradation",15
"Ironically, despite their efforts in managing land and biodiversity resources in ecologically harsh situations, such tribal communities seldom receive policy attention and attendant benefits like equitable benefit sharing for biodiversity conservation",15
"Increased participation of custodians of biocultural resources, for example, can improve the local acceptability and outcomes of programs like “Organic Farming Policy” (2005) intended to achieve intertwined objectives of social-ecological resilience and well-being",2
Consequent increase in demand for the locally produced nutritious food can motivate the communities for strengthening species conservation measures as well as increasing livelihood opportunities,2
"Coordinated planning between agriculture (including horticulture), forestry, land development corporations, and housing authorities remains critical to reversing and arresting the adverse impacts of land use changes and erosion in biocultural diversity",15
"Aligning local conservation practices with flagship national programs (e.g., Sustaining Himalayan Ecosystems) can specifically help achieve the SDGs targets of “Zero Hunger” and “Life on the Land”.",2
Since 2017 Aotearoa New Zealand has been undergoing governance reform to realign priorities and to improve the management of natural hazards and climate change,13
"Four recommended actions are provided to further implement these international aspirations: (1) take into account these international agreements during the development and implementation of all legislation; (2) build awareness, capability, and capacity within central, regional, and local governments to support implementation; (3) actively evaluate the progress of implementing initiatives designed to reduce vulnerability and strengthen resilience; and (4) ensure that more weight and value are given to indigenous planning documents",1
"To meet this aim, a desktop assessment is provided of how Aotearoa New Zealand is changing governance arrangements and introducing new policies, and implementation progress against the priorities for risk reduction and climate change adaptation",13
"Opportunities for improvement are discussed, including the development of a national policy statement for natural hazard management and climate change adaptation, and the inclusion of vulnerability into land-use planning",13
"2010), many of which will be influenced by climate change",13
"Extreme weather events and landslides can also impact many places, and flooding can affect catchments across the country",13
"New Zealand has experienced significant natural hazards—ex-tropical cyclones, floods, fires, large earthquakes, numerous coastal erosion events, landslides, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis (local and distal sources), extreme weather (high winds and rainfall intensity), geological events (subsidence and landslides), droughts, and excessive snowfall",13
"The impacts of climate change on sea levels are already being experienced and recorded, with an average sea-level rise across New Zealand of 1.8 mm per year (over the last 100 years up to 2015) (Ministry for the Environment 2017), and in some areas tectonic subsidence will exacerbate this rise",13
Over this time Aotearoa New Zealand has undergone governance reform that has resulted in realigned priorities and increased identification of the need to manage natural hazard and climate change risks,13
"Timeline of key events, actions, and governance responses to the growing threat of natural hazards in Aotearoa New Zealand, 2010–2020 The case for aligning disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, and sustainable development has been successfully argued for at the international level (O’Brien et al",13
"At the national level, during 2019/20, the first national risk assessment on climate change is being undertaken to inform the development of a National Adaptation Plan (Ministry for the Environment 2019)",13
"Aligning disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, and sustainable development efforts makes sense in a country with a relatively small population that is highly prone to natural hazard events and surrounded by ocean",13
"It meets this aim by providing an overview of the national governance arrangements and a focus on the key legislative tools that influence emergency management, urban development, and land use in New Zealand",11
"The discussion that follows describes how obligations are applied, and considers two “disruptive and proactive” action examples: councils choosing to declare climate emergencies; and the role of indigenous (that is, Māori) planning in contributing to natural hazard and climate adaptation planning",13
The five primary statutes in Aotearoa New Zealand that contribute to the management of natural hazards and climate change are presented in Table 1,13
"Figure 3 shows the national, regional, and district level hierarchy of strategies, policies, and plans, and where linkages could be strengthened to ensure the consistent application of tools to meet the purposes of each statute, and the coordination of climate change adaptation and natural hazard management initiatives",13
Source Adapted from Saunders (2017) Legislative linkages across key legislation for management of natural hazards and climate change in Aotearoa New Zealand,13
"In terms of governance responsibility, the Treasury has an interest in education and skills, health, transport, taxes, the Maori economy, and housing, with an overarching role to provide strategic advice on the current and future Aotearoa New Zealand economy and to assist the government in achieving higher living standards for New Zealanders",4
"Central to the Sendai Framework is a shift of focus from managing disasters to managing risk, including the reduction of the underlying drivers of risk, that is exposure and vulnerability (MCDEM 2019)",11
"In addition, the Earthquake Commission’sFootnote 3 Research Investment Priorities Statement 2020–2021 has a resilience goal to “inform, enable and influence the choices and decisions that reduce vulnerability and the exposure of New Zealand’s built environment to natural hazard events” (EQC 2019a, p",1
"While vulnerability is considered for emergency management, climate change adaptation, and insurance purposes, it is not well reflected within land use planning and resource management frameworks, national planning tools, or clearly represented or addressed in regional and district planning documents",13
Figure 4 shows where there are further implementation opportunities within the five primary statutes in New Zealand that contribute to the management of natural hazards and climate change,13
"Responsibility for health, social development and education, and other supporting social services are spread across a range of other legislative tools and agencies",1
"The five primary statutes provide the tools to manage land use for natural hazard risks (that is, the RMA), respond to risks (that is, the CDEM Act), and adapt to climate change (that is, the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act), all of which overlap",13
RMA—Resource Management Act; CDEMA—Civil Defence Emergency Management Act; CCR(ZC)AA—Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act; MCDEM—Ministry of Civil Defence Emergency Management (now NEMA—National Emergency Management Agency); CC—climate change There is also consistency between some national strategies and policies,13
"The LSF influenced the framing of the National Disaster Resilience Strategy, and the National Climate Change Risk Assessment Framework that will result in the development of the first National Climate Change Adaptation Plan in 2020–2021",13
"They can also ensure an element of coherence, both vertically throughout the family of RMA documents, while strengthening horizontal alignment with initiatives under the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act and CDEM Act",13
"In contrast, a National Policy Statement for Natural Hazards that includes the effects of climate change has yet to be realized and could provide a crucial tool for advancing concepts of risk, vulnerability, and resilience within regional and district plans",13
"This gives a clear directive that policies, plans, and practices should reduce vulnerability",1
Only 2.9% of the district plans and none of the regional plans discuss or assess vulnerable communities,1
"By comparison, 57.1% of the CDEM plans discussed or assessed vulnerable communities",1
"To align Aotearoa New Zealand’s efforts to meet obligations under the three international frameworks, a broader perspective, understanding, and application of vulnerability would prove useful in terms of where and how to direct efforts to reduce natural hazard and climate change risk",13
The following two subsections provide two examples of non-regulatory initiatives that councils—driven by community pressure—and Māori communities are undertaking to prioritize climate action and natural hazard risk reduction,13
"Notwithstanding the requirements under legislation to develop strategies, plans, and policies to manage and reduce natural hazard risk and to plan for climate change adaptation, there are initiatives under way regardless of national direction",13
Two examples are: (1) the declaration of climate emergencies by territorial authorities; and (2) iwi (Māori tribal groups) developing their own climate change strategies and plans,13
"These could be seen as “disruptive” to the national direction, or as “proactive” grassroots responses to the increasing awareness and call for action around climate change",13
"These local responses are encouraged within the Guiding Principles of the Sendai Framework, where engagement from all of society, and empowerment of local authorities and communities are key to reducing risk (UN 2015b)",11
"As of 11 November 2019, 15 local or regional authorities in New Zealand had declared a climate change emergency or variation thereof, across the country (Fig. 5)",13
"In New Zealand, the declaration of a climate change emergency has the potential to invoke links to the declaration of a state of emergency under the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002 (CDEM Act)",13
"Given that climate change is a global occurrence that is indefinitely ongoing, a “climate emergency” does not have statutory or legal implications under the CDEM Act (or any other New Zealand legislation) at this time",13
"Territorial authorities who have declared climate emergencies in Aotearoa New Zealand, as of November 2019 In declaring a climate emergency, councils generally considered climate change to relate to global temperature increases, and some have identified the potential for climate change to intensify natural hazard risk",13
"Reasons for declaring climate emergencies include: Reference to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report (IPCC 2018), that limiting global warming to the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius requires rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban, infrastructure (including transport and buildings), and industrial systems (Environment Canterbury 2019); Acknowledgment of the potential for local impacts due to climate change exacerbating natural hazards; and The importance of local and regional councils supporting the solution (Kāpiti Coast District Council 2019)",13
The Auckland Council has released their Climate Action Framework for public feedback and Nelson City Council has appointed their Climate Champion,13
"Wellington City Council (WCC) is working to implement their plan Te Atakura First to Zero (Wellington City Council 2019), while Christchurch City Council natural hazard advisors are utilizing the declaration of a climate emergency as a mandate to ensure that climate change is taken into account across council departments",13
"It does not set out Wellington’s approach to adapting to climate change impacts, but does acknowledge that adaptation is an essential element of managing the locked-in climate impacts, irrespective of how we now manage emissions (Wellington City Council 2019)",13
The purpose of Auckland Council’s proposed Climate Action Framework Te Tāruke-ā-Tāwhiri (Auckland Council 2019) is to reduce emissions and increase resilience,13
"It identifies seven climate action outcomes, including emissions reduction, resilience, human health and well-being, diversity of response, equitably or just transitions, environmental, and economic outcomes",13
"IMPs address more issues than just resource management matters, although climate change-specific plans are now being developed by many iwi (for example, Te Arawa Lakes Trust 2018; Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu 2018)",13
"For resource management matters, the IMP provides a framework for the sustainable management of natural and physical resources by providing goals, and will typically include issues, objectives, tasks, actions, and indicators of environmental health (Nelson and Tipa 2012)",3
Two examples of the depth of these plans are outlined: a specific climate change strategy from Ngāi Tahu (Table 3); and a combined natural hazard and climate change provision from Ngāti Rangitihi iwi (Table 4),13
" In August 2018, Ngāi Tahu, the main Māori tribe of Te Wai Pounamu (the South Island), produced their Climate Change Strategy",13
"The purpose of their strategy is “To create Ngāi Tahu responses to the risks and opportunities presented by climate change, referencing the entire tribal structure, so that iwi, hapū, and whānau (extended family group) aspirations can be met in a changing world” (Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu 2018, p",13
"While the strategy focuses on climate change, it also acknowledges the impacts of extreme weather on the tribal lands and communities, the interconnectedness of the environment, and the importance of resilience",13
"In contrast to a specific climate strategy, other iwi are including climate change and natural hazards in their IMPs, which cover a wider range of issues and aspirations (Saunders 2017)",13
"Climate change and natural hazards are integrated, and the plan gives the iwi a voice within council decision making",13
"The legislative requirements for emergency management, land use planning, and climate change mitigation and adaptation are all in place, and have common themes of well-being, sustainability, resilience, and to a lesser extent, vulnerability",13
"Neither vulnerability nor resilience is explicitly included within the RMA and sustainability, resilience, and well-being are not included in the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act 2019",13
"Indigenous iwi groups have instigated climate change action in direct recognition that climate change has the potential to affect their rohe, cultural, and commercial activities in the future",13
"The importance of these local-level plans cannot be overstated, as this is the level where the effects of climate change and natural hazards are inequitably experienced and where action needs to occur in order to reduce risks in all its manifestations",13
"These plans and actions have the potential to align established and sometimes siloed processes that occur in existing legislative tools, and they reflect a growing empowerment of local authorities and local communities to address climate change and natural hazard challenges",13
This approach of simultaneous top-down and bottom-up efforts to reduce risk resonates with the rhetoric of the Sendai Framework,11
"Since climate change mitigation does not depend on where the emission reductions occur, a reasonable economic approach is to reduce them to the lowest possible level everywhere",13
The CDM offers countries and the private sector the opportunity to reduce GHG emissions anywhere in the world and count these reductions towards meeting their quantitative obligations (Jotzo and Michaelowa 2002; Cui et al,13
"With the help of emission reduction projects, these mechanisms could stimulate international investment and ensure the flow of necessary resources for cleaner economic growth in all regions of the world.Footnote 1 The significance of CDM projects has been raised by many researchers, including Hepburn (2007), Ruthner et al",8
"Specifically, from an economic and environmental perspective, SDG 7 and SDG13 are similar to the primary aims of CDM projectsFootnote 2 as they cover progress to more sustainable energy consumption and climate action",7
"Notwithstanding a number of studies in the field of CDM projects and renewable energy sources (RES), there are few analyses of specific CDM projects in the countries under study here,Footnote 3 despite the fact that this region is of particular interest as it has the highest energy intensity in Europe",7
"Furthermore, this region is of special relevance considering that the geography of the region and its location in Europe sets the direction for the overall energy security of European countries (Lalic et al",7
"Due to the critical proximity of these countries to the European Union (EU), they have a direct impact on the energy system of the European continent and its energy security",7
"2019), as well as individual aspects, such as private sector optimization in energy consumption matters (Shankar et al",7
The key to reducing emissions is improving efficiency in energy consumption,7
CO2 emissions into the atmosphere can be reduced by changing both energy consumption and the electricity production system (Hawkes 2014),7
"Indeed, such technologies play a central role in the ability to respond to the challenges associated with the negative effects of climate change (Gaast and Begg 2009)",13
Such technologies should be introduced as soon as possible to help prevent climate change and adapt to the change that does occur (Gaast and Begg 2009),13
(2009) is to outline the most urgent global problems related to assessing the current climate situation and climate change projections in specific regions,13
"This includes assessing the degree of anthropogenic impact on the climate (Hawkes, 2014); determining the main areas of climate research in developing countries, needed to prepare regional forecasts and economic and social development programmes; and presenting proposals on the climate doctrine concept (Manton et al",9
The factors driving climate change influence the flow of investments from Annex I countries to other countries where certain KP mechanisms might be implemented,13
The second group specifically considers the strengths of the potential of Bosnian energy: hydropower and biofuels (Dogmus and Nielsen 2019),7
"In Albania, the main source of RES is hydroelectric power plants, although this entails energy problems during low tide and low water levels",7
"Albania has a high potential for the development of RES (Xhitoni, 2013; Rickerson and Perroy 2005); however, it is worth noting that the strong points are biofuels, geothermal energy, and hydropower (Karaj et al",7
"Over the past two decades, Serbia and Montenegro have made progress in the areas of RES and energy efficiency",7
Wind energy accounts for a relatively large share of RES in Serbia and Montenegro (Mikicic et al,7
"In 2018, wind power provided 0.36% of the total electricity generated in Serbia, up from 0.15% in 2017 (Komarov et al",7
"At the same time, Serbia has major potential for the energy use of biomass from agriculture and forestry (Cvetković et al",15
The energy efficiency policy of Moldova is shaped by a combination of its energy problems and obligations due to its status of a member of the Energy Community,7
"The country receives financial support from several international donors for the development and implementation of energy efficiency regulation policies, including from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the EU, and the United Nations Development Programme",7
"Moldova occupies a leading position in the field of biogas and biofuels, in terms of the percentage they represent in the electricity generation sector",7
The CDM allows a party included in Annex 1 to implement a project to reduce GHG emissions or to remove GHG by absorbing carbon or promoting carbon sinks in the territory of a party not included in Annex 1 (Criqui and Kitous 2003),13
"CDM projects should be approved by all parties involved, lead to sustainable development in the host countries, and have a real, measurable and long-term effect on mitigating climate change",13
"Besides, CERs received through CDM projects are subject to a 2% fee, known as a “share of the proceeds”, which is paid to the newly created adaptation fund to help the most vulnerable developing countries adapt to the negative effects of climate change",13
"UNdata began operations in February 2008 and is the outcome of a partnership among the UN Statistics Division, the Swedish Statistical Office and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency",17
"UNdata enables the user to explore and download data from many statistical resources, covering such subjects as energy, the environment, employment, food and agriculture, health, human development, industry, information and communication technologies, national accounts, population, refugees, commerce and tourism",10
"Although some less common financing types were not used (e.g., interim financing, microloans, collateral financing), one of the most recent and relevant types was implemented — namely, Energy Service Company/Renewable Energy Service Company (ESCO/RESCO) (see Table 1) — which has proved fundamental to the projects analysed here",7
"Bosnia and Herzegovina also had two projects, both of which were hydroelectric",7
The three Albanian projects were also carried in the field of hydropower,7
"We should also point out the large, arduous projects in the field of hydropower",7
"Since the region has great potential in the field of hydropower, a substantial number of projects were developed in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania",7
It should be noted that both projects in Bosnia and Herzegovina showed very high cost-effectiveness; these projects naturally require more investments than wind power projects for example,7
Most were projects in the field of wind energy and only one was in the field of biogas,7
These countries have also confirmed their targets for emissions reductions by 2030 (Serbia to reduce emissions by 10% by 2030; Montenegro 30% by 2030; Bosnia and Herzegovina 2% by 2030; Albania up to 12% by 2030; Moldova up to 70% by 2030) (Djurovic et al,13
"The analysis carried out shows that the studied projects have undeniably contributed to the countries’ performance in terms of SDG3 (good health and well-being), SDG8 (decent work and economic growth), SDG9 (industry innovation and infrastructure), and SDG17 (partnerships for the goals)",8
"Following the analysis of the studied projects, the initial purpose of the CDM to function as an effective climate finance tool can clearly be seen in the individual projects (Olsen 2007)",13
"Moreover, they were collaborative, which, in addition to the inflow of investments from Annex 1 countries, helped to accelerate the process of technology transfer",17
All the selected projects supported decarbonization processes,13
"The benefits in terms of sustainable development (SDGs), technology transfer, additionality of funding and global emission reductions have been called into question, as has the fair distribution of the benefits (the CDM market has been dominated a few non-Annex 1 parties)",17
"Despite the shock caused by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, nations are still striving to reduce emissions, while overcoming the crisis and developing their economies in a sustainable way",13
An effective battle against climate change requires much more drastic emission reductions by the world’s top emitters,13
Climate change impacts are now widespread and have a profound effect on pollutant fluxes and distribution,13
"The climate change signatures will impact the pandemic-induced enhanced fluxes of pollutants in the global waters, such as their transport and transformation",13
The effect of climate change on the global distribution and fate of CECs is well established (Snyder et al,13
The seminal book “Silent Spring” (Carson 1962) marked the dawn of an era of enhanced environmental consciousness and led to the creation of agencies such as the US Environmental Protection Agency in the 1970s,15
"Globally, pollutants in the environment and water bodies pose significant public health problems, and the CECs are of great concern (Landrigan et al",3
"Studies reported improved water quality due to the lockdowns, for example, improvement of the water quality of the Ganges (Dutta et al",6
"2020), and improved coastal water quality across the globe among others",6
"Further, the medical care of patients involves a lot of single-use plastic materials, which countries have planned to regulate or phase out gradually during the pre-COVID era",3
The halt of waste management systems worldwide combined with the surge in plastic waste has taken a toll during the pandemic,12
Climate change is predicted to increase human exposure to many environmental pollutants (Balbus et al,13
"Further, contaminant fluxes between the ocean and the atmosphere will also be altered, affecting their distribution and availability for uptake at lower trophic levels in the marine environment (AMPA 2016), potentially creating imbalances in the existing global biogeochemical processes",14
Plastic pollution is often referred to as comparable to the climate change in terms of public fear and the problems they pose to the environment (VishnuRadhan et al,13
Plastic recycling is also known to produce greenhouse gases (Zheng and Suh 2019),12
"The greenhouse gas emissions from the plastic life cycle seriously threaten the remaining carbon budget and contribute to the climate change (Shen et al., 2020)",13
The central finding from the 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change is that tackling climate change could be the greatest global health opportunity of the twenty-first century (Watts et al,13
The complex interactions between health and the climate change and their importance in global socio-economic and environmental systems are well perceived in recent years,13
"Therefore, it is suggested that the discussed context (climate-health-pollutant nexus and the pandemic) should be considered as an explicit risk at various levels of governance to the existing sensitivity and dynamics of regulating the adaptation and mitigation strategies to combat climate and emerging pollutants",13
"Urban schoolyards are essential in biodiversity conservation; they provide numerous ecosystem services to students, school managers, and the city where the schools are located",15
"However, limited or no studies have explored the role of urban schoolyards in both biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration",15
This study recommends the use of multipurpose woody plant species in urban greening school initiatives for quality education,4
"In addition, urban trees in school areas improve air quality, regulates school temperatures, heighten the beauty of the schools, thereby improving students’ academic performance [9] and urban food production [10] which make a city green and sustainable as highlighted by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 11 and Paris Agreement which calls for more climate solutions such as green city solutions like tree planting programs in urban areas",13
"Additionally, schoolyards’ trees reduce conflict and physical violence in urban areas [11], and their presence in urban spaces also contributes to the smooth running of physical activities [12]",16
"For instance, the campuses have been reported to be sites of biodiversity conservation [13, 14]",15
"In addition, most of the schools in Niger are now working to meet Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by creating urban green infrastructure in their schoolyards, the trees in schoolyards contribute to quality education through the forest biodiversity for environmental education and urban forest in schools (SDG4) and also enhance the academic performance of student and schools’ employees’ productivity [9]",4
"Consequently, the trees in schoolyards promote the city's sustainability (SDG11), climate actions (SDG13), and the conservation of terrestrial biodiversity (SDG15)",15
"Tree species diversity in the schoolyards of Maradi and Niamey (source Moussa Soulé) Previous studies on urban schoolyards have highlighted numerous contributions of schoolyards biodiversity in mitigating climate change, regulating the microclimate of the schools as well as in improving the performance of the student and the beauty of the cities",13
"Similarly, there is no study, which explored the determinants of the botanical knowledge of tree species of the students with regard to the schoolyards of their studying areas, the role of urban schoolyards in biodiversity conservation, and carbon storage, especially in the West African context",15
"Additionally, the urban forestry activities in the two cities are made up of trees planted in public and private spaces and preserving historical woody vegetation [19]",15
"Study area This study used urban forestry inventory, based on quota and purposive sampling approach",15
"From each school, dendrometric data were collected from a plot of 50 m × 50 m as recommended for the agroforestry systems in West Africa [21]",15
"Likewise, X7 represents the type of ecosystem service perceived by the students from the trees of the schoolyards, which scores 1 if intangible ecosystem services, 2 if tangible ecosystem services, and take 3 if they perceive both tangible and non-tangibles ecosystem services",15
"Similarly, [41] emphasized that protecting the trees from destruction slows down the impacts of climate change which is a key to meeting the SDG 13 (climate action)",13
which is key to food security and nutrition for the students,2
"Our study reported the diversity of the food tree species (Annex 1 and 2) used in the schoolyards in the urban areas which can rise the urban food forestry practices in the schoolyards as means of promoting Smart cities, where people are allowed to harvest nuts, root, fruits, leaves and vegetables that can contribute the urban climate change adaptation (SDG 13)",13
"Therefore, it contributes to climate change mitigation (SDG 13) especially during the hot periods in dryland zones like the West Africa Sahel cities",13
"This relationship highlights also the urban forest in the schoolyard of the two cities present an opportunity for urban air pollution removal, which improve the health and wellbeing of the urban citizens",11
"This service could be confirmed due the dominance of the neem trees in the urban schoolyards in the two cities as neem tree has been pointed out that neem tree is a good natural air filter (air pollution removal central to the urban heath) and, absorber of CO2 (climate change mitigation), Oxygen producer (urban health) and used for soil restoration [31]",13
The use of food plants in the schoolyards as income generating activity is an opportunity for green job creation (SDG 8) for fighting poverty and enhance the resilience of urban areas,8
"The results have demonstrated the role of urban schoolyards in tree biodiversity conservation, which has to be considered in the urban forestry analysis",15
Our study recommends the use of multipurpose woody plant species in urban greening school initiatives for quality education,4
Our study has demonstrated planting trees and conserving natural forests in schoolyards is a double win for biodiversity conservation and trapping carbon,15
Our study complements the international efforts of proposing city green solutions as nature-based solutions to fight climate change and make healthier and sustainable urban areas,13
"Finally, our study recommends that the school authorities incorporate multipurpose tree planting in your school’s environmental plans and the use of Rainwater Harvesting Systems for the school urban forestry in two cities.",15
"Since renewable energy is essentially non-carbohydrate in nature, it can generate little or no pollutants and can therefore help in achieving both sustainable development and environmental quality",7
"Economic globalization also positively affects renewable energy in the long term, but a neutral impact is uncovered in the short term",7
"From a policy standpoint, we propose that the Vietnamese policymakers need to consider economic globalization as a renewable energy promotion tool via capital inflow, foreign direct investment, and technological transfer",7
"The Sustainable Development Goal 8 (SDG 8), which is to attain sustainable growth, is considered crucial for enhancing and preserving global environmental and socioeconomic wellbeing, especially in the modern era",8
It is considered that the quantity and form of energy used to create national productivity commonly impact the potential to achieve SDG 8 (Anwar et al,8
The capacity of global renewable energy is predicted to expand by 50% between 2019 and 2024 (IEA 2019),7
"Also, it is estimated that the percentage of renewable energy in the global electricity mix reached over 26.2% in 2019 (Ranalder and Gibb 2020)",7
"For example, SDG 7 aims to attain ubiquitous accessibility to clean, cheap, and sustainable energy by 2030 (Shahzad et al",7
2021) by expanding renewable energy usage into the global energy mix,7
Increasing the usage of renewable energy is therefore in line with attaining SDG 7,7
"Recently, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow exposed some of the crucial issues relating to global warming and provided recommendations on how to make outstanding progress towards establishing a sustainable environment",13
"Given that renewable energy is anticipated to be the only sustainable solution in the future, it is important to identify the major drivers of renewable energy in order to provide direction to energy policy",7
"However, beyond economic expansion and environmental deterioration as a determinant of renewable energy usage, the relevance of globalization for renewable energy consumption has also been found (Ibrahiem and Hanafy 2021; Rahman and Miah 2017; Irfan et al",7
"Meanwhile, there is conflicting evidence regarding the association between globalization and renewable energy, such that the impacts of globalization on renewable energy usage can be both beneficial and detrimental",7
"The development of renewable energy necessitates high-level technology, while high-level technology requires large financial resources whereby multinational corporations may help to reshape renewable energy investments in a country via capital flow or foreign direct investment (FDI)",7
The supply of input for the development or production of renewable energy technologies can be provided by trade,7
"Hence, through the conduits of capital flow, foreign trade, and FDI, the process of economic globalization is a critical determinant of renewable energy development (Gozgor et al",7
"Hence, we anticipate that economic globalization is positively related with renewable energy",7
"In the same vein, economic globalization can indirectly achieve sustainable economy and environmental quality through its crucial role in the development of renewable energy",7
They concluded that economic globalization plays a critical role in enhancing renewable energy in these economies,7
"(2020) established a different opinion regarding the effect of economic globalization on renewable energy for the same economies, thus generating conflicting outcomes",7
"On the other hand, this raises an important question for both governments and policymakers in developing economies: how crucial is economic globalization for the development of renewable energy consumption in the twenty-first century? Inspired by our research question, we try to investigate the effect of economic globalization on renewable energy usage in Vietnam by researching the linkage between renewable energy usage and the extent of economic globalization",7
"This is an important and current research challenge for developing nations, especially given the fact that the role of economic globalization towards economic development is vital",8
"For instance, a positive connection between institutional quality and renewable energy was found by Appiah et al",7
"(2022), whereas the study of Uzar (2020) detected that institutional quality mitigates renewable energy",7
2022) established that the effect of external and internal conflict is adversely related to renewable energy,7
"These elements entail institutional quality, control of corruption, external and internal conflict, law and order, investment profile, democratic accountability, military in politics, quality of bureaucracy, religious tension, socio-economic conditions, ethnic tensions, and government stability",16
"(2021) employed a panel dataset, the effect of political risk on renewable energy in the case of a specific country was limited",7
This study attempts to bridge this gap in the literature by investigating the effect of political risk on renewable energy usage in Vietnam,7
The findings of this study are intended to assist the Vietnamese’ policymakers in adopting and implementing appropriate measures to enhance the usage of renewable energy production,7
"As a result, these policies can be an effective approach for Vietnam to reshape its energy mix towards expanding the usage of renewable energy (SDG 7) and achieving sustainable growth and environmental quality (SDGs 8 and 13)",7
The Fig. 1 presents the energy mix for Vietnam in 2019,7
Vietnam energy mix for 2019 The next section comprises a synopsis of the research,7
Some extant research has emphasized some determinants that often boost renewable energy demand,7
Prior literature on renewable energy and economic globalization nexus are scant,7
(2020) probed into the association between renewable energy (REN) and economic globalization in OECD nations for the period between 1970 and 2015,7
"In another investigation on the globalization and renewable energy nexus, the study of Urom et al",7
(2022) studied the connection between FDI and renewable energy in the United Arab Emirates for the period between 1989 and 2019,7
Several previous research employed qualitative methodologies to examine the various avenues via economic expansion to expand renewable energy usage in a group of economies or specific nations,7
"In research by Murshed (2021), the authors employed the AMG to scrutinize the impact of economic growth on REN in South Asian nations within the timeline spanning between 1992 and 2015",8
The empirical outcome reported that REN is positively affected by economic growth,8
(2022) researched the impact of economic growth on REN in GCC economies for the period between 1990 and 2019,8
"In an investigation by Przychodzen and Przychodzen (2020), the authors studied the influence of economic growth on REN in twenty-seven economies for the period between 1990 and 2014",8
The authors documented that the usage of REN increases due to economic growth,8
This research spans the period between 1971 and 2015 and detected that economic growth enhances REN in India,8
Alam and Murad (2020) studied the connection between REN and economic growth in OECD economies for 43 observations,8
(2022) inspected the effect of economic growth on REN usage in BRICS economies for the timeline from 2000 to 2017,8
The findings of the research concluded that economic growth increases REN,8
"However, these studies employed several proxies for environmental degradation such as carbon emissions, and ecological footprint, which is among many",15
"First, the studies on economic globalization-renewable energy are quite scarce for the time series approach, and the political risk-renewable energy nexus also faces the same circumstances",7
"Furthermore, no prior research has attempted to ascertain the contributing factors of renewable energy use in the case of Vietnam",7
"However, in terms of attaining the SDG 7, ascertaining the driver of renewable energy usage for Vietnam is critical to enable the country to meet the SDG target by 2030",7
"For this purpose, this present work intends to bridge the gap in knowledge by employing a unique indicator of political risk, which contains components of investment profile, rule of law, democratic accountability, corruption index, government stability of the nation, and economic globalization (which combines the financial and trade globalization)",16
"This research is carried out in the presence of environmental degradation, by utilizing carbon emissions as the proxy",15
The current research inspects the role of political risk and economic globalization on renewable energy usage,7
"Economic globalization offers cutting-edge technology to the host nation through technological transfer, so they can raise their energy efficiency",7
"Economic globalization promotes the inflow of financial resources, which also supports the investment in renewable energy by shifting conventional energy generation to renewable generation",7
"Thus, economic globalization has an impact on renewable energy sources through the scale, technique, and substitution effects",7
The generation of renewable energy can also be considered to be affected by political risk,7
"Energy is a major engine of this developmental pathway, although political risk may result in escalating discrepancies in renewable energy output",7
"As a result, the political risk-renewable energy connection may be described from the perspective of the theory of political economy",7
"According to this assumption, political risk has been identified as a key macroeconomic issue limiting the growth of renewable energy",7
The highest mean value is detected in economic growth while the lowest mean value is CO2 emissions,8
"The range of REN, economic growth, economic globalization, CO2 emissions, and political risk are 0.5848 to 2.3478, 2.5769 to 3.2932, 1.4692 to 1.7872, − 0.5844 to 0.3456, and 1.2844 to 1.8548, respectively",8
"These tests reported that economic growth and political risk are integrated at level (I(0)) while the remaining variables (REN, ED, and economic globalization) are integrated at first difference",8
"The results of the ZA unit root test (see Table 3) report that economic growth is integrated at level, whereas economic globalization, REN, political risk, and ED are integrated at first difference",8
"The rejection of the null hypothesis of no cointegration is evident, suggesting that there is a strong significant indication of a cointegrating association between REN and economic globalization, political risk, economic growth and ED",8
"With the increase in per capita income by 1%, the usage of renewable energy will also increase by 2.173% (long run) and 8.4142% (short run); therefore, the level of income boosts the renewable energy usage in Vietnam",7
This demonstrates that improved economic activities in Vietnam are capable of meeting the demand for the usage of more renewable/clean energy,7
"As a result, the consumption of fossil fuels will decline, while the proportion of renewable energy demand in the overall energy composition in Vietnam will rise",7
They highlighted that per capita income is a determinant of renewable energy and concluded that per capita income contributes to the usage of renewable energy,7
The persistence of larger-scale development activities in the public and private sectors is heavily dependent on affordable energy sources through a feed-in-tariff system,7
"The Vietnamese policymakers began several renewable energy initiatives in 2007, aiming to meet 11% of the economy’s energy needs through renewable energy projects by 2050",7
The connection between renewable energy and economic globalization is positive in the long term but a neutral interaction exists in the short term,7
A 1% increase in economic globalization in the long run will cause the consumption of renewable energy to increase by 1.7418%,7
Our finding demonstrates that economic globalization is critical in stimulating renewable energy in Vietnam,7
"Thus, economic globalization can help to improve environmental quality through its role in boosting the usage of renewable energy",7
"(2020) for the OECD nations, who concluded that economic globalization increases the consumption of renewable energy",7
(2022) for the G7 nations discovered that globalization enhances renewable energy,7
The prior study by Murshed (2021) for South Asian economies established that trade openness boosts renewable energy,7
"Furthermore, the ED is adversely associated with renewable energy at a 1% level of significance in the long and short term",7
"Thus, all things being equal, if the level of ED increases by 1%, the consumption of renewable energy will decrease by 1.2258% (long term) and 1.2531% (short term)",7
"Thus, ED mitigates renewable energy usage in Vietnam",7
(2022) for Uruguay established the an adverse connection between ED and renewable energy,7
(2021) concluded that an insignificant association between ED and renewable energy in South Africa,7
"As the environment degrades due to a persistent surge in carbon emissions, it is predicted that this will exacerbate climate change and have detrimental consequences for the life expectancy of humans, animals, and other species",13
This finding should encourage policymakers to heighten awareness and motivation among households and the industrial sector in Vietnam to convert their energy usage patterns from fossil fuel to renewable energy,7
"As a result, the usage of renewable energy will serve as a “win–win” situation for Vietnam and other developing economies",7
"Hence, renewable energy could serve as an alternative energy solution to fossil fuel, thus helping to ensure the long-term sustainability of environmental quality and energy security in Vietnam and other developing economies in the twenty-first century",7
"Finally, but certainly not least, the increases in the index of political risk increases the renewable energy use in prior literature such as (Su et al",7
"Meanwhile, in our case study, it was found that the usage of renewable energy decreases as a result of the political risk index",7
"As the level of political risk increases by 1%, the usage of renewable energy will reduce by 1.2461% (long term) and 1.3016% (short term)",7
This finding indicates that the expansion of renewable energy may be hampered by political risk and that the increase in political risk may have an adverse environmental externality by exerting a burden on the country’s natural resources,7
"When the level of political risk rises, trade in capital goods may place a further burden on the pool of natural resources, resulting in a downward trend in the development of renewable energy solutions in Vietnam",7
"This could reduce the accessibility of renewable energy, causing the country to move away from achieving SDG 7",7
"This outcome can be expressed from the perspective of the theory of political economy, which states that political risk impedes the inflow of capital from abroad, resulting in a reduction in renewable energy investment",7
"(2021) contradicts this study’s outcome, as they reported that political risk improves renewable energy in the OECD economies, and a similar finding was reported by Uzar (2020), who discovered that institutional quality contributes to the usage of renewable energy in thirty-eight economies",7
Table 6 depicts the causal interactions between renewable energy and the exogenous variables at different time frequencies,7
"Thus, REN and economic growth can predict each other in the long term in Vietnam",8
"Hence, a bi-directional causality is evident between ED and renewable energy in Vietnam",7
"However, no causal interaction is evident from economic globalization to renewable energy, but the non-causality association from renewable energy to economic globalization is rejected in the long, medium, and short run",7
"Lastly, no casual association is found from renewable energy to political risk, while a causality relationship from political risk to renewable energy is uncovered in the long, medium, and short term",7
"Hence, political risk can predict renewable energy in the short, medium, and long run in Vietnam",7
"Given the contradictory evidence on the association between economic globalization and renewable energy, as well as the potential effect of political risk on renewable energy, the current study evaluated the impact of economic globalization and political risk on renewable energy in Vietnam, a country that is becoming highly integrated into the global market and moderately stable politically",7
"Economic globalization promotes renewable energy in the long term, but a neutral impact was uncovered in the short term",7
Vietnam’s economic expansion pathway is beneficial for expanding the initiative of renewable energy generation,7
"Therefore, the prominence of the usage of fossil fuel-driven energy must be progressively displaced in order for renewable energy options to increase in the country’s energy mix",7
"Since the renewable energy demand is projected to expand, the need for technological advancement will grow accordingly",7
"As a result, until the technological expertise of the country reaches its maximum potential, the economic globalization route could be employed in the generation and development of renewable energy via FDI and technological transfer",7
"Thus, the increasing demand for renewable energy sources will be achieved via this process",7
"This would not only assist these countries in addressing unemployment, but also in maintaining their economic development patterns",8
This initiative will assist Vietnam in moving closer to achieving SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth),8
"This would eventually deter businesses from using fossil fuel-based options in their manufacturing activities, forcing them to switch to sustainable energy",7
"Therein lies the constraint, as it should be emphasized that the policy framework is only a starting point for building additional policies that are a better fit for other emerging and developing economies aiming to increase renewable energy output",7
Future studies could consider the asymmetric analysis of these drivers of renewable energy generation for panel dataset.,7
There is evidence of both disconnects and linkages among food security indicators along the agriculture-to-nutrition pathways across states,2
"This heterogeneity implies that a food security policy with a single focus is not appropriate, given that there are more disconnects prevailing than linkages",2
"The southern states performed better than the rest on almost all indicators, which was primarily attributed to better governance in ensuring food security",2
"We also provide a mapping of the SDG 2 sub-goals, corresponding indicators, and to what extent their attainment is addressed in existing policies",2
"Through a broadened and comprehensive approach under one coordinating body with a good set of improved interventions and governance, Indian states could attain food and nutrition security by 2030",2
Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to food and nutrition security will require translating agricultural and food production into nutrition security for whole populations,2
The literature on food and nutrition security highlights several pathways toward food and nutrition related SDGs,2
"Considering that attaining food and nutrition security is a process that happens at multiple levels, the following pathways are commonly discussed: (1) agriculture as a source of food, (2) agriculture as a source of income for food and nonfood expenditures, (3) agricultural policy and food prices that affect food consumption, (4) women in agricultural intra-household decision making and resource allocation, (5) maternal employment in agriculture and its effect on childcare and feeding, and (6) the effect of women’s work in agriculture on their own and their children’s nutrition and health status (Kadiyala et al",2
"Although these pathways focus on different channels and are key contributors to ensuring food and nutrition security at different levels, there is little research-based evidence on their effectiveness, nor on the policy, institutional, technological, and resource impediments that exist among them (Pinstrup-Andersen 2015)",2
"This paper analyzes these pathways from agriculture to nutrition in the context of India, focusing on the performance of Indian states across different indicators that capture information on the different dimensions of the process of food and nutrition security",2
"First, it analyzes the importance of and interdependencies along the major pathways in the context of a large country with high levels of malnutrition",2
"Though some argue that all the pathways are equally important and therefore call for them to be given equal priority in discussions of food security for households and individuals (Ruel and Alderman 2013), others have questioned that broad approach, given the limited resources available for allocation across these pathways",2
"Further, the research provides an opportunity to evaluate whether Indian states recognize the importance of a systematic and coherent food security policy that emphasizes any or all of the pathways, or whether they are inclined towards certain types of policies due to historical, demographic, geographic, socioeconomic, and political factors at play",2
"Section 3 provides a case study of Indian states, including background on the evolution of their concepts, programs, and policies related to food security, and discusses the data and methodology adopted",2
"In order to develop a conceptual framework to guide the analysis presented in this paper, we drew from four different strands in the literature on food security, agriculture, and nutrition",2
"The first strand relates to the process of food security and the need for a multidimensional approach to implementing policies, especially in developing countries, in the midst of high levels of under-nutrition",2
"The process of achieving food security,Footnote 1 broadly speaking, has four interconnected dimensions: input, process, output, and outcome",2
"However, definitions of food security generally do not incorporate its multidimensional aspect, nor do they distinguish between the long-term and short-term indicators of food security along the entire agriculture-to-nutrition pathway",2
This focus has led to global overemphasis in food security policies solely on under-nutrition and calorie adequacy numbers (Fukuda-Parr and Orr 2014),2
"In this paper, to shed light on their interlinkages and performance we look at dimensions of the processes and indicators of food security through the lens of pathways from agriculture-to-nutrition at the subnational level in India",2
"For example, a large number of poor households in developing countries are composed of subsistence farmers and agricultural laborers",1
"Some argue that to ensure food security and nutritional adequacy among this population, governments should encourage consumption of micronutrient rich foods and animal source foods, biofortificationFootnote 3 of crops (Qaim et al",2
"Further, there has been a shifting focus towards precision agriculture using modern and accessible technologies to reduce waste of resources and to improve the nutrient content of food (Gebbers and Adamchuk 2010)",12
"These strategies not only ensure better agricultural practices from the point of view of SDG 12, responsible consumption and production, but also ensure that the final nutritional outcomes are improved",12
"Source: Authors’ conceptualization The third strand of literature we reviewed draws on the capability approach, pioneered by Sen (1999) in the context of poverty and deprivation",1
"From this perspective, food insecurity is due to a lack of both access and basic capabilities such as education and healthcare services",2
The capability framework provides a conceptual background to understand the interplay among the factors related to food security,2
"The last strand of the literature draws on comparative studies analyzing the nature of spatial development from the perspective of food security, agriculture, and child nutrition at the national and subnational levels",2
"(2014) comparatively analyzed the performance of Indian states and found a negative relationship between economic growth and per capita income, and economic growth and child under-nutrition",8
"Last, they highlighted that child nutrition measured using multidimensional indicators has a negative relationship with child under-nutrition",2
"Similarly, a handful of studies have analyzed different aspects of the process of achieving food security in India at the subnational and regional levels (Datt and Ravallion 1998; Shetty 2002; Ghosh 2006)",2
"We focus on a set of development indicators and the role of states and their interventions on these outcomes, especially focusing on women and children, who are particularly vulnerable to malnutrition",2
"Drawing insights from all of these strands of the literature, we analyze the performance of various states in India on different aspects of achieving food security",2
"Using data from multiple sources and a scorecard-based approach, this paper investigates whether a uniform, indicator-based policy or a multidimensional approach to the food security process along the pathways from agriculture-to-nutrition would be better suited for India",2
"Uniformity in food security status may be defined as invariance in a state’s rankings on different indicators — that is, under uniformity, the relative ranking of a state based on the absolute values of different indicators remains invariant across these indicators",2
"In the last two decades, India’s remarkable economic growth performance has not been matched with similar performance in the social sectors of education, health, and nutrition",8
"Just after India gained independence, the availability of food grains in the country was a serious concern, so the focus of food security policies was on ensuring adequate availability",2
Yet this approach was in contrast to the definition of food security promulgated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO): “ensuring that all people at all times have both physical and economic access to the basic food they need” (1983),2
"In addition, the internationally used definition and scope of food security has been expanding since then to incorporate various dimensions — food security is now about not only food availability at the national level but access and utilization at the household and individual levels",2
"Recognizing this trend, India slowly evolved its policies over time to incorporate the different dimensions of food security",2
"However, despite common knowledge of the multidimensionality of food security, planning bodies and government departments still worked in ‘silos’",2
"To ensure better food access and delivery mechanisms for all types of households, the government adopted a major intervention called the Public Distribution System (PDS) to improve the provision of staple food grains",2
"During this phase, the focus of food security policies in India shifted from the national and household levels to the individual level",2
(2015) documented the success of the PDS in tackling the twin problems of poverty and undernourishment,2
This development in ensuring food security was also complemented by programs focusing on other dimensions of the process,2
"The objective was to provide food, education, and healthcare facilities to reduce mortality, morbidity, and malnutrition, and improve school enrollment",2
"Despite the presence of such large-scale food distribution programs, however, there was no improvement in the nutritional status of either children or adults, an outcome that can be attributed to a lack of focus on factors that improve the absorption of nutrients, such as water and sanitation facilities",6
"This issue is evident from the simultaneous presence of under- and over nutrition as well as micronutrient deficiency diseases, known as the “triple burden of malnutrition” in the country (Popkin 2001; Gómez et al",2
"Further, an appreciation for the linkages between agriculture and nutrition was missing in the implementation of this gamut of food security policies",2
"Cereal or calorie intake, in the absence of any integrated food security framework, remains the main focus of food security policies in India",2
The recently enacted National Food Security Act of India (2013) adopts a similar approach whereby the policy recommendations are mainly based on a single indicator of food security (calorie intake),2
"However, the salient question is whether a uniform policy prescription of distributing subsidized food grains is valid when food security itself is a multidimensional concept and the food security profile across Indian states is heterogeneous",2
"One of the solutions to this problem is analyzing the input, process, output, and outcome indicators of food security in an integrated framework (Suryanarayana and Silva 2007)",2
Vaidyanathan (2003) and Deaton and Drèze (2009) pointed out that an analysis of nutrition security is incomplete if it is based only on an assessment of calorie intake,2
"In fact, food security policies in India are not forward looking, nor do they contain any provision to face sudden shocks and protect the vulnerable",2
Food security and nutrition monitoring systems in India have remained disconnected from policy implementation (Babu 1997),2
"However, this precept may not hold in the face of heterogeneous food security profiles, such as those that exist across Indian states",2
"To better understand these issues and inform both academia and policy makers, there is a need to analyze the linkages and disconnects among the various dimensions of food security in India",2
The food security framework presented in Fig. 2 provides the conceptual background for our analysis,2
"Table 1 maps data on various food security indicators pertaining to the different dimensions and pathways — including those measuring agricultural production, consumption expenditure, sanitation and hygiene facilities, care practices, health, and anthropometric status — across contemporary surveys, noting the sources of data",2
"Food, agriculture, and nutrition security framework",2
"For example, for examining the food security profile for the year 1992/93, the consumption, and nutrient intake data (output dimension) correspond to the year 1993/94, and the data for the rest of the indicators correspond to the year 1992/93.Footnote 4 Our analysis in this paper corresponds to the years 2005/06 and 2015/16 respectively",2
"(1994), such as number of unique food items consumed, vaccination status, and drinking water and sanitation facilities",6
"The choice of indicators is dependent on those factors which have been neglected, and are crucial for ensuring proper child nutrition",2
"In such cases, we resort to the performance of various government interventions to understand the status of food security pertaining to that particular indicator",2
"For our first analysis the indicator and time period corresponding to the reference data source are as follows: agricultural production (2005–06), consumption (2004–05), facilities, utilization of maternal and child health care services (DLHS Round 3 survey reference period is from 1 to 1-2004 to survey), and nutritional status (2005–06)",3
The role of agricultural production as an important indicator in food security can be explained as follows,2
(2006) found that a longer duration of breastfeeding had a positive impact on child health outcomes,3
Kishore and Gupta (2004) found a positive association between the level of women’s empowerment and nutritional status,5
"Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Punjab had the best record of women’s empowerment; Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Bihar performed the worst",5
The mother’s level of education and women’s empowerment in general also determine the quality of childcare practices adopted,5
"Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Assam, and Orissa have the lowest level of women’s empowerment, which is reflected in the poor nutritional status of children in these states",5
The impact was greater for households with inadequate sanitation and a poor water supply,6
Smith and Haddad (2015) found that differences in stunting rates across countries could be explained by access to safe water and improved sanitation,2
"An evaluation of the Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission (India, MOF 2010) found that 93% of participating households were satisfied with the quality of water and had access to it, demonstrating the importance of village water and sanitation committees",6
"Bhargava (2015) identified the lack of focus on environmental factors in policy making to tackle malnutrition and proper child growth, especially cognitive growth",2
Table 2 broadly summarizes the performance of states along the different indicators of food security,2
This leads to an understanding of the multidimensional aspect of the process of achieving food security,2
"Some states, such as Assam and Orissa, have both low levels of food production and poor nutritional status.Footnote 8 This combination can be attributed to the failure of food distribution systems and other indicators related to the process dimensions as measured by income, education, and levels of women’s empowerment",5
"Similarly, Uttar Pradesh, though a major food grain-producing state, ranks low on calorie intake and final nutritional status, a situation attributed to low levels of women’s empowerment and poor sanitation and hygiene conditions",5
"Women’s empowerment leads to greater decision making power and knowledge of childcare practices, both of which are important for acquisition of good health practices, not only by the child but by all members of the household",5
"Southern states are again the best performing ones.Footnote 10 Undernutrition and anemia numbers are in decline, unlike those for stunting and wasting",2
"What remains an enigma is that despite a decadal gap between the two rounds of the survey we did not find any major improvement across most indicators and states, or evidence of major catch-up stories, probably attributed to inefficient delivery mechanisms, lack of consolidated action on interrelated dimensions of food security, or lack of nutrition knowledge",2
"First, sufficient food and agricultural production alone may not improve nutrient intake and assimilation",2
The complexity of the food system has not been fully recognized due to a narrow focus on food production as the goal of food security efforts,2
"To ensure sustainable food and nutrition security, equal emphasis on the different dimensions is required",2
A similar approach with food and nutrition security in India has plagued the system with distortions,2
"2012) through interventions including improving research and development on nutrient-rich food crops, reducing subsidies on staple crops, encouraging diversity in the crop production of smallholder and marginal farmers, encouraging homestead gardening as an income diversification strategy, enacting gender-sensitive policies, and so on",9
"In-kind transfers may be a quick solution to uplift the masses from poverty and hunger, especially those vulnerable groups subject to variation of income, health, climate or other catastrophic shocks",1
"A cost-effective solution would be to focus on all the different pathways, possibly by amalgamating the functioning and budgeting exercises of the different ministries concerned with food security, ensuring no duplication of work",2
"One immediate conclusion that can be drawn from the main findings is that the southern states have better governance in ensuring food security, as is evident from their performance on the different indicators",2
Good governance in the southern states is evident in their successful policy interventions across different pathways,16
Table 4 provides a simple mapping exercise of the SDG 2 sub-goals and the actions taken at the all India level at present.Footnote 12 As is evident there are limited studies and actions in place and more effort by government is required,2
Based on the state-level scorecard analysis conducted we recommend a similar approach for better tracking of the performance of states on different SDG 2 sub-goals in a broader agriculture-to-nutrition pathways framework,2
"A good initiative would be to extend this exercise further by mapping the different SDG goals and sub-goals, corresponding indicators, Ministries/Departments responsible for the same, and existing performance.Footnote 13 This paper analyzed the performance of different food security indicators along agriculture-to-nutrition pathways in the context of Indian states",2
Our key finding is a general lack of uniformity in food security status as measured by the different indicators along the pathways,2
"This heterogeneity implies that a food security policy with a singular focus is not appropriate, given that there are more disconnects prevailing along the agriculture-to-nutrition pathways than linkages",2
"In a way, this explains why food security policies in India have failed to reduce the high rates of malnutrition for decades and failed to help the country attain the MDGs",2
"In addition, serious data gaps hinder efforts to tackle the problem of malnutrition",2
"An integrated framework for measuring food and nutrition security, and implementing and monitoring relevant policies, is missing",2
Innovations in survey methodology are required to capture the different dimensions of food and nutrition security,2
"Policy interventions need to be more evidence based and should incorporate both short-term and long-term indicators of food security, going beyond calorie security",2
"Mounting concerns over food insecurity have emerged as a key agenda in many recent global development dialogues, on accounts of observed and expected health outcomes",2
"The present study attempts a reflective summary around a yet little-explored aspect of food insecurity: health and social ramifications of coping behaviours (adaptive strategies to improve food availability, accessibility, utilisation, and stability), with specific emphasis on women and children",2
"The likely health outcomes included stunting and wasting, disrupted socio-cognitive development among children",2
"We offer a discourse on what we refer to as time poverty, especially for farm women, resulting from obligatory outdoor employment, mostly as farm labourers to highlight a social paradox: women provide massive contributions in the translation of high value goods and services of a vibrant global agricultural system, and yet are among the first victims of food insecurity themselves",2
"In final section we appeal for more targeted, evidence-based research to establish direct causal linkages between food insecurity and coping behaviours, distinguishing them from life-as-usual scenarios",2
"Food security may be conceptualised by four mutually reinforcing components: (1) physical availability of food, (2) food access (affordability), (3) utilisation, and (4) stability that interfaces with multiple environmental and societal factors (Compton et al., 2010; Ingram, 2011; Torres, 2015; Ville et al., 2019; Bolarinwa et al., 2020)",2
"Food insecurity is defined as uncertainty, lack of, or inability to acquire nutritious food (approximately 2100 cal per capita per day) in a safe and socially acceptable manner (USDA, 2012; Morales & Berkowitz, 2016)",2
"Addressing the growing challenges of the changing food environment on both the personal, household, and societal levels is addressed in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 2: Zero Hunger)",2
"This is part of the 2030 agenda in a universal call to ensure access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food for all (Target 2.1); and eliminate all forms of malnutrition (Target 2.2)",2
"It gains added importance in view of 821 million people (one out of every nine people worldwide) who are affected by undernourishment or chronic food deprivation (Abbade & Dewes, 2015; FAO, 2018; Ambagna et al., 2019)",2
"The notion of food insecurity has often been equated with restricted access to food (Webb et al., 2006), under-nutrition (Das & Bose, 2015), or low dietary diversity (Lo et al., 2012; Belachew et al., 2013)",2
"Recent studies showed close ties between food insecurity and physical health (Friel & Ford, 2015; Davison & Kaplan, 2015), mental disorders (Gilbert et al., 2020; Kolovos et al., 2020; Ville et al., 2019); poverty (Black et al., 2008; Maitra & Rao, 2015); quality of life (Gomes et al., 2020); GDP losses (Sengupta & Mukhopadhyay, 2016), and conflict (Bora et al., 2011)",2
"In the USA, food insecurity plagues over million people, with adverse nutritional and non-nutritional outcomes (Holben & Marshall, 2017)",2
"Discrimination against women, and their disempowerment, has become a common concern – equitable access to amenities and high-value nutrition",10
"By the same token, coping strategies employed by women (adaptive behaviours to combat food insecurity) have multidimensional impacts on social and health processes",2
"Studies from Ghana (Amugsi et al., 2016), India (Gupta et al., 2019), Nepal (Malapit et al., 2015) stress the need for developing gender-responsive mechanisms (Garcia & Wanner, 2017) and women’s empowerment programmes (Galie et al., 2019) to ensure women’s full and active participation in food interventions",5
"(2018) analysed a variety of nutritional indices such as Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS), Women’s Dietary Diversity Score (WDDS), and the Food Variety Score (FVS), to urge the authorities strategically integrate agricultural modernisation with women’s empowerment initiatives to strengthen nutritional benefits (e.g., dietary diversity)",5
"Women’s role in household food security is particularly acknowledged in high-risk climate and conflict areas, as men mostly migrate to maintain income (Ibnouf, 2011)",2
Children are especially vulnerable to food insecurity as they depend on mothers for adequate and healthy diet,2
"Worldwide, a vast number of children suffer from food insecurity that leads to acute under-nutrition (Zace et al., 2020), and/or nutrition-related overweight and other health hazards (Branca et al., 2015; Rocha et al., 2016; FAO, 2019)",2
"Such observations raise critical concerns about a more elusive concept around food insecurity - coping strategies, and their likely impacts on individual to households (Tam et al., 2014; Payne et al., 2016)",2
"The surging interest in women’s adaptive behaviour in response to food insecurity owes to the different roles and responsibilities of men and women within households and their different levels of access to livelihood support systems (Zakaria et al., 2015)",2
"Terms such as “food *security”, “food shortage”, “food access*’, “food avail*”, “food” were used as prefix or suffix with each individual category above",2
"urban) Number of dependents (children or jobless or elderly or sick) Number of school-going children Total food budget Presence (or absence) of social protection systems In a study in Malaysia, Shariff and Khor (2008) pointed out to two additional factors: (1) life quality standards and (2) overall outlook (expectations and aspirations, personal and household) (Shariff and Khor, 2008)",1
"The most common strategy for women to cope with food insecurity, is to seek and engage in outdoor employment in order to increase family income and food access, or utilisation",2
"Households solely reliant on farming are more vulnerable to production shocks, and thus food insecurity (Gitz & Maybeck, 2012)",2
"This includes a range of strategies, including procuring cash and/or food from friends or relatives, purchasing food on credit, borrowing money from friends to cope with food insecurity (Table 1) (Grobler & Dunga, 2017; Gupta et al., 2017; Cordero-Ahiman et al., 2018)",2
"Collectively such strategies undermine future food security efforts of the households (Athanassios et al., 2016)",2
"The latter may include, but not limited to, government food assistance programs (food aids), school meal programs, soup kitchens, or charity food clubs (Tam et al., 2014)",3
"Women are expected to take up outdoor employments to cope with food insecurity, while performing household chores apace (Kim et al., 2019)",2
"Experiences from Yemen, Burkina Faso, and Tajikistan indicate that food insecurity of mother eventually affect the children in multiple ways (IFAD, 2008; Saparoi, 2009; Ruel et al., 2018)",2
"Productive asset base primarily includes land and livestock, viewed as fallback assets, which pay dividend during food insecurity (Tumaini & Msuya, 2017)",2
"Such coping strategies
 Turn farmers from net seller (excess and/or sufficient production) to net buyers Risk land hogging by wealthier classes (von Braun & Meinzen-Dick, 2009) Create a class of middle men (Owino et al., 2014) Make children more vulnerable to malnutrition-related health hazards in future (Sulaiman et al., 2009; Frempong & Stadelmann, 2017) When (and if) the crises period gets over, and the individual attempts to buy back what was sold, on most occasions the same costs more",2
"Chronic food insecurity can elevate mental stress levels among women, to inflict morbidity, in turn leading to lower sense of self-esteem, dampen social interaction skills, resulting in social isolation (Beverly, 2001)",2
"As women are primarily responsible for food acquisition and preparation (Norhasmah et al., 2010; Sulaiman et al., 2010), food insecurity exerts variety of physical and/or mental on expecting mother owing to their high nutrient demand (Laraia et al., 2006)",2
"There could also be coexistence of undernourishment and overweight/obesity among women, termed as double burden of malnutrition (Gubert et al., 2017; WHO, 2017; Perez-Escamilla et al., 2018)",2
"Moreover, health burdens arising from of maternal food insecurity can be vertically transmitted to the new-borns, triggering a variety of pre-natal (Carmichael et al., 2007), and early-stage psychological disorders (Dubois et al., 2011)",2
"Early-age food insecurity increases vulnerability to pathogens (Christian, 2010; Meerman & Aphane, 2012), amplifies risks of stunting and wasting (Table 3) (Christian, 2010; Siwar et al., 2014; Arndt et al., 2016; Mbwana et al., 2017), retards cognitive development (Howard, 2011), results in a variety of psychological disorders (Whitaker et al., 2006), collectively, which reduces future career opportunities (Black et al., 2008).
 In most developing nations, although women form an integral part of food security workforce, discriminatory behaviour prevents them from contributing to their fullest (Grassi et al., 2015; Sharaunga et al., 2015; Gupta et al., 2017, 2019; Galie et al., 2019; Akter et al., 2020)",2
(2015) and Sharaunga & Maxwell (2016) conducted a study involving 300 female heads-of-households in KwaZulu-Natal to demonstrate that socio-cultural empowerment of women and enhancement of their economic agency and physical capital could help curbing household food insecurity,2
"(2019) used a modified Abbreviated Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (AWEAI), to enumerates women’s ability to influence food systems’ dynamics:
 Production: Ability to influence decision making for: (i) choice of crops to plant, (ii) technology adopt, (iii) sale of crops in market, (iv) buying and/or selling livestock, (v) buying and selling KG produce, and (vi) collecting forest produce",5
"Moreover, to influence future policy-making, the AWEAI-type assessments, measuring women’s empowerment in farm sector, should be performed over extended period (instead of on-point-in-time approach, which is more common) as the parameters can change over time.
 Potential measures to introduce new farming technology and/or protocols to ameliorate farm women’s time poverty In a study in Bangladesh, Schreinemachers et al",5
"Main roadblocks to develop such cross-sectoral policies in developing nations include dysfunctionality of institutional system (corruption, lack of manpower, extension agents, infrastructure), right political will, private-public partnerships to finance food interventions and lack of reliable and detailed time-poverty information",16
"Discriminatory pay-structure and time apportionment of women, as against men, are among prime causes of women’s time poverty (Rao, 2015).
 Present narrative scans the post-2000 global literature to offer a summary perspective, to future decision-makers and research community, of coping strategies adopted by women and children to cope with food insecurity",2
"We believe, with unregulated natural resources exploitation, alteration of natural environment and climate change, skyrocketing demand and population growth, such studies will be increasingly sought after in policy circles to identify the main drivers of coping strategies and develop appropriate interventions accordingly",13
"Although women are the key actors across most domains of food security (availability, accessibility, utilisation); their full and active involvement in agricultural value chain is constrained by a number of gender-oriented inequities",2
"Coping behaviours violate basic premise of a number of SDGs, undermining ideals and aspirations for sustainable growth and human development (Table 5)",8
"However, there is need to clarify a fundamental notion: What we see, is it really coping or life-as-usual condition? In other words, Do the behavioural changes come solely in response to food insecurity? Ability to distinguish food-related coping behavior from regular livelihood strategies is critical to target interventions at the real needy sections",2
"Under such circumstances, it calls for targeted research to establish direct causal linkage between food insecurity and adaptive behaviours (Cordero-Ahiman et al., 2018), which, however, is yet sparse",2
"The CSI represents a range of possible consumer behaviours, under food shortage situations, arranged in accordance with increasing severity levels (Anderson, 2010; Kruger et al., 2008) (Table 6)",2
The weighted scores are then summed and ranked to assign an index that reflects current and perceived future food security status,2
"A confounding issue with CSI is, people fall in and out of food insecurity over time, and so the adaptive behaviours change, which often outdates survey results (Capaldo et al., 2010)",2
"In study in Burkina Faso, Frongillo & Nanama (2006) carried out a longitudinal study (2001–2003; five rounds of data collection) to characterise changes in household food insecurity",2
"Overall, the authors highlighted the need of constructing more experience-based questionnaire to capture on-ground lived experiences during food insecurity.
 Cyclic feedback loop between the main barriers associated with Coping Strategy Index (CSI)-based assessment of food insecurity",2
"A sustained global, national, institutional and individual collaborative involvement and financial support for research, improved adaptation and social protection strategies, predominantly in the developing world, where a large number of people work outdoors, can reduce heat exposure and boost the resilience and adaptive capacity of workers to facilitate efforts to achieve sustainable development goals",1
Diverse working populations of the world are experiencing adverse effects of occupational heat stress risks due to global climate change,13
Heating of the climate system from rising concentrations of human-enhanced greenhouse gases (GHGs) exemplified in carbon dioxide and methane emissions have increased the global mean temperature by ~ 0.76 °C since the 1850s (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] 2014),13
"Based on climate change modelling using global climate change scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways [RCPs]), average ambient temperatures of the world are estimated to increase within the range of 1.4–5.8 °C by the year 2100 (IPCC 2014)",13
The projected increase in the incidence and severity of heat stress and exposure events is expected to impact outdoor workers’ health and will lead to a reduction in their work capacity or affect social well-being,8
Australia’s climate change projections showed an increase in days with unsafe heat exposure from 1 day in the 1990s to 15–26 days for each year by the 2070s (Maloney and Forbes 2011),13
"For instance, climate change had a positive consequence on winter wheat, spring wheat and barley production in northern and Siberian parts of Russia, but had adversely affected grain production in the southern part of the country (Belyaeva and Bokusheva 2018)",13
"Furthermore, a global examination of yearly average temperatures and national gross domestic product (GDP) for various countries indicated that up to 23% of global GDP would be lost due to climate change by the year 2100 (Burke et al",13
"Similarly, due to climate change impacts, Nigeria and Ghana lost 3.3% and 3.2% of GDP in 2010 and are expected to lose 6.4% and 6.5% of GDP in 2030 respectively (Kjellstrom 2016)",13
Increased heat exposure occasioned by climate change leads to more significant effects of occupational heat stress (e.g,13
"However, beyond safety and health, not much attention is being paid to the hazards of heat stress experiences in a changing climate on the productivity and social health of workers (Kjellstrom et al",8
Climate change–related occupational heat stress refers to heat stress that is either driven by climate change or is aggravated by climate change,13
"knowledge, skills and abilities) capital embodied in workers are significant in reducing climate change and work-related heat stress vulnerability and enhancing adaptive capacity",13
"However, the occupational safety and health, productive capacity and social lives of outdoor workers are at risk due to increased ambient temperatures and higher relative humidity associated with climate change",13
"Previous empirical and review studies attest to the effect of climate change and work-related heat exposure on the health, efficiency, social well-being and adaptation strategies of people (Kjellstrom et al",13
Much of the climate change and heat stress impact research focus on the health of the general population rather than occupational cohorts,13
"However, the impacts of heat stress on workers’ safety and health, efficiency, social well-being and their adaptation strategies are not well described (Costello et al",8
"Furthermore, inadequate studies have used conceptual frameworks to illustrate how climate change and heat exposure influence workplaces and workers’ productive capacity, social lives and adaptation strategies in the context of the SDGs (Lucas et al",13
"Social impacts due to heat stress reflect those that directly affect the physical, social and emotional well-being of people including health effects, poverty and income inequality (Gasper et al",10
"Hence, the authors construct a framework to portray the conceptual pathways of climate change–related occupational heat stress, adaptation and SDGs",13
"It elucidates the repercussions of heat stress on SDGs based on the adequacy of workers’ social protection, coping and adaptation strategies",1
"The paper advocates for the integration of social extents and impacts of physiological health, productivity and social welfare ramifications of heat stress into climate change social impact assessments to enhance the SDGs",13
"Hence, this article reviews and synthesises salient literature on climate change, work-related heat stress and workers’ adaptation strategies",13
"It proposes a conceptual framework depicting pathways of social extent and impacts of climate change–related occupational heat exposure and SDGs via the interconnected safety and health, productivity and social well-being implications of work-related heat stress on workers",13
"Accordingly, keywords including ‘adaptation strategies’, ‘health and safety’, ‘social impact’, ‘social well-being’, ‘occupational heat stress’, ‘climate change’, ‘psychological behaviour’, ‘productivity’ and ‘workers’ were used as part of the search strategy in a variety of data repository (e.g",13
The purpose was inter alia to identify evidence of journal articles with conceptual frameworks related to social impact of work-related heat stress and adaptation policies of workers in the context of climate change,13
"Similarly, the studies had to assess the effect of work-related heat stress on workers’ productivity, health and safety and social welfare and/or used conceptual frameworks to describe the linkages among climate change, occupational heat exposure, worker’s safety and health, their social well-being, productivity and adaptation strategies",13
"However, we excluded from the review studies which (1) were letters, editorials, reviews, comments and viewpoints; (2) assessed climate change-related precipitation, drought, increasing sea levels and rainstorms; (3) assessed the effect of heat stress on animals, crops, plants and ecosystems and (4) were related to climate change mitigation",13
"Climate change and occupational heat exposure impact pose a threat to the health, productivity and social lives of employees especially in low- and middle-income countries of tropical regions (Kjellstrom et al",13
"These regions have inadequate adaptive capacity and inappropriate adaptation and social protection measures due to worsening poverty, insufficient resources and lack of innovative technologies (Kjellstrom et al",1
"Social dimensions and impacts of climate change–related occupational heat stress and adaptation strategies: a conceptual framework The basic principle of vulnerability is that the extent of speed and severity associated with various forms of changes in climate conditions and heat exposure risks define the degree of susceptibility and risk of persons, social units and communities",13
"The various conceptual frameworks are comprehensive and valuable in explaining the scope, routes and impacts of climate change–related hazards to human performance, health, productivity, communities and ecosystems",13
"However, concerns of social dimensions, linkages and effects of climate change and occupational heat exposure effects on the healthiness, productivity and social lives of workers and their families and communities appear to have been underestimated and/or piecemeal in these models (Kjellstrom et al",13
"Hence, the necessity for a new conceptual framework describing the social dimensions and impacts of heat exposure, risk and effect of work-related heat stress on workers’ health, productivity, social welfare and adaptation policies in the perspective of the SDGs",8
"age, sex, body size, medical condition, medication, use of drugs and alcohol, rehydration, acclimatisation level, physical fitness, metabolism rate, choice of clothing and prior heat injury)",3
This further impacts on the extent of occupational heat exposure aggravated by climate change without adequate control measures and the cycle continues as indicated by the arrows (Fig,13
"In addition to mitigation, impacts can be managed and ameliorated through appropriately improved policies of coping, adaptation and social protection, with the positive consequence of realising the SDGs",1
"The scope and spectrum of work-related heat stress effects from the perspective of climate change on workers in high danger of being exposed to heat include physiological, psychological, behavioural, health and safety impact as well as social and productivity concerns (Dunne et al",13
"Hence, it is essential and timely to use the framework as the conceptual basis in future research and highlight evidence of the social dimensions and impacts of climate change–related health consequences on different worker cohorts",13
"More so, tiredness, sickness and workplace stress and frustration expressed in alcoholism, smoking, substance abuse and workplace violence lead to interpersonal issues with colleagues, subordinates and supervisors",3
"social protection, adaptation and mitigation) are identified as workable in work-related heat stress prevention and control measures (Nunfam et al",1
"Accordingly, the conceptual perspective, as highlighted in the framework, can shape future studies in providing evidence of coping, adaptation and social protection strategies aimed at informing heat stress management protocols, actions and policy decisions",1
"However, at more local scales, healthy and productive adaptation and social protection strategies for working and living in warmer environments are also needed (Frimpong et al",1
"Social protection involves collective and individualised strategies, programmes and actions directed at averting, decreasing and eradicating poverty and social marginalisation",1
It also seeks to boost prospects and resilience by stimulating social capital of workers to ensure decent and productive employment (Cichon 2013; Mundial 2012; UNICEF 2012),8
"The impact of heat stress related to occupations because of climate change on workers’ social welfare, productivity and health remains critical",13
"Generally, preventive and control intervention of heat exposure comprise managerial controls, engineering designs and continued training and education regimens",4
"Also improving the preventive and control intervention of climate change–related heat stress by strengthening labour organisations, regulations and workers’ protective policies have implications for work-related heat stress",13
"Besides, workers’ vulnerability is reduced and their resilience and adaptive capacity enhanced by social protection and insurance policies, programmes and strategies (e.g",1
"social security, superannuation and pension schemes)",1
"Also, health insurance, interventions to employment market (e.g",3
"It is also overlooked in social impact and climate change discourse, even though it has implications for ecological, socioeconomic and human health",13
"The essence of the focus on the social dimensions of work-based heat stress and climate change is to contribute to the ongoing discourse, policy and research effort on climate change to ensure an inclusive sustainable development to overcome poverty, ensure healthy lives, combat increasing ambient temperature and promote decent jobs",13
"This has the possibility of facilitating environmental justice and decreasing the vulnerability of people including worker cohorts, improving their adaptive capacity and resilience as well as their productive capacity and social well-being for social and economic growth and development",8
"The main purpose of this study is to examine the democracy–environmental degradation nexus in 26 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries from 1990 through 2015 by using panel data estimation methods, performing well under cross-sectional dependence",15
"Empirical results are as follows: (i) Tests show that cross-section dependence exists among panel members, and slope coefficients are heterogeneous, respectively, and (ii) long-term coefficient estimation results with Augmented Mean Group estimator show that democracy, non-renewable energy consumption, and real income per capita have statistically significant negative effects on environmental quality, whereas renewable energy consumption has a positive effect",7
"Moreover, promoting renewable energy consumption may be an effective alternative in reducing environmental degradation; therefore, it can be said that promoting clean energy use and raising the SDG environmental quality targets are in harmony",7
"Moreover, substituting carbon-based energy with cleaner, renewable sources such as wind and solar power would help diminish emission levels and encourage both developed and developing countries to move toward low-carbon technology",7
"In addition, the lack of consideration or emphasis for institutions in the MDGs was remedied with Goal 16, which recommended building strong institutions to create peaceful and inclusive societies, promoting transparent regulations, and protecting individual and human rights around the world (United Nations 2019b)",16
"When drafting the SDGs, the parties presumed that the objectives of economic growth and environmental sustainability would become less contrary to improvements in efficiency; however, researchers have expressed different remarks based on their researches",8
"For instance, improvements in sustainable agriculture increase agricultural productivity, which increases food security and leads to reaching the zero-hunger goal",2
They also find that Goal 13 lacks a concrete commitment to combating climate change and lowering emissions,13
"Furthermore, Hickel (2019) states that reducing carbon emissions and resource use, which is a prerequisite for achieving decent work and economic growth targets (Goal 8), cannot be achieved with a 3% global economic growth rate",8
"Although most SDG researches have focused on the economic growth and environment nexus, the institutions and environment nexus have largely remained unexplored",8
"Olson (1996) states that compatibility nexus between democracy and economic growth means that democracy increases economic growth as well as resource use; hence, it can be said that democracy does not promote actions on diminishing environmental pollutions and emissions",8
"In other words, pollution abatement requires long-term commitment, and democratically elected governments might be unwilling to choose policies that limit resource use and slow economic growth down instead of vote-saving policies such as boosting economic growth",8
They also have the right to organize and lobby for environmental protection at both national and international levels (Kinda 2011),15
"In light of these conflicting thoughts, there is no apparent consensus about how democracy affects environmental degradation",15
The main objectives of this paper are to investigate the democracy–environmental degradation nexus in 26 OECD countries by using data available from 1990 to 2015,15
"However, institutional determinants of environmental degradation, particularly democracy, were ignored",15
"Second, we employed ecological footprint, which considers agricultural, water, weather, and forest side of environmental pollution, as an indicator of environmental pollution to study environmental degradation more comprehensively",15
Pellegrini and Gerlagh (2006) investigate democracy-environmental protection stringency nexus in 44 countries for the period of 1980–1985 by employing the ordinary least squares (OLS) method,15
"Their findings are in favor of the non-existence of a statistically significant relationship between democracy and environmental protection stringency, while there is a positive and statistically significant relationship between GDP and environmental protection stringency",15
Overall results mostly indicate that democracy has negative and statistically significant effects on environmental degradation,15
Buitenzorgy and Mol (2011) examine democracy and deforestation rates in 177 countries for the period of 1990–2000 by employing the OLS method,15
"Their findings suggest that democracy has a positive and statistically significant effect on deforestation rate, while estimation results for income level mostly show that no statistically significant relationships exist between GDP and deforestation results",15
Gani and Scrimgeour (2014) investigate voice-accountability and water pollution nexus in 21 OECD countries for the period of 1998–2005 by employing the generalized method of moments (GMM) approach,6
"Their findings suggest that an increase in voice and accountability exacerbates water pollution, whereas increases in both GDP and trade diminish water pollution",6
"Moreover, trade openness reduces environmental degradation while urbanization increases",15
The findings indicate that an increase in the democracy level helps to reduce carbon emissions in those African countries,13
"In addition, both FMOLS and DOLS findings reveal that real GDP has a positive effect on environmental degradation",15
Kashwan (2017) investigates democracy-protected areas nexus in 137 countries in 2012 by using generalized linear models,15
"The overall results show that democracy has a positive effect on the size of protected areas, while based on the model, the effect of GDP varies",15
"Besides, their findings overwhelmingly indicate that real GDP positively affects environmental pollution, whereas trade openness does not have a statistically significant effect on environmental degradation",15
They find that democracy promotes to reduce carbon emissions,13
"Besides, renewable energy consumption also reduces carbon emissions level, while trade openness increases",7
Adams and Nsiah (2019) investigate democracy and environmental degradation nexus in 28 Sub-Saharan African Countries from 1980 to 2014 by employing the FMOLS and GMM methods,15
"Second; distinctively, this study uses the ecological footprint, which is a more complex indicator of environmental degradation",15
"Third, a great part of the papers, examining democracy-environmental degradation nexus, employ panel data approaches; however, the panel data techniques used in those papers are not able to cope with cross-sectional dependence, generally occurring in multi-country studies",15
The first approach argues that democracy helps to reduce environmental degradation,15
"Individuals can access grater information about environmental issues, express their opinions, and priorities through freedom of the press, can right to organize and lobby for environmental protection at both national and international levels, and putting political pressure on the government through voting in democratic societies",15
"Furthermore, democratically elected may choose to boost economic growth to increase welfare and save votes for coming to power for one more period",8
"Therefore, democratically elected governments may tend to fail to combat environmental degradation",15
"Moreover, we used the ecological footprint as an indicator of environmental degradation",15
"It is a measure of how much resources we demand from nature and how much resources we must provide to nature in return; hence, a higher ecological footprint means higher environmental degradation",15
Economic growth and environmental quality nexus have been intensively studied since the study of Grossman and Krueger (1991),8
"Therefore, we included economic growth in our model as a control variable",8
"Afterward, disaggregate energy consumption have gained importance in empirical analyses (see Cole et al",7
"Conversely, the exacerbating effect of non-renewable energy consumption on environmental quality is widely accepted",7
"On the one hand, urbanization can lead to environmental problems by destroying ecological areas, increasing fossil fuel consumption, and resource use, due to the increase in demand for housing and transportation, and industrial production",11
"Moreover, urbanization can ease environmental problems by creating positive externalities, economies of scale, and efficient public services such as pipeline water, health services, proper waste management, and environment-friendly infrastructure (Pata 2018a; Danish and Wang 2019; Erdogan 2020)",12
"Therefore, it may be said that one is not able to judge the overall effect of urbanization on environmental degradation",15
"Based on these theoretical discussions, the impact of democracy on environmental degradation is investigated with a linear model as shown below (Eq",15
"LnEF is the log of ecological footprint per capita, LnGDP is the log of the gross domestic product per capita (constant 2010 US$), LnRNEC is the log of renewable energy consumption calculated as a share of renewable energy consumption in total final energy consumption, LnNRNEC is the log of non-renewable energy consumption calculated as a share of fossil fuel energy consumption in total final energy consumption, LnDMC is the log of democratic accountability index, and LnUR is the log of urban population (% of the total population)",7
"Consequently; GDP per capita, renewable energy consumption, non-renewable energy consumption, and urban population were obtained from the World Development Indicators Online Database (2019)",7
"Based on these findings, it can be said that environmental degradation in 26 OECD countries is highly dependent on each other",15
"Hence, environmental degradation shocks in one country would probably affect other countries",15
The main reason for this could be the high use of non-renewable energy sources in the growth process and the use of old-fashioned production technologies,7
"Moreover, an increase in renewable energy consumption reduces the ecological footprint, while an increase in non-renewable energy consumption exacerbates the ecological footprint, and these findings consistent with expectations and former literature",7
"Although the polluting effect of fossil fuels on environmental pollution is widely known, overall, 82% of global energy consumption was sourced from non-renewables in 2017",7
"According to the fifth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the main cause of global warming and climate change is carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels (Chen et al",13
"In contrast, renewable energy consumption has the following advantages and opportunities: (i) has the potential to provide services with almost zero emissions of both air pollutants and greenhouse gases (Panwar et al",7
"Thus, making generalizations about a democracy’s effect on environmental degradation based on its age and strength may be misleading",15
"For instance, lobbying groups that consist mostly of industry owners may pressure decision-makers to prioritize economic growth and development over ecological concerns, and environmental lobbying groups may not have as much impact",8
"For example, the USA signed the Paris Agreement under President Obama, but President Trump withdrew from the agreement",13
The AMG estimation results and its corresponding policy implications are as follows: an increase in economic growth decreases environmental quality,8
"To eliminate the environmental cost of economic growth, it would be better to adopt a more inclusive and eco-friendly development approach that substitutes pollutant-production technology based on nonrenewable resources, with technologies that use eco-friendly renewable resources",8
Democracy has an aggravating effect on environmental degradation,15
"While non-renewable energy consumption has a negative impact on environmental quality, renewable energy consumption has a positive impact",7
This finding indicates that countries with a high share in renewable energy consumption could provide a sustainable solution to environmental problems,7
We analyze the evaluations of California energy efficiency programs to assess the effectiveness of these evaluations in (1) improving our understanding of their performance and (2) providing a check on utility incentives to overstate energy savings,7
Energy efficiency is a key component of local and national strategies to reduce energy use and combat global warming,7
"The National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency (2008)—a consortium of electric and gas utilities, utility regulators, federal government officials, and other US stakeholders—identifies the goal of achieving all cost-effective energy efficiency measures in the country by 2025, representing more than $500 billion in net savings",7
Realizing these substantial efficiencies in such a short time period will require a massive effort to successfully identify opportunities and implement energy efficiency programs,7
This paper will focus on ex post measurements of the savings that can be attributed to energy efficiency programs,7
The third-party program evaluations that supply these measurements are a controversial component of the effort to improve energy efficiency in this country,7
The objective of this paper is to provide an assessment of the information from these energy efficiency program evaluations using empirical data from California,7
The importance of energy efficiency program evaluations is derived largely from the unfortunate reality that energy savings are extremely difficult to measure,7
Better measurements of energy savings require the monitoring of actual energy usage and an answer to the counterfactual question: How much energy would have been used in the absence of an energy efficiency program? Ex post program evaluations go beyond the simple formulas described above and use measurements of actual consumer behavior to calculate energy savings,7
"First, evaluations provide an opportunity to learn more about the relative performance of the different types of energy efficiency measures and programs as well as the policies that facilitate the implementation and effectiveness of these efforts",7
"While energy efficiency programs and efforts to estimate the savings they produce have existed for several decades, our understanding of the most cost-effective methods to achieve energy savings is still in its infancy",7
Designers and implementers of energy efficiency programs will rely on these conclusions in revising and expanding programs,7
A second motivation for conducting energy efficiency program evaluations stems from the independence of the third-party evaluators,7
The performance of energy efficiency programs depends on the actions of the local electric and gas utilities that oversee the programs,7
"A performance incentive mechanism is a regulatory framework that provides utilities with the opportunity to earn a profit from energy efficiency activities in their service territories, often by allocating to them a small percentage of the value of the energy savings",7
"In this paper, we analyze the results of the recently completed evaluations of the 2004–2005 California utility energy efficiency programs compared to both savings projections and the results reported by the electric and gas utilities",7
"This unique dataset enables us to analyze both objectives of energy efficiency program evaluations described above: First, related to the use of evaluations as an opportunity for learning, we compare the savings projections with the ex post evaluated savings measurements",7
"Using techniques of statistics and econometrics, we identify what differentiates energy efficiency programs that have had higher evaluated savings compared to predicted savings and what differentiates programs that have had independent evaluations confirm or exceed the utility-reported energy savings",7
We aim to give policymakers and regulators a better idea of the benefits of incorporating independent evaluations into their performance incentive mechanisms and to provide valuable information to those who will be designing and implementing energy efficiency programs in the near future,7
"We find that the energy efficiency programs in the 2004–2005 California program cycle did not meet expectations in terms of electricity savings, gas savings, or peak demand savings.Footnote 1 We also find that the utility-reported electricity savings estimates are systematically higher than the third-party evaluated savings estimates, which may suggest that the incentive to overstate savings has affected the utilities’ reports.Footnote 2 Interestingly, the particular contractor chosen to conduct the evaluation (or an unobservable correlated with this choice) appears to be an important determinant of the estimate of evaluated savings compared to both the projections and the utility-reported estimates",7
"Since the 1970s, California has been at the forefront of US pursuits of energy efficiency goals",7
"Supply shortages, air pollution, and increasing concerns regarding the emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere have heightened the emphasis on energy efficiency in California in recent years",7
California’s energy efficiency programs are administered largely by the states’ four investor-owned utilities (IOUs) with the oversight of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC),7
"The state’s performance incentive mechanism, known as the RRIM, awards profits to an IOU based on the savings produced by the energy efficiency programs in its service area compared to predetermined annual savings goals",7
"Therefore, the RRIM would encompass the performance of the 2004–2005 programs.Footnote 3
 Evaluation, measurement, and verification (EM&V) of energy savings has been a major component of California’s energy efficiency efforts",7
"The IOUs have complained about the delays of the EM&V process, their access to interim results, and the fairness of the evaluations’ use of ex post savings measurements to determine the performance of the energy efficiency programs",7
"In contrast, ratepayer advocates have argued that IOUs should only earn profits if and when it is shown by an independent evaluator that energy savings attributable to an energy efficiency program have occurred",7
"On the other hand, the CPUC has the responsibility to minimize the costs to the California ratepayers and taxpayers of providing these rewards",17
"The evaluations from the 2004 to 2005 cycle of energy efficiency programs were only finalized in 2008, and millions of dollars were spent on performing these evaluations",7
"The information in this paper is primarily from two sources: (1) 118 third-party ex post evaluations of energy efficiency programs in California from the 2004 to 2005 program cycle, obtained from the appendices of the Energy Efficiency 2006–2007 Verification Report (CPUC 2009a), and (2) the filings of the four IOUs (Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, SoCalGas, San Diego Gas & Electric) relating to these same 118 energy efficiency programs, obtained from the CPUC’s Energy Efficiency Groupware website ( )",7
"Law required that third-party contractors evaluate the 2004–2005 California energy efficiency programs per the CPUC’s (2003) Energy Efficiency Policy Manual to measure the level of energy and peak demand savings achieved; measure cost-effectiveness; provide up-front market assessments and baseline analysis; provide ongoing feedback and corrective, constructive guidance regarding the implementation of programs; and help to assess whether need for the program was ongoing",7
"In its Energy Efficiency 2006–2007 Verification Report, which included the results of the nearly complete evaluations from the 2004 to 2005 energy efficiency program cycle, the CPUC (2009a) provided information on the impact evaluations of 118 energy efficiency programs from 2004 to 2005, including links to evaluations of 112 of the programs on the CPUC website",7
"A single evaluation often contained the energy impacts of more than one energy efficiency program, which occurred when the same (or virtually the same) program was implemented in different IOU service territories",7
The CPUC (2003) Energy Efficiency Policy Manual required adherence to the International Performance Measurement & Verification Protocol (IPMVP) for the M&V portion of the evaluation,7
The California IOUs were also required to track the performance of their own 2004–2005 energy efficiency programs,7
These reports are publicly available on the CPUC Energy Efficiency Groupware website and are our second main source of data,7
"The number of 2004–2005 energy efficiency programs for each IOU’s service area is displayed in Fig. 1, where the abbreviations are for Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE), Southern California Gas (SCG), and San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E)",7
"Option A, “Partially Measured Retrofit Isolation,” requires that savings be determined by short-term or continuous field measurements of energy use",9
"Option B, “Retrofit Isolation,” is the same as option A, except no parameters may be stipulated",9
Figure 5 displays the number of energy efficiency programs that claimed to use each option described above,7
"IPMVP International Performance Measurement & Verification Protocol, EM&V evaluation, measurement, and verification Programs were at different stages in their development at the beginning of the 2004–2005 energy efficiency program cycle",7
The total resources cost (TRC) ratio is defined as the benefits divided by the costs of a demand-side management energy efficiency program,7
The benefits of the energy efficiency program evaluations both as an opportunity for learning about how to improve program performance and as a component of a performance incentive mechanism is contingent on whether the evaluated savings estimates significantly differ from other estimates of savings,7
Performing ex post evaluations of energy efficiency programs has costs as well as benefits,7
"This suggests that the more rigorous are the evaluations, the more valuable they are in revising the savings projections.Footnote 10
 We ran regression analyses to gain further insight into what differentiates an energy efficiency program that is successful compared to its expectations from one that falls short",7
"For example, all four IOUs implemented a program called “Savings by Design,” which provided financial incentives to improve the energy efficiency of commercial new construction and industrial projects and provided electricity and gas savings in each of the IOUs’ service territories",7
"Tables 5 (megawatt hour savings) and 6 (megawatt savings) display the regression results, attempting to determine what differentiates an energy efficiency program that is successful in meeting its savings projections from one that is not",7
"Tables 8 and 9 display the results of the same five regression models, attempting to determine what differentiates an energy efficiency program that has its IOU-reported savings estimates confirmed by an independent evaluation from one that does not (for both megawatt hour and megawatt savings)",7
We have compiled a unique dataset related to the 2004–2005 California utility energy efficiency program cycle,7
We find that most energy efficiency programs did not meet their energy savings projections,7
One limitation of the analyses in this paper is that many of the energy efficiency programs were extremely broad in scope and did not focus on particular customer classes or end uses,7
"Despite these limitations, the 2004–2005 California energy efficiency program cycle offers a unique opportunity to compare various estimates of energy savings and the associated characteristics of programs and the evaluation process",7
We are hopeful that our findings will be useful in designing energy efficiency programs and determining how to use independent third-party program evaluations in the future.,7
"Renewable energy, which consists of non-carbohydrate energy sources that do not or seldom emit emissions, can assist the accomplishment of both ecological sustainability and sustainable development in this respect",7
"Therefore, ensuring political stability will bring in more foreign investment, forcing the Canadian government to take its climate crisis problem more seriously",13
"As a result, the cornerstone of sustainable growth is under threat (Adebayo et al. 2022; Xue et al. 2022)",8
"Out of the 17 development objectives, SDG 13 demands special attention since it pertains to climate action",13
"As seen in Fig. 1, Canada generates more than 50% of its electricity from renewable energy sources with hydro constituting a large proportion",7
"Source: (IEA, 2021) Percentage electricity generation by  Percentage of Total Energy Supply in Canada from 1990–2020",7
"Source: (IEA, 2021) The Canadian government has made considerable steps in combatting climate change since joining the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015",13
Canada will continue to support the fight against climate change in the global transition to a cleaner and greener economy,13
"The Canadian government introduced aggressive and upgraded plans in 2021 to promote the worldwide phase-out of thermal coal, assist emerging nations in making rapid transitions to green fuel sources, and decrease pollution in the oil and gas industry.Footnote 1 One of the most important initiatives the globe must take in the fight against climate change is to eliminate coal power pollution",13
"This will aid in the development and implementation of renewable energy options, as well as the shift to a greener economy in low- and middle-income nations",7
"In addition, by 2050, Canada will be the first major oil-producing nation to cap and reduce emissions from the gas and oil sector to net zero",13
"Furthermore, it may also have an impact on the perceptions of corporations and the general public on environmental protection",15
"Theoretically, a stable political environment should encourage climate change policy actions that reduce CO2 emissions",13
"Nonetheless, political uncertainty over a clean energy future and growing CO2 emissions may have an impact on Canada’s sustainable development foundation",7
"This research seeks to build an SDG-oriented policy framework for Canada against the backdrop of renewable energy generation and growing CO2 emissions, as well as the underlying challenges of political risk and trade globalization",7
"The policy framework that will be developed in this research will mainly concentrate on achieving the goals of SDGs 7 and 13, as well as expanding it to include some of the goals of SDG 17, which deals with trade",17
"Since most developed nations, such as Canada, are cautious of their environment, significant attention is given to environmental degradation",15
"Reduced dependency on fossil fuels will contribute to increased energy efficiency, leading to lower energy consumption, reduced emissions, and fossil fuel replacements (Rehman et al. 2021; Can et al",7
"Theoretically, a stable political environment should encourage climate change policy actions that reduce CO2 emissions",13
"For instance, (Awosusi et al. 2022a, b) using the MMQR and causality approaches investigated the association between real income and environmental degradation using data between the period from 1990 to 2018",15
"In addition, causality from income to environmental degradation is established",15
"Moreover, using Colombia and dataset from 1970–2017 (Awosusi et al. 2022a, b), reported that REC aids in curbing emissions using gradual shift and ARDL, DOLS, and FMOLS approaches",3
"Likewise, using NARDL and dataset from 1990–2014 (Toumi and Toumi 2019), research on the renewable energy–emissions connection reported that a decrease in emissions is attributed to an upsurge in renewable energy use",7
These have the potential to significantly reduce emissions,13
"Furthermore, the research of (Ali et al. 2020) on the role of political stability toward emissions reduction in selected OECD nations",13
"Over the years, significant studies have been conducted regarding the drivers of environmental degradation using time series and panel data analysis",15
"However, few studies have examined the effect of political risk on environmental degradation",15
"Therefore, the current paper fills the gap in the prior studies by examining the effect of political risk on environmental degradation",15
"Figure 5a depicts the impulse response plot, which identifies the interrelationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions",8
"A 10% upsurge in economic growth causes a negative effect on CO2 emissions in both the short and long term, whereas a 10% reduction in economic growth has a positive effect on CO2 emissions in both short and long term",8
"Moreover, Fig. 5b shows the impulse response plot that demonstrates the connection between renewable energy use and CO2 emissions",7
"A 10% upsurge in renewable energy use has a negative effect on CO2 emissions in both the short and long term, whereas a 10% reduction in renewable energy use has a positive effect on CO2 emissions in both the short and long term",7
a The impulse response plot for economic growth and carbon emissions,8
b The impulse response plot for renewable energy and carbon emissions,7
"The current research reported that economic growth abates CO2 emissions in Canada, which implies that Canada’s growth is sustainable",8
"In order to achieve this, Canada must progressively reduce the amount of nonrenewable energy in the energy mix while increasing the share of renewable energy",7
"As a consequence of the empirical findings of this research, we recommend that policymakers and government officials continue to support measures to boost successful renewable energy measures",7
"Moreover, we established a negative interconnectedness between trade globalization and ecological footprint, which implies that trade globalization aids in lessening degradation of the environment",3
"Moreover, (Yuping et al. 2021) and (Jahanger et al. 2022) suggested that globalization promotes the flow of environmentally beneficial technology and contemporary creative production processes among countries involved, resulting in reduced environmental degradation",15
This supports the argument that political stability aids in formulating policies that aid in abating the degradation of the environment,3
This negative interconnection between political risk and environmental degradation shows that the government institutions are strong enough in Canada to implement environmental rules and regulations that improve environmental quality,15
"Thus, a stable political environment is important for the mitigation of environmental degradation in Canada",15
"As a result, the current paper assesses the effect of political risk and renewable energy use on CO2 emissions in Canada",7
We also incorporate other drivers of CO2 emissions such as trade globalization and economic growth into the model,8
"It will assist Canada in dealing with the challenges of climate change, i.e., achieving SDG 13 (UNDP 2017)",13
"If the government continues to promote renewable energy development and discovery, Canada will be able to minimize its non-renewable energy use",7
"Moreover, it will assist Canada in developing sustainable and affordable energy solutions for all, assisting in the fulfillment of SDG 7 (UNDP 2017)",7
"Citizens will be able to live healthy growth-oriented lifestyles in this way, and Canada will be moving closer to reaching SDG 8 (UNDP 2017)",8
"Therefore, ensuring political stability will bring in more foreign investment, forcing the Canadian government to take its climate crisis problem more seriously",13
"Investing in green energy is not only good for the environment for the Canadian government, but it is also a good strategic move given that less reliance on oil makes Canada less vulnerable",7
Livelihood vulnerability was evaluated from the collected households’ data using the Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Vulnerability Index (IPCC-VI) methods,13
"The LVI results showed that food insecurity, livelihood strategy and social networking were the major drivers of livelihood vulnerability",2
"The high sensitivity was due to food and water insecurity, while low adaptive capacity was due to a lack of formal education and a high dependency rate",6
Heavy investment in education and reducing the number of dependents through family planning and campaigning against polygamy could enhance households’ adaptive capacity,3
"Drought reversed positive steps that had been taken to achieve various SDGs; however, heavy investment in other SDGs such as quality education and health could enhance households’ adaptive capacity and system sustainability in African semi-arid regions",4
The severity and frequency of drought occurrences have drastically increased worldwide as a result of climate change [18],13
"Droughts undo positive steps taken by SSA states to attain various sustainable development goals (SDGs); hence, condemning people to poverty and hunger while affecting their health, well-being and access to clean water",6
"Past studies in African semi-arid areas focused on community vulnerability and adaptive capacity to climate change with fewer investigating droughts [4, 26, 28, 31, 41,42,43,44]",13
"The region has a population of approximately 3.5 million people, many of whom are living in abject poverty with the lowest literacy rates and primary school enrolment in the country",1
"All of the surveyed households in the Division obtained their food primarily from their farms; however, Balaza Lawane (0.939) and Gazawa (0.938) had the highest overall food security vulnerability score in the area",2
Households in Gazawa (55.6%) and Meri (55.4%) reported water conflicts in their communities and respondents attributed this to water scarcity due to drought,6
The aggregated drought disaster vulnerability was the highest in Gazawa (0.395) compared to other communities,11
"Almost all respondents claimed to be affected by drought through crop failure, livestock death, malnutrition among children < 5 years, pasture and water shortage, reduced household income and high food prices",2
"Food insecurity, livelihood strategy and social network, in that order, were the main drivers of drought vulnerability in all communities except in Yolde Naggue where social network, food and livelihood strategy, in that order, were the main drivers",2
"Overall, access to food, livelihood strategies, social networks and water availability were the key factors causing household livelihood vulnerability to drought",2
Vulnerability chart of the contributing factors of the Index-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC-VI),13
"Health service, being one of the SDGs, needs to be improved among rural households (despite its lower contribution to sensitivity in the current study) to enhance/maintain households’ resilience against drought sensitivity in similar African drylands elsewhere",3
"Large household size could be due to early marriage, polygyny, lack of family planning or households caring for the children of relatives who died from violence or the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which is prevalent in most parts of Sub-Saharan Africa [3, 9, 34]",3
Family planning needs to be emphasized among rural households in African drylands and there is merit in campaigning against polygamy and early marriage so that the household adaptive capacity could be enhanced with improved household structure i.e,3
"Adult education, as was done in Tanzania [13], should be introduced to achieve various SDGs i.e",4
Education and training can improve the ability of households to acquire modern and appropriate drought adaptation and recovery information such as changes in daily weather and planting dates,4
"Additionally, it can improve the ability of the agrarian population to diversify their income sources through the acquisition of salaried jobs that could not be possible due to lack of skills, and adaptation options, especially from written sources, that can play a great role in increasing productivity and fostering individual economic growth",8
"However, a weak social network, not food insecurity, was the main vulnerability driver in the Yolde Naggue community",2
"The main vulnerability drivers were food insecurity, livelihood strategy and social networking because the studied communities relied heavily on rain-fed agriculture, cultivated fewer crops and there was limited early warning information on impending droughts",2
"However, heavy investment in SDGs such as quality education and health could improve households’ adaptive capacity and system sustainability",4
"We argue that the post-COVID-19 re-build represents a once-in-a generation opportunity to markedly shift developed trajectories to more sustainable pathways, to rebalance the domains of sustainability, and in the process, to address longer-term crises including those of climate and biodiversity loss",15
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and United Nations have repeatedly shed light on the emergency in successive reports,13
"Though sustainable development as originally envisaged included a clear social mandate, the social dimension has been historically neglected amidst abbreviated framings of sustainability typically focused on narrow understandings conflating ‘development’ and ‘economic growth’ (Vallance et al",8
"The nature and pace of ecological degradation in particular, means that all of the SDGs are dependent on how successful or not measures to arrest the climate crisis are",13
"We are now beginning to better understand that climate change makes existing poverty worse, leads to more inequality and results in more vulnerability",13
"The pillars presented here are designed to inform the policy effort to rebalance the domains of sustainability and in the process, to address longer-term crises including those of climate and biodiversity loss",15
"The Project Drawdown report, published in 2017, describes the 100 most substantive solutions to the climate crisis, for which the technology already exists",13
"If designed appropriately, GND based policies can accelerate sustainability transitions, within a context of social protection (Allam et al",1
"The post-Covid rebuild therefore needs to keep sight of the pressing imperatives of the climate crisis, just transitions and the no carbon economy when designing stimulus packages",13
"The drivers of the climate crisis have a direct relationship with economic inequality, whereby the greenhouse gas emissions of the ‘haves’ are largely driving a crisis which will impact on the ‘have-nots’ the hardest (Gore 2015)",13
"While countries in sub-Saharan Africa contribute the lowest levels of per capita CO2 equivalent emissions, these countries are ranked as the most vulnerable to climate change impacts (Eckstein et al",13
"Given international poverty alleviation goals, redistribution of carbon shares from wealthy elites to the global poor would seem to be appropriate (Hubacek et al",1
Fair burden sharing between countries implies that countries benefiting from greater climate stability should also help to shoulder a higher burden of the effort and costs of climate change mitigation and adaptation (Puaschunder 2020),13
"Participation of diverse societal actors in the governance of complex, long-term challenges such as the climate crisis can potentially make planning trade-offs and equity considerations clearer in policy design (Cavaleri Gerhardinger et al",13
Figures applied for economic growth scenarios based on average global growth rate 2010 to 2020 of ~ 2.5% and max global growth rate of ~ 4.5% (in 2010) from World Bank (2021),8
"These figures stand in contrast to the 2019 figure of ~ 0.28 (kg per PPP $ of GDP), starkly illustrating the level of decarbonisation required across the global economy by 2030",13
"Under a 2 °C warming scenario, accumulated costs of damages from warming to global aggregate economic growth may be as high as USD 69 trillion by 2100.Footnote 3 This remains as high as USD 54 trillion under a 1.5 °C warming scenario (Hoegh-Guldberg et al",8
"Overall, the global economy could be impacted by an additional 10% loss in GDP by 2050 if commitments in the Paris agreement are not met (Swiss Re Institute 2021)",13
"Kikstra et al.’s (2021) analysis projects deteriorating growth trajectories in Africa, Latin America and South Asia as a result of climate change",13
"Further, Cevik and Jalles (2022) report that vulnerability and resilience to climate change have a significant impact on the cost of government borrowing, all else being equal, further exacerbating risks for countries in the global south",13
More than 130 countries pledged to reverse deforestation by 2030,15
"We argue that the post-COVID 19 re-build represents a once-in-a generation opportunity to markedly shift developed trajectories to more sustainable pathways, to rebalance the domains of sustainability, and in the process, to address longer-term crises including those of climate and biodiversity loss",15
Corporate entities are expected to show a great commitment to the sustainability agenda in response to the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)-12—‘Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns’ by 2030,12
"This is as a result of the detrimental consequences of climate change on the environment and socio-economic conditions [6], as well as the continuous threat it poses to global sustainability moving into the future [7]",13
It is widely acknowledged that society plays an instrumental role in contributing to climate change [8],13
"A study by Seuring and Müller [20] also showed sustainability commitments and integrations in corporate organizations’ operations in Germany, and in general, corporate sustainability reporting, for example, has received extensive studies in the scientific domain concerning the Global North [14, 21]",12
"For instance, in South Africa, Dzomonda and Fatoki [23] have reported that the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) now regulates the reporting of listed firms’ environmental performance as part of regulatory demands for sustainability reporting, and it is ascertained that firms committed to environmental investment are likely to enhance their environmental performance",12
"This justifies this study as it takes into account two consumer goods companies in Ghana (Unilever Ghana Limited and PZ Cussons Ghana Limited) which have intensified communications and discourses on sustainability since the global transition from Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015—an indication that perhaps, they are dedicated to actually implementing and getting results from their sustainability commitments in relation to meeting the SDGs, especially Goal 12—‘Ensure sustainable consumption and production pattern’",12
"[25] respectively focused on determinants of firms’ performances in corporate sustainability, and business sustainability reporting; but identifying and evaluating firms’ commitments remain loosely attended to in the discover-sustainability literature in Ghana as a nation, the SSA region, and Africa in general",12
[35] have however argued that the identification of corporate sustainability commitments aids their evaluation and management which allow corporate entities to effectively plan and efficiently practicalize their actions for sustainability,3
"The two selected companies are also key members of the Ghana Recycling Initiatives by Private Enterprises (GRIPE), an industry-led coalition formed under the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) with a stake in the plastic sector to integrate sustainable waste management solutions, particularly around plastics [73]",12
"The initial output was then merged with the analyzed results of phase 2 by establishing logic, followed by drawing inferences through discussions of the reported issues on sustainability, especially in relation to the SDG 12",12
"Progress from 2015–2018 by Unilever Ghana Limited shows a 31% reduction in waste, as an incremental effort of achieving a 50% waste reduction target by 2020 [75]",12
"[18] revealed de-materialization as one of the ways of reducing waste under Archetype 1 ‘maximize material productivity and energy efficiency’; and this is an example planned to be used by Unilever Ghana Limited amidst others such as increase recycled content, and the use of compostable plastic packaging",7
"Waste reduction strategies that the entity is committed to are the elimination of paper in operational process, elimination of PVCs, and withdrawal from sachet waste [71]",12
"Again, Unilever Ghana Limited can also show commitment to the turning of its waste to resources (Archetype 2) in production, if it intends to make an immense contribution to achieve its 50% target in waste reduction",12
"In line with Archetype 3—a shift to renewable energy, the company aims to become ‘carbon positive in manufacturing’ through 100% use of renewable energy by 2030",7
"The company, since 2018, intends to source all energy renewably, eliminate coal from the energy mix and make surplus energy available to communities to achieve its 100% target of renewable energy use within the remaining period of the SDGs [75]",7
"Operationally, the company has practicalized its commitments in respect to Archetype 5 through the sales of oral products such as Pepsodent and Close-up to improve oral health, as well as educational and sensitization programs on handwashing to reduce diarrheal and respiratory diseases [83, 84]",6
"This is rooted in its sustainable sourcing strategy, guided by the Unilever Sustainable Agriculture Code of 2010 [89] as one of the major tools to assess progress towards the company’s sustainability ambitions in agricultural sourcing as part of its stewardship role in society as defined in Archetype 5",2
"For instance, in line with the sourcing principle, the company published the ‘PZ Palm Oil Promise Setting out our No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation (NDPE)’ policy in 2014 [95] which outlines commitments towards sustainable and responsible sourcing of palm oil which is a major source of raw materials for most of the company’s products",15
"This was in line with the company’s commitment and respect for local and indigenous communities, protection of animal habitats and not contributing to deforestation, so as to play a role in the wellbeing of the society",15
"In furtherance, one of the company’s brands, Carex has been redesigned centred on circular economy and principles of the 3Rs of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, based on the company’s commitments to sustainable consumption under Archetype 6 [97]",12
The redesign of the Carex brand aims to help consumers to reduce their consumption by keeping their packs and pumps for longer and reusing them through refilling and then recycling at the end of each service life [93],12
"This indication is highly possible in Ghana, as there are no strong media reporting, active civil society movement and concrete policy regulations that connect and monitor the commitments and on-the-ground activities of corporate entities, especially, multinational companies like Unilever Ghana Limited and PZ Cussons Ghana Limited including the sustainability information they disclose to the public",12
ining Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is important to control the adverse impacts of climate change and achieve sustainable development,13
"This target is also dependent on target 7, which advocates enhancing access to cheap alternative sustainable energy",7
"Thus, this study assesses the role of transport renewable energy consumption (TRN) in TCO2 by taking into consideration transport fossil fuel consumption (TTF) and road infrastructure (RF) from 1970 to 2019 for the United States (US) with the intention to suggest some suitable mitigation policies",7
"The long-run findings of the Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) test, which counters endogeneity and serial correlation, revealed that the transport renewable energy use mitigates as well as Granger causes TCO2",7
The association between TCO2 and economic growth is similar to a U-shaped curve,8
"The Spectral Causality test revealed the growth hypothesis regarding transport fossil fuel use and economic growth connection, which suggests that policymakers should be cautious while decreasing the usage of transport fossil fuels because it may hamper economic progress",8
These findings call for revisiting growth strategies and increasing green energy utilization in the transport sector to mitigate transport emissions,7
"Every year, there are more freight and people to move than in the preceding years; consequently, an increasing number of vehicles emit hazardous emissions into the environment leading to climate change",13
"Along with the economic growth, the demand for transportation has escalated, which in turn increased passenger and freight transportation (Sharif et al",8
"Hence, passenger and freight transport accounts for approximately 50% of the growth in global travel (Ahmed et al",9
"Considering the increasing contribution of transportation in fossil fuel usage, it is important to move towards green energy usage in the transport sector to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)",7
"Recently, in the COP26 held in Glasgow, world leaders admitted that net zero emissions in the transport sector are a necessity since road transport is responsible for almost 50% of global oil consumption",13
"Moreover, net zero emissions in the transport sector are impossible without an energy transition in the transport sector and the introduction of new vehicle technologies (UN 2021)",13
"Despite the necessity to decarbonize the transport sector through the energy transition, previous literature mostly neglects the long-run impacts of transport green energy utilization on TCO2 and the mutual causal dynamics between TCO2 and transport sector renewable energy usage",7
"Thus, economic growth is subject to deterioration in environmental quality only at a lower level of growth due to the priority for production at the cost of the environment and weak environmental laws (Ali et al",8
"Against this discussion, this work explores the role of transport green energy consumption in TCO2 in the US including transport fossil fuel consumption, trade openness, and road infrastructure following the EKC framework",7
"Transport fossil fuel and renewable energy usage (Trillion Btu) in 2019 Despite the high proportion of fossil energy in transportation, the USA is increasing the green energy in the transport sector over the year to reduce TCO2 (Fig. 2)",7
"2022b); thus, it becomes essential to understand the relationship between transport sector variables and TCO2 as well as the causal dynamics of transport variables with economic growth and TCO2 for effective sustainable transportation policies",8
"Trends of transport renewable energy consumption in the USA Against this background, this paper studies the impacts of transport green energy consumption on transport sector CO2 emissions",7
This is an important contribution because the effects of transport green energy consumption on TCO2 are largely unexplored in the past transportation literature,7
"Most of the previous studies on TCO2 do not focus on SDGs, particularly SDG 7",7
"Previous works mostly suggest that growth in the transport sector is highly correlated with transportation energy consumption, TCO2, and environmental deterioration",7
"The results supported the EKC hypothesis by finding a nonlinear association between CO2 and growth, whereas private vehicles and energy consumption revealed a U-shaped connection with TCO2",7
"(2020) established that fuel prices are not correlated with Indian TCO2; however, industrialization, RF, economic growth, and energy use in the road sector boost TCO2",8
"Interestingly, they disclosed that both urbanization and GDP do not affect transport CO2 emissions, while transport emissions were significantly influenced by energy consumption and FDI",7
"(2019) examined the relationship between economic growth, population density, oil prices, road transport energy, and TCO2 in Pakistan",8
"However, the increases in energy intensity, RF, and population concentration raise TCO2",7
"In Malaysia’s setting, Chandran and Tang's (2013) empirical work found that road transportation causes high energy consumption and CO2 emissions",7
"(2020) indicated that innovation and transportation exacerbate environmental degradation in China, while financial development tends to mitigate emissions",15
(2020a) disclosed that transportation and economic growth escalate CO2 emissions in Malaysia,8
(2019b) found a strong correlation between transport service and economic growth in the US,8
"In another scenario analysis, Das and Parikh (2004) scrutinized the association between CO2 emissions and energy use and economic growth in two different sectors of Mumbai and Delhi transportation",8
"However, many works revealed the environmental benefits of renewable energy in the context of overall emissions and other environmental indicators",7
(2022b) provided that green energy is beneficial to reducing the environmental footprints of the US,7
"Nevertheless, the USA is using green electricity in the transportation sector to a large extent and this study ignored the impact of green energy on TCO2",7
(2019a) established that green energy is useful in mitigating pollutant emissions,7
(2020b) depicted that Turkey’s footprint reduces due to the consumption of green energy,7
(2019) found that green logistics boost economic growth and the quality of the environment,8
"In past literature, studies on the investigation of transport Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) are scant, and renewable energy usage in the transport sector is also overlooked by most scholars",7
"Thus, unlike past works, this study evaluates the impacts of the transport sector’s renewable energy usage along with transport fossil fuel usage, road infrastructure, and trade openness on transport CO2 in the USA using the EKC framework",7
"(2021), growth and environmental pollution exhibit an inverted U-shaped relationship (EKC) because unlike early stages of growth, high levels of growth induce green energy use, effective ecological laws, innovation, and advanced technology that lessen atmospheric pollution (Sharif et al",7
An increase in economic growth upsurges transportation and stimulates transport emissions (Danish et al,8
Road transport infrastructure and transport fossil fuel use degrade the environment (Shahbaz et al,9
"However, reducing the consumption of petroleum products and using more green energy can decrease environmental pollution (Sharif et al",7
"As indicated in Table 3, the series has an integration level of I(1) and only G (economic growth) is stationary at levels",8
This upshot unfolds that economic growth in the context of TCO2 is not heading in a desirable direction,8
"Thus, a rise in growth will not reduce emissions in the transport sector rather TCO2 will intensify in the upcoming years due to the increase in growth and the related utilization of fossil fuels",13
The utilization of green energy in the transport sector is decreasing TCO2,7
"Renewable energy in the transport sector of the US is mainly comprised of green electricity consumption and biomass energy, and according to our analysis, green energy is limiting the TCO2 levels although its impact is lower than the increase in TCO2 associated with the consumption of fossil fuels",7
"However, this notion is supported by many studies that report the environmental benefits of renewable energy and its negative connection with the overall CO2 (Apergis and Payne 2014; Shahbaz et al",7
"This outcome is sensible since green energy helps to reduce the overdependence on conventional sources of energy, such as coal, oil, and gas",7
"Although trade can bring green technology, the massive transportation activities from the trade of goods and services and resulting emissions surpass the possible technique effects of trade in the transport sector",9
We also estimated the causalities of variables with economic growth for better policymaking,8
The causality from G to TRN suggests that increasing growth levels are favorable to renewable energy use in the transport sector,7
"As there is no causality from RF to growth, it implies that the USA can concentrate on developing and extending other suitable transport infrastructures rather than road infrastructure keeping in view their environmental impacts without the fear of a negative influence on economic growth",8
"However, green energy consumption in transport limits TCO2 and boosts environmental quality",7
The growth hypothesis is found in the context of economic growth and TFF,8
"First, the direction of economic growth should be corrected by modifying policies since higher growth has adverse repercussions for environmental quality",8
This will require less fossil fuels without interrupting the economic growth of the US economy,8
"Notably, expansion in growth will facilitate investments in green energy because causality is from green energy to growth",7
"Subsidies for green energy adoption, for instance, tax reliefs and lower prices of electric vehicles can stimulate the reduction of TCO2 and limit emissions from transport",7
"Current transport infrastructure boosts TCO2 in the USA; in this context, rail and subway-based services should be extended which will be helpful to reduce the burden on freight and passenger vehicle that contribute heavily to TCO2",9
"In the vehicle categories, bus-based public transport should be improved further to decrease private vehicle ownership",11
The strategies discussed above will help to combat climate change and attain SDGs 13 and 7,13
This study used a time series analysis on the role of green energy consumption in the transport sector and TCO2 connection by using a relatively small sample consisting of data from 1970 to 2019,7
"The previous studies focused on environmental issues, identifying their root causes, urging prompt action to reduce environmental degradation",15
"The present study adds to the body of knowledge by examining the relationship between CO2 emissions, sustainable development, energy efficiency, energy intensity, and health expenditures for SAARC countries from 2000 to 2020",7
"The results show that energy efficiency and sustainable development have a statistically significant negative effect on health expenditures, vice-versa for CO2 emission",7
"SDG 3 puts health at the core of the agenda, and it is closely tied to more than a dozen other goals, including urban health, fair access to treatments, and noncommunicable diseases",3
"Indeed, the SDGs provide a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enhance public health via an integrated approach to public policy across many sectors (Hák et al",3
"Better education for girls (goal 4.1) improves maternal health (goal 3.1); combating child malnutrition (goal 2.2) has a significant impact on child health (goal 3.2), and ensuring access to safe water (6.1) or combating ambient air pollution (11.6) has a direct effect on several SDG 3 targets",3
"Moreover, environmental degradation is likely to stifle development and progress, raise vulnerability, harm people’s health, and force them back into poverty (Fankhauser and Stern 2016)",15
"In the absence of proper and significant global climate change mitigation actions, distractive and extreme events are expected to increase",13
CO2 emissions do contribute to climate change and global warming,13
"It has a significant impact on human health, causing illnesses ranging from respiratory difficulties to lung cancer",3
One of the most serious consequences of pollution is a health risk,3
(2016) discovered a positive effect of CO2 emissions on health expenditures and economic development,8
"(2016), Siti Khalijah (2015), and Toplicianu and Toplicianu (2014) have also investigated the influence of environmental degradation on health expenses and discovered a substantial association",15
(2011) explored a positive and substantial association between economic growth and health expenses,8
"(2017) discovered a detrimental influence of CO2 emissions and other environmental contaminants on public health; nevertheless, health and medical conditions were documented bearing considerable involvement in growth and health promotion",3
"On average, the infant mortality rate in the region is 27.3 per thousand; in this, Pakistan is leading with 55.7 per thousand, and Sri Lanka has a minimum number of deaths of 6.1 per thousand",3
"Different indicators have been used to measure environmental degradation in prior research, such as NOx, CO2 emissions, and SO2",15
"Moreover, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), CO2 emissions are the leading contributor to global climate change",13
"CO2 emissions can cause health problems and respiratory sickness in people, placing pressure on governments to devote more money to public health initiatives",3
"(2021a, b, c) found that negative GDP per capita growth shocks indicate a significant increase in economic advancement, whereas positive shocks indicate an undesirable impact on economic growth in China",8
"In both shocks, GDP per capita growth revealed a positive impact on economic growth",8
(2021a) show that CO2 emissions from Pakistan’s transportation sector have an impact on the country’s economic development,8
"Positive shocks to such CO2 emissions have been shown to hinder economic development in the long run, whereas negative shocks have been shown to promote growth in the short and long term",8
(2019) have shown that energy utilization has been increasing for many years as economic growth is expanding and found a significantly positive and bidirectional causal association between CO2 emission and energy use,8
The manufacturing industry not only pollutes the air but also causes water and land pollution,9
"Furthermore, an increase in a country’s economic activity creates an increase in energy demand and increases its energy consumption",7
2021) have found a negative relationship between renewable energy consumption and environmental pollution levels and concluded that renewable energy consumption improves environmental quality,7
"(2021a, b) estimated that energy structure raises CO2 emissions, but energy intensity can lower CO2 emissions",7
"According to many studies, energy efficiency may decrease CO2 emissions (Liobikien and Butkus 2017)",7
The conversion of the energy mix to renewable energy is crucial in a worldwide environmental acknowledgment of green energy sources and ecologically friendly surroundings,7
Energy efficiency can be shown by GDP per unit of energy use in the SAARC region,7
"Most countries consume 95% of non-renewable energy, causing environmental damage in the SAARC region",7
"Source: WDI) Trends of energy efficiency in SAARC region ( In light of the above discussion, it is clear that different factors are depleting the environmental quality and there are also some ways to save our environment",7
"With the fact that our environment is degrading at a very fast speed as the countries move towards industrialization, so it is also very important to know the effects on human health in the SAARC region",3
Sustainable development and environmental degradation play a substantial effect in the health sector,15
"Therefore, the main aim of the present study is to explore the relationship between health expenditures, energy efficacy, energy intensity, environmental deterioration, and sustainable development",7
"Data for CO2 emission, energy efficiency, energy intensity, health expenditures, FDI, and GDPc has been extracted from the World Development Indicators (2021) from 2000 to 2020 for the selected participants based on data availability, i.e., Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka",7
"CO2 emissions metric tons per capita have been taken as a proxy for environmental degradation because, in contrast to NOx and SO2 impacts, CO2 emissions pave the way for global-scale issues",15
GDP per unit of energy use has been used for energy efficiency (Akbar et al,7
Gross domestic product has been considered a variable for economic growth in GDP per capita growth annual percentage as many scholars like Ike et al,8
Energy intensity level primary energy has also been taken (Bekun et al,7
"GDP, employment, and FDI as economic and energy intensity as an environmental factor have been taken in the study following Li et al",7
"In Eq. 1, “i” shows the 7 sub-dimensions; SD1 = GDP per capita, SD2 = FDI, SD3 = education, SD4 = employment, SD5 = labor force participation, SD6 = life expectancy, and SD7 = energy intensity",7
"In the given model, λi and δi state the trends and specific country effects, while β1 to β6 are the impact magnitude of CO2 emission, energy intensity, energy efficiency, FDI, GDPc, and sustainable development, respectively",7
"The correlation matrix shows that health expenditures strongly relate to energy efficiency, CO2 emissions, sustainable development, and FDI",7
The relationship between energy intensity and health expenditures is positive and statistically significant,7
"It indicates that due to a 1 unit increase in energy intensity, health expenditures will increase by 25.24% according to DOLS and around 5.12% according to FMOLS, and the results are similar to A",7
"On the other hand, energy efficiency has negative and statistically significant values for DOLS and FMOLS",7
"According to DOLS and FMOLS results, a 1 unit increase in energy efficiency will decrease the health expenditures by 10.18% and 15.55%, respectively",7
"For economic growth, results showed that an increase in GDP per capita leads to a rise in health expenditures by 12.38% according to DOLS and 49.4% according to FMOLS",8
"In the case of energy efficiency and energy intensity, both Granger causes health expenditures, but health expenditures do not have a causal effect on EE and EI",7
"Similarly, the variation of GDP in health expenditures is about 8.33 units in the 5-year horizon and 9.784 units in 10 years because of shocks on economic growth",8
"Energy intensity and energy efficiency described 11.5% and 14% of the variation in health expenditures in 5 years, respectively, and in 10 years, horizon variations are 7.18% and 14.8%, respectively",7
"Environmental degradation had 5.12% and 4.8% of the variation in health expenditures in the coming 5 years and 10 years, respectively",15
"The energy-related variables used in this study, such as energy efficiency and energy intensity, described 0.21 and 2.87 units variation in 5 years and 0.304 and 3.315 units in 10 years in foreign direct investment",7
The discrepancy in health expenditure due to energy intensity is 32 and 97% in 5 and 10 years,7
FDI and energy efficiency show 15.95 and 1.58 units of variation in energy intensity in 5 years and 32.31 and 3.11 units in 10 years,7
"The share of gross domestic product and sustainable development in energy intensity is around 28 and 41% in the 5-year horizon, and in 10 years, it is 0.64 and 5.92 units, respectively",7
"Regarding energy efficiency, health expenditure contributed 69% in 5 years and 48% in 10 years",7
"Correspondingly, the energy intensity and GDP shares are 14.76 and 2.375 units in 5 years and 17.86 and 1.21 units in the 10-year horizon",7
"Similarly, the variation of GDP in sustainable development is about 26% and 47% in the 5-year horizon and ten years because of shocks on economic growth",8
"Energy intensity and energy efficiency described 1 and 0.83 units of variation in SD in 5 years and 10 years horizon variations are 60% and 81%, respectively",7
"Environmental degradation had 1.24 and 0.76 units of variation in sustainable development in the coming 5 years and 10 years, respectively",15
Energy intensity and energy efficiency add 2.81 and 1.99 units of variation in 5 years and 2.83 and 2.04 in 10 years,7
"The impulse response function is also used to examine how the dependent variable health expenditure responds to a one standard deviation shock given to the independent variables foreign direct investment, energy intensity, energy efficiency, CO2 emission, sustainable development, and GDP, respectively",7
"The dependent variable health expenditure is modelled as a function of the independent variables foreign direct investment, energy intensity, energy efficiency, CO2 emission, sustainable development, and GDP (see Fig. 4)",7
The immediate reaction to a one standard deviation shock to sustainable growth will increase health expenditures over the following 10 years,8
"Impulse response functions To determine how much health expenditures respond to energy efficiency, we can see that a one standard deviation shock to energy efficiency initially has no effect on health expenditures but later causes them to rise, indicating that energy efficiency policies must be carefully considered",7
"Energy intensity will initially raise health expenses, but energy intensity will cause health costs to decrease as time progresses",7
(2021) concluded that renewable energy consumption improves environmental quality by reducing CO2 emissions and shown a negative association between energy efficiency and environmental pollution,7
The present study’s results also showed that an increase in energy efficiency negatively impacts health expenditures,7
"In the literature, we found that FDI reveals a direct link between CO2 emission and the impact of GDP growth is also adverse, as it raises the ratio of CO2 emission",8
This means the GDP’s effect on the health sector can be controlled through energy efficiency,7
"As climate change is expected to diminish the ozone layer and increase UV radiation, it can impair the immune system to numerous illnesses and immunizations",13
"The designed policies to achieve SDG 7 targets on energy efficiency, renewable energy, and availability will also impact human health",7
Numerous health problems have a significant effect on economic growth and development,8
"Several critical determinants of health and illness and potential remedies are found in sectors other than health, including the environment, water and sanitation, agriculture, education, employment, and others",6
"To this end, SDG 3 prioritizes health and is inextricably linked to more than a dozen other objectives, including urban health, equitable access to treatments, and no communicable illnesses",3
The SDGs provide a once-in-a-generation chance to improve public health by integrating public policy across many sectors,3
Improved education for girls (goal 4.1) improves maternal health (goal 3.1),3
(2011) explored a positive and substantial association between economic growth and health expenses,8
"In contrast, energy efficiency and sustainable development have a statistically significant negative effect on health expenditures",7
"There is two-way causation between health expenditures, sustainable development, and economic growth",8
"At the same time, there is a one-way causation found between energy efficiency, energy intensity, and CO2 emissions with health expenditures",7
"Energy access, energy efficiency, and renewable energy goals set out in SDG 7 can help improve human health (SDG 3) and speed up the whole sustainable development agenda",7
Our findings show a strong connection between economic growth and health expenditures,8
"Environmental degradation negatively impacts human health, such as heart disease, bronchitis, lugs problems, and different types of flu from which COVID-19 is also evolved",15
Investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy networks can help people in the SAARC region live better lives,7
"Since the long-run impacts are utilized, it can be disputable how environmental degradation in a given year may impact health expenditures in the same year",15
"Food insecurity in the African context is a critical issue; yet total food losses are estimated at 15.9% and 17.2% in quantity and in caloric value, respectively (FAO, 2019)",2
"Currently across the continent, there is insufficient funding and the lack of policy mechanisms to support interdisciplinary analytical approaches and data collection systems to better inform the reduction of food loss",12
"Global attention to food loss and waste (FLW) reduction is reflected in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, particularly in the Sustainable Development Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production",12
SDG target 12.3 specifically seeks to “halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumption levels and reduce food loss along production and supply chains (including postharvest losses) by 2030.” Achieving SDG target 12.3 by 2030 will necessitate accelerating the pace of actions,12
"According to the FAO flagship publication titled The State of Food and Agriculture (FAO, 2019), “Food loss and waste reduction should be seen not only as a goal in its own right but also as a means toward achieving other objectives.” Food loss reduction must accordingly complement increasing crop productivity toward sustainably feeding increasing populations",12
"Based on food loss estimates documented by the African Postharvest Losses Information System (APHLIS) a World Bank study estimated that improved postharvest management to reduce food loss has the potential to avoid food losses equivalent to the food and nutrition requirements of 48 million people in sub-Saharan Africa SSA (World Bank et al., 2011)",12
"Using 2016 data, the FAO Global Food Loss Index (GFLI) – an indicator which focuses on the supply stages of food supply chains, and measures changes in percentage losses between harvest and distribution over time, estimates that globally (FAO, 2018b), 13.8% of food produced is lost from postharvest up to, but not including the retail level (FAO, 2019)",12
"Effectively reducing food loss necessitates policy frameworks at the national, regional and international levels that promote the coordinated action of all stakeholders",12
"To achieve this, a Voluntary Code of Conduct (CoC) for Food Loss and Waste Reduction that presents a set of internationally recognized, nationally adaptable guiding principles and standards for responsible actions, was developed by FAO through an inclusive process (FAO, 2021a)",12
"Subsequently, a number of food loss analysis studies were commissioned and carried out in African countries to contribute toward meeting both SDG target 12.3 and the AUC targets",12
"Due to scarcity of food loss data and challenges with measurements, a methodology was developed by APHLIS to estimate quantitative and nutritional food loss (Hodges et al., 2014)",12
"The key strategy at the continental level, is the African Union Postharvest Loss Management Strategy, launched in 2018, which aims at facilitating and building the capacity of post-harvest actors to reduce post-harvest losses in order to increase incomes and food and nutrition security (AUC, 2018)",2
"The distinction between food loss and food waste is important as the causes and the nature of interventions in each case, are different",12
This paper brings in a concerted focus on food loss,12
"Low-income countries tend to focus on improving food security and nutrition, in addition to the sustainable management of land and water resources",2
"This calls for a focus on reducing food loss early in the supply chain, including at the farm level, and in traditional food supply chains where impacts are the greatest and losses tend to be the highest",12
"A 2017 IFPRI (IFPRI, 2017) study concluded that most food loss takes place at the farm level, but also observed that the causes often relate to factors beyond the farm, associated with poor food value chain integration – inadequate storage, packaging, transport and processing capacity – leading to poor handling of produce at the farm level",12
"This paper discusses and provides evidence to illustrate how food loss analyses conducted in three African countries (Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda) using the FAO Food Loss Analysis Methodology (FAO, 2016), contributed to the identification of critical loss points in the food supply chains, promoted a multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder approach to food loss reduction, and contributed to informing and developing local and regional policies and strategies",12
Food loss and waste are defined as the decrease in quantity or quality of food along the food supply chain,12
"Empirically, food losses occur along the food supply chain from harvest to, but not including, the retail level. Food waste, on the other hand, occurs at the retail and consumption level",12
"The multidisciplinary approach was centered around three main pillars: (i) food loss analysis and the identification of critical loss points, underlying causes of losses, recommendations and feasible solutions; (ii) capacity building of stakeholders at different levels; and (iii) support to the development of food loss reduction policies and strategies and related effective engagement with actors (Fig. 1)",12
"The multi-dimensional approach of the project The FAO Food Loss Analysis (FLA) methodology The FLA methodology applies a case study approach to assess location-specific quantitative and qualitative data (FAO, 2016)",12
"These critical loss points are locations at which food losses have the highest magnitude, the greatest impact on food security and the largest economic impacts (FAO, 2019)",2
"The FLA helps to identify the underlying causes of these losses, feasible solutions and ultimately serves to inform strategy and policy development (FAO, 2016) for food loss reduction",12
"This step is based on a literature review and local expert interviews; (ii) a survey method—that makes use of a questionnaire differentiated for different stakeholders, complemented with additional observations using checklists, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions—to identify and assess the critical loss points and the possible major causes of food losses at different stages of the supply chain; (iii) A load tracking and sampling method to collect quantitative and qualitative data on the commodity “load” as it moves across the food supply chain, to identify the critical loss points and the main underlying causes of losses; (iv) a synthesis stage that engages local stakeholders in identifying and assessing solutions that are technically, economically, socially and environmentally feasible for intervention programs to reduce food losses, and to formulate recommendations for policies and strategies that are conducive to food loss reduction, based on the results of all of the analyses",12
"The methodology takes into consideration the fact that women play a critical role in harvest and postharvest activities and are normally responsible for ensuring household food security, nutrition and health",2
The FLA methodology also integrates consideration for environmental analysis as food losses along the supply chain are expected to have both direct and indirect impacts on the environment and climate change,13
Each team was tasked to train national experts on the use of the FLA methodology and support them in conducting food loss analyses in the selected food supply chains,12
"Knowledge sharing, networking, and the development of linkages among stakeholders was facilitated by the establishment of a web-based Community of Practice on food loss reduction (FAO, 2014), to share and communicate information pertinent to project activities, and to make available the FLA methodology as a global public good",12
"The levels of food losses at critical loss points in each of the three pilot countries are summarized in Table 2.
 Results of the food loss analysis carried out in the selected grain supply chains in the three countries showed indicative levels of quantitative and qualitative losses across all countries",12
Quantitative food loss refers to food that ultimately is not eaten by people,12
"The results of aflatoxin tests carried out in Uganda showed that aflatoxin contamination was a major issue, and one that needs to be fully evaluated and addressed to inform stakeholders on the serious health risk that it poses and the dire need for good postharvest handling practice and drying, in particular, to reduce this risk",3
"In addition to the testing and demonstration of technologies, government employees, universities, and national agricultural research experts were trained to use and assess the recommended solutions to reduce post-harvest loss, based on results of the FLA",2
"At the country level, government institutions, ministerial staff, researchers and practitioners and the private sector were assisted to improve their capacity to engage with multilateral and global research and development programs",9
"The FAO-hosted online Community of Practice (CoP) on food loss reduction (FAO, 2014) disseminated training materials, and the results of project activities to a global audience, while facilitating linkages and information-sharing amongst stakeholders and relevant networks, projects and programmes and making available required materials and tools to support training",12
"In DRC and in Burkina Faso, the limited participation of women in decision-making over postharvest tasks led to the adoption of inappropriate practices, that resulted in work-burden and ultimately to food losses",5
"At the national level, policy-makers, donor agencies, and key stakeholders were fully engaged in the development of policy briefs conducive to food loss reduction and the integration of post-harvest management and food losses in national agricultural policies, as well as in supporting strategy development",12
"The strategy aims to improve food security and nutrition in AU Member States by reducing post-harvest losses in grains, horticulture, livestock and fishery products",2
"FLA results have also inspired the development of a postharvest loss reduction strategy by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) (IGAD & FAO, 2019) – in line with the goals of the Malabo Declaration—which focuses on developing and implementing solutions to reduce food losses at various levels (from policy, to improved market linkages and technologies) and which is compiled on the basis of data obtained through the conduct of food loss analysis case studies",12
"At the global level, the results of the food loss analysis studies have contributed to informing the development of the Global Food Loss Index (FAO, 2018b) to track progress in reducing losses toward meeting SDG 12.3, and in building the capacities of member countries in data collection",12
"The methodology, identified critical loss points along the food supply chain as well as feasible solutions and strategies for food loss reduction",12
"The food loss analysis methodology allowed detailed and context-specific insights into the identification of critical loss points and allowed in-depth, multi-faceted and efficient exploration of the complexities associated with food loss-reduction",12
"The results also highlighted the importance of collecting context-specific data on food losses, thus implying that no one size fits all – that solutions to reduce food loss must be comprehensive, science-based and context-specific",12
"Our findings reported here, highlight the importance of integrating gender-based approaches in food loss reduction activities",12
"Further work would, however, be required to impress upon AU member states, the need to invest in food loss reduction at critical loss points and to generate reliable food loss data which can serve as indicators of progress toward reducing postharvest losses",12
"Alignment of the AU data collection framework with the Global Food Loss Index, is also of critical importance to maximising its use and application",12
"Reducing food loss necessitates the improvement of local food systems, and warrants a thorough understanding of the local conditions and factors that adversely impact food value chains, as well as greater attention to the barriers that limit investment in improved postharvest handling practices, technologies, and policy",12
This paper has highlighted key elements of an integrated approach to address food loss reduction in selected African countries,12
"In terms of field-related, practical recommendations, it is important to underline that emphasis should be given to good sanitation and proper management of environmental conditions (temperature and relative humidity) in the initial crop postharvest period, as these conditions are essential in minimizing food safety risks",2
"Knowledge-sharing, the sharing of data and collaborative actions should be promoted",17
"As a follow up to this project, it is now critical that the AU incorporates and encourages the conduct of food loss analyses and the implementation of solutions to reduce food loss among its member countries so that these countries can generate data and track progress toward achieving the Malabo commitments and the SDG12.3 targets",12
"Using the continental postharvest management strategy, the AU intervention may facilitate the commitment of resources in national budgets to support food loss reduction where public funding is needed",12
Actively engaging the existing commitments to the SDGs would draw stated international commitments together to meet the constitutional commitment to food rights into an overarching food and nutrition security law,2
"SDG 2 aims to end hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture",2
"Actions from and across all these various subsystems have been impeded by stakeholder interests, specialisation, power, political trade-offs, and accountability, among others (Baker et al., 2018; Committee on Food Security, 2018; Peters, 2018)",2
"Despite having a plethora of food system policies (Supplementary File 1), the country is failing to address the food needs of its citizens (Boatemaa et al., 2018; Hendriks, 2018)",2
"However, the country faces a higher burden of malnutrition than countries of comparable income levels (Statistics South Africa, 2016) and is undergoing nutrition and epidemiological transition (Steyn & Mchiza, 2014; Tathiah et al., 2013)",2
"Social, economic, and ecological factors lead to between 23 and 30% of the population having severe inadequate access to food or being at risk of hunger (Ledger, 2016; Statistics South Africa, 2016)",2
"Food security can be understood as the state when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life (FAO, 1996)",2
"In South Africa, food security mainly depends on income rather than agricultural production, even in rural areas (Pereira et al., 2014)",2
"According to the National Agricultural Marketing Council, a nutritious food basket was valued at USD 40Footnote 1 in May 2016 (National Agricultural Marketing Council, 2016)",2
"Poor households spend 8% of their income on vegetables, while rich households spend only 1% (Jansen et al., 2012)",1
"These initiatives are primarily informed by Sect. 27 of the Constitution, which guarantees that 'everyone has the right to access sufficient food and water' (Republic of South Africa 1996)",2
"These policy interventions include supporting land reform, social protection programmes, field crop production, nutrition education, the school nutrition programme, and lowering the price of bread and some fruits and vegetables (Boatemaa et al., 2018)",1
"After years of implementation, these policies have demonstrated some impacts on improving stunting, but not over-nutrition, micronutrient deficiency and environmental security (Dugard, 2015; Hendriks, 2013; Pereira & Drimie, 2016)",2
"This study analysed the government institutions involved in food system policies, the domains covered by policies, and policy coordination",17
"We adopted the approach developed by Harris and colleagues to categorise the policies into seven domains (Agriculture, Environment, Social Protection, Health, Land, Education, and Rural Development) under which the policies could be clustered (Harris et al., 2017)",1
"Policy coordination is defined as information, resources, and responsibility sharing to achieve a specific outcome",17
"Policy coordination was measured with three pieces of evidence 1) how different sectoral policies articulated interdependence with other sectors, 2) whether mechanisms to enable coordination between sectoral policies and programmes were defined, 3) and whether learning and adapting (a ""learning ethos"") from implementation was established to enable policies to adapt to a fast-changing context (Table 1)",17
"The highest proportion of policies was made by the Department of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (DAFF) (34%), followed by the Department of Health (DoH) (15%) and the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) (17%) (Supplementary File 1 contains the list of abbreviations)",15
"Extant policies that followed this until 1994 focused mainly on conservation, land, agricultural production, and national food security",2
Food security was overwhelmingly conceptualised as an agricultural production issue,2
"It was a key priority of Apartheid-era policymakers, including the Plant Improvement Act, the Agricultural Pests Act, and the Agricultural Research Act",2
"Timeline of extant food system-related policies in South Africa from 1947 – 2017 In line with global debates about food security, the post-1994 policies moved beyond food production towards improvement in livelihoods, with an increasing focus on household and individual nutrition security",2
"Underpinned by the South African Constitution, key policies included Zero-Rated Vat on some food items, the Primary School Nutrition Programme (revamped into the National School Nutrition Program), the Integrated Food Security Strategy (IFSS), Integrated Nutrition Program (INP), the Social Assistance Act, and the Social Relief of Distress Grants (Chagunda, 2014; Department of Social Development, 2002; Jansen et al., 2012; Rendall-Mkosi et al., 2013; Republic of South Africa, 1996)",2
"In 2010, the National Planning Commission (NPC) reported that South Africa was slow to progress on improving food security due to a general failure to implement policies and an absence of broad partnerships (Hendriks, 2013)",2
"The IFSS reflected the first broad, interdepartmental initiative on food security (DAFF 2002)",2
"On paper, at least, this reveals a broader multisectoral approach to addressing malnutrition bringing in key actors outside of the state",2
"This echoed the APAP predecessor, the IFSS, which listed the ""Departments of Health; Social Development; Public Works; Water Affairs and Forestry; Transport; Education; Housing; Provincial and Local Government; Land Affairs; Environment and Tourism; Arts, Culture, Science and Technology"" as ""core sectors needed for effective implementation (DAFF, 2002, p",15
"Once again, the broader multisectoral and multi-stakeholder approach to addressing food security was articulated with lead departments and partners",2
"Drimie and McLachlan (2013) state that the NDP ""provides an innovative framework to begin to inform action required across society to deal with pervasive hunger"", and that the NDP ""makes several arguments that resonate with international literature in its appraisal of what it will take to eradicate food insecurity"" (p",2
"The first objective is to ""establish a national multisectoral Food and Nutrition Security Council to oversee alignment of policies, legislation and programmes, and coordination and implementation of programmes and services"" (Ngomane, 2017, p",2
"Further, the 2017 Implementation Plan for the NPFNS, for example, recommended the establishment of (a) an intersectoral National Food and Nutrition Security Council (NFNSC) chaired by the deputy president; (b) Provincial Food and Nutrition Security Councils (PFNSCs) chaired by premiers; (c) district sub-councils on Food and Nutrition Security chaired by mayors; and (d) consultative forums at all levels which are supposed to meet at regular intervals",2
"The only movement was to establish the National Food and Nutrition Security Coordinating Committee, chaired by the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, mainly to steer the implementation of the six strategic objectives as separate entities",2
"The APAP under the agriculture domain placed consensus at its core, stating that ""established forums through which all stakeholders are able to interact, table their concerns, and reach consensus with the state around Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, on what should be addressed both nationally and provincially"" was imperative (DAFF, 2015, p",15
"A striking statement in the IFSS was that ""while the strategy takes a long view and is designed to have an enduring impact on food security, it is viewed as a living approach that will be updated as changes comes in the rural economy, national priorities, and external factors"" (DAFF, 2002, p",2
One of the key strategies of the IFSS was to establish a Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping System,2
"The NPFNS detailed a sixth strategic objective as a monitoring and evaluation system for food and nutrition security, including an integrated risk management system for monitoring related risks",2
"In 2016, the Department of Health conducted the South African Demographic and Health Survey, which contained information on the population's anthropometric measurements and food security indicators (Department of Health, 2019)",2
"The high levels of hunger and malnutrition, including overweight, obesity, and stunting, testify to this (Said-Mohamed et al., 2015; Tathiah et al., 2013)",2
South Africa's food security policy is located within a broader regional and international context,2
"These programs were implemented until the 1970s, when food security was conceptualized as a human right (Hawkes at al., 2012)",2
"The human rights perspective brought changes through the Millennium Development Goals and SDGs, which adopt a holistic approach to addressing the root causes of food insecurity (Fanzo, 2017)",2
"For example, the recognition of nutrition, social protection, and environmental welfare are aligned with the SDGs",1
"This highlighted several key challenges to effective policy coordination, namely: Siloed approaches: while policies acknowledged the need for other sectors to be involved in policy implementation, there was no effort for cross-sectoral participation during policy implementation",17
"Ineffective policy coordination is a global challenge; it has been reported in food systems (Harris, 2019; Lang et al., 2009; Parsons & Hawkes, 2019), developmental aid (Baker et al., 2018; OECD, 2003), and health systems (Assan et al., 2018; Naidoo & Sheiham, 2014)",17
"The award-winning social protection program of Brazil’s social protection program, the Bolsa Familia used an intersectoral and decentralized structure of governance during implementation to enhance the programs impact (Paiva et al., 2019)",1
This would empower the Department of Monitoring and Evaluation to monitor policy coordination across various sectors effectively,17
"Furthermore, the recognition of nutrition, social protection, and environmental welfare are aligned with the SDGs (Hendriks, 2018)",1
"Agricultural production received the most significant emphasis amongst food policies, although more recent formulation has broadened the scope to include livelihoods, social protection, and nutrition",1
"Similarly, actively engaging the existing commitments to the SDGs would help draw these stated international commitments together to meet the constitutional duty to food rights through an overarching food and nutrition security law",2
"Despite the heightened attention to climate change and sustainable development initiatives by governments, civil society groups, and private companies in the USA and worldwide, the international community is confronted with a question that has existed since the 1992 Earth Summit: how can we pay for it all? To better understand this climate change and sustainable development goals (SDGs) funding dilemma, there needs to be greater clarity around four climate change investment and finance-related questions that are frequently absent or inadequately addressed in the academic and policy literature",13
"Firstly, what are or should be the boundaries of climate change investment and finance when the problem of climate change becomes impossible to separate from biodiversity, land use management, and other dilemmas related to the broader SDGs? Secondly, how we should define and what constitutes “adequate” financial resources to address the climate change and SDGs dilemmas on the global level? Thirdly, why is it important to close the gap between climate change adaptation and mitigation funding levels? Finally, what role should the private sector and business actors play in terms of climate change investment and finance issues? In addition to achieving greater clarity around these four issue areas, I argue in this article that three questions are likely to shape the future success (or failure) of the global climate change investment and finance architecture",13
"One, what is likely path of the United Nations as a global climate change/sustainability governance institution? Two, will the emerging Green New Deal model in the USA and in other countries actually materialize? Three, what is the future outlook for “market-fixing” sustainability-driven enterprises? The late Monty Hempel once observed that the presidential governance of Donald Trump has produced “a growing crisis of legitimacy” regarding the future of democracy and sustainability, a situation he described as the “politics of environmental disruptions” (Hempel 2018 p",13
"More than three years later, the global COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with lackluster global and national leadership in many countries, has led to an unimaginable degree of legitimacy crisis in the way climate change and other global environmental issues are governed",13
"As this post-COVID-19 global environmental governance landscape moves to 2022 and beyond, central to the global legitimacy crisis continues to be the way the international community finances climate change and SDG solutions in the USA and worldwide",13
"While mechanisms for additional funding were announced at UNCED, including the launch of a new financing mechanism (Global Environment FacilityFootnote 1), only about $2 billion in “additional” funding were allocated, far short of the $125 billion extra funding (beyond existing development assistance funding levels) that was needed (Davidson 1992)",10
"Although there has always been a gap between what the international community needs and what the international community has in terms of available resources, the gap in climate change investment and finance appears to be widening dramatically",13
"To address the growing concern of an ever-increasing climate change and SDG financial obligations, the G-7 countries, for instance, have taken a number of measures, including the group’s environment ministers’ agreement to phase out new direct government support for “carbon-intensive international fossil fuel energy” in May 2021 and the group’s finance ministers’ agreement to require companies to disclose their climate-related risks in their financial statements in June 2021 (McDonnell 2021)",13
"While these measures will no doubt help climate change and SDG financing indirectly (e.g., by reducing climate-related risks in investment and project financing), Mitchell et al",13
"(2021) estimate that if one were to analyze the progress made since the pledge at the 2009 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference in Copenhagen (and affirmed in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement) by developed countries to mobilize $100 billion in climate finance, only $43 billion or less than half in “new and additional” total development finance (including flows from official aid, multilateral contributions, and less-concessional finance, including export credits) has materialized",13
"Moreover, if one were to assess which developed countries have contributed their “fair share” of the total climate finance contribution since the 2009 UNFCCC Conference, Colenbrander et al",13
"(2021) argue that France and Germany are paying their fair share of climate finance, while the USA contributed just 7% of its fair share in 2017–2018",13
"If one used a more stringent definition of climate finance, Colenbrander et al",13
"Despite greater attention to climate change and sustainable development initiatives by national governments, civil society groups, and private companies, the international community is confronted with a critical question which has existed since the 1992 Earth Summit: how can we pay for it all? To better understand this funding dilemma, there needs to be greater clarity around four climate change investment and finance-related issue areas that are frequently absent or inadequately addressed in the academic and policy literature",13
"Firstly, what are the boundaries of climate change finance and investment when the problem of climate change as environmental science dilemma is almost impossible to separate from biodiversity, land use management, and other global environmental issues? Secondly, what constitutes “enough” or “adequate” financial resources to address the climate change dilemma on the global level? Thirdly, how do we close the gap between climate change adaptation and mitigation funding? Finally, what role should the private sector and business actors play in terms of climate change investment and finance? In addition to achieving greater clarity around these four issue areas, I argue in this article that three questions are likely to shape the future success (or failure) of the global climate change investment and finance architecture",13
"One, what is likely path of the United Nations as a global climate change/sustainability governance institution? Two, will the emerging Green New Deal model in the USA and in other countries actually materialize? Three, what is the future outlook for “market-fixing” sustainability-driven enterprises? According to Steffen et al",13
"Given the growing global public concerns surrounding extreme weather events in recent years, should climate change be regarded as the most important or just one of many important environmental problems in this era of the Anthropocene? Are the environmental and natural disasters the international community has experienced in the past couple of years yet another signal of intensifying climate change or possibly something else? Because climate change has become the most important global challenge confronting the international community, there is a risk that all other environmental issues, whether or not they are directly related to the causes and effects of climate change, like land use management, urbanization, among others, will be viewed myopically as well as exclusively through the lens of global climate change",13
"For instance, if one were to examine the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Reports since the publication of its first report in 2006, all five categories of global environmental risks (“extreme weather events and temperatures; accelerating biodiversity loss; pollution of air, soil and water; failures of climate change mitigation and adaptation; and risks linked to the transition to low carbon”) have risen in terms of their risk profile (Martin 2018)",13
"Not only these risks ranked highly on the likelihood and impact scales, all five environmental risks have direct (e.g., failures of climate change mitigation and adaptation) and/or indirect (e.g., extreme weather events and temperatures) linkages to climate change (Martin 2018)",13
"Similarly, if one were to look at the six transformations that are needed to achieve the SDGs as highlighted (see Table 1) in the Stockholm Resilience Centre report (2018), one can see to what degree the conceptualization of climate change and environment/sustainable development domains has been blurred",13
"In terms of conceptualizing global solutions, it is very difficult to see what meaningful differences exist between the climate change and the broader SDG domain",13
"This issue and question of “how much is enough” represents a good conceptual frame to highlight the past, current, and future gap in terms of climate change investment and finance",13
"More than any other issue, the failure to deliver on the promise of a secure and stable funding can only be described as the “original sin” of global climate change/sustainability governance",13
"This is why climate change investment and finance-related issues serve as such important criteria to assess whether or not the USA and other wealthier OECD countries have lived up to their historical responsibilities under the UNFCCC Principle of Common, But Differentiated Responsibilities (Zhang and Pan 2016)",13
"As part of the climate change finance agreement reached at the 2009 UNFCCC conference in Copenhagen, the international community agreed to establish a climate change finance architecture as well as to provide $30 billion in “fast-start” finance and to mobilize $100 billion long-term finance starting in 2020",13
"A new global climate change financial entity, the Green Climate Fund, was also launched in 2010",13
"While most observers would describe the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference as a “success,” there was no progress in reaching a global consensus in terms of how to share the financial responsibility of providing $100 billion annually between the industrialized and developing countries (Zhang and Pang 2016)",13
"If one were to define the climate change investment and finance flows narrowly as financial resources coming from “multilateral climate funds”Footnote 3 (including the Green Climate Fund, Adaptation Fund, etc.), 152 climate change investment and finance projects valued at over $2 billion were implemented across 70 countries in 2017, with half of the total ($1 billion) coming from the Green Climate Fund (Watson et al",13
"If one were to use a broader measure of climate change investment and finance flows to include a wide range of public, private, and public–private initiatives (e.g., electric utility investing in a green grid project), climate change investment and finance flows would reach $612 billion in 2017 (Buchner et al",13
The question of “how much is enough” gets even more interesting if one were to explore future climate change investment and finance needs and priorities,13
Climate change actions can be categorized into two major types: adaptation or mitigation,13
Adaptation describes “actions that countries will need to take to respond to the impacts of climate change that are already happening … (as well as future actions) … that can reduce our vulnerability to climate change impacts (e.g,13
"While both of these climate change action types are important, it is important to disaggregate climate mitigation investment flows from climate adaptation because the climate mitigation finance is so heavily tilted toward cities and urban regions in developed countries away from rural communities and regions in the developing world, where adaptation finance is the key to address community-based solution, particularly in the context of sub-Saharan African countries",13
"Sub-Saharan Africa as a region does not, ironically, emit enough greenhouse gas emissions to benefit from most climate mitigation projects",13
"Consequently, only 7% of the total climate investment and finance flows went to adaptation activities in 2016, while 93% of the total climate finance flows went to fund climate mitigation activities (Oliver et al",13
"Economically insecure rural communities in the developing world are often the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, but these same communities are also tragically the most in need of financial support to strengthen the local resilience to climate change (Soares et al",13
"While one can understand the economic rationale of funding a solar power project in Denmark over a climate-friendly agricultural project in Niger from a private energy market risk and return perspective, the gap between what is required versus what is available in terms of adaptation finance is projected to worsen",7
"According to the UN Environment Adaptation Finance Gap report (2016), the cost of adapting to climate change may range between $140 and $300 billion per year in 2030 and between $280 and $500 billion per year in 2050, due in part to worsening effects of climate change in the developing world",13
"Even if one agrees with the premise that “changing the way we do business is essential to addressing the challenges of environmental degradation” (Hoffman 2018, p",15
4–5) provides a useful theoretical frame to contextualize the role of the private sector as a climate change investment and finance actor,13
"According to Green (2013), there are two types of private authority operating in the climate change governance arena",13
"4–5), private actors create climate change and other sustainability governance rules without an explicit delegation of authority from states",13
Forest Stewardship Council’s sustainable forestry standards and the U.S,15
"Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system are both examples of such “entrepreneurial state authority.” Conceptualizing private authority in the climate change governance arena as one of private and state authority, as opposed to private versus state authority, is important since any meaningful climate change solutions, without some form of private sector collaboration, are probably impossible",13
"In a rapidly changing transnational climate change governance system, there is a wide range of business, civil society, and hybrid (business/civil society) advocacy networks (Macleod and Park 2011) that collaborate on some issues and competing on other issues while operating in the same climate change market institutional space",13
The cost of implementing the Paris Climate Agreement is likely to cost over $12 trillion between 2015 and 2030 and an annual gap of $2.5 trillion in financing SDGs over the same time period (United Nations 2014) and it is unclear how these climate change and SDGs funding goals can be achieved without effective cross-sector collaboration,13
"Virtually, all of the innovative climate change/SDGs financing mechanisms currently under consideration involve higher and more integrated models of cross-sector collaboration, most notably with the global financial sector",13
"At a 2018 UNFCCC-sponsored climate change conference held in Bangkok, Thailand, one issue and question stood central to the policy discussion at the conference: how should Article 9.5 of the UN climate change convention (which states that developed country parties [e.g",13
"The failure to meet the promise of mobilizing an annual disbursement of $100 billion by the industrialized countries at the 2009 UNFCCC conference, coupled with funding only one-third of the $10 billion Green Climate Fund (GCF) and former U.S",13
"Fueling the feeling of despair is the cumulative impact of intensifying drought and other climate change-related extreme weather patterns in northern Kenya, Somalia, and other countries/regions in the Horn of Africa",13
"Over the long term, three questions are likely to shape the future success (or failure) of the global climate change investment and finance architecture",13
"First (and continuing a bit more on the theme of despair), will the United Nations as a global climate change/sustainability governance body, continue to follow the post-1992 UNCED model of process (e.g., organizing meetings, deliberating on resolutions) taking precedence over results (e.g., achieving specific goals and measures)?Footnote 6 Second, what impact will the emerging Green New Deal in the USA and in other countries accelerate new climate change finance and investments? Third, what is the future outlook for new models of “market-fixing” sustainability-driven enterprises? When representatives of governments, civil society, and private companies converged in Brazil for the 1992 UNCED conference, the mood of the international community was cautiously optimistic",13
"Should the industrialized countries pay for the costs of additional measures undertaken by developing countries to tackle global environmental problems? This notion of “additionality,” that is financial commitments beyond existing development assistance, “became a rallying cry for the developing countries in the negotiations on Agenda 21 prior to the Earth Summit, and something that has been raised many times since: a desire for a sustainable future is rarely followed up with adequate institutional support and economic resources” (Park et al",10
"To bridge the annual gap of $2.5 trillion in financing sustainable development goals between 2015 and 2030 (UN 2014) in the USA and worldwide, there is a critical need to go beyond the governmental sector in terms of a long-term climate change investment and finance solution",13
"The transition to a low carbon economic future in the USA and worldwide will require a sustained long-term strategy of collaboration with the private sector, particularly with institutional financial investors, in order to tap into the $200 trillion in private capital markets in the USA and worldwide (Della Croce and Hindle 2019)",8
"Case in point: approved as a $400 million general obligation bond in November 2017, the Miami Forever Bond,Footnote 9 for instance, used the municipal bond market to raise $400 million to fund a wide range of urban climate change resilience projects in Miami and nearby communities in Florida",13
"One key issue that is likely to shape the future success (or failure) of the global climate change investment and finance architecture is the future outlook for new climate-resilient business enterprises, whose models are built on an integrated goal of accelerating low carbon pathways, adaptation finance, and climate justice toward long-term “market transformation”Footnote 10 impact in the developing world",13
"With climate change-related financial and economic losses set to reach $1.5 trillion between 2003 and 2013 (Hallmeyer and Tonkonogy 2018), the private financial market (e.g., in the insurance sector) for investors and companies to measure and manage their risks from climate change is likely to remain strong in the coming decades",13
The second trend stems from the growing recognition that climate justice needs to play a greater role in any meaningful climate change-driven market transformation process,13
"While the role of business in global climate change governance is growing in the academic literature (see Green 2013 and Paterson 2018), and extensively in the policy literature (e.g., World Economic Forum, Business for Social Responsibility, among others), what has been traditionally been missing in both the academic and the policy research literature is the explicit focus on climate change justice and the role it can and needs to play at the nexus of climate change governance and investment/finance (Gifford and Knudson 2020)",13
"Monty Hempel (2014) once observed that “knowing that change is needed is clearly not enough to motivate it in most human behavior.” Rather, “individuals must have a sense of urgency and personal control over prospective outcomes and goal achievement before they will commit to meaningful action or new behaviors.” Whether the election of President Joseph Biden and the appointment of John Kerry as the new climate change special envoy in November 2020 creates that “sense of urgency” to mobilize greater climate change investment and finance support for the developing world remains to be seen",13
Re-entering the Paris Climate Change Agreement process and other multilateral forums is one thing; making long-term commitments to climate change investment and finance in an extremely divided Washington D.C,13
"What Hempel (2018) refers to as the “politics of environmental disruption” is likely to continue in 2021 and beyond, which raises both short-term and long-term questions regarding the trajectory of global climate change and sustainability as a governing principle in the Biden and Harris administration.",13
"It is therefore important that this theme is taken into account as part of universities´ teaching and research programs.MethodsA three-tiered approach was used, consisting of a bibliometric analysis, an online survey and a set of case studies, which allow a profile to be built, as to how a sample of universities from 45 countries handle climate change as part of their teaching programs.ResultsThis paper reports on a study which aimed at identifying the extent to which matters related to climate change are addressed within the teaching and research practices at universities, with a focus on the training needs of teaching staff",13
"This is complemented by a set of 12 case studies from universities round the world, illustrating current trends on how universities handle climate change",13
"Apart from reporting on the outcomes of the study, the paper highlights what some universities are doing to handle climate issues, and discusses the implications of the research.ConclusionsThe paper lists some items via which universities may better educate and train their students on how to handle the many challenges posed by climate change",13
Universities globally are increasingly recognizing their responsibility to prepare students and society to actively contribute to the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change,13
"Second, universities are developing curricula and pedagogical approaches to educate students (and by extension society) about the imperatives of carbon neutrality and climate change mitigation and adaptation",13
"As such, HE providers have a vital role to play in educating future environmental auditors, community organizers, corporate managers, engineers, practitioners, technical professionals, policymakers and, most significantly, the community about actions that can be taken to mitigate and adapt to climate change, while concurrently propagating social and governance measures",13
"Over time the cumulative build-up of societal awareness progressively permeates and influences the practices of the corporate sector, community stakeholders and local and national governments on how to better manage climate change mitigation and adaptation in their diverse spheres of influence, including through advocacy, daily behaviors and professional careers [13, 21, 57]",13
"[4] While universities are thus recognizing their responsibility to progressively prioritize carbon neutrality and develop climate change modules in educational content, efforts can sometimes be stymied by organizational inertia, operational complexity and a plethora of regulatory requirements that impinge on governance in the higher education sector [39, 57]",13
"They also manifest as renewable energy, recyclable resources, campus greening, embodied pedagogies, and nature-immersive outdoor education, among others [8, 35, 47, 70]",7
"This would measurably bridge the gap between generating direct action in the area of carbon neutral education and the creation and dissemination of critical knowledge about climate change that has the potential to proliferate across multiple other sectors [11, 13]",13
"Among them, SDG 13—climate action—is used",13
"This measures whether universities perform research on climate change, how they use low-carbon energy, and if they have education programs aimed at the achievement of carbon neutrality",13
Climate change and climate variability are principal issues confronting the global community [16],13
This can be facilitated by enhancing opportunities for quality education on sustainable development [15],4
"This also underscores the need to integrate sustainable development themes, such as climate change within teaching and learning (UNESCO 2020)",13
"Efforts are needed from universities around the world to develop advanced curriculum, programs, capacity building and interdisciplinary collaboration in order to support a deeper learning on climate change [12, 48]",13
"The Decade is a rallying cry for the entire global community to catalyze actions in addressing urgent global challenges—from poverty and gender to climate change, and inequalities",13
"In this regard, education and training will play a critical role",4
"The paper aims to identify how matters related to climate change are tackled at universities both in teaching and research, with a focus on the training needs of teaching staff",13
"It is developed in three directions: a bibliometric analysis, an online worldwide survey aimed at ascertaining the degree of involvement from universities to offer training provisions on the topic and a set of 12 case studies from universities round the world, illustrating current trends on how they handle climate change in teaching and research",13
"These methods are mutually complementary for 3 main reasons: they provide an overview of the recent and current literature and their focus (bibliometric analysis); they enable the identification of trends among academic staff (the survey), and they cater for the provisions of real life examples illustrating how climate change is being implemented in university activities (case studies)",13
"To collect relevant information from the WoS, a broad-based search string was developed that includes terms related to climate change, universities, and education/training: TS = ((“climat* change”) and (“education” or “training” or “curricula” or “curriculum”) AND (“universit*” OR “higher education institut*”))",13
"In line with the study objectives, the criterion for inclusion in the analysis was addressing issues related to the integration of climate change in the teaching and research practices at universities",13
"Output of the term co-occurrence analysis In order to establish the degree of involvement from universities in reducing their own carbon footprint and to fill in the research gap on how universities around the world handle climate change as part of their teaching programs, a questionnaire survey was undertaken",13
"The main target group of the questionnaire was the university staff involved in teaching and/or research at the university, who already integrated climate change-related aspects in a course at the university",13
"The first section aimed to gather information regarding the background of the participants: gender, age, university and the role at the university, the scientific domain and if the respondent is teaching or not climate change issues at the university",13
"The second section of the survey, being devoted to the staff members in a university who integrated climate change-related aspects in a course, aimed to gather information on the perceived level of training of the teacher: climate change topics of the course, for which the teacher needs more training, the level of expertise to teach the course, how this was obtained and which sources of information are used to develop the content of the course",13
"The third section investigated the challenges and drivers of implementing climate change-related initiatives at the university level, aiming to assess the drivers and their potential",13
"In order to reveal how climate change is implemented by universities, mainly through teaching and research, a literature review has been performed",13
"In parallel with covering climate change in bachelors/masters/PhD curriculum, they cover this topic through the following approaches: (i) by delivering different training events; (ii) by means of various public initiatives including workshops and conferences; (iii) by conducting specific research activities",13
"These results (Fig. 2) show that, in addition to the search terms (i.e., climate change, education, universities, HE, and curriculum), terms such as adaptation, perceptions, science, management, policy, and several terms related to mitigation have received more attention",13
"These clusters show the major thematic focus of the existing literature and are, in descending order of importance, focused on climate change adaptation, sustainability and climate change mitigation, institutional aspects, challenges and barriers, and curriculum reform",13
In the largest cluster (in red) terms related to climate change adaptation are dominant,13
This indicates the recognition of the significance of integrating knowledge about climate change adaptation in university education,13
"In fact, communicating the potential risks posed by climate change is critical and has been well recognized in the literature [42]",13
The second largest cluster (in green) is dominated by terms related to sustainability and climate change mitigation,13
"Considering the central position of mitigation in climate change efforts and policies, and since the energy and water sectors are major contributors to climate change, there has been increasing attention to issues related to their efficient management [28]",13
Curriculum reform is essential since it may not be easy to integrate topics related to climate change into curricula that are traditionally developed along disciplinary lines [20],13
"Regarding the university profile and institutional involvement in external climate change projects, research was the most important type of involvement observed (76.7%)",13
"When asked if they teach climate change-related aspects in a course at the university, 77.5% responded positively (Additional file 2: Appendix S2 presents the list of courses taught as indicated by the sample)",13
"On the other hand, only 58.1% of the respondents indicated that climate change-related aspects are included in the course guidelines",13
Table 3 presents a comparison between aspects of climate change mostly addressed by the courses taught by the sample and their training needs,13
"As expected, the aspects of climate change mitigation and adaptation, and social and environmental impacts were addressed mainly by the courses, while the lowest rates were observed for ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) reporting, climate diplomacy and climate leadership",13
"In terms of more training needed by the educators, around one third of the sample indicated topics as projections of future climate change, the economics of climate change and climate governance",13
The least indicated topics include climate change mitigation and SDG 13,13
"Other aspects listed by the sample in the additional open option as already being included in teaching cover a wide range of perspectives and topics: carbon trading, carbon footprinting, greenhouse gas inventorying, climate change impacts, climate and gender, climate change communication, climate finance, climate justice, leadership in sustainability, among others",13
"In terms of the areas where the respondents need further training, the listed topics include: communication strategy, health impacts, history of climate change, how to educate in response to climate change, justice and equity impacts of climate change, keep on track with various information bases, public engagement, countering climate change denialism",13
Figure 4 presents the responses for two of the survey questions: “Do you feel prepared to teach climate change-related concepts?” and “Have you received or pursued training on matters related to climate change?”,13
"Similarly, around 53% of the respondents said they already received or pursued training on climate change",13
Sample perceived preparation to teach climate change-related concepts (left) and received/pursued training on climate change (right) (in percentage of responses) The questionnaire also focused on the primary sources the academic staff rely on to develop the content of courses,13
"Scientific articles were the most indicated option (85.5%), followed by Internet-based resources (69.8%), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment reports (68.2%), own research (62.0%) and reports elaborated by other global organizations (58.1%)",13
"Almost 10% of the respondents used the additional option to include other sources, such as national assessments of climate change projections and impacts, findings from other project research, the course textbook, workshops, conferences, and webinars",13
"In courses on climate change, the sample supported the need for placing specific emphasis on problem-based learning (48.1%), behavior change (37.2%), nature-based learning (36.4%), experiential learning (36.4%), cognitive learning (30.2%), and Socio-emotional aspects (30.2%)",13
"When focusing on climate change and several aspects in the training process involving the universities, the academic staff generally showed a high level of agreement with the presented statements (Table 5)",13
"On the other side, respondents have a neutral opinion with the statements referring that the university has properly embedded climate change into teaching and learning activities and offers nature-based/nature-immersive courses to cultivate care for the environment (Table 5, scores around 3)",13
"Finally, the sample of respondents does not agree whether there is lot of skepticism related to climate change among students, as this topic had the lowest agreement mean (Table 5, scores below 3)",13
"While the respondents in both clusters scored almost equally for the first two statements (climate change is a real concern for the country and that the university should offer space for CC, p > 0.05), the first group of “climate active universities” showed a higher agreement (scores around 4) with the statements referring to the awareness in terms of climate-related initiatives (research units, programs) undertaken by the university, but also with the statements that there is a growing demand for experts and professionals in climate change, thus climate change is likely to increase in the future and to the fact that students are keen to receive training on CC",13
Both clusters express the same level of disagreement associated with skepticism related to climate change among students (p > 0.05) and the same level of agreement that climate change literacy enables better career pathways (p > 0.05),13
"Lack of funding for climate-related research was the most indicated challenge (by roughly 63% of the sample—of this number, two-thirds from developing countries)",13
"Lack of staff expertise had also a high response (over 50%), supporting the need for further climate change training",13
"Other challenges mentioned by the sample (11%) in the open space consist of lack of internal resources for scientific development, lack of leadership from highest campus officials, lack of progression between climate-related courses, lack of diversity in faculty expertise, lack of targeted on-job short to medium term trainings on climate change and related issues, lack of internship opportunities for students to develop their practical skills on climate change solutions, lack of will to pursue CCE against all odds, and religious or political perspectives",13
"Challenges (above) and Drivers (below) to implementing CCE at the respondents ‘ universities (in percentage of responses) As for drivers, additional resources dedicated to CCE (selected by 71.3% of the sample) were perceived as fundamental for improvements in this area, followed by national guidelines to address climate change in the curricula (63.6%) and the increased attractiveness to students (62.8%)",13
"Other drivers were indicated by less than 7% of the respondents, and include being relevant in global discourse on climate issues, competition among universities in terms of courses offered to their graduates, increased job opportunities directly arising from climate change concerns in businesses and communities, organized faculty support, personal motivation, potential national and international collaborations with research institutions and academic institutes, as well as any non-governmental organizations, and the existence of local (e.g., state) guidelines to address climate change in the curricula",13
"By coding the responses against the major themes, several aspects were identified as having the highest frequency (proportionally represented in Fig. 6), being the significant needs in terms of climate change at universities",13
"The main one identified by the respondents is related to the courses, either by introducing climate change aspects in the existing courses, or designing new interdisciplinary courses",13
"Another main need was the curriculum in terms of introducing a flexible and interdisciplinary curriculum, embedding deeply the climate change aspects and allocating more time for them, following by the need to increase staff training and capacity",13
"With a lower frequency, research in terms of funding projects related to climate change was mentioned by the respondents, but also the need to enhance the partnership, collaboration and exchange between the universities, to design specialized university programs, and to organize various events as workshops, seminars and conferences. Some respondents also mentioned community outreach activities, the involvement of students and creating special departments on climate change as being relevant actions to address the climate change needs at universities",13
The major themes for training needs in terms of CCE at universities identified by the participants in the survey These identified needs are also the main instruments used by the 12 selected universities analyzed in the paper to develop climate change actions,13
This is in line with the strong need perceived by the respondents of the survey regarding staff training and increasing the capacity of staff to teach the climate change aspects along various courses,13
"Also, universities within their different research projects and activities produce graduate theses (mostly PhDs) that have climate change in focus",13
"As a result of these research activities, universities also organize conferences/workshops and have a growing publication record dedicated to climate change",13
"In parallel with teaching and research activities, some universities observe climate change from a wider perspective, providing voluntary training for their staff and students, life-learning and other types of courses to the public, or organizing public activities raising awareness to climate change challenges",13
One of the goals at KTH Royal Institute of Technology [31] is that all educational programs at all levels should integrated climate action in their curricula so that students after graduation can contribute to achievement of a climate neutral society,13
"At the University of Campinas, there are courses in undergraduate and graduate programs focusing on climate change issues (Geographic Climatology; Climate changes; Global Ecology and Climate Change)",13
"Among the topics addressed in these courses, it can be mentioned: effects of climate change on plants, analysis of climate changes, and to analyze at global scale the planet’s system, predicting and understanding environmental changes [63]",13
"At the University, there are 100 documents presented in the online academic repository focusing on climate change",13
Studies on climate change are an important focus of CEPAGRI [9],13
"In the University of British Columbia (Canada) repository, 85 thesis and dissertations are focused on climate change issues, with 36 PhD thesis and 49 master dissertations",13
"Starting from 2012, the University of Latvia [65] has been engaged on climate change and sustainable development which has been advanced since 2014 by the development of a study course ""Climate change and sustainable development"" offered as elective with over 500 students having these lectures",13
"Since 2018 another course is delivered, entitled ""Management of Climate Change""",13
"At this institution, over 20 BSC, 8 MSc and one PhD theses have analyzed climate change",13
"Impact of such an initiative has been observed by inviting academics to participate in drafting ""Climate Law"" (in progress) and National climate policy",13
"Climate change is being addressed at the University Fernando Pessoa [59] within its PhD program in Earth Sciences, comprising the research branches, Oil Systems and Energy Problems, and Geo-risks, Gas Emissions and Geological Sequestration of CO2, through a specialized Isotherm Laboratory (measuring the capacity of coal as non-conventional reservoir to safety store CO2) to study CO2 sequestration in coal, aiming to contribute to Climate Change minimization",13
"Until now, four PhD theses associated with climate change have been defended, and 12 peer-reviewed publications",13
"Similar can be seen at University of Colombo [64] with climate change courses for students at various levels of studies (Climate Change, Adapting businesses for climate change) and a postgraduate program on 'Climate Change and Environmental Management'",13
This University was the hosting partner of the International Climate Change Conference 2017 and 2018,13
"Over 500 students have been included in various climate change lectures, with 1 PhD and 13 MSc/BSc (Honors) theses defended, and 12 articles related to climate change published in peer-reviewed journals within the last 5 years",13
"Within the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee [27], specific research has targeted climate vulnerability based on land use, soil and climate, temperature and rainfall with urban civic labs incorporating relevant SDGs",13
Outcome comprises over 20 theses from different levels of studies covering climate change with several publications,13
"Within its curriculum, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences covers climate change as a topic included in Bachelors and Masters degree programs [22]",13
"Within the scientific community, research group at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences is editing the world's leading peer-reviewed book series on climate change (the 'Climate Change Management' series) published by Springer which has produced various volumes such as 'Water, Energy and Food Nexus in the Context of Strategies for Climate Change Mitigation', 'Climate Change and the Role of Education or Climate Change, Hazards and Adaptation Options', among others",13
Hamburg University of Applied Sciences is an example of successful delivering training on climate change for over 3.000 academic staff [17],13
"Ranked in the first position of the [51] Ranking regarding universities activities related to climate action (SDG 13) [52], the University of British Columbia (Canada) established a plan to address climate change through actions within their campuses (Climate Action Plan 2030-CAP 2030)",13
"At University of Colombo [64], awareness programs on climate change have also been conducted for school children, employees at certain institutions, and public (i.e., through public lectures)",13
"At campus, awareness is raised by reducing carbon footprint over time, and better waste management",12
"As a result of an action initiated by administration and students at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) associated with the impact of fossil fuels on climate change [10], this institution is divesting by the endowment from companies that are developing fossil fuel resources, spreading various types of climate change disinformation and performing anti-climate lobbying by promoting their divestment and organizing Fossil Fuel divestment days [37]",13
"University of Toronto within its School of Continuing studies (part of a life-learning program) is another example since they launched the course 'Climate Change Policy and Practice' associated with learning the methodology for calculating GHG emissions, GHG reporting and risk management [66]",13
Its main goal is to cope and adapt capacities of rural communities to climate change by improving scientific understanding and developing technologies and innovations to respond to challenges induced by climate change,13
"As a scientific center it has an annual budget to conduct climate change research and since its inception, the budget has been increasing every year",13
"Due to the climate change catastrophes (droughts and floods) experienced in South Africa with more effects being felt within the municipality since 2019, the Centre has performed research collaborations from external local and international funders to tackle climate change issues facing the province",13
"The Centre was selected to conduct climate change awareness workshops for the 2019 National Science Week by the South African Agency for Science and Technology Advancement (SAASTA), entitled 'Facing the Harsh Realities of Climate Change'",13
"The University of Colombo [64] applied for the Green Metric award in 2020, and was ranked fourth among the other universities in the country, however, the University of Colombo earned the highest marks for the Energy and Climate Change category",13
"Currently, several climate change-related research projects involving local and international collaborators are underway",13
"This paper has presented an overview of the extent to which matters related to climate change are tackled within the teaching and research practices at universities, with a focus on the training needs",13
"There is a perceived need for this climate change-related research, since climate change is a major global problem, and knowledge about it is becoming increasingly important for future professionals, who need to be made familiar with strategies for its mitigation and adaptation as part of their university studies",13
"Through a mixed research strategy, which entailed a bibliometric research, a worldwide online survey and case studies, the study shed some light on various aspects related to teaching and further needs on climate change within university programs",13
"Also, as highlighted in the survey results, respondents in general reported that in their countries climate change is perceived as a matter of genuine concern, acknowledging that there is a growing demand for professionals with training in this area",13
"It is a matter of fact that not all universities are fully prepared for addressing climate change in their curricula and further, thus improvements are needed",13
"One of the areas to be improved is in respect of curriculum innovations, i.e., making provisions to include climate change in teaching programs, and in various courses across the spectrum of academic disciplines",13
"Firstly, it reiterates the growing emphasis universities give to climate change, as documented in the literature",13
"Thirdly, it showcases examples of successful inclusion of matters related to climate change in university programs, and how some of the challenges may be overcome",13
"Based on the lessons learned, some of the actions universities may adopt to better take into account matters related to climate change are: A cross-cutting emphasis to climate change, across courses and disciplines; Identification of specific strengths and weaknesses in the curriculum for further improvement; Greater provisions for training programs for academic staff, so as to encourage them for a greater engagement in this area; Build a bridge between climate change teaching and research to maximize the synergies",13
"As seen in the results and discussion section, there are many on-going initiatives in respect of climate change teaching, which show it is perfectly feasible to engage in them",13
"Teaching initiatives, combined with climate change research programmes, can make sure that universities are able to make their contribution towards addressing a problem, which is global in nature but whose impacts are mostly felt at the local level.",13
"Therefore, this study examines the relationship between MF, economic growth, and CO2 emissions for EURO-26 countries",8
"However, the positive relationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions is statistically insignificant",8
One of the primary issues that the entire globe is closely watching is the fact of climate change,13
"At the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) held in Glasgow in 2021, countries signed an agreement that includes a series of measures to be taken against climate change",13
"The agreement includes important decisions such as a commitment to phase out coal, a regular review of emission reduction plans, and more financial support to developing countries (United Nations 2021a)",17
"The Paris Agreement, signed in 2015, is the strongest agreement among the international climate change negotiations",13
"Following the Paris Agreement, long-term climate targets were set and countries’ emission reduction has been monitored through the INDC (intended nationally determined contribution) mechanism",13
Implementing the national net zero policies set in the Paris Agreement will play a critical role in limiting global warming to 1.5 °C (Runsen et al,13
It is expected that global temperatures will become stable if these targets are met (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2021; Lee et al,13
"However, for the 1.5 °C target to be achieved, CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) must fall to zero by 2050 and 2070 (Climate Action Tracker 2021)",13
Reducing MF and energy efficiency will significantly contribute to sustainable development,7
"According to the UNEP (2020), although energy efficiency and low carbon resources increase in countries with ongoing development processes, energy demand and CO2 emissions have increased",7
The lack of a firm plan for material efficiency and cyclical economics limits the fight against climate change (Pauliuk et al,13
Developed countries can maintain economic growth and increase environmental quality thanks to technological capacity and human capital,8
Many studies have found that developed countries have decoupled economic growth from emissions (Raupach et al,8
"(2015) disagree that while economic growth increases in some developed countries, the use of natural resources decreases",8
"(2013), on the other hand, found that developed countries are more successful than developing countries in decoupling and this is attributed to the differences in their economic development levels",8
The motivation of this study is to investigate whether the success of EURO-26 countries in emission reduction and energy efficiency is also valid for MF,7
"Therefore, the circular economy in Europe is still in its developmental stage",12
"However, the MF comprises energy consumption caused by the material from production to consumption which is more realistic regarding environmental policies (Razzaq et al",7
(iv) The reason why we examine the EURO-26 countries is that it is recently claimed that there is a decoupling between economic growth and environmental pollution in many European countries,8
"Therefore, we aim to analyze whether there is a decoupling between MF and economic growth",8
Climate change and environmental problems continue to pose problems for current and future generations,13
"While countries are struggling with these problems, they are also trying to increase their welfare by maintaining economic growth",8
"Therefore, it leads to a decrease in environmental quality while economic growth rises",8
"However, it has recently been argued that European countries are achieving sustainable economic growth and diverging from emissions",8
"The section includes studies examining the relationship between material use, emissions, and economic growth",8
"First of all, most of the studies examining the environment-economic growth interaction investigate the validity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis (Sharif et al",8
The results determined that GDP growth cannot be decoupled with material and energy use in the world,8
"In parallel with this, Hickel and Kallis (2020) stated that there is no decoupling between economic growth and resource use on a global scale in the ongoing economic growth process",8
They suggest to policymakers that green growth is probably a misguided goal and alternative strategies should be considered,8
"(2013) examined the relationship between environmental indicators and economic growth in the USA, Japan, China, and Russia",8
"According to the results, decoupling is higher in the USA and Japan since these countries are at different levels in terms of economic development",8
"Finally, if global efforts on resource efficiency increase, they assert that decarbonization and dematerialization can be achieved without harming the economy",13
"According to Vavrek and Chovancova (2016), there is a strong decoupling of economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions in V4 countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland)",8
(2018) found a relative decoupling between economic growth and material density for the Philippines,8
"Accordingly, a decoupling occurred in China during the 1978–2010 period through material energy efficiency",7
Brizga (2019) examined Latvia; results reveal that resource extraction and consumption are increasing steadily and are not decoupled from economic growth since material productivity is low,8
"This study investigates the relationship between MF, economic growth, and CO2 emissions for EURO-26 countries by panel data method",8
"In the empirical model, CO2 emissions represent environmental degradation",15
"In addition, the GDP represents economic growth",8
"In other words, MF increases environmental degradation",15
"However, the variable of economic growth is positive but statistically insignificant",8
Energy consumption is one of the most critical reasons why MF increases CO2 emissions,7
Many studies determined that energy consumption and energy intensity reduce environmental quality by increasing CO2 emissions (Nejat et al,7
(2015) found that MF diverged less than economic growth and claimed that income growth does not increase resource efficiency,8
"(2013)’s thesis that developed countries are more advantageous in decarbonization, they do not support Wang (2013)’s view that there is not much difference between developed and developing countries in terms of MF",13
Consumption-based mitigation policies are essential tools to reduce environmental degradation,15
"However, achieving a decoupling between economic growth and MF will become more difficult and complex if countries do not formulate specific MF strategies immediately",8
"Many instruments tackle climate change, but this study is aimed at providing empirical evidence for integrating material productivity into climate policies",13
This study examines the relationship between MF and economic growth and CO2 emissions over 2008–2019 for EURO-26,8
The European Region has achieved significant success in reducing emissions in the fight against climate change,13
"However, achieving a decoupling between MF and economic growth is a real success in environmental sustainability",8
"As MF increases, the region’s CO2 emissions that cause climate change also increase",13
"In addition, technological developments in the field of renewable energy may also contribute to the reduction of emissions and cause a decrease in MF",7
Net zero targets are far from achieving the greenhouse gas emission transition required to keep the earth’s temperature at 1.5 °C and below set in the Paris Agreement (Hans et al,13
Many studies suggest that this emission reduction comes from reforestation (Griscom et al,15
"In this context, policies that focus on product supply chains can offer significant opportunities to reduce emissions",13
"Otherwise, the commercial losses might cause additional environmental degradation",15
There is significant potential to reduce emissions in manufacturing materials used in buildings and vehicles (Hertwich et al,13
"For example, the carbon tax for green building projects will save energy and reduce the building sector’s carbon footprint (Tsai et al",12
"In addition, the carbon tax can promote low-carbon material substitution (Hertwich et al",12
"Using independent variables such as urbanization, financial growth, and energy consumption for empirical analysis could strengthen the MF model",7
"The objective of this study is to contribute to the existing debate of green economic growth by empirically investigating the role of cleaner energy production, green innovation, and green trade in green economic growth in the context of South Asian countries",8
"Thus, the global discussion for sustained economic growth has been started",8
"Thus, a new paradigm of growth, known as “green economic growth” has been introduced",8
2018) which can be solved with the implementation of green economic growth policies,8
"Therefore, it is believed that green economic growth is critical for the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs)",8
"Researchers identify the presence of green economic growth in history, but the disclosure of green economic growth (as another term for sustainable development) is still limited to the theoretical perspectives",8
"Hence, there is a need for the implementation of green economic growth policies to overcome environmental disputes and for the achievement of SDGs",8
"The present study proposes that Cleaner energy production, Green Innovation, and Green Trade are the important determinants of green economic growth as they significantly contribute to economic progress and environmental sustainability",8
"Most importantly, substituting the consumption of fossil fuel with renewable energy can significantly reduce the negative externalities from the production process and thus, promotes sustainable economic progress (Alper and Oguz 2016; Owusu and Asumadu-Sarkodie 2016; Sbia et al",7
Several empirical studies have found that green energy positively contributes to economic progress and environmental sustainability (Pao and Fu 2013),7
Some official obligatory contracts such as Kyoto Agreement also encourage the production and consumption of green energy as it reduces carbon emissions,7
The empirical work of Grossman and Krueger (1995) revealed the inverted U shape relation between economic growth and environmental pollution,8
"Similarly, the Environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) indicated the positive association between environmental degradation and economic progress (Munasinghe 1999; Shahbaz et al",15
"However, this relationship can be revisited by introducing green innovation which is inclined toward green economic growth",8
"Referring to this fact, the present study incorporates green innovations in explaining long-term green economic growth",8
The present study strongly argues that green trade is another important determinant of green economic growth as it provides the access to economical goods and services which accelerate the shift into the green economy,8
"Thus, the author perceived green trade as an essential element that can advance the green economic growth of nations",8
"1).
 A country-wise pattern of carbon emissions and economic growth Second, the region is experiencing a rapid increase in its economic growth",8
"However, the current approach of economic growth is not appropriate as it deteriorates the environment of the region in many ways; an incredible increase in carbon emissions is one of the most prominent",8
"This rapid increase in economic growth results in increased demand for energy which tends to increase the region’s GHG i.e., carbon emissions",8
Continues rise in carbon emissions increases the temperature of the earth which results in adverse environmental effects such as global warming and climate change,13
"Therefore, the implementation of green economic growth policies is essential to separate the adverse environmental effects from the economic growth.
 Average pattern of carbon emissions and economic growth of South Asian Region Anthropogenic GHG emission by South Asian Economies Third, many people of South Asian Economies are living below the poverty line",8
"Therefore, the region cannot take a chance to sacrifice its economic growth for the attainment of sustainable economic growth",8
"Since GHG emissions are significantly related to the environmental perspective of the economy, the patterns of GHG emissions of the region could suggest valuable understandings of green economy, because Green economy does not require the reduction in economic growth for the attainment of a sustainable economic path, rather it boosts the economic growth within the limits of environmental sustainability",8
Now the question of “how to achieve green economic growth” has encouraged many researchers to publish several empirical studies in various academic journals (Dai et al,8
"Unfortunately, existing studies did not identify the factors which positively contribute to the enhancement of green economic growth, and the question of “how to achieve green economic growth” is still unexplained",8
"However, the present study contributes to the existing debate of green economic growth in several ways",8
"First, the study calculates the green economic growth for the selected South Asian Economies i.e., Nepal, Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan for 2000–2018",8
"Secondly, to the extent of the author’s best knowledge, the study for the first time explains the empirical contributions of green trade in green economic growth",8
"At a crucial period, when South Asian Economies are struggling to tackle the environmental problems and promoting sustainable development, the results of the study do not only contribute to the literature but also illuminate the progress of green economic growth in the context of South Asian Nations",8
"Lastly, the study suggests important policies on how to accelerate the green economic growth of South Asian economies by linking them with the achievement of SDGs",8
Salim and Rafiq (2012) utilized the data of six developing nations and investigated the impact of renewable energy production on social sustainability,7
The study revealed the positive relationship between renewable energy and social progress,7
The study concluded that the production of renewable energy makes the provision of energy that enhances the quality of life of individuals which in their turn leads toward social sustainability,7
Fang (2011) worked on the association between renewable energy and economic progress by utilizing the data of China for 1978–2008 and showed the positive effects of renewable energy on economic progress,7
"Majeed and Luni (2019), specified the positive role of renewable energy consumption in improving the environmental quality",7
(2016) indicated that the association between renewable energy consumption and EG is based on the stage of economic progress,7
Ackah and Kizys (2015) explored the drivers of renewable energy demand in the oil-producing economies of Africa,7
The author believed that renewable energy is a solution to environmental problems and energy shortage because it is produced from cleaner sources,7
Renewable energy refers to clean energy,7
(2016) applied a dynamic computable general equilibrium model for investigating the economic effects and environmental benefits of the large-scale development of renewable energy in China,7
"Therefore, the current study attempts to examine the role of green on green economic growth in the context of South Asian economies",8
"Several studies have found that technical innovation plays an essential role in improving the environmental quality, or in other words, technical innovation tends to reduce Carbon emissions by enhancing the effectiveness of factor productions (Hascic et al",13
(2005) investigated the influence of technological innovation on economic growth by using the cross-sectional data of 37 nations that participated in GEM 2002,8
The findings of the study revealed the positive effect of technological innovation on economic growth,8
"(2019) examined the vigorous association among technical innovation, environment quality, and economic growth by utilizing the data of Denmark, covering the period of 1970–2002",8
Results of the study indicated the positive association between technical innovation and economic growth,8
Results further showed that technical innovation tends to reduce carbon emissions and promote environmentally friendly apparatuses that having less significant contributions to carbon emissions,13
(2019) collected the data of 71 nations for 1996–2012 and investigated the influence of technological innovation on the reduction of CO2,8
"Conclusively, literature discussed the role of technical innovation in environment quality which is one dimension of green growth; so the role of technical innovation in green economic growth is a less researched area",8
A few studies have investigated the relationship between technical innovation and green growth,8
(2017) used the data of 30 regions of China throughout 2011–2012 and showed the positive impact of technological innovation on green economic growth,8
"As far as we know, the literature on the relationship between green innovation and green economic growth is very limited",8
Most of the researchers focused on the role of technological innovation,8
"Therefore, the present study contributes to the existing debate by empirically examining the role of green innovations in green economic growth in the context of South Asian Economies",8
"Conclusively, after reviewing the above literature, it is assumed that: H2: “There is a significant relationship between green innovation and green economic growth” Numerous researchers empirically examined the relationship between trade, economic growth, and environmental quality",8
"(2012) examined the effects of trade volume on economic growth and showed the positive association between trade, economic growth, and environmental quality",8
Wacziarg and Welch (2008) investigated the influence of trade liberalization on economic growth and study found the positive effects of trade liberalization on economic growth,8
Results further showed that the economic growth rate for the nations who liberalized their trade is higher because liberalization increased the average trade ratio to GDP,8
Results of the study showed the positive association between trade openness and GDP in long run and suggested that global integration is a useful approach to enhance economic growth in the long run,8
"While, (Keho 2017) revealed the positive association between trade openness and economic growth in the short-run as well as in long run",8
Alam and Sumon (2020) showed the positive relationship between trade and economic growth by utilizing the data of 15 Asian Economies,8
(2018) utilized the data of China for 1980–2014 and investigated the causal effect of urban population and international trade on environmental degradation,15
The study showed the two-way causality between urban population and imports and further highlighted the positive role of trade on environmental degradation in China,15
"After considering the significant role of international trade on environmental pollution, and in economic growth; this study comes with the role of green trade in green economic growth",8
"To the extent of the author’s best knowledge, the relationship between green trade and green economic growth is still not discussed by the researchers",8
"Therefore, the present study contributes to the existing debate of green economic growth by empirically examining the role of green trade in green economic growth",8
"Further, the relationship between green trade and green economic growth is not discussed by the researchers",8
Green economic growth is identified as an efficient means of fostering economic growth by addressing environmental problems,8
"Thus, “how to promote green economic growth is the main concern of policymakers”",8
Core-macro economic theory concludes that factors like renewable energy are essential for sustainable economic progress,7
It also positively contributes to the economic growth of developing economies (Shahbaz et al,8
Economic theory also elaborates on the significant role of technological innovations in economic growth,8
"Such technologies are also known as green technologies that are connected with environmental policies, i.e., environmental quality and climate change mitigation",13
"The hypothesis suggests that green technologies, on the one hand, promote economic growth, and on the other hand, deals with environmental problems (Carrión-Flores et al",8
Modern growth theories also indicated the positive contributions of green technologies in sustainable economic growth (Acemoglu et al,8
All these theories are providing a clear theoretical basis on the relationship between green innovation and green economic growth,8
These extensions of the H–O model shed the light on the association between green trade (export of clean/environmentally friendly goods) and green economic growth,8
"Data are collected from different sources i.e., data of green innovation and green trade are obtained from OECD statistics, data of clean energy production are obtained from International energy statistics (IES), and data of remaining variables are obtained from World development indicators (WDI)",7
"Equation (4) shows the specifications of Westerlund and Edgerton (2007) test:
 where: X = vector of independent variables, including green energy, green innovation, and green trade, γi is the value of the speed of adjustment of error-term",7
"(6)
 where: X is the independent variables such as green innovation, green trade, and green energy, Lij is the lead or lag coefficients of predictors at first difference",7
"Equation (10) shows the expression of DOLS coefficients.
 where: \( {z}_{it}=\left[{X}_{it}-{\overline{X}}_i,\Delta {X}_{i,t-q},\dots \dots ..,\Delta {X}_{i,t+q}\right] \) is the vector of independent variables and \( {{\hat{y}}_{it}}^{+}\ \left({{\hat{y}}_{it}}^{+}={y}_{it}-{\overline{y}}_i\right) \) is the dependent variable of the study, i.e., green economic growth Fig",8
"The table shows, the mean value of green economic growth (GG) is −1.7854, ranging from −2.0302 to −1.3005",8
Green energy (GE) is having a mean value of 3.0098 with a minimum value of −2.6757 and the maximum value of 4.6069,7
"The result shows that the null hypothesis of “nocointegration” is rejected at the level of 1% as the probability value of Gt, Ga, Pt, and Pa is less than 0.01, signifying the existence of a long-term relationship among green economic growth, GE, GI, and GT.
 The study employs FMOLS and DOLS for testing the proposed hypotheses of the study",8
This implies that a 1% increase in GE tends to increase green economic growth by 2.81%,8
The result indicates that a 1% increase in GI tends to increase green economic growth by 1.32%,8
"The coefficient of GT (0.0504) is also positive and significant at the level of 1% as the p-value is less than 0.01 i.e., (0.0003<0.01), indicating that a 1% increase in GT tends to increase green economic growth by 0.504%",8
"The value of Adjusted R2 shows that 93.7% variations in green economic growth are collectively explained by GE, GI, and GT Table 6.
 Results of DOLS are quite similar to the results of FMOLS",8
The result indicates that GE positively contributes to green economic growth,8
"For instance, a 1% increase in GE tends to increase green economic growth by 6.05%",8
"The coefficient of GI (0.0083) is positive and significant at the level of 10% as the p-value is less than 0.10 i.e., (0.0821<0.10), indicating the positive relationship between GI and green economic growth",8
This implies that a 1% increase in GT tends to increase green economic growth by 0.83%,8
"The coefficient of GT (0.0112) is also positive and significant at the level of 1% as the p-value is less than 0.01 i.e., (0.0002<0.01), indicating the positive contributions of GT in green economic growth",8
Finding reveals that a 1% increase in GT tends to increase green economic growth by 1.12%,8
"The value of Adjusted R2 shows that 96.2% variations in green economic growth are explained by GE, GI, and GT collectively",8
"This study analyzed the role of GE, GI, and GT in green economic growth in the context of South Asian Economies",8
"Moreover, GDP, which produces through green energy sources is sustainable as it decouples from the deterioration of natural resources (Owusu and Asumadu-Sarkodie 2016)",7
"Second, the findings of the study show the positive and significant role of green innovation in the green economic growth of South Asian Economies because it promotes affordable and environmentally friendly technologies which reduce environmental pollution, provide access to modern technologies and promote sustainable economic progress (Popp 2002)",8
"First, the study suggests that there is a need to promote the production of green energy in South Asian Economies by encouraging new projects, and investment in renewable energies",7
The government of South Asian Economies should encourage the private sector to increase the production of green energy by subsidizing it,7
"To enlarge the scale of green energy production, tax credits should arrange for investors at the stages of installation and production",7
"Second, the present study explored only three factors that positively contribute to green economic growth, future researchers can explore more antecedents of green economic growth",8
"Future researches can also consider the pandemic issue i.e., COVID-19 while further working on green economic growth.",8
"After several years of conferences, workshops, and reports by workgroups on the construction industry in developing countries, the International Council for Research and Innovation for Building and Construction (CIB) identified the following as the main challenges facing the construction industry in developing countries [13]: (i) The need for a new model of development, (ii) Linkages between urban and rural development, (iii) The need for sustainable housing, (iv) Sustainable education, (v) Sustainable construction through innovative building materials and methods, (vi) Indigenous technologies in the modern era, (vii) Bridging the gender divide, (viii) Appropriate financing and delivery systems, (ix) Issues of governance and management across the industry, (x) Appropriate procurement systems, (xi) Project management, (xii) Access for Local Firms",9
"However, for purposes of sustainability, the concept of “green economy” must be invoked, where a green economy is defined as: “an economy in which economic growth and environmental responsibility to work together in a mutually reinforcing fashion while supporting progress on social development” [43]",8
It is expected that this would profoundly change the industry as a system and lead it towards the path of sustainable growth,8
"The shoreline changes due to local oceanographic conditions and the increase in the number of tropical cyclones along the coast lead to loss of nesting habitats, while the narrow and low elevation nesting beaches are at great risk of habitat loss for various threatened and endangered species, including the sea turtle due to the sea level rise (Fish et al",15
"Coastal erosion is a major environmental concern throughout the world, which causes the loss of coastal habitats and biodiversity (Malini et al",14
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" -dive.lbl.gov/trends/emis/meth_reg.html
Flitcroft R, Cooperman MS, Harrison IJ, Juffe-Bignoli D, Boon PJ (2019) Theory and practice to conserve freshwater biodiversity in the Anthropocene",15
Clean water and sanitation is the basic human right but alarmingly it has been denied to billions of people across the globe,6
"As per the analysis of Water Aid (2017), it was found that one in ten people still has no access to clean water and 31% lack basic sanitation facilities ( %20to%20get%20water%20and%20sanitation%20to%20everyone%20by%202030.pdf)",6
"Moreover, this will maintain high mortality rate among children, particularly in developing and poor regions of the world due to issues of hygiene and communicable diseases ( -and-statistics)",3
"On the other hand, World Bank (2018) reported that in case of affordable and sustainable energy, again the records show very dismal growth which makes it difficult to achieve the defined timeline of Goal 7",7
Around 13% of global population (~ 1 billion) still lacks access to electricity and 674 million people will be living without electricity by 2030,7
Goal 12 targets sustainable consumption and this is should not be a very difficult to achieve,12
This is another major setback to the goal of sustainable consumption,12
Climate change is already accelerating at a rapid pace hampering the targets of Goal 13,13
"With rise in population and energy consumption, release of greenhouse gases (GHGs) is expected to increase to 50% by 2050 ( )",7
A global assessment report by International Energy Agency suggests that energy consumption has grown by 2.3% which is ten times faster than past 10 years resulting in 1.7% more carbon emissions ( -energy-demand-in-2018-grew-at-fastest-pace-in-a-decade/),7
"Threats like water pollution, aquaculture and overexploitation of ocean resources have resulted in huge loss of biodiversity in water bodies",6
"This will also result in soil erosion, terrestrial degradation and shrinkage of habitable and agricultural lands",15
These reports clearly seem to threaten the fulfilment of the objectives of Goal 14 which is about protection of life below water,14
"In case of forest cover, although recent reports suggest that the rate of deforestation appears to be slowing down, but due to unplanned cutting of jungles in the past (and continuing in some parts even at present) the big forests are being fragmented, leading to several issues including biodiversity loss, climate change, increase in invading species and fragile ecosystems",15
"However, there still is a continuous shrinkage in forest cover due to growing agricultural lands (in place of forests), fires and illegal mining",15
"This 2.2 million square mile forest cover, which acts as a major sink to earth’s carbon emissions, is at its tipping point and is nearing towards becoming a fragmented drier zone of ecosystem",15
"WWF states that Amazon region has lost about 17% of its forest cover since last half century, mainly due to anthropogenic interference ( -and-forest-degradation)",15
"This will result in accelerated loss of innumerous species as well as higher rate of climate change, extreme weather events and air, water and land pollution",13
Fragmented habitat not only causes species reduction but also brings about land degradation and soil erosion,15
"A global assessment by United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) states that tree cover areas have reduced by 35,204 sq km in last 15 years causing overall massive land desertification",15
"Apart from this, poaching and hunting have resulted in decline of species biodiversity",15
The tax collection should be utilized for improving or sustaining the ecosystems/environment and reducing the carbon footprint,17
"Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is used to measure the economic progress of a country, similarly Gross Carbon Footprint (GCF) and Gross Sustainable Production (GSP) should be measured for assessing sustainable development (involving environment) for each country",12
Previous literature has neglected this and focuses directly on renewable and fossil energy research and development (R&D) budgets,9
This paper fills the gap in the literature by showing whether the budgets allocated by countries for energy efficiency R&D are important in the maturation process of renewable energy sources,7
"This paper offers policy recommendations to the countries (the USA, Canada, Germany, France, and Japan) that allocate the highest share of the budget to energy efficiency",7
It also presents the current situation of countries investing in energy efficiency as examples for other countries looking to transition into green energy,7
"Moreover, economic growth and trade openness also contribute to environmental damage",8
"In the light of the empirical findings, the considered countries with the largest budgets (top five) should expand their energy efficiency budgets until the transition to renewable energy gains momentum to achieve SDG-13, i.e., climate action, and SDG-7, i.e., affordable and clean energy",7
"It is generally accepted that greenhouse gases (GHG), especially CO2 emissions are considered one of the primary causes of climate change (Koçak and Ulucak 2019; Wang et al",13
The Paris agreement targets to keep the enhancement in world air temperature below 1.5 degrees,13
Economic growth is directly linked to the main goals of governments,8
"However, since economic growth creates serious energy needs, countries primarily use their natural resources (Caglar 2020; Yang et al",8
"In this context, governments are on the side of economic growth in the environmental pollution-economic growth puzzle",8
"However, countries encounter many problems in their transition from fossil energy to green energy because countries use fossil fuels intensively and cannot suddenly transition into a different energy source",7
"To solve this problem, the concept of energy efficiency came to the fore at COP26.Footnote 2 The COP26 is particularly important because it is an international response to the threat of global warming",7
"The UK presidency of the COP26 put a significant message: “keeping 1.5C alive,” addressing the aim of the Paris Agreement that will limit the destructive consequences of climate change",13
Another key message from the COP26 is that advanced countries such as the US and the UK need to do more to support the decarbonization and climate in the developing world,13
"The International Energy Agency and the COP26 have agreed on the “COP26 Product Efficiency Call to Action to double the efficiency of key appliances and help make it quicker, easier, and cheaper to raise climate ambition” (IEA 2021)",13
The public budget on energy technology spending is of great importance in understanding the link between energy technology R&D spending and emissions,9
"In 2020, the countries in the IEA increased their budgets for all types of technology and the estimated total public R&D expenditures for IEA countries increased by 6% to reach $23.1 billion",9
"In this context, there is an increasing role of the public budget through energy efficiencyFootnote 3 investments that offer the most accessible and cheaper way of doing effective actions to reduce emissions (IEA 2021)",13
Public energy R&D budget in IEA member governments Some statistics of the sample we consider in this paper are given in Table 1,9
"Accordingly, while in 1985, the budget for energy efficiency in IEA countries is 13.020 million dollars, the top five countries represent 5% of this budget",7
"The idea of increasing the investment in R&D is linked to improvements in the development of high technology, which in turn leads to an important decrease in energy density",9
These countries have an important place in the prevention of global environmental degradation,15
"Empirical findings can contribute to the SDG 7, 12, and 13 targets of the top five countries and accelerate their transition to a low-carbon economy",7
There is a growing literature on the link between R&D or innovation and CO2 emissions,9
The existing studies focused on the influences of R&D spending and technologies on carbon emissions for different country cases by employing different approaches,9
"When looking at these studies, the authors tackle the determinants of CO2 emission as control variables and investigate the importance of energy R&D progress in the reduction of CO2",9
"Accordingly, researchers study the impact of key factors: economic growth, natural resources, trade, and so on",8
"In this regard, several studies examine the link between energy technological innovation and CO2 emissions",8
(2021) explored the significant role of energy (efficiency) R&D in the reduction of CO2 emissions,9
(2018) employed the bootstrap bounds testing method to examine the effects of energy technological innovation on emissions in France during the period 1955–2016,8
"In contrast to these studies, some empirical results show that energy R&D has a significant and negative impact on emissions",9
"That is, energy R&D affects the level of emissions (Zhang et al",9
"According to Koçak and Ulucak (2019), the efforts to increase energy R&D spending have a significant impact on emissions",9
"In addition to both negative and positive relationships between energy R&D, there are empirical results that show no significant role of R&D for the CO2 emissions (Cheng et al",9
"These studies failed to find a significant link from energy R&D toward CO2 emissions, meaning that development in innovation does not change emissions",9
These papers provide mix results when looking at the energy R&D—emissions nexus,9
"Finally, there is literature that argues the idea that public spending is an important issue when government invests in energy innovation R&D (Garrone and Grilli 2010; Marques and Fuinhas 2012; Lindman and Söderholm 2016; Pitelis et al",9
"Therefore, these studies focus on the significance of public spending in energy innovation R&D and the influences of R&D expenditures on emissions",9
An important study conducted by Garrone and Grilli (2010) shows that there is a mix and positive relationship between public budgets in energy R&D and emissions,9
Another study that examines the role of public spending on energy R&D is conducted by Álvarez-Herránz et al,9
"To summarize, these studies highlight the important role of government budgets on energy innovation R&D budgets and their influences on the reduction of emissions",9
The majority of these studies focused on the aggregate level of the budget for energy technology R&D to examine the role of public attention to environmental pollution and reduction of carbon emissions,9
"All in all, most of these studies focus on the aggregate level of public spending on energy R&D to provide empirical findings on whether public support through its fiscal role can make difference when environmental issues matter",9
"However, there are a few studies that consider disaggregate levels of public budget on energy R&D to analyze the effects of public budget R&D on carbon emissions",9
This study examines the disaggregate effects of government support through its public budget on energy R&D rather than the aggregate level,9
"Energy efficiency is a particular focus of this study which we wish to contribute to the current literature, considering that budget for “energy efficiency offers some of the fastest and most cost-effective actions to reduce CO2 emissions” (IEA 2021)",7
"The selected top five countries (Canada, the USA, France, Germany, and Japan) are the largest spender in the energy efficiency category",7
"On the other hand, fossil energy sources are exhaustible and contribute to environmental degradation (Mert et al",15
"Nevertheless, economies cannot suddenly run away from fossil fuels because of the high share of fossil energy in their total energy mix (Fernández-Torres et al",7
"Therefore, converting fossil energy to green energy requires a process, and economies should tend to initiate this transformation, albeit in small steps (Zhao et al",7
"So, should countries invest only in renewable energy technologies in this transformation process? Renewable energy technologies require serious infrastructure and a strong financial system (Caglar 2020)",7
Can countries use a part of the budget to effectively manage existing fossil resources instead of using all the resources they have allocated to achieve their emission targets on renewable energy technologies? The answer to this question is sought in this study by robust econometric methods that consider heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence,7
"Therefore, economic growth, natural resources, and trade openness are included in the model as control variables",8
"On the contrary, some studies prove that they contribute to environmental degradation (Muhammad et al",15
"The coefficient of economic growth is seen as positive with a significant sign at 5% level, meaning that an increase in growth generates more CO2 emissions",8
"In addition, empirical findings confirm that the most negatively influential variable on environmental development is economic growth in terms of the magnitude of the coefficient",8
"This result confirms several previous studies that attempted to reveal the positive effect of economic growth on emissions (see, Chishti and Sinha 2022; Ahmad et al",8
"According to the findings, carbon emissions increase when the public decides to invest more in energy efficiency",7
"That is, a 1% rise in energy efficiency budget reflects emissions by 0.017%",7
"Considering that the development of renewable energy sources is a long-term plan, countries may not be able to avoid fossils in the first place",7
"In particular, the pressure of emissions on environmental quality can be reduced in the short term by increasing the energy efficiency R&D budget until renewable energy sources mature",7
"To increase environmental quality, especially within the scope of SDG 13, the top five countries should limit the entry of carbon-sourced products into their countries",13
"In addition, carbon-free production should be encouraged by investing in green technology",9
"In all countries, economic growth and trade openness reduce environmental quality, except Germany",8
"Natural resources reduce environmental degradation in all countries, except the USA",15
"In this context, when the sizes of the coefficients are examined, it has a limited contribution to environmental degradation",15
"There is bidirectional causality between CO2 emissions and income, energy efficiency budgets, trade openness, and natural resources",7
"To explore the effects of the public budget on energy efficiency and factors that affect CO2 emissions, we employed robust econometric techniques",7
"Moreover, the top five countries are selected in the IEA group and these countries have common characteristics in terms of economic transactions and agreements on climate change",13
We also show the allocated government budget for energy efficiency does not decrease the emissions in the top five countries,7
"However, our finding suggests otherwise, that is the increase in energy efficiency budget by governments means more CO2 emissions",7
"The possible explanation for this finding is that increase in the energy efficiency budget enables countries to obtain their energy needs quicker, easier and cheaper",7
"Therefore, the governments of the top five IEA countries should carefully allocate the public budget among the energy technology R&D if the aim is to decrease CO2 emissions",9
"Until renewable energy sources mature, which is a long-run goal, top five IEA economies should bring their energy efficiency R&D budget to a level that reduces environmental degradation",7
"In this context, this paper focuses only on energy efficiency and models the top five countries",7
Future studies can compare countries that invest the most and least in energy efficiency budgets,7
The study recommends that policymakers should develop policies to develop green economic growth to save the environment and for the reduction in poverty and income inequalities in south Asian economies,8
"During the decades, the achievement of economic growth (EG) is the prime concern of both developed and developing economies (Anand and Sen 2000; Sachs et al",8
The studies report that the economies do not require an increase in economic progress only but they also demand environmental protection and social sustainability (Fleurbaey et al 2014),15
"Over time, the economies are grasping the negative externalities and economic problems causing inclination in TGDP; hence, they become conscious to find out an integrated approach that balances all the dimensions of sustainability such as economic development, social sustainability, and economic progress, due to which the search for sustainable economic paths has started",8
"With the passage of time, the countries start facing environmental sustainability as one of the most challenging issues and they start searching for an appropriate measure of sustainable economic development",8
"The central theme of all these conferences was “sustainability or sustainable development.” The most important conference on the issue of sustainable economic development was held in 2012, known as the “Rio-20 conference of sustainable development.” In this conference, the concept of the green economy (or green EG) as an appropriate measure of sustainable development has emerged",8
The governments of different developed and developing countries have promised to promote the EG within the limits of social sustainability and environmental protection (Pow 2011),15
"In other words, green growth is regarded as an efficient approach to advancing EG and addressing environmental disputes in a country",8
The principal aim of green growth is to attain economic progress without damaging natural resources (Jacobs 2012),8
Different environmental policies (suggested by Mathews 2012; OECD 2011) are recently announced by the global institutions to strengthen the governments for the implementation of green growth practices,8
Green economic growth is comprised of all three dimensions of sustainable development which not only help to eradicate different economic problems but also help in achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) of 2030 (Huan et al,8
Some studies highlighted the role of institutions and their policies to achieve sustainable economic development goals in the context of BRICS and China (Wahab et al,8
"First, the study finds that several researchers have scrutinized the role of traditional GDP in poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation",15
"Third, researchers have theoretically discussed the significant effects of green GDP on poverty alleviation",1
"But as far as we know, the literature does not report any empirical study on the nexus between green economic growth (EG) and poverty",8
"However, the present study figures out that no study has been conducted, more specifically in the context of South Asian nations, which comparatively discussed the role of traditional GDP and green GDP in major economic problems (poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation) to show the importance of green economy",15
"Hence, the novelty of the study is that it tests the role of traditional and green GDP in reducing poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation in South Asian economies",15
"Second, currently, south Asian economies are heavily dependent on the exploitation of natural resources and the utilization of fossil fuels for rapid economic growth",8
"Third, the fundamental goal of South Asian economies is to increase the EG so that they can eliminate poverty, reduce inequality, decrease unemployment, and improve environmental quality (EQ)",8
A country does not only require increased economic progress but also demands environmental protection and social sustainability (Fleurbaey et al 2014),15
Green growth is regarded as an efficient approach to advancing EG and addressing environmental disputes,8
The principal aim of green growth is to attain economic progress without damaging natural resources (Jacobs 2012),8
"Hence, researchers have started a discussion to focus the green economic growth rather than the economic growth (Brown et al",8
"The current study considers brown EG as equivalent to economic growth which is measured by traditional GDP, while green EG is equivalent to sustainable EG which is measured by green GDP",8
"Nwosa and Ehinomen (2020) tested the link between EG, poverty, and income inequality using the data of Nigeria between 1981 and 2018",10
"Therefore, green economic growth came into light for solution of poverty",8
"Moreover, the study also found that the states that experience good economic growth are also experiencing the worst environmental quality",8
(2020) analyzed panel data of South Asian economies and investigated the role of energy consumption and EG in reducing poverty,7
Their findings reported the negative effects of EG and energy consumption on poverty,7
They concluded that a country should promote sustainable EG to reduce poverty,1
"However, their findings do not reach a definite supposition as some researchers indicate EG as a solution to poverty while others report it as a curse and emphasize the advancement of sustainable (or green) EG to eradicate poverty",1
"Thus, this study contributes to the available debate by investigating the role of traditional and green GDP in reducing poverty and postulates that: H1a: “There is a significant relationship between traditional GDP and poverty.” H1b: “There is a significant relationship between green GDP and poverty.” The relation between EG and income inequality has also been observed by many studies",10
"Similarly, Brueckner and Lederman (2018) depicted a bi-directional causality between EG and income inequality in African economies for the period of 1890 to 2016",10
"They argued that the higher the level of GDP the higher will be the production of goods and services which provides the means of income to rural as well as urban residents that, resultantly, reduces income inequality",10
(2020) also showed a negative linkage between income inequality and EG,10
"Asongu and Odhiambo (2021) conducted a study in Sub-Saharan Africa to investigate the role of the green economy in income inequality and the study concluded that if the emission of CO2 remains below than threshold level, there will be no increase in the Gini coefficient",10
(2000) explained the relationship between carbon emission and income inequalities and the study found a nonlinear relationship between CO2 emission and income inequality,10
"Moreover, the study found that a static tradeoff exists between reduction in CO2 emission and promoting lower-income inequality",10
(2020) investigated the impact of green growth on female labor force participation and the gender wage gap; the study found that growth in green sectors causes to increase in women’s employment and wages in South Asian economies,8
The study explained that on the demand side consumer behavior affects income equality dividends while on the supply side institutional factors are more important for income equality dividends,10
"Based on this theory, the current study highlights the importance of green EG because green EG consists of all three dimensions of sustainability which advances the economic progress through environmental protection and social sustainability",15
"The prime objective of this research is to frame “why is the shift from brown economy to green economy important?.” To answer this, the study empirically investigates how the traditional GDP and green GDP contribute to the level of poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation",15
"The study uses traditional GDP (TGDP) and green GDP (GGDP) as explanatory variables and poverty (POVR), inequality (INEQ), and environmental degradation (ENVD) as outcome variables",15
"Moreover, in this study per capita income indicates economic growth while green economic growth is measured with the help of the following formula adopted from Sohag et al",8
"GGDP represent green economic growth; GDP indicates the economic growth; EE represent education expenditure; NRP is the monetary value of exhausting coal, crude oil, natural gas, and other minerals; NFD indicates the monetary value of exploited forest; and CO2 is the monetary value of carbon dioxide damage and t used for time",8
"Moreover, green economic growth is defined as economic growth decoupled from negative externalities like carbon dioxide damage, natural resource depletion, net forest depletion, and emission damage (Sohag et al",8
"The study uses the following equations to test co-integration: where POVR: poverty; INEQ: inequality, ENVD: environmental degradation, X is a vector of independent and control variables",15
"However, in model 2, the results indicate that green economic growth negatively and significantly lower poverty, and 1 unit change in green economic growth will bring 1.8023 unit change in poverty (β =  − 1.8023***)",8
"In model 3 of panel A, the negative coefficient of TGDP reveals a negative impact on income inequality (β =  − 0.2028**) while in model 4 GGDP co-integrated negatively and significantly with income inequality (β =  − 1.0813***)",10
"Moreover, models 5 and 6 in panel A indicates the co-integration between TGDP and environmental degradation, GGDP, and environmental degradation (β = 3.7364**, β =  − 2.0383***)",15
"This study aims to investigate empirically that how the traditional and green GDP contributes to poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation",15
"The possible justification behind this relationship is that the traditional EG provides the means to access necessities, but it does not guarantee that this growth will reduce poverty as many researchers argue that EG is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the poverty mitigation (Cruz and Ahmed 2018; Tri 2020)",1
This implies that traditional growth imposes pressure on natural resources on which the fulfillment of the basic needs of rural people depends (Kousar et al,1
"Transformation of this traditional growth into green growth is considered a solution to mitigate poverty at the desired level, because green growth is reflected as an effectual approach that advances the EG without imposing pressure on the natural resources as Jacobs (2012) claims that the principal aim of green EG is to attain economic progress without damaging the natural resources",8
"Hence, it is justified that there is a need to give greater weightage to green growth along with economic growth to mitigate poverty (Adeleke and Josue 2019)",8
"Second, the study also finds a negative impact of TGDP and GGDP on income inequality",10
"Moreover, Brueckner and Lederman (2018) stated that an increase in TGDP reduces income inequality by providing the means of income sources",10
"Hence, it is crucial to shift from brown to green growth because it reduces inequalities",8
GGDP is observed as an effective approach to improving EG as green growth aims to attain economic progress deprived of damaging natural resources,8
"This study finds that traditional and green growth has a negative impact on poverty, whereas the influence of green growth is more significant in reducing poverty, as compared to economic growth",8
"The findings of this study suggest that South Asian economies’ policymakers should invest their energies to devise policies to promote green growth because only sustainable use of natural resources, efficiencies in the use of energy, and appraisal of ecosystem services help them to get rid of social evils like poverty and inequalities",8
"Toward the effort to decarbonizing humans’ way of life and looking toward a sustainable existence, the perspectives of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC 2015) and other intergovernmental frameworks have translated into enormous studies (Bossle et al",13
Against the backdrop for the support of “population engineering” on the ground of climate change (Cafaro 2012; Earl et al,13
"(2017), the high risk associated with the humanity’s plan of dealing with climate change is the reason for employing a new dimension and strategies of tackling climate change by using the principle fertility-reduction alongside other decarbonization efforts",13
"The use of energy-saving technology has ensured the closing of the gap between energy consumption and technological advancement, thus suggesting positive impact of technology on the environment",7
"For instance, the recent study of Charfeddine and Kahia (2019) examined the impact of renewable energy consumption on environmental quality vis-à-vis carbon emissions",7
The study found that renewable energy consumption positively affects the environmental quality especially of the Middle East and North Africa (NEMA) countries,7
"Specifically, energy use is an essential component of the 7th goals of the SDGs 2030; the use of information and communication technology is closely associated with quality education (4th goal of SDGs 2030) while also linked with the 7th goals of SDGs 2030",4
BiocapacityFootnote 3 which is used as a proxy for environmental degradation is the dependent variable,15
Charfeddine and Mrabet (2017) observed a complicated relationship between environmental degradation and fertility rate,15
This implies that access to quality education (one of the SDGs 2030) plays a vital role in improving the quality of the environment of the country,4
"In addition, a long-term policy like the “population engineering” framework might be appropriate to mitigate the risk of dangerous climate change or optimize the ecological footprint and biocapacity of the USA",13
"These technologies which include waste management could be part of the policy mechanism that is driven by sustained innovations, investment in education, research, and development (Lee et al",12
"Because of Canada’s low fertility rate (per couple), energy consumption per household or couple (Besagni and Borgarello 2018), human capita availability, and resource utilization are unlikely to translate to a sustainable development",7
"Since ict is observed to play significant role like in the USA, in addition to the Canada’s labor force shortage, a specified education policy framework might be suitably productive",4
"In this study, the suppression effects of both thiourea and SDG on the formation of dioxins are systematically tested in a pilot-scale system, situated at the bypass of a hazardous waste incinerator (HWI)",12
Studies have shown that hazardous waste incineration (HWI) is potentially a major source of airborne emissions,12
"Therefore, stack gas emissions from hazardous waste incinerators (HWIs) are a serious concern and need appropriate control tools to deal with it",12
"In this study, a 500 Nm3/h capacity pilot-scale system with flue gas recirculation and thermal treatment of filtered ash, designed for the bypass of an actual hazardous waste incinerator (HWI) is used to observe and quantify the suppression effects of S-N inhibitors (Lin et al",12
The pilot-scale experimental system is carried out in a 50-tonne/day hazardous waste rotary kiln incinerator (Wu et al,12
"Systemic diagram of the hazardous waste incinerator The PES is mainly composed of a baghouse filter system, a thermal treatment and a flue gas recycling system (Lin et al",12
"The flue gas recycling system returns the desorbed gaseous phase inhibitors into the flue gas, aspired by a negative pressure to inhibit the formation of PCDD/Fs",12
"In Tests 5 and 6, the recycling system is put into use to increase the concentrations of gaseous phase inhibitors to realise a high suppression efficiency of PCDD/Fs formation",12
"As to the SDG, the concentration of PCDD/Fs could decrease to 0.05 ng TEQ/g when combined with the recycling system",12
"6, the emission factor decreased to 1.01 μg TEQ/h with a reduction of 74.2 % after accumulating the gaseous phase inhibitors by the recycling system (Test 2)",12
"Hence, the suppression efficiency could reach 95.5 % after the gaseous phase inhibitors recycling (Test 4)",12
"A better suppression effect is also detected with the application of the recycling system for SDG, showing a reduction efficiency of 93.7 % (Test 6)",12
"Therefore, the dioxin suppression efficiencies could be up to 90 %, and the value could further increase to 95 % after recycling",12
"The ratios of PCDDs/PCDFs in Test 2 did not change so much that the reason could be attributed to the still low levels of gaseous phase inhibitors in flue gas, even with the recycling system",12
By direct seeding fly ash deposits may be transformed with increased biodiversity and productivity that promote improved livelihoods of people living in increasingly sustainable communities,11
"Selection of a suitable seed mix of native flora that has diverse growth-forms, together with suitable waste organic amendments significantly accelerates plant cover development on fly ash deposits, and mitigates environmental pollution around thermal power plants",7
"Success in initial revegetation improves the biological condition of fly ash deposits, thus setting the stage for afforestation using the next generation of target species including saleable plants that promote the bioeconomy",15
Fly ash is a combustion product from coal power plants,7
Coal power plants generate fly ash as well as bottom ash in high quantities compared to other coal combustion products,7
"The slurry is transported through iron pipes into ash ponds, lagoons or dumping areas near the power plants",7
Coal power plants are the main source of fly ash,7
"Fly ash dumps occupy significant areas around the world, totalling several thousand hectares of land near thermal power plants",7
"Toxic metal enriched fly ash dust from these sites degrade air quality and deposits impair soil health (e.g., decrease in dehydrogenase and phosphatase enzymatic activity) in the vicinity of coal-fired power plants as has been reported by Raja et al",7
"Therefore, direct seeding is a simplified and relatively low cost option that can be used effectively for restoring thousand hectares of degraded land worldwide",15
"Important factors to be considered in the success of seed-based land restoration include seed characteristics, viability and germination requirements, timing of seeding, seeding practices, microsite conditions, competing vegetation, and seed predation (Grossnickle and Ivetić 2017)",15
"One of the more important developments in geotechnical engineering is the use of jute geotextiles for multiple purposes such as soil stabilization, soil erosion control and re-establishment of vegetation cover",15
The application of new generation jute erosion control mats with special design features could be an effective alternative for soil erosion control and accelerate the revegetation process,15
The global extent of land degradation and deforestation under changing climates has created an urgent need for systematic screening of potential plant species suitable for restoration of fly ash deposits by direct seeding (Grossnickle and Ivetić 2017),15
"(2021a, b) have demonstrated the linkages between circular bio-economy and recycling of electronic waste by applying microbial activities and other friendly technologies that fulfil some goals of the UN-SDGs",12
"Establishment of native vegetation on fly ash deposits significantly enhances biodiversity that provides habitat to a plethora of flora and fauna species, delivers ecosystem goods and services, decreases environmental pollution, reduces CO2 emission, and mitigates climate change",13
"Thus, creating a multifunctional ecosystem on abandoned fly ash deposits through direct seeding as a restoration method can fulfil the partial objectives of UN-SDGs that address poverty, good health and well-being of people and communities, while mitigating climate change",13
Further research is needed to address the impacts of climate change on direct seeding in restoration programs,13
This synthetic review highlights the need for restoration experiments in situ conditions by direct seeding to evaluate more species in the context of adaptation to climate change,13
"Currently, the use of direct seeding on degraded land is gaining in importance as a restoration method and a holistic approach to ecosystem recovery",15
"The emerging scientific evidence links the loss of ice, snow, and glaciers with the changing climate, with extreme climate events and water-related disasters such as storms, floods, and drought, and with the sustainability of freshwater resources",6
"First, there will be the climate negotiations at the next Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris, where we can finally expect to see binding agreements on reducing carbon emissions, and substantial pledges to be made to the Green Climate Fund to support both mitigation and adaptation efforts",13
"For the first time, water supply and sanitation have been linked with broader issues namely integrated water resources management, water quality issues, and even transboundary cooperation",6
"It will be an opportunity to connect the dots between extreme climate events and climate change, for instance as we heard so eloquently from Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University at the “International Workshop on Communicating the Science and Impacts of Fundamental Earth System Change: A Focus on Ice-Snow Water”, linking the latest meteorological science on the disappearance of Arctic Sea ice with extreme events such as the floods in Pakistan and the heat wave and wild fires in Russia in 2010—and with the recurring polar vortex",13
"Approximately 70 % of global freshwater resources are presently locked up as snow and ice, although of course much of this is located at the poles and is inaccessible for direct use",6
"Because of their low concentrations (ppm or ppb) and complex structure, these pollutants are difficult to completely remove in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs)",6
"They enter the soil, water, and food chain in a variety of ways such as wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), sewage treatment plants (STPs), and livestock farms with many animals are major sources of PPCPs",6
"Therefore, PPCPs are considered as emerging pollutants by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S",15
"At extremely low concentrations, these compounds are bioactive, and their potential negative effects on human health have already been identified",3
"Furthermore, water scarcity has become a significant issue in a number of semiarid and arid regions",6
"Similarly, PPCPs will also release into the environment as a result of the use of treated or untreated water from STPs (U.S",6
Clean water is critical to life's survival,6
Such compounds may accumulate in crops irrigated with recycled water,6
"Some of these techniques are carried out in the soil or on the water's surface, while others are carried out in wastewater treatment plants",6
"These SDGs are associated with specific soil science challenges, such as (1) sustainable food production, which refers to appropriate nutrient management, or decreasing or preventing soil dangers, such as soil acidification, soil erosion, soil biodiversity effects, and soil compaction, and lessening natural effects on water and air quality (SDG2 and SDG15); and (2) addressing soil contamination issues (SDG13)",15
Membrane bioreactor (MBR) is a term that refers to the combination of a membrane process such as microfiltration or ultrafiltration and a biological wastewater treatment process such as activated sludge,6
"We identify four common themes (thermal comfort and exposures, agricultural productivity, air quality, and urbanization) that biometeorologists are currently studying and that we expect to be important in the future based on their alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals",2
"While variability and improvisation may be assets in promoting flexibility, adaptation, and interdisciplinarity, the lack of formal training in biometeorology raises concerns about the extent to which continuing generations of scholars will identify and engage with the community of scholarship that the ISB has developed over its 60-year history",4
"First, what is the current state of biometeorological education and training? In this discussion, we consider both educational programs and more informal training opportunities",4
"Finally, we connect these two questions by asking: What type of training and skill development are needed to prepare the “biometeorologists of the future” to effectively address forthcoming challenges? We reference the SDGs throughout the manuscript as a means of identifying plausible connections between current and future biometeorology training and education and significant global goals concerning health, well-being, equity, and the environment",4
"Such courses include but are not limited to geography, atmospheric science, climatology, cartography, hazards, environmental sciences, climate change, engineering, biophysical environment, animal biometeorology, animal behavior and welfare, precision agriculture, and environmental physiology",13
"With technological innovation, more elaborate data collection and analysis have become possible",8
"However, new techniques in instructional technology do provide the capability of increased knowledge-sharing and participation across disciplines (Jacob 2015)",17
"By exposing students to the notion of biometeorology earlier than graduate school, the visibility of the discipline could provide a path to obtain necessary education and training",4
"These themes include thermal comfort and exposures, agricultural productivity, air quality, and urbanization (Table 1)",2
"The issues of thermal comfort and thermal inequality relate to several of the SDGs recently put forth by the United Nations, including “good health and well-being” and “sustainable cities and communities” (Table 1)",11
"Plants, animals, and humans may be expected to experience increasing thermal heat stress under projected climate change as temperature continues to rise",13
Thermal comfort models have also been applied to understand the influences of urban landscape ecology (Connors et al,15
"2014), issues of brownouts or blackouts that cause cascading failures across public health systems (Klinger et al",3
"2016), yet based on 2005 to 2007 production levels, an estimated 60% increase in agricultural output is needed to fulfill the dietary requirements of the increasing global population (FAO 2013)",2
"In addition to population and agricultural growth, society is faced with the impacts of climatic change and other environmental changes such as deforestation",15
"These issues fall directly within the realms of ongoing research in plant and animal biometeorology and connect to several of the SDGs proposed by the United Nations, especially “zero hunger” and good health and well-being (Table 1)",2
Climate variability and the uncertainties that coincide with climate change are expected to play a significant role in crop production in the future,13
"Water resources, declining soil quality, and increased GHG emissions are related factors to cost, quality, and quantity of crop production (Tipathi et al",2
"Thus, training and educating are necessities in this area to allow for efficient and reliable data collection, a goal that falls under the SDG of “quality education.” Livestock production plays a key role in the provision of food, accounting for 70% of agricultural land use worldwide (Gaughan and Cawdell-Smith 2015)",4
"Therefore, continued investigation of the science of seasonal plant and animal activities and how seasonal and interannual variations in climate influence these activities will become increasingly important as climate change progresses",13
"Additionally, water concerns exist with respect to agricultural productivity (Nath et al",2
It is important to note that the potential effects of climate change are difficult to quantify as it relates to agricultural production as the impacts will vary across both time and space (Gaughan and Cawdell-Smith 2015),13
"Moving forward, collaboration among researchers spanning biometeorological sub-disciplines (microclimatology, thermal comfort, phenology, etc.) and related areas of water resource management and animal physiology is essential in addressing the SDGs noted in Table 1",6
"Air quality relates to multiple UN SDGs, in particular good health and well-being and “climate action,” and the effects of air pollution on plants, animals, and humans have been a prominent focus in the study of biometeorology (Table 1)",13
Recent studies emphasize how reduced energy consumption in buildings may promote sustainability but not necessarily indoor air quality (Tong et al,7
"2015), with growing concerns of elevated levels of aeroallergens and thus respiratory illness and allergies with climate change (Beggs and Bambrick 2006)",13
"Rapid urbanization combined with projected climate change will impact our social, economic, and health systems both now and in the future (Grimmond et al",13
"Over the scale of metropolitan regions, the impacts of urbanization on climate can equal or exceed those associated with global-scale climate change (Georgescu et al",13
The migration of individuals towards urban environment may have negative consequences to their personal well-beings,11
"Coastal communities, urban and rural alike, are faced with infrastructure challenges and water quality concerns",6
"By leveraging green infrastructure, flood risk can be reduced and water quality improved",6
"Collaborations such as Dutch Dialogues combine the expertise of architects, engineers, marine scientists, and policy-makers to mitigate the impacts of sea level rise on highly vulnerable communities (Dutch Dialogues Virginia 2016)",1
"We have also identified many connections between predominant themes of biometeorology research and the UN SDGs, which suggests that continuing improvements to biometeorology training and education could enhance the likelihood of making progress towards those goals in the future",4
This paper aims to address gender equality and environmental problems in terms of SDG context in sub-Saharan AfricaFootnote 2 and to examine the role of gender equality with its education dimension in environmental sustainability in the region,5
"It shows that deforestation discharging carbon dioxide into the atmosphere was higher in the region than in other parts of the world.
 In addition to this, according to the UNECA (2015), “one-third of young people in sub-Saharan Africa fail to complete primary school, and the overall status has not changed since then” (p.11)",15
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) estimates the cost of gender inequality in sub-Saharan Africa as $95 billion on average in a year (UNDP 2007),5
"However, almost half of this population is below age 15, which is seen as a sign of the potential for future economic growth in the region",8
This cycle can be explained by the EKC hypothesis that shows the relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution,8
"Measured levels of environmental quality, such as CO2 emission, increases with the rise in economic growth measured by income per capita at first",8
"In this regard, this study will be a pioneer study showing the link between gender equality and CO2 emission by using gender embedded EKC hypothesis",5
"For example, environmental quality may not only be related to the economic growth of the country",8
"Therefore, to keep the diverse and rich environment of sub-Saharan Africa, implementing the SDG strategies embedded into economic growth is playing a crucial role in her sustainable development",8
Energy and women studies are in a limited number in the literature and mainly discussed within the framework of energy consumption by gender,7
"Räty and Carlsson-Kanyama (2010) found that a single man consumes more energy than a single woman in Germany, Sweden, Norway, and Greece, due to their expenditure and energy intensity patterns",7
Another study analyzing households’ energy consumption by gender is conducted by Tjørring et al,7
"However, all these studies ignore the link between growth, energy consumption, and pollution, in turn, mentioned in the EKC hypothesis",7
"Therefore, it is expected that environmental quality will be improved by integrating gender considerations in environmental policies and women’s contribution to the energy sector when gender inequality in education is removed",5
"Although gender equality does not get enough attention in the literature regarding environmental concerns, there are some supporting arguments proposing that women are different from men in terms of their behavior, opinion, and attitudes toward environmental concerns",5
"For example, Ergas and York (2012) found that the countries with the higher political status of women have lower CO2 emissions and suggested increasing gender equality for supporting the environment",5
"In this regard, it is expected that education will increase the awareness of women on (i) using energy-efficient tools and its possible contribution to climate change, (ii) adopting environmentally friendly strategies preventing air pollution, and (iii) attending training activities on the use of energy-efficient technologies",13
One of the recently published studies mentions that “women tend to understand and concern about the benefits of environmental protection from their unique perspective” (Liu et al,15
(2008) conducted a similar study and found that more women’s share in the decision-making process in non-governmental organizations leads to lower rates of deforestation,15
"Although there is no specific mechanism defined to explain the link between gender equality and CO2 emissions in the literature, education can be seen as a tool to promote gender equality and environmental strategies considering CO2 emission",5
"However, this study uses macroeconomic data to analyze if there is an association between the variables rather than to explore a direct mechanism showing the channels between gender equality and environmental sustainability",5
Gender equality and environmental quality is also one of the main interests of International Institutions,5
"Figure 1 shows possible ways of improving environmental quality through gender equality.
 Possible ways of improving environmental quality through gender equality (source: authors’ own drawing) In addition to the EKC hypothesis, this study can also explain the link between women and environmental concerns using eco-feminist theories",5
"According to eco-feminist theories, feminism and ecology have some historical roots while improving socio-economic and political opportunities for better living conditions and environmental protection (Allison 2010)",15
"The scholars of eco-feminists (Collard and Contrucci, 1989; Norwood, 1993) criticized institutions constraining women’s contribution to society and mentioned that environmental protection is impossible without rising women’s socio-economic position and the power in politics",15
"Some studies (Lahar,1991; Merchant 1990; Norgaard and York 2005) emphasize the gender differences in environmental values, anxiety, and perceptions and show that women are more likely than men to support environmental protection",15
"They mentioned that socio-economic systems, values, institutions, and ideologies are already gendered, promoting environmental degradation and devaluing nature and women",15
Liberal ecofeminism focuses on attributes of environmental problems to economic growth and argues that environmental politics can be much more effective with the increasing number of women in politics to gain from their unique experiences and views on nature,8
"According to socialist eco-feminists, environmental degradation is associated with the capitalist society, and behavioral and institutional changes are essential for environmental sustainability",15
"Population growth decreased agricultural performance, and environmental degradation were defined as three basic concerns",15
"A very recently published study by Amegah and Mensah (2017) outlined the urban air pollution in sub-Saharan Africa within the international policy actions, including SDG, by associating pollution with its impacts on health",11
"Climate changes, environmental degradation due to unsustainable agricultural practices, higher fertility rates, and unplanned urbanization, are defined as the main challenges in sub-Saharan Africa in the study of Omisore (2018)",15
The report also reminds us that having lower girls to boy ratios in primary and secondary education is positively correlated with lower electricity access globally,7
"They find that economic growth, urbanization, and natural resource rent increase CO2 emissions, while value-added agriculture reduces CO2 emissions in sub-Saharan Africa countries",8
"(2020c) aim to explore the effect of energy consumption, tourists’ arrivals, and economic policy uncertainty on ecological footprint using FMOLS, DOLS, and Dumitrescu and Hurlin causality tests",7
"Moreover, using panel-based models, Adedoyin and Bekun (2020) explore the linkage between tourism, energy consumption, pollutant emissions, and urbanization in the seven tourism-dependent countries",7
"The present study revisits the relationship between growth, energy consumption, and pollution nexus in sub-Saharan Africa and contributes to the existing literature in several ways",7
The results address the importance of female education for environmental sustainability concerning SDGs,4
"According to the EKC hypothesis, environmental pollution is the economic growth function indicating income per capita",8
"This study takes gender parity in education as an indicator of gender equality into account, and the following function given below is employed:
 CO2 refers to the carbon dioxide emission which is stemming from the burning of fossil fuels",5
"To test the relationship between CO2 emission and economic growth, the model is estimated as below:
 Here, L indicates natural logarithms, μ is the intercept, α is the parameters in the estimation, ε is the error term, and t is the time",8
"According to the model, EKC can have five different shapes that reflect relationship between CO2 emission and economic growth as follows:
 Positively sloped linear shape EKC if α1 > 0, α2 = 0, when income per capita rises, CO2 emission increases",8
"2018).
 Another indicator used as a function of CO2 emission is energy consumption",7
The results show that a 1% increase in energy consumption raises the pollution level by 2.5% (p < 0.001),7
"As an indicator of gender equality, the gender gap in education has a significant negative sign, which indicates that a 1% increase in gender parity in education will decrease CO2 emission by 3.51%",5
GPI is the gender parity index defined as girls’ ratio to boys enrolled at primary and secondary levels,5
"From this point of view, we can conclude that environmental quality will be improved by integrating gender considerations in environmental policies and women’s contribution to the energy sector when gender inequality in education is removed",5
"However, this study does not focus on the channels distributed through education and how education affects people’s behavior for environmental protection but focuses on if education brings positive outcomes for environmental sustainability",15
The sign of energy consumption is again positive and highly significant in the short run as it is in the long run,7
"While a 1% increase in energy consumption raises CO2 emissions by 2.5% according to ARDL estimation, the rate is estimated as 2.5, 2.8, and 2.6% in FMOLS, DOLS, and CCR estimations, respectively",7
All policymakers should pay special attention to environmental issues with their solutions embedded into gender equality,5
"Policymakers, starting from local governors to international organizations, should support the girls’ education and train people effectively to address the link between growth, environmental awareness, and gender equality.",5
"This commodity trade itself, of course, relies on the country’s natural resources which are cross-linked with a biodiversity (the second richest in the world) and hydrology highly susceptible to climate change, a fact not sufficiently recognized in official prosperity discourse (Rodríguez Becerra and García Portilla 2013)",13
"2006; In’t Veld 2011), transformation in the field was a primary objective; in this case, above all for the local partner, a cultural and scientific entity closely linked to the administration and its urban development plan",11
"For this purpose, four thematic priority areas with high importance both at the local and at the global levels were identified: water governance, energy, soils and nutrition [i.e., the ‘nexus’ areas (Hoff 2011)], and urban development model/SDGs (A fifth area, resources and waste had to be discarded due to time constraints.) Regarding these specific areas and the dialogue project as a whole, IASS wanted to identify whether there existed, within the specific local discourse and related to the four thematic areas, references and resonances to the international/global level (e.g",11
"by considering an urban SDG useful for Bogotá and/or Colombia (SDG conference, 74.3 %) or by regarding the tension between energy security and sustainability a ‘mostly international’ topic (Energy Dialogue Table, 56 %)",7
"This assumption is reinforced by certain attitudes we encountered among the respondents, as for example considering water governance preferentially an ecosystemic issue (25 % of the Water Conference’s audience, only surpassed by the adherence to a familiar, but slightly more technical notion of ‘cleanliness’ ) or attributing an even higher priority to energy efficiency than the discussing experts (24 % considered that a top priority during the Energy Conference)",7
"Perceived lack of applicability of international reasoning to Bogotá This variation corresponded with high unanimity among experts and a public admission that bordered overcrowding at the Water Events; weaker live admission (of people younger than average with a high questionnaire response rate) but peaking TV rate, along with an almost complete lack of expert consensus but high visibility of international concepts at the Energy Events; a lively attendance (of older people), almost zero TV audience, heated discussions on principles and lack of argumentative detail and coherence at the Nutrition Events and a neither polarized nor consensual, diversified discussion at the Urban Development Model Events, along with a public attendance weak in numbers and strong in opinions, the latter beingin general more locally concrete than those of the experts",11
The unanimity among experts and the public in this field was overwhelming (with some minor differences in the field of waste water treatment),6
"Given this, neither the narrow poverty focus of former MDGs on short-term drinking water supply and sanitation nor the always locally specific cultural traditions of water governance from European countries which were presented at the February conference would really make a difference regarding that socio-ecological approach",6
The international push for non-water renewables and for energy efficiency provoked opposition or avoidance; the region’s concerns about new transmission lines met a dead end in the discussion; solar innovation was fervidly advocated by some and easily dismissed by others,7
"A ‘decarbonization’ rhetoric alone, however, would not suffice in this case",13
"The most remarkable momentum was nevertheless provided by the highly politicized Soils & Nutrition Event, to which small-scale farmers surged from the adjacent communities and forcefully claimed more food sovereignty",9
"Whether this claim was fully compatible with food security, how it could be measured, which institutional role food processors and consumers should have in the matter: these and other technical questions were not debated in depth due to the political heat and anger",2
"More detailed analysis of the data will show at which points exactly this potential collided with thematic and procedural stumbling blocks and how this is related to transdisciplinarity challenges in general (an example is the ‘loss’ of the energy efficiency topic over the course of the Energy Dialogue Table, which might have had a source in a lack of integration both of business representatives and technical experts into the overall discussion; the latter being dominated by the more politicized topics of urban mobility)",7
"In comparative urban SD research, it has been argued that for the majority of cases, the consideration of global issues such as climate change mitigation at city level might work best when 'hiding' the global within the local, i.e",13
"This certainly had something to do with the fact, as well, that national politics did not satisfy certain important actors (renewable energy agents or small-scale peri-urban farmers, for example, but also the strong academic component of local government)",7
"urban-regional integration, this implies that international comparisons on governance etc",11
This study examines factors that define a suitable waste-to-energy (WTE) technology and identifies an appropriate WTE technology that can be deployed to improve waste management in rural areas,12
"Observations, questionnaires and interviews were used to collect data from waste management experts at  Atwima Kwanwoma District and the residents in Kwanwoma township in Ghana",12
"Waste management involves gathering, storing, and disposing of both domestic and industrial waste",12
"The definition is, in most cases, extended to include the sorting, monitoring, transport, processing, and recycling of waste (Shafiul and Mansoor, 2004)",12
"Crafting workable waste management strategies is important for countries globally, as improper management of waste can pose a great challenge",12
One emerging innovation in treating and managing waste has been “waste-to-energy” solutions,12
"Researchers have explored these waste-to-energy approaches in the last half-decade (e.g., Mutz et al., 2017; Jouhara et al., 2017; Matsakas et al., 2017; Moya et al., 2017; Scarlat et al., 2015)",12
"These emerging technologies look to support sustainable waste management solutions, support the recycling of municipal solid waste (MSW), and convert waste to energy and other useful chemicals",12
"The Sustainable Development Goal Seven (SDG 7) is an unprecedented worldwide vision on energy, bordering on access, efficiency, renewables, and mode of implementation",7
"Making sure access to inexpensive, dependable, and sustainable energy for all is vital to realizing the SDGs (UN DESA, 2018)",7
Energy is principal to the realization of the SDGs by 2030 as well as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change,13
Progression in SDG 7 can prospectively lead to the advancement of other related SDGs,7
"Yet, progress on SDG 7 is falling short",7
It is worth noting that the strides made toward clean energy technologies decelerated from 2009 to 2017,7
"Sustainable solid waste management aims at the following in ranked order: source reduction, reuse, recycle, waste-to-energy, and landfill",12
"Since the Paris Agreement, the core consideration in the use of energy globally is to decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions",13
"In the framework of the Paris Agreement, therefore, renewables became more significant",13
"Efforts in the past to manage Ghana’s waste situation cannot be downplayed; however, the lack of efficiency in the prevailing waste management regime is very evident (Nsiah-Asamoah and Ackah, 2019)",12
Open defecation continues while waste is dumped in bushes and openly along streets,6
"Also, these practices make waste management cumbersome and expensive for the community and the Government of Ghana as a macro manager of the community",12
Technologies that have helped nations globally to convert waste to different forms of energy have become collectively known as waste-to-energy (WTE) solutions,12
"While much work on Ghana has been done in the area of waste disposal and management, the studies done on waste management have centered more generally on issues of waste processing, recycling, and disposal (e.g., Douti et al., 2017; Adu-Boahen et al., 2014; Thompson, 2011; Puopiel, 2010; Boadi and Kuitunen, 2003)",12
Four (4) waste experts with a minimum of 5 years experience in waste processing who had operated within the Atwima Kwanwoma district for at least 2 years with adequate knowledge of the Kwanwoma township were interviewed,12
"Again, issues concerning the application of suitable waste management technologies to specific geographic waste situations have not been explored in Ghana",12
This presents a significant need to test the suitability and effectiveness of WTE solutions in addressing waste management challenges in rural areas,12
It is becoming increasingly evident that waste processing technologies which are useful and efficient in one geographical area might not be equally fitting and efficient in other areas due to geographic peculiarities and differing human behaviors,12
"The SDG 7 aims at supporting access to affordable, dependable, and sustainable energy",7
"At the micro level, off-grid solutions such as WTE are an affordable, sustainable, and modern energy source which could reduce pressure on the government for local electrification needs while also providing other affordable forms of energy for industrial or domestic use",7
"In the spirit of development, therefore, the output (energy) in the conceptual framework (Fig. 2) provides the support Ghana needs at the micro level to achieve SDG 7",7
Diseases related to poor waste management are also expected to reduce drastically or be eradicated completely,12
"WTE technologies provide the novelty proposed by this perspective to increase energy supply while addressing waste management challenges, thereby achieving these twin goals",12
The concept of sustainability directly applies to waste management practices because some practices endanger human existence with diseases and pollution while creating problems for the existence and survival of future generations,12
"Waste-to-energy technology and solutions are grounded in the spirit and thinking of sustainability (Chepkemoi, 2015)",12
"The waste management theory (WMT) is an integrated frame of knowledge regarding waste and waste management, and it hinges on the anticipation that waste management would ensure the prevention of waste from causing damage to the health and environment of humanity and encourage the optimization of resource usage (Pongrácz et al., 2004)",12
"In other words, WMT posits that the function of waste management is converting waste to non-waste by assigning a different owner and/or finding a different purpose for the waste (Pongrácz, 2002)",12
"This does not essentially render it a real possibility always but only establishes that converting waste to non-waste is of utmost importance to waste management (Pongrácz, 2002)",12
"Most countries develop their policies and plans for waste management using the 3Rs: “reduce, reuse, and recycle.” The foremost consideration in waste management is a general decrease in the quantum of solid waste in the course of production activities",12
Waste reduction translates into a lower cost of managing waste,12
"For example, paper and plastic recycling saves more energy than the energy output from WTE plants from the same materials (Mutz et al., 2017)",12
ToC has a significant bearing on the present study owing to the waste-to-energy solutions anticipated to be a transformational tool for waste management in the Kwanwoma township,12
"Efforts have been made to establish less costly standards for the set-up of municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) for developing economies, but the required expertise for the longevity of such plants can be an issue",12
"MSWI requires a well-established waste management system, a complete system for environmental monitoring with standards for emission, additional financing to cater for miscellaneous costs unlike landfills, at least 100,000 t/year supply of combustible MSW, and skilled personnel (Mata-Lima et al., 2021)",12
"Also, deforestation is curtailed since firewood for domestic use is replaced by biogas (Postawa et al., 2021)",15
SLF is well recognized in the developing world and turns out to be the sole choice in most instances for waste treatment in an organized manner,12
The efficiency of the collection is approximated at 60 to 85% by computations of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (1998),15
"The 12 parameters are: Status or stage of waste management Waste composition Calorific value of MSW where applicable Appropriate waste volumes for WTE Competent running of waste facilities Extra transport time and distance of MSW to WTE plant Sale and/or ultimate disposing of process residues Legal framework and environmental requirements for WTE Funding the managing of MSW Access to foreign currency Access to final consumers of energy from WTE Incentives for producing low carbon energy A few studies have been done on suitable WTE technology within the African region, but these have geographically focused on urban, peri-urban, national, and regional levels (Agbejule et al., 2021; Akhator et al., 2016Scarlet et al., 2015)",12
This presents a significant need to test the suitability and effectiveness of WTE solutions in addressing waste management challenges,12
"To qualify as an expert respondent, experts required a minimum of 5 years’ experience in waste processing and must have operated within the Atwima Kwanwoma district for at least 2 years with adequate knowledge of the Kwanwoma township",12
"These experts indicated that they have served in their roles as waste management experts for more than 5 years; two of them had served for 6 years, one had served for 9 years, and the other for 11 years",12
This section is dedicated to the analysis of the responses from  the waste management experts and the residents,12
"Four waste management experts were interviewed, and their responses have been analyzed under two sections:  factor considerations for WTE technology and suitable WTE for the Kwanwoma township",12
"The experts generally agreed on organic waste, mainly animal and human fecal matter as feedstock for anaerobic digestion for biogas production with solid waste and general waste as feedstock for incineration and sanitary landfill, respectively",12
The major wastes generated in the Kwanwoma township are building and construction waste from the activities of building and construction workers and food waste from the activities of food sellers and market women,12
"The energy output from WTE processes is clean and environmentally friendly, thereby meeting SDG 7 which seeks to achieve clean and affordable energy",7
"The theme of the environmental upgrades and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations is “Better Environment, Better tomorrow.” This study uses regulatory quality (RgQ) and energy consumption per capita (EC) as explanatory variables and foreign direct investment (FDI) as an integrating variable with RgQ and EC and examines their impacts on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 2001 to 2018 in panel Asian economies",7
"In addition, FDI has an integrating role, as sufficient FDI inflows significantly enhance clean energy use and EC efficiency",7
"By extending the Earth Day inspiration, the UN, in recent climate summits, has urged its member states toward bilateral effort for environment protection and regional collaboration in institutional governance, investment, and technical support (WMO 2019 & 2020).
 Environmental protection is an important goal of sustainability",15
"To protect the environment from GHG emissions, national and regional integration of investment, resource use, and institutional governance is needed to promote environmental initiatives",11
Prior studies have found that foreign direct investment (FDI) promotes SDG initiatives by enhancing state capacity and institutional performance through investment in research and development measures (Bokpin 2017; Zhou et al,9
The UN has also stated that SDGs should involve regional integration and collaboration to promote regional development while working toward global sustainability (UN 2019),11
"Previous studies have examined the ways FDI supports energy productivity and clean energy use in developing countries (Adom and Amuakwa-Mensah 2016), but the focus on FDI as an essential pillar for environmental SD has been limited to developed states and institutional development (Ridzuan et al",7
"The term “green finance” has been used when considering the significance of investment in environmental protection and upgrading—that is, on the nexus of SD and FDI (Sachs et al",15
"Thus, this study may help restate public policies in promoting institutional governance, human settlement (energy consumption), and FDI in controlling GHG emissions in Asia and other regions",7
"This paper sought to answer the following research questions: how does regulatory quality help to improve climate quality? What is the role of FDI in environmental upgrades, and how does it improve institutional quality? Do excess energy consumption and human activities deteriorate environmental quality? Can FDI improve energy efficiency patterns and technological integration? In response to these questions, the relevant literature, hypotheses, and econometric results are explained in detail in the following sections: “Research background” explains the literature review and development of hypotheses, “Methodology” presents the methodology and econometric strategy, “Data analysis and discussion” includes the data analysis and discussion, and “Conclusion” concludes this study",7
SD is a global phenomenon to support regional integration and future development planning,11
"(2017), and Pata (2018) have analyzed the relationship of energy use with economic growth and GHG emissions through the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ADRL) approach for Malaysia, China, and Turkey, respectively",8
"However, prudent and appropriate energy efficiency and renewable energy consumption promote SD and mitigate the adverse effect of deleterious energy use (Owens 2016)",7
Pata (2018) found that energy consumption had a less adverse effect on Turkey’s GHG emissions than in other regional states,7
"(2020) examined the energy consumption and GHG emission nexus in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and G7 countries; they found that environmental SD has been improving, but energy-related policies and FDI could be vital in reducing GHG emissions in developing and emerging economies",7
"Other studies analyzed energy consumption regulations, state resources, and financial investment and their effect on GHG emissions and found improved environmental quality (Khan et al",7
"Due to low state resources and financial development, FDI enhances institutional capacity and strategic measures in developing countries (Virtanen et al",16
"They found that FDI inclusion and economic growth, and regulatory quality substantially affected environmental improvement and GHG emission reduction",8
They found that FDI enhanced the financial development of developing countries and policymakers’ capacity to make prudent and effective policy reforms for climate change in light of international standardization,13
Previous studies have used GHG emissions per capita as a proxy for environment improvement as the response variable and energy consumption per capita (EC) and regulatory quality (RgQ) as independent variables,7
"Overall institutional governance and RgQ—including proper research and development, technology deployment, and quality of climatic institutions in Asia—need to be enhanced to achieve SDG",9
"There are various determinants of such upgrades, including, for example, state capacity and climate regulations, national and foreign investment, and energy productivity",7
"Furthermore, FDI adds a positive inclusion in state resource capacity by enhancing energy resources and efficacy by importing the latest technology and equipment and promoting energy efficiency to support SD",7
"Second, public and private entities must work collectively to invent more sources of clean, renewable energy",7
Develop more and more electric public transport services to new routes to restrict traditional petrol and diesel private transportation on the roads unnecessary,11
"Eighth, the government should promote and introduce affordable solar energy devices and consumption patterns, and renewable energy approaches by avoiding traditional fossil fuel sources that pollute the air",7
"Ninth, rebates and subsidiaries on green finance projects and research and development on environmental upgradation should be encouraged by the government and leverage foreign direct investment on environmental projects",9
FDI enhances state resource and institutional capacity and capabilities by helping the state meet international standards by importing and using appropriate sustainable technology,16
"Future studies could consider the impact of globalization as an integrating variable in achieving environmental sustainability, with energy consumption and institutional governance used to gauge their impacts on GHG emissions.",7
"Moreover, the consumption of renewable energy restored the environmental quality in these countries",7
"Based on the results, we recommended the need for the diversification of the energy-basket for enhancement of the use of renewable energy resources",7
Many studies have established the fact that economic growth endeavors have damaged environmental quality across different regions (Birdsall 1992; Holtz-Eakin and Selden 1995; Wackernagel and Rees 1996),8
"Considering the need for environmental conservation, the Kyoto protocol and later the Paris Agreement have been initiated",13
"The United Nations Development Committee has recognized the need for sustainable economic growth, which is evident from the recommendations of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) (UNDP 2019)",8
"In this regard, despite registering the phenomenal GDP growth rate, the emerging economies of Asia have preferred economic interests over environmental purification, which is evident from the increasing social-cost bill caused by the increasing pollution level in the region (Yorifuji 2015)",8
"Similarly, to safeguard the quality of water, the Philippines government has passed an Act in 2004, which is termed as the Clean Water Act (CWA).Footnote 1 Considering the need for environmental conservation, the Malaysian government has also issued specific guidelines, which are part of the Environmental Quality (Clean Air) Regulation-2014",6
The market-oriented economic policies adopted by the Asian emerging economies have amplified the opportunities for economic development and resource exploitation (OECD 2018),8
It is evident from the budget allocations that the emerging Asian economies have started focusing on the ecosystem or biodiversity conservation as part of their long-term growth targets (Squires 2013),15
"However, the policymakers are well aware of the negative consequences related to the overutilization of natural resources, which is evident from the fact that the Asian governments have accepted the membership of the Paris Agreement",13
The Asian region is bestowed with natural resources that are desirable for economic growth,8
"Therefore, it is necessary to assess the economic growth pattern of these nations for examining the impact of ecological sustainability and suggesting consequential policies",8
"While analyzing the ecological impact of the economic growth pattern, the drivers of economic growth need to be considered",8
"The South and Southeast Asian nations are traversing a high growth trajectory; hence, these nations are characterized by high energy consumption, which is majorly sourced by fossil fuel",7
"In the background of elevated economic growth, these nations are also characterized by the growth in job opportunities, which causes a rural-urban migration",8
"In order to commensurate the rise in consumption, there is increase in energy consumption, which also catalyzes other economic activities, and this in turn is translated into trade and other manufacturing activities",7
"In the existing literature, GDP growth (Selden and Song 1994), energy utilization (Danish and Wang 2017), FDI (Acharyya 2009), trade expansions (Friedl and Getzner 2003), financial sector development (Nasir et al",8
The GDP growth pattern has been found as the main cause behind the widening of CO2 inequality in the long run,8
"(2017) in their study intended to establish the long-run relationship of CO2 emissions and its possible determinants (i.e., per capita income, renewable energy, and trade expansion)",7
"In terms of carbon emissions, the impact of power plants is found insignificant, which may be due to the implementation of modern and energy-efficient techniques of electricity generation",7
"Therefore, the study has intended to examine the impact of per capita income (constant $US), renewable energy (percentage of total energy utilization), non-renewable energy (% of total energy utilization), population density (people p./sq.km",7
"Contrarily, the impact of renewable energy on EFP is expected to be negative because compared with the nonrenewable energy, renewable energy is less-carbon intense (Alola et al",7
"The study has tried to examine the impact of economic and demographic characteristics on land, forest, air, and water quality, whose aggregated degradation is termed as the ecological footprint",6
The correlation of EFP with all variables except renewable energy is found to be positive,7
"Besides, the correlation between per capita income and renewable energy usage has been observed as negative",7
"The statistically significant value (1% level) of the error correction term given in the lower panel of Table 4 confirms that per capita income, nonrenewable, and renewable energy consumption, urbanization, fertility, and density converge with the long-run equilibrium at a speed of (− 0.808) if disequilibrium occurs",7
"It indicates that the selected countries need to generate environmentally sustainable production processes, as the present modes of production are significantly contributing toward environmental pollution in the long run",12
"Here, it can be inferred that the region is unable to develop a sustainable economic environment and may be tolerating the tradeoff between ecological system and economic growth",8
"In this regard, the impact of renewable energy resources on EFP has been observed as indirect and significant, thus meaning that the use of renewable energy resources such as wind, solar, and biomass has contributed toward reducing EFP in the long run",7
"This association highlights that to fulfill the long-term growth targets, these developing countries have to intensify the usage of renewable energy",7
"The use of renewable energy will probably have twin benefits: Firstly, the usage of renewable energy is more appropriate in terms of ecosystem conservation",7
"Secondly, the widespread use of renewable energy resources may lessen the burden of the energy import bill, as most of the selected countries are net-energy importers (Sharma et al",7
"Once the widespread use of renewable energy is initiated, the additional marginal cost of production may become significantly low, which may improve the market competitiveness of these countries in the long run",7
"Moreover, the results of the preceding studies confirm that the impact of renewable energy and nonrenewable energy on environmental pollution may be indirect and direct, respectively (Nazir et al",7
"Excluding per capita income and renewable energy, the short-run impact of other economic and demographic indicators on EFP is found insignificant",7
"Contrarily, in both the periods, renewable energy utilization has contributed toward significantly improving environmental quality",7
We primarily analyzed the impact of economic growth and its drivers on EFP of the South and Southeast Asian countries over 1990–2015,8
It can be seen that the rise in the living standard and quality of life driven by the fossil fuel–based energy consumption have negatively affected the ecological balance of these nations,7
"Hence, there lies a tradeoff between achieving economic growth and uplifting environmental quality of these countries",8
It can be seen that the renewable energy consumption has more positive environmental impact compared with the negative environmental impact of fossil fuel energy consumption,7
"Apparently, it might seem that the nationwide implementation of renewable energy solution can solve this problem",7
The households might be provided the renewable energy solutions at a pro-rata rate from the government while enhancing the awareness about these solutions through the people-public-private partnerships,7
"The quality of life indicated by the fertility rate has direct negative impact on the ecological balance; however, it is necessary that people with a standard quality of life should be primarily targeted for the diffusion of renewable energy solutions, as the spillover effect of the usage of these solutions will be reflected in the populace with comparatively lower quality of life",7
"Hence, in the second phase, the industrial sector should be provided the renewable energy solutions at a pro-rata rate, which will be based on the carbon footprint of the firm",7
"In this way, EFP can be reduced without harming the economic growth pattern",8
"The initiative of providing renewable energy solutions to the households and industrial sector will help these nations to bring down the price of renewable energy solutions, and in this way, these nations will be able to achieve the objective of providing clean and affordable energy to their citizens (objective of SDG 7)",7
"In the pursuit of city expansion and exploration of renewable energy solutions, the extent of job opportunities will increase, which will help in improving people’s living standard (objective of SDG 7)",7
"Moreover, the reduction of pressure on the urban infrastructure will make the cities more livable (objective of SDG 11)",11
"Accordingly, this study uncovers the non-linear effects of economic complexity on CO2 emissions including technology, population density, and economic growth in a STIRPAT model",8
"Further, population density and economic growth are evidenced to intensify CO2",8
"Economic growth is necessary to decrease poverty, improve the standard of life, and stimulate human wellbeing",8
"However, one of the negative externalities of development is human-induced CO2 emissions, which are believed to trigger climate change and environmental deterioration",13
The world has realized that combined efforts are required to mitigate environmental adversities and ensure sustainable growth,8
"Among these targets, SDG 13 calls for taking steps to control global climate change and stimulating mitigation activities to reduce the adverse effects of climate change (Xue et al",13
"In this context, less developed nations with a low ECC try to acquire economic growth by improving the agriculture sector, and thus, energy usage and environmental issues are generally low at this stage",8
"In this context, the objective of this study is to assess the non-linear effects of ECC on CO2 in BRICS, including technology, population density, and economic growth from 1992 to 2018",8
"2020a), these developing nations need to upgrade their existing technologies and build new innovative technology to decrease adverse externalities of development",9
"First, it uncovers the non-linear impact of economic complexity on CO2 in BRICS countries, including technology, population density, and economic growth in the model",8
"However, they used ECC instead of economic growth, and ECC differs from the economic growth to a great extent",8
The omission of economic growth from the model can cause omitted variable bias,8
(2021c) refuted these findings and illustrated that technological innovation intensifies pollution in Chile,8
(2022) suggested that technological innovation boosts emissions in BRICS,8
(2015) found that raising research and development and innovation in the energy sector can curb environmental pollution in OECD,9
"(2021), when countries intend to develop complex goods, they end up producing dirty products, such as textile, metal, and cement, at the early development level, which in turn boost environmental degradation",15
Modern technology is critical to achieving energy efficiency and controlling environmental pollution (Wasif et al,7
"In this equation, CO2 captures the environmental impact (I) while technology (T), affluence (A), and population (P) are represented by technological innovation, economic growth, and population density",8
"In Eq. 2, CO2, ECC, ECC2, T, Y, and PD depict CO2 emissions (per capita tonnes), economic complexity, economic complexity’s square, technology (total resident and non-resident patent applications), economic growth (per capita GDP 2015 constant US $), and population density, respectively",8
"The data on population density, technology, and economic growth is collected from WDI (2021)",8
"Further detail in Fig. 3 depicts that China, Russia, and Brazil had more patents at the start of the period; however, technological innovation has boosted in India over the period of analysis, and India has surpassed Brazil and Russia in terms of total patents",8
"In Table 5, the estimates uncovered that increasing Y (economic growth) enhances CO2, which infers that environmental quality reduces because of economic progress in BRICS",8
"In these countries, economic growth has boosted for the period under analysis, and just in the last decade, these nations obtained 6.5% of the average growth rate",8
"Currently, their overall contribution to global economic development is approximately 23% (Khan et al",8
"As BRICS are included in the developing group of nations, they overwhelmingly consume traditional fossil energy to support their economic growth",8
Their contribution to the world’s energy consumption is approximately 40% (Qin and Ozturk 2021),7
"Thus, the consumption of traditional energy sources for achieving economic growth degrades environmental quality in BRICS",8
"Thus, BRICS nations can continue to expand their ECC levels to meet SDG 13 because a high ECC level will be beneficial in reducing CO2 and thereby achieving the commitments regarding climate actions",13
"Therefore, environmental quality in BRICS is improved due to technological innovation",8
Enhancing technology enables countries to uplift their energy efficiency because modern technology consumes less energy,7
"Also, developing new technologies help to uplift green energy production enabling countries to gradually shift towards alternative energy (Kihombo et al",7
This finding depicts that BRICS are on the right path to achieving SDG 9 as innovation is on an increase in this country group,9
Enhancing Technology will be useful in achieving sustainable industrialization which will pave the way towards sustainable development,9
"Alongside this, upgrading reducing harmful effects of industrialization and the use of modern technology for green energy production will enable BRICS to achieve SDG13",7
"This research probed the non-linear effects of economic complexity on CO2, including technology, population density, and economic growth in the context of BRICS",8
"Also, the results revealed that CO2 emissions upsurge on account of an increase in population density and economic growth",8
"In this context, the findings also indicate that technological innovation lessens CO2",8
"In this setting, upgrading the technology in the industrial sector will lead to sustainable industrialization, which will help BRICS to achieve SDG 9",9
"Thus, SDG 13 can also be realized since the reduction in energy usage will decrease CO2",13
"In this context, relaxed regulations and easy documentation for the import of advanced technologies, and beneficial investing opportunities for clean energy production can attract competencies and investments across this country group",7
Boosting energy efficiency can decrease the overwhelming usage of fossil fuels in industrial production,7
"Alongside, raising the consumption of solar, wind, bioenergy, and other clean sources can limit the adverse environmental effects of economic growth",8
"Climate change is an environmental and existential issue of great urgency, especially for today’s youth",13
"Until recently, the French national school curriculum had not given students much opportunity to learn about climate change (CC), its causes and repercussions, and mitigating measures to reach sustainable climate conditions",13
"Older students learned about the Conference of the Parties, COP21 Paris agreement and the IPCC climate findings and recommendations",13
"This article is a qualitative case study of a successful attempt to raise students’ awareness of sustainability and climatic issues, and to involve them in thinking collaboratively with others about the tasks ahead to address the problem of climate change from a local perspective",13
We (Larose and Blaisot) designed an experiential workshop to introduce the basics of sustainability and sustainable development to our students through the lens of climate change,13
"Through this initiative, every staff member and student in each school building would play a part in the process of implementing concrete solutions in line with the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [3] in the areas pertaining to school and facility management, such as energy and water usage, waste reduction, recycling and disposal, landscaping, and throughout all levels of classroom lessons",12
"This article describes a six-week collaborative experiential workshop that brought together two groups of French students, (age 10 and ages 15–16) to learn and teach each other about climate change (CC)",13
The older students learned about the Conference of the Parties (COP21) Paris agreement and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate findings and recommendations,13
"Co-authors Larose and Blaisot undertook this project with their students in 2015, before the national sustainability curriculum was instituted; it occurred at a time when the topic of sustainability became prominent in the news media because of the UN-SDGs [3] and the UN Climate Change Conference, (The 21st Conference of Parties, or COP 21) held in Paris in November–December 2015",13
"While the two age groups were at very different developmental levels, their performance in this collaborative project would allow them to learn from and with each other, and gain crucial twenty-first century sustainability literacy skills such as: Gaining fundamental knowledge about environmental sciences: Many articles are featured by newspapers, television and other social media on issues of sustainability and climate change, but the notions and the terminology remain hazy in the minds of many people",13
"The ability to assess different kinds and sources of information: Students used scientific approaches to learn how scientists study climate change and make projections into the future, and learned that the models have to take into account many parameters and uncertainties",13
"Learning about responsible, realistic and hopeful behaviors: Students learned and in turn taught their parents about sustainability and climate change, without succumbing to catastrophic-thinking",13
Climate change (CC) is one of the biggest challenges of our times and is one of the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) [3] to transform our world; SDG13 is dedicated to Climate Action,13
"In the French high school curriculum, climate change is only taught during the last year, and only when students choose the specialty ‘Biology and Earth Sciences’",13
"As this was a multi-disciplinary project, students and pupils were able to draw on a wide range of disciplines as they delved into learning about climate change and sustainable behaviors ",13
"Each student chose a topic from this list: Consumption, Agriculture, Water Management, Biodiversity, Population migrations within and across national borders, Health, Energy",6
Representative slide from a student presentation about Consumption and climate change,13
https.ecologie.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/ONERC_FichesIndicateur_glacier.pdf [8] Representative slide from student presentation about Biodiversity and climate change,13
Predicted distribution of vineyards under climate change scenario RCP 8.5 [9] Representative slide from student presentation about Population Migrations and climate change,13
 -pedagogique-changements-climatiques/ (Publisher gives permission to use these in public education.) [10] Representative slide from student presentation on Health and climate change. Source: Kit pédagogique le changement climatique p 40,13
 -pedagogique-changements-climatiques/ [11]  Representative slide from student presentation on Energy and climate change,13
"However, arable land areas remain stable, and can no longer increase to meet the need",15
"The pupils were quite interested in the unit on health, and they found it difficult to choose which of the many illustrations of the effects of climate change on health they wanted to use in their presentation",13
"The students chose this chart to show that fossil energy consumption increases due to the growth in the number of people on Earth, resultsing in more emissions of GHG",7
We have to eliminate power plants that generate energy from fossil fuels and just use renewable energy sources,7
"First, the collaboration was a crucial component of their learning; and second, they are compelled to take action in the struggle to limit climate change, and they are witnessing the utter failure of the adults’ political systems to treat the problem as the emergency that it is",13
"They had a unified goal: learning about climate change issues, sharing information and proposing solutions",13
They all shared the same convictions that society must mobilize against climate change,13
"The pupils became very aware that the problems of climate change concern everyone, and no matter what one’s age, one can participate and act for the environment",13
The parents expressed amazement at the involvement of pupils and students to find solutions to mitigate the consequences of climate change,13
"Their civic actions (“Taking civic action” section) led the students to a keen awareness that the slow pace of adults’ willingness to make change is deepening the injustices caused by climate change (“Youth sense of climate injustices” section), and is woefully insufficient (“Frustration with slow pace of adult leadership” section) for the current crisis",13
"As the students in this collaboration learned about the unsustainable nature of the accumulating repercussions of climate change, they developed a pressing desire to take civic action",13
"Here are sample responses to the student’s requests: For lower bus fares: “The topic requires study.” For bike lanes for safer passage to school: “The store-owners’ desire more parking spaces, so bike lanes aren’t easily created in town.” For the city to encourage carpooling: “The mayor encourages it for town employees, but we recognize this is not enough.” To address school lunchroom food waste: “A young person has been hired to investigate this subject.” To the proposal to serve meatless lunch 1 day per week to reduce the school’s carbon footprint: “Parents are not ready for that.” [The students didn’t challenge this assumption, but certainly could have.] The pupils took their similar positions to a different town hall agent",12
They wanted to raise awareness among their fellow students against food waste at the school lunchroom,12
"All the students expressed a desire “to understand the causes and consequences of climate change in order to mobilize against it.” By studying the causes of climate change, the youth learned that human activities have impacts on the environment",13
"They understood that CC would affect not only their lives but also the lives of people in poorer countries, with even more disastrous consequences: desertification, depletion of water resources, salinization of soil, rising ocean levels",15
They learned that the hardships of climate change are falling first upon regions where the people have few or no resources to struggle for survival through these impending crises,13
This knowledge raised their awareness of the world-leaders’ failure to address climate change with any urgency for the sake of environmental justice and addressing human suffering,13
"As they learned about the world leaders’ responses to climate change (or lack thereof), one of the students stated with dismay, “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was created at the end of 1988 and almost nothing has been done",13
"We need more rapid change to respond to the urgency of climate change.” They inquired, “Why did adults not react sooner and why are their actions still only moderate? Why is there a gap between what adults say and what they actually do?” Sylvie Granon, researcher at neurosciences institute in Paris-Saclay, who is co-writer of a chapter in the book “Le Souci de la nature” suggests the reason adults may be so slow to respond attributes blame to the human brain: “Le changement est extrêmement énergivore et stressant pour l’organisme, qui va essayer de diminuer l’impact de ce stress en adoptant les comportements les plus automatiques et les plus rassurants possible.” (Translation: Change is extremely energy-consuming and stressful for organisms, which try to diminish the impact of this stress by adopting automatic habitual behaviors which serve to reassure as much as possible) [16]",13
The solutions proposed by the students of this workshop were to show how each person at their level of skills can have a positive influence on the problem of climate change,13
"Two strong themes emerged from student work products: (1) The collaboration of two age groups proved to be more than the sum of its parts; (2) Unnerved by the slow response from the adult world of politics, the students felt compelled to take immediate personal and civic action to confront climate change",13
"In secondary schools, any teacher could teach climate change; however, it is mainly science and social studies teachers who incorporate climate curriculum in their courses",13
"The teacher’s role is, of course, to allow students to develop knowledge to understand climate change and also to support the various actions often implemented by students to do their part in mitigating its consequences",13
This is just one small example of the growth that occurred when two groups of students came together to share their learning about sustainability and take action to confront climate change,13
"Even though they have the resources to teach sustainable development issues, many do not feel ready to teach this topic",4
Energy and tourism is an integral component of modern societies and key pillars of sustainable growth in the world,8
This paper applies the concept of the EFP to examining the impacts that energy consumption and tourism growth have on environmental quality,7
"Energy consumption and tourism growth increase revenues, create employment, and contribute to a blueprint for achieving a sustainable future for all (Dogan and Aslan 2017; Gokmenoglu and Eren 2019; Işik et al",7
"Per the Energy Information Agency (EIA), global energy consumption will grow from 549 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) in 2012 to 815 quadrillion Btu in 2030, and the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) predicts tourist arrivals to grow from 1 billion in 2012 to more than 1.8 billion in 2030 (Işik et al",7
Sustainable growth and preventing environmental change must be considered while fulfilling the growing energy demand,8
Renewable energy has become more important today because of its lean adverse effects on the environment compared to other energy resources (Razmi et al,7
This study uses sustainable growth theory by highlighting the environmental sustainability and benefits of tourism development on the population’s well-being and the environmental quality of 38 International Energy Agency (IEA) countries,8
"First, we form an index for energy consumption that merges the two primary sources of energy consumption: renewable energy consumption and non-renewable energy consumption",7
"Thus, the study is the first to use PCA to construct and estimate indices of these critical parts of sustainable growth theory",8
"The coordination of energy consumption and tourism growth with EFP has received relatively little attention in the literature, as has research at the intersection of the environment, energy, and tourism growth in IEA countries",7
"No empirical research has been conducted on the probable connections among energy consumption, tourism growth, and the EFP for the IEA countries, so this study fills the vacuum by examining the prospective long-run relationship among the study variables for a balanced panel of 38 members and associations of the IEA family",7
"According to the IEA (2018), world energy consumption in 2018 increased at about twice the average growth rate since 2010, resulting in increased environmental deterioration during that year, a record",7
"(2020a, b) examined the asymmetric impact of energy consumption on Pakistan’s EFP from 1971 to 2014 and found a negative relationship between energy consumption and environmental quality",7
(2020a) confirmed a negative long-term equilibrium relationship between energy consumption and the EFP in Turkey,7
(2020) empirically examined the relationship between tourism and economic growth for 80 countries over the period from 1995 to 2016 and concluded that tourism contributed positively to economic growth both directly and indirectly,8
"(2021) used a limited information maximum likelihood (LIML) approach to investigate tourism specialization, economic growth, and transition economies for Poland, concluding that tourism specialization has a short-term positive impact on economic growth",8
"(2021) also incorporated an industry-level analysis of the relationship between tourism and economic growth in the USA from 1998 to 2017 and found that investment in tourism development may lead to long-run equilibrium economic growth even during economic stagnation, but tourism may not effectively stimulate economic growth in the short run, as it may take a cue from the general economy",8
"(2018a, b) tested empirically the role of tourism in influencing the economic growth of micro states from 1995 to 2015 and found that the tourism sector did not contribute to economic growth over the study period",8
"Therefore, we suppose that tourism growth is positively associated with economic growth and is adversely associated with the EFPs of IEA countries",8
"(2016) found a significant positive relationship between capital formation and economic growth in India from 1970 to 2012, while Udom et al",8
(2020) demonstrated a positive association between capital formation and economic growth in Malaysia from 1980 to 2014,8
The same positive relationship between capital formation and economic growth was the conclusion of the studies by Adebola and Shahbaz (2015) and Topcu et al,8
"Therefore, we contend that capital formation stimulates economic growth and increases the EFP, hence deteriorating environmental quality in IEA countries",8
"Non-renewable energy is depends primarily on burning of fossil fuels, which breaks down hydrocarbons, creating air pollution",7
"Therefore, this kind of energy consumption is not only a danger to the environment but also a challenge to sustainable development",7
"The tourism sector should endorse clean energy initiatives by providing energy-saving lodging, solar heating and cooling, and renewable technologies (He et al",7
"First, we form an index for energy consumption, in which we merge the two primary sources of energy: renewable energy consumption and non-renewable energy consumption",7
"Y is gross domestic product (GDP), t is the time (1995-2018), i is the cross-section (1,2,3,…N), L is the total labor force, K is the gross fixed capital formation, β0 is a constant, and β1 to β4 are the coefficients of energy consumption, tourism growth, labor, and capital, respectively",7
"Table 6 shows the outcomes of FMOLS models I and II, for which economic growth (Y) and EFP (environmental quality) are the dependent variables, respectively",8
"Energy consumption, tourism growth, labor force, and capital formation are the independent variables in both models",7
"Further, a 1% acceleration in tourism growth increases the economic growth of IEA countries by 34% in model I, while it decreases the EFP of IEA countries by 24% in model II",8
All of these studies found that tourism growth encourages the economic growth process in a country,8
"(2017), who found that the tourism sector does not contribute to economic growth",8
"Similarly, capital formation is positively associated with economic growth and the EFPs of IEA countries in the study period, as a 1% increase in capital formation increases economic growth by 40% and the EFP by 75%",8
"Thus, although capital formation is a significant driver of economic growth, it also harms the environmental quality of IEA countries",8
"However, the labor force positively contributes to economic growth while decreasing the EFPs of IEA countries, as a 1% increase in the labor force increases economic growth by 12% and reduce the EFP by 86%",8
"Thus, although an increase in the labor force does not contribute much to economic growth, it has a significant effect on environmental quality and sustainability",8
"The analysis shows the presents of a bidirectional Granger relationship among energy consumption, the labor force, and GDP",7
"However, a one-way Granger relationship prevails from GDP, capital formation, and the EFP to energy consumption in the economies of the 38 IEA countries during the study period",7
"Our finding that energy consumption unidirectionally Granger causes EFP is contrary to the findings of Nathaniel (2020), who demonstrated no Granger relationship between energy use and EFP",7
"Moreover, the result of no causality between tourism growth and economic growth is consistent with findings of Balli et al",8
"(2019), who found a unidirectional causality relationship between tourism and economic growth",8
"Stacked common coefficients causality analysis The underlying relationships and the long-run elasticities between the study variables explore the satirical navigational associations among the variables, and understanding these relationships is crucial for efficient and environmentally friendly energy design and tourism policies",12
"However, energy consumption promotes EFPs, while tourism activities lower them",7
Energy consumption from renewable sources plays an active role in reducing energy poverty and dependence on foreign-produced energy while ensuring energy efficacy,7
IEA nations should motivate and develop strategies that will give opportunities for investors to invest in the production and consumption of renewable energy,7
"Furthermore, the governments of IEA countries should work toward meeting clean production thresholds by pushing capital formation toward renewable energy sources",7
"The governments of all IEA countries, especially Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Slovak, Morocco, and a few others, should reduce their subsidies of non-renewables in favor of investing in renewable energy",7
"At the initial phase of transformation from one kind of energy to the other, a considerable amount of investment is required for the technological upgrade to the process of developing renewable energy",7
These shifts from non-renewable to renewable energy sources create multiple externalities for these economies,7
"Based on our findings, we suggest that decision-makers implement such policies that will improve the critical relationship between tourism, economic growth, and the EFP",8
Table 6 shows that a 1% increase in tourism growth increases economic growth by 34% and reduces the EFP by 24%,8
These figures are significant but could improve with the introduction of coordinated and comprehensive tourism policies and practices,12
"Hence, sustained economic growth may be possible while implementing the thresholds of various SDGs",8
"We use PCA to construct two indices, one for energy consumption, in which we merge renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, and one for important tourism indicators, where we combine 12 critical symbols of the tourism industry",7
"Using these indices, we explore the impact of energy and tourism on the EFP and the economic growth of IEA countries in two multivariate production functions using labor and capital as the control variables",8
"This study plays an essential part in establishing the literature at the intersection of EFP, energy, tourism, and sustainable growth",8
"Likewise, the think tanks of these economies should consider tourism strategies that support sustainable economic growth through the use of reusable energy",8
"The UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 2.5 explicitly calls for the maintenance of genetic diversity of seeds through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at national, regional, and international levels as an essential undertaking to end global hunger (SDG Goal 2)",2
"This special issue results from a renewed call to demonstrate the value-in-use of conserving and supplying plant genetic resources conserved in genebanks to researchers, plant breeders, and farmers",2
"We summarize the main messages of the studies included in this special issue of Food Security and explain how they contribute to a better understanding of the role, function, and value of genebanks, particularly as we address food security challenges in a changing agricultural context",2
"By contrast, applied research about the value of conserving the diversity of plant genetic resources outside their place of origin (ex situ, in genebanks) is scant",2
"Further, even when we are able to assess the impact of improved varieties grown by farming households on food security, it is not easy to disentangle the specific contribution of the genetic resources supplied by the genebanks in the ancestry of the varieties",2
"Over the last 50 years, the CGIAR (formerly the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research) research centres have built up the largest and most frequently accessed network of global crop collections (Fig. 1)",2
"Coordinated by the CGIAR Genebank Platform and in partnership with the Global Crop Diversity Trust,Footnote 1 the 11 genebanks of the CGIAR currently manage more than 773,000 accessions of genetic materials of cultivated plants and crop wild relatives that are crucial to achieving worldwide food and nutrition security (Table 1)",2
"While this represents only 10% of the total accessions stored in about 1750 genebanks around the world, the CGIAR genebanks account for about 95% of the germplasm distributed within the guidelines of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) (ITPGRFA 2020)",2
(2016) concluded that countries could use a wide diversity of germplasm from many other countries as inputs into their crop improvement programmes if they are provided with the opportunity of facilitated access to genetic resources,15
"They did, however, highlight the importance of non-monetary benefits, such as information exchange, technology transfer, and capacity building, in the global movement of germplasm",17
"The UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 2.5 explicitly calls for the maintenance of genetic diversity of seeds through soundly managed and diversified seed and plant banks at national, regional, and international levels as an essential undertaking to end global hunger (SDG Goal 2)",2
SDG Goal 2 recognizes that genebanks are critical to the achievement of global food security,2
"Target 2.5 further acknowledges that because food security depends on the food production adapted to local farming environments and suited to the needs of local societies, genebank systems must encompass a diversity of plants, crops, and commodities",2
"With this special issue in Food Security, our principal aim is to update the evidence and enhance the understanding of the role and value of genebanks in a changing agricultural context",2
"The studies presented in this special issue were undertaken in partnership with genebank staff and scientists at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, the International Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT) in Mexico, the International Potato Center (CIP) in Peru, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Colombia, the International Livestock Research Center (ILRI) in Ethiopia, World Agroforestry (ICRAF) in Kenya, and the Pacific Community’s Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees (CePaCT) in Fiji",15
"The plant genetic resources that are our focus are conserved as germplasm or ‘accessions’ in genebanks are typically stored as seeds, seedlings, tissue, and other forms that contain genetic information and are being distributed and used by farmers, scientists, and breeders",2
"To understand the impacts of a genebank, we need first to understand the sources of value in plant genetic resources",2
Economists are often asked to value plant genetic resources because these resources are limited,2
"Use value can be direct, deriving from the food, fibre, and medicinal products to which plant genetic resources contribute; use value can also be indirect, relating to the habitat or ecosystem",2
"It has been argued, however, that the existence value of plant genetic resources is appreciated by relatively few individuals",2
"in Svalbard), plant genetic resources are conserved precisely because they are thought to embody genes and gene combinations of future use to human society through crop improvement",2
"Second, the commercial value of plant genetic resources may represent a relatively small component of their total use value when markets function poorly",2
"In many developing agricultural economies, farmers obtain seed outside of formal markets, and although there is considerable value in the plant genetic resources they use, they may not sell their harvest",2
"Production shocks occur from which plant genetic resources that are rarely used in crop improvement derive substantial economic value, such as a genetic material that confers resistance to a new pathogen",2
"Revisiting these concepts today, we recognize that genebanks have multiple functions that are not strictly limited to the conservation of plant genetic resources, including the documentation and provision of scientific information for further research",2
"Considering the breadth of sources of value that can be ascribed conceptually to plant genetic resources, the empirical documentation of these values is remarkably narrow",2
A smaller set of studies explores the effects of certain categories of plant genetic resources (e.g,2
"Among studies that assessed the economic impact of using plant genetic resources in crop improvement, we know of only a handful that sought to relate productivity changes in farmers’ fields to genebank accessions",2
"First, the literature on crop productivity documents the value of plant genetic resources used in plant breeding only for commercial agriculture",2
"For example, the value of crops not often used by breeding programmes, of which relatively little scientific research has been conducted (sometimes referred to as ‘neglected and underutilized crops’), is not included",9
"This question, discussed next, is relevant for the decision to expand a collection, discard an accession, or restrict the use of an accession through imposition of property rights",1
"Economically important traits are distributed statistically across plant genetic resources, with varying likelihood of attaining useful levels",2
The same trait may be apparent to one degree or another in multiple plant genetic resources,2
The lack of useful data about accessions was cited as an obstacle to greater utilization of accessions in plant breeding and scientific research when the valuation work on genetic resources began (Wright 1997),9
Most of these were universities and national agricultural research systems,2
"They found that developing and transition economies dominated as recipients, utilizing transferred germplasm within their public agricultural research systems, and development programmes",2
"The availability of high quality fodder is one of the major constraints in livestock production, while poor soil fertility is a serious limiting factor to maize productivity",15
"Together with genebank staff and scientists from CIMMYT, the authors interviewed various stakeholders, including maize experts, CIMMYT and national agricultural research systems (NARS) breeders, farmers, consumers, and local youth groups to elaborate on the cultural and economic significance of Jala",2
"The authors narrated the formation of CePaCT in Fiji, underscoring the role of a global effort to collect, conserve, and breed taro in response to the Pacific’s version of the Irish potato famine, the Taro Leaf Blight (TLB) catastrophe, that occurred in Samoa in the 1990s",2
"Yet, each of the empirical studies presented here illustrates how, because of genebanks, these accessions can be made tremendously valuable in addressing the challenges of global food security",2
SDG Target 2.5 highlights the contribution of genetic diversity of seeds and cultivated plants and their wild relative species as well as the promotion of access and benefit-sharing arising from the use of genetic resources to achieving SDGs,2
"We hope that this special issue contributes to a better understanding of the role, function, and value of genebanks, as we address food security challenges in a changing agricultural landscape.",2
The study determines the development of the sustainability reporting domain using a dataset of publications extracted from the Web of Science (WoS) core database and visualized with CiteSpace,12
"The paper accentuates the need to bridge the uneven institutional and regional contributions toward the sustainability reporting domain, so more light is shed on environmental sustainability across regions through firm and institutional levels",12
"Given emerging climate change issues, the ISSB would be responsible for establishing an all-inclusive global baseline of investor-based sustainability-related disclosure standards for markets",13
"Accordingly, the goals “are integrated and indivisible and balance the three dimensions of Sustainable Development (SD): the economic, social and environmental” (UN 2015), that is, contributions toward economic growth while valuing the rights of people and protecting the environment via the implementation of risk-reducing strategies",8
"Given that the agenda has heightened issues of ending all forms of inequalities and poverty and tackling climate change threats, Sekarlangit & Wardhani (2021) aver that the SDGs would be realized if all societal entities join forces toward their attainment",13
"Because of this, the sustainability reporting domain has received much attention over the last decade (Burritt & Schaltegger, 2010; Mahmood et al",12
"Moreover, the sustainability reporting domain remains broad and varied due to stakeholders’ pursuit for different economic, social, and environmental interests supported by the SDGs",12
Sustainability reporting is a significant avenue for communicating management strategies to maintain a sustainable business environment and publishing reports to promote accounting and transparency,12
"As a result, sustainability accounting has been linked to sustainability reporting",12
"Additionally, regardless of the form of reporting companies take on, whether ESG, environmental, and social or sustainability reporting, these reports ought to offer relevant information on a firm’s performance in relation to all corporate sustainability achievements and challenges in addition to future viewpoints (Schaltegger et al",12
"For the purpose of this research, TBL, ESG, and environmental reporting would all be referred to as sustainability reporting since they are all corporate reporting avenues toward sustainable development",12
"2021), Hahn & Kühnen (2013) employed the systematic review process to review 178 articles to assess the determinants of sustainability reporting using a sample from 1999 to 2011",12
"2021), this study employs this method to review the extant literature on sustainability reporting",12
"Thus, we comprehensively assess the intellectual, social, and conceptual structure of the sustainability reporting domain to provide scholars with an overview of the sustainability scope and examine the developmental stages over the last 18 years",12
"Using data from the Web of Science (WoS) database and the CiteSpace software for visualization, our goals are to (i) assess the adequacy and excellence of the subject area through the identification of dominant authors, patterns, and performances of regions/countries or institutions; (ii) examine cooperations among institutions and countries that have massively been involved in sustainability reporting research to uncover the research progress between countries/regions; and (iii) to determine current hotspots in the subject area based on keyword analysis and citation cluster analysis which may impact and shed more light on the avenues for future research in the field",12
"Specifically, the following research questions are addressed: (1) What is the growing trend in this research area? (2) Which journals, subject categories, institutions, and regions involved in sustainability reporting are dominant? (3) Who are the most influential authors on sustainability reporting? (4) What is the current research’s social (collaborative) and intellectual (citation and co-citation) structure? (5) What are the popular evolving themes in sustainability reporting research and areas that need further studies? The remaining sections of the paper are organized as follows: the “Overview of sustainability reporting research” section gives an overview of sustainability accounting and reporting research, while the “Methodology” section describes the methodology adopted for the study",12
Climate change issues have heightened stakeholder interests in business operations as they demand transparency and accountability for firms’ social and ecological impacts via policy espousal and production activities,13
"As Schaltegger & Csutora (2012) aver, climate change’s foremost causes and effects are linked directly to firms’ economic and social activities",13
"Similarly, Bose (2020) opines that due to growing investor interests in environmental and social disclosure, revising accounting and disclosure frameworks to trace non-financial performance measures while incorporating climate change-related issues is non-negotiable",13
Herzig & Schaltegger (2006) contend that many firms are motivated to engage in environmental and sustainability reporting because it increases corporate reputation and brand while maximizing accountability and transparency,12
"Moreover, because comparing sustainability performance is usually difficult,  sustainability reporting may signal stakeholders about the firm’s performance and make them gain a competitive advantage over those who do not engage in it (Herzig & Schaltegger 2006)",12
"Essentially, it aids in legitimizing corporate activities and services and increases the supply of vital resources",3
"However, the benefits that firms derive from engaging in sustainability reporting depend on characteristics unique to the firm, industry, and market, as well as stakeholder intentions and management proclivity",12
"Herzig & Schaltegger (2006) aver that ideally, a highly developed strategy for sustainability reporting strongly connected to accounting, strategic and information management is necessary to realize the possible advantages (Herzig & Schaltegger 2006)",12
(2016) evaluated the drivers of sustainability reporting and recorded firm size and media visibility as critical determinants of sustainability reporting,12
"In this study, academic publications on sustainability reporting and accounting from 2004 to 2021 were retrieved from the WoS core database using the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI EXPANDED), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) on February 4, 2022",12
"Among the visualization software that can be employed to visualize research patterns in scientific research, such as Pajek, Bibexcel, VOSviewer, UCINET, and Biblioshiny, CiteSpace is one of the popular and widely used software for visualization in bibliometric analysis (Chen 2020; Guo et al",9
"This paper assesses the general characteristics of sustainability reporting from 2004 to 2021 since there were no available documents from 2000 to 2003, as illustrated in Fig. 1",12
Figure 2 illustrates the growth of sustainability reporting research from 2004 since the keyword search yielded no publications from 2000 to 2003,12
"Though sustainability reporting research thrived before the COVID-19 pandemic, the era of the outbreak sparked more studies in 2020, some of which were driven by scholars’ quest to determine whether a company’s ESG performance shielded socially responsible firms from the devastating impact of the pandemic (Demers et al. 2020)",12
It further aids in exploring the relationship among journals in a related field (Feng et al,3
"Overall, sustainability reporting research has been dominant in Europe, with a density of European institutions (6 of the top ten)",12
"Overall, Europe contributed the most to the sustainability reporting research (46.5%) with more citations",12
"Further observations show that most countries contributing to sustainability reporting research are economically developed, except those from Asia and Africa, deemed rapidly as developing countries",12
"His most cited article (48), co-authored with Franzese PP, was “Assessing the value of natural capital in marine protected areas: A biophysical and trophodynamic environmental accounting model” in 2017",15
This collaboration between the two authors may indicate the possibility of collaborations between author researching firms’ sustainability reporting practices,12
The analysis of co-cited works aids in detecting the knowledge base of a research field through cluster evaluations in the citation network (Afrane et al,3
"As indicated in Table 7, the most co-cited reference was “Determinants of sustainability reporting: a review of results, trends, theory, and opportunities in an expanding field of research (Hahn & Kühnen 2013).” By studying the adoption and extent of sustainability reporting quality, the authors unearthed the missing link to sustainability research theories, drawing future researchers’ attention to the importance of establishing links to theories",12
Milne & Gray’s (2013) paper subsequently discussed the current disassociation between sustainability reporting and the sustenance of life-supporting ecological systems upon which living organisms rely,12
"By extension, as CSR affects environmental, social, and sustainability reporting, they evaluated the intensity of institutional reforms designed to empower stakeholders and improve accountability from the voluntary initiatives and mandatory disclosure of an operating and financial review (OFR) by the UK quoted companies",12
"Given the growing attention to sustainable firm practices and development, Boiral (2013) studied the degree to which sustainability reporting can be regarded as a facsimile to conceal actual sustainable development issues and project a flawless view of entities’ activities",12
The reference with the least burstness strength (8.3) among those ending in 2021 by Kuzey & Uyar (2017) examined the determinants of sustainability reporting and its effects on firm value,12
"Findings were that most firms seek external assurance for their reports, and sustainability reporting propels firm value",12
"Cluster 0 is the largest cluster labeled as sustainability reporting with a silhouette score of 0.731, 86 members of co-cited references, and a mean year of 2013, which shows that nodes in the cluster are pretty recent",12
The sustainability reporting (cluster 0) cited articles like those by Garcia-Sanchez (2021); Maas et al,12
"The frequently used keywords were “sustainability reporting,” “corporate social responsibility,” and “performance,” with 400, 359, and 289 occurrences, respectively",12
"Cluster #0 focused on environmental accounting, sustainability reporting and accounting and the social accounting matrix",12
"Cluster #3 focused on emergy accounting, water management, specific emergy, and energy-based appraisal as part of environmental accounting and decision-making",6
"2020), it contributes to understanding the developmental path of the sustainability reporting domain",12
"Many ESG, environmental, and sustainability reporting studies have been done in the energy sectors (Baran et al",12
"“Energy” was followed by “index,” “life cycle assessment,” “consumption,” and “climate change,” with bursts lasting from 2006 to 2015",13
"“Global reporting initiative” had the highest burstness score since it is a widely adopted framework for sustainability reporting (Bose 2020; Milne & Gray 2013; Tiwari & Khan 2020), although it was not listed as part of the top 15 frequently used keywords in Table 9",12
"Founded in 1997 by the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies, the UN environment program and the Tellus Institute, the GRI launches standards for corporate sustainability reporting (Bose 2020)",12
"Amid the dominance of keywords within the first two phases, clusters 1 to 4 and nine are still robust, reporting on hotspots such as “SDG,” “non-financial disclosure,” “integrated reporting,” “social and environmental reporting,” “insight,” “society,” and “control system.” Timeline analysis of keywords With the objective to examine the sustainability reporting subject area through the identification of contributing authors, institutions, regions, and the current hotspots in the subject area based on keyword co-occurrence analysis, the research employed data from the WoS database from 2004 to 2021 and conducted visualizations in CiteSpace",12
"Journal of Cleaner Production, Sustainability and Accounting Auditing & Accountability Journal were the top three research sources on sustainability reporting, contributing about 22% of the total sample of articles used in the analysis",12
"The co-occurrence analysis of keywords revealing the research hotspots showed “sustainability reporting, “corporate social responsibility,” and “environmental accounting” based on their centralities as key hotspots in the research domain",12
"Overall, this study has contributed to the developments in sustainability reporting research by highlighting the leading authors and regions, examining the collaborations, citations and co-citations, and the current hotspots based on keyword analysis",12
"Although keywords like “sustainability reporting,” “CSR,” “performance,” and “management” have received much attention because they are fundamental to the domain, other keywords such as “governance,” “legitimacy,” “environmental disclosure,” and “sustainable environment” have equally received attention because they co-occur, and in most cases in accounting research, serves as key areas that would forever be influential in managing the affairs of organizations (for keywords like “governance” and “legitimacy”)",12
"There is also a focus on employing accounting methods or tools that aids in estimating resource consumption, waste assimilation requirements of a group of people against productive land use, and nature’s ability to absorb waste and generate resources",3
Results have indicated that sustainability reporting is vital,12
"As such, there is a need for more sustainability reporting and accounting research, especially from the African region, seeing that South Africa was the only African country to have contributed to publications in the research domain",12
Studies cutting across multiple  contexts are more likely to enhance collaborations among regions and help reveal adopted sustainability reporting mechanisms,12
Regional and cross-author collaborations may also yield pioneering ideas that would enhance sustainability reporting research and gradually unearth findings that would inch us closer to attaining a sustainable society,12
"Through a systematic literature review, this paper seeks to assess how the pandemic affected the phenomenon of food waste, with the aim of assessing whether the pandemic stimulated changes amongst food system actors, especially consumers",12
The findings indicate that consumers generally reported behavioural changes during the pandemic and claimed to have adopted sustainable practices that could contribute to reducing food waste,12
"In recent years, food waste – and its related environmental, economic, and social implications – has represented a pressing sustainability issue, worldwide",12
"The magnitude of this phenomenon has been widely discussed by both scholars and international organisations, highlighting the high economic costs (amounting to billions of dollars per year; FAO, 2013) and environmental impact (in relation to CO2 emissions, land degradation, and biodiversity loss; FAO, 2013)",15
"For this reason, food waste has been included and targeted in international strategies aimed at sustainability, including the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)",12
"However, a primary link can be made with SDG 12 (‘Responsible Consumption and Production’) (UN General Assembly, 2015)",12
"Specifically, Target 3 of SDG 12 seeks to, ‘[b]y 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses’ (UN General Assembly, 2015, p",12
"Furthermore, food waste from households (UNEP, 2021) now represents 61% of the total global food waste, which is almost double the proportion recorded in 2011 (FAO, 2011)",12
"One of the most comprehensive of these strategies is the European Green Deal, which the EU laid out with the aim of becoming the first climate-neutral region by 2050",13
"One of the focal points of the European Green Deal is the ‘Farm to Fork Strategy’, which seeks to improve the sustainability of food chains and systems, focusing on the link between healthy practices, healthy people, and a healthy planet (European Commission, 2020)",2
"As highlighted in the strategy, although a sustainable food system was needed even before COVID-19, the pandemic enhanced awareness of the need for greater resiliency in this context (European Commission, 2020)",2
"In light of these considerations, this paper aims at analysing how the phenomenon of food waste has been impacted by recent changes associated with the COVID-19 pandemic",12
"In particular, it seeks to assess how changes in consumer patterns might have affected (consumer perceptions of) food waste",12
"The public health measures highly impacted not only social behaviour, but also consumption and spending behaviours, especially in relation to food",3
"Additionally, growing food insecurity was registered in specific minority groups – many of which had already been suffering from this at a high level (John-Henderson et al., 2022)",2
"Subsequently, the systematic literature review illustrates how scholars have investigated the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on food waste, and discusses the main findings according to broad categories of actors",12
"Finally, key changes in consumer behaviour and the food supply chain in relation to food waste, as provoked by the pandemic, are discussed",12
"The discussion also addresses proposed mitigation strategies and policy actions, as well as implications for research and policy",13
"The eligibility criteria were as follows: (i) addressing the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on food waste, independently of the food supply chain; (ii) discussing changes in consumer perceptions of food waste generation; and (iii) addressing the topic of food waste in relation to the pandemic thoroughly, rather than mentioning it as a brief aside",12
"Furthermore, publications were categorised according to two themes, as reflected in the results and the discussion: studies focused on consumer behaviour (particularly consumer perceptions of food waste) and studies focused on changes in the food supply chain (particularly within pre-consumption stages)",12
"Of note, the majority of the papers that were selected and reviewed dealt with consumer food waste, which suggests the need for a methodological specification",12
This paper seeks to examine the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the generation of food waste in the food supply chain and changes in consumer perceptions regarding food waste and food-related behaviour,12
"For the purposes of this paper, the changes considered are those that were provoked by the pandemic and related to alternative practices of actors in relation to food waste",12
"Recently, the global challenge of food waste has attracted increased attention from scholars, in light of growing concerns over environmental issues",12
"As noted, food waste is relevant to all phases of the food supply chain, from production to consumption (UNEP, 2021)",12
"Likewise, the pandemic is likely to have affected the generation of food waste at all stages",12
"Therefore, this paper analyses the literature on the impact of the pandemic on the generation of food waste in the food supply chain",12
"Consumer behaviour is particularly relevant to food waste, considering both the high proportion of consumer food waste within the total quantity of food waste (i.e., 61% of the 931 million tonnes of food waste in 2019; UNEP, 2021) and the even distribution of consumer food waste across countries with different income levels (UNEP, 2021) – a finding that counters previous evidence of an uneven distribution of food waste along the value chain between high- and low-income countries (Parfitt et al., 2010)",12
"Consumer food waste may be influenced by a variety of factors, including age, gender, income, household composition, and education (Di Talia et al., 2018)",12
"Considering the significant impact of the pandemic on all spheres of human life and lifestyle habits, researchers have tried to investigate its specific effect on consumer behaviour with respect to food waste (Aday & Aday, 2020; Jribi et al., 2020; Principato et al., 2020)",12
"Therefore, our general aim was to outline perceived changes and new practices due to the pandemic, which impacted (positively or negatively) food waste generation at a household or individual level",12
"In the studies, different associations were drawn between demographic variables (e.g., gender, age, provenance, income, number of household members, education) and food waste production, showing that these variables define the basic circumstances that drive consumer choice",12
"In particular, gender and age (Berjan et al., 2021; Brizi & Biraglia, 2021; Burlea-Schiopoui et al., 2021; Chen et al., 2021; Cosgrove et al., 2021; Principato et al., 2020; Qian et al., 2020; Vidal-Mones et al., 2021), level of education (Jribi et al., 2020), income and relative change in income (Heikal Ismail et al., 2020; Jribi et al., 2020; Rodgers et al., 2021; Vargas-Lopez et al., 2021), employment (Scacchi et al., 2021; Scharadin et al., 2021), and number of household members (Everitt et al., 2021; Pappalardo et al., 2020; Qian et al., 2020; Vidal-Mones et al., 2021) were the most debated factors, and shown to be significantly associated with food waste during the pandemic (Amicarelli et al., 2021; Muresan et al., 2022)",12
"Most studies highlighted the lower volume of food waste generated by women, older people, and people with low income",12
"Primarily, the studies investigated the economic factor of food price changes, highlighting the influence of these changes on consumer choice (Babbitt et al., 2021; Cequea et al., 2021; Qian et al., 2020; Roe et al., 2020; Schmitt et al., 2021; Sharp et al., 2021)",2
"All of the papers highlighted the pandemic’s significant alteration of these behaviours, which was shown to change the production of food waste in most cases (Alazaiza et al., 2022; Amicarelli & Bux, 2020; Amuakwa-Mensah et al., 2021; Babbitt et al., 2021; Ben Hassen et al., 2020, 2021; Borsellino et al., 2020; Kubíčková et al., 2021; Liu et al., 2021; Pires et al., 2021), though with some exceptions (Bogevska et al., 2021; Music et al., 2021)",12
"(2021), after discovering that the majority of participants reported a consistent amount of food waste during the pandemic relative to pre-pandemic levels, highlighted the role of age, gender, and household size in relation to food waste",12
"In fact, the authors found that household food waste increased in line with age up to the age of 65 years, when it began to decrease",12
The authors also found that changes in employment had a noticeable effect on food waste,12
"(2020) emphasised patterns related to age, noting significantly reduced food waste among younger generations during the pandemic",12
"The authors suggested that, when people have more time to cook and manage their meals, their production of food waste is significantly reduced; this effect may be particularly pronounced in combination with food management strategies, such as the use of shopping lists",12
"(2021) highlighted a growing concern among young people regarding food waste, in connection with environmental concerns",12
"According to the authors, these concerns were enhanced by the pandemic, resulting in an adaptation of food shopping practices to reduce food waste",12
(2020) concentrated on the production of food waste in regions of Japan that were highly impacted by the pandemic,12
"Besides noting a greater awareness of food waste due to positive behavioural changes resulting from the pandemic, the authors highlighted greater concern for this issue among older people, in particular",12
"(2021), while confirming these results, suggested that food waste produced by younger generations may relate to fewer responsibilities in food preparation and procurement, relative to older generations, who may have also experienced greater economic challenges during the pandemic",12
(2021) highlighted the greater responsibility of older people regarding food waste,12
"(2020), who endorsed the positive influence of COVID-19 on consumer behaviour towards food waste",12
"According to the authors, this tendency was also associated with a loss in income during the pandemic, which increased consumer willingness to minimise food waste",12
"(2020), who observed the interlink between uncertainty related to income and job security and greater attention to and valuation of food, resulting in a decrease in food waste",12
"(2021), who observed that wealthier families were more likely to waste food during the health crisis, as well as an overall slight decrease in food waste in Mexico during this time",12
"(2021) noted a reduction in food waste due to the effects of the lockdown on job security, leading consumers to both reduce unnecessary food shopping and pay greater attention to the economic impact of food waste",12
"(2021), who, in their cross-cultural survey (comparing American and Italian consumers), also emphasised the role of cultural factors in determining food choices, with a range of effects on food waste",12
"In fact, although decreased food waste was reported in both countries, American consumers reported a greater decrease compared to Italian consumers, probably due to the greater presence of sustainable practices (e.g., cooking meals at home) and the lower baseline level of food waste in pre-pandemic Italy, compared to the United States (Rodgers et al., 2021)",12
"(2021) observed food waste to increase in parallel with the number of people in the household, while Qian et al",12
(2020) highlighted a greater consciousness regarding food waste among smaller families,12
"(2020), who reported better food management strategies (e.g., the reutilisation of leftovers) in larger families, with the result of decreasing the volume of food waste",12
"(2021) underlined the role of housing tenure and the neighbourhood food environment (e.g., proximity to grocery stores and restaurants) in determining household food waste",12
"Specifically, they partly confirmed patterns associated with: gender (Muresan et al., 2022), observing a higher reported percentage of food waste among men (Amicarelli et al., 2021); and age, noting the greater food waste production of younger generations (in contrast with their greater awareness of the issue), due to their irresponsible shopping and preparation habits (thereby confirming the observations of Cosgrove et al",12
"Their findings also aligned with the previously noted associations between food waste and gender, showing lower food waste production by women, whose perceptions of food changed during the pandemic; and education, reporting a lower volume of food waste among highly educated people, which did not match their level of awareness",12
(2021) observed that awareness of the environmental implications of food waste did not imply behaviour aimed at reducing it,12
"This study also aligned with previously mentioned trends, such as consumers’ improved food preparation and conservation skills in light of their increased time spent cooking – which eventually led, together with other sustainable practices, to a reduction in food waste",12
"Similarly, the association between higher prices and reduced household food waste was noted by Roe et al",12
"The latter authors additionally noted that Brazilian consumers tended to avoid food waste even prior to the pandemic, and the pandemic enhanced their efforts toward this end",12
"In contrast, a study conducted in New Zealand (Sharp et al., 2021) showed that people who struggled to acquire money for food were more likely to waste food during the lockdown compared to the pre-pandemic era",12
"This finding contradicts studies noting the relevance of socio-economic and financial factors in reducing consumer food waste (Jribi et al., 2020)",12
"(2021) proposed that difficulties related to insufficient and inefficient food aid during the pandemic, as well as additional stress due to the health emergency, might explain their unexpected finding, but more research is needed to confirm this claim",3
"Lastly, behavioural factors were the most discussed and explored issues, since they have the most direct effect on food waste",12
"As mentioned above, more time spent at home was shown to support better food practices, leading to a decrease in food waste (Amicarelli & Bux, 2020; Pires et al., 2021)",12
"Of interest, the adoption of sustainable food management practices was not always significantly associated with a reduction in food waste (Music et al., 2021)",12
"(2021) argued that, although consumers employed new management behaviours during the pandemic (e.g., eating more leftovers), these behaviours did not result in a significant reduction in food waste, perhaps due to poor planning (Music et al., 2021)",12
"Of note, even in the context of panic buying, which led to an initial increase in food purchasing (Scacchi et al., 2021), the amount of food waste sometimes decreased, in contrast to what one would assume (Pappalardo et al., 2020)",12
"This decrease was observed even in countries such as Brazil, where the avoidance of food waste was already a priority, which the pandemic managed to enhance (Schmitt et al., 2021)",12
"et al., 2021; Liu et al., 2021) reported greater food waste in connection with increased food purchased online and more cooking at home (Alazaiza et al., 2022), as well as with increased online shopping and food delivery (Liu et al., 2021)",12
"Lastly, it should be noted that, although several scholars emphasised the role of the pandemic in both increasing consumer awareness of food waste (Amicarelli & Bux, 2020; Borsellino et al., 2020; Jribi et al., 2020; Pappalardo et al., 2020; Qian et al., 2020) and encouraging the adoption of more sustainable practices to reduce food waste, different strategies emerged according to the socio-demographic and economic context",12
"In general, scholars observed that food waste prevention strategies were primarily motivated by socio-economic issues connected to the pandemic, rather than environmental concerns (Babbitt et al., 2021; Cequea et al., 2021; Jribi et al., 2020)",12
"Figure 1 summarises the main findings of this section, highlighting the positive and negative perceived impacts on consumer behaviour related to food waste during the pandemic",12
"As previously stated, all phases of the food supply chain generate food waste, according to different factors",12
"Other scholars focused on particular stages of the supply chain (with the majority focusing on the consumption stage), or specific sectors (e.g., hospitality), reflecting on both the impact of the pandemic on food waste and future strategies to increase resilience (Filimonau, 2021; Strotmann et al., 2021)",12
"Of interest, these publications generally invoked a transition toward a more resilient and sustainable food system, in light of increasing environmental challenges",2
"(2021), investigating the effects of COVID-19 on the food system in the Caribbean, highlighted the role of the pandemic in worsening the condition of Caribbean agriculture, which had already been presenting with structural difficulties and food insecurity, due to environmentally-caused food shortages and political instability (Blazy et al., 2021)",2
"On the other hand, the authors observed that the pandemic encouraged changes in food behaviour, resulting in a reduction in food waste and increased awareness of the relevance of the agricultural food sector and local products (Blazy et al., 2021)",12
"(2020), who observed that, following an initial phase of panic purchasing, the pandemic enhanced consumer awareness of both food waste and local and homegrown food",12
"Taking into account the decrease in extra-domestic consumption, overall food waste was calculated to be the same as in pre-pandemic times; accordingly, consumer food waste was considered to have increased",12
"In addition, Galanakis (2020) highlighted that the employment of such technologies to improve farming, post-harvest, storage, and transportation could ultimately reduce food waste",12
"(2021) also identified the role of technological tools in influencing the generation of food waste, alongside sales channel disruptions and changes in public policy",12
"In particular, the authors noted that technological tools that improve firms’ ability to adapt to new societal dynamics and public policies that mitigate shocks in the food supply chain (which have a negative impact on food waste) may contribute to decreasing food waste",12
"Furthermore, the redistribution of food as a strategy for reducing food waste was emphasised by Boyacι-Gündüz et al",12
"(2021) also provided a clear picture of the interrelated effects of the pandemic on the food system, which included input and labour shortages, demand shocks due to lockdown measures, food waste in production and processing, panic buying, and increased online grocery shopping and delivery (Boyacι-Gündüz et al., 2021)",12
"Finally, Filimonau (2021) explored the effect of the pandemic on food waste in the hospitality sector",12
"In addition, the increase in online food delivery was considered to have produced food waste, as excessive discounts and flexibility (i.e., with consumers given the option to cancel orders at the last minute) resulted in an excess of food being ordered (Filimonau, 2021)",12
"This mismatch between operational capacity and food stock, in conjunction with the impossibility of redistributing any food surplus, resulted in food waste",12
"The study identified possible solutions to reduce food waste in the hospitality sector, including enhanced collaboration with alternative food networks to redistribute food and increased participation in the short food supply chain (Filimonau, 2021)",12
"Another study identified poor management planning (e.g., overproduction) due to uncertainty over demand during the pandemic as particularly relevant to food waste (Strotmann et al., 2021)",12
"The authors noted that, as a result of these interdependencies, primary production generated greater food waste during the pandemic, due to a ripple effect (Strotmann et al., 2021)",12
"In particular, the study identified increased planning on the part of consumers, which, paired with good retail management practices, could have reduced food waste (Strotmann et al., 2021) (Fig",12
"While surveys and questionnaires are unable to provide accurate estimates of food waste at a household level, they can provide insight into consumer behaviour that can be used to guide the development of targeted strategies (UNEP, 2021)",12
"More specifically, they can provide useful information on consumers’ perceptions of their own behaviour and the resulting food waste",12
"On the other hand, waste compositional analysis is needed to provide accurate data regarding the amount of food waste, as well as the types and categories of food wasted (UNEP, 2021)",12
"In some cases, more than one methodology is needed to quantify actual food waste (UNEP, 2021)",12
"Consequently, the reviewed papers suggest that the pandemic changed consumers’ perceptions regarding food waste and food-related behaviours, and also impacted the perceptions of actors in earlier stages of the food supply chain",12
"These different implications will now be discussed, to provide a clearer picture of the generation of food waste within the entire food supply chain, both during and after the pandemic",12
"Figure 3 shows, in different colours, changes in the upstream and downstream flows of the food supply chain due to the pandemic, which had positive, negative, and mixed impacts on food waste",12
"The downstream flow was mainly associated with positive behavioural changes that reduced food waste, apart from panic buying (which had a negative effect on food waste) and food delivery (which had a mixed impact on food waste)",12
"Panic buying was connected with a fear of food insecurity and a general feeling of uncertainty due to the pandemic, which induced some consumers to stockpile",2
"In contrast, one study (Alazaiza et al., 2022) found an association between more time spent at home (and, by extension, more time spent cooking) and greater perceived food waste",12
"Other scholars linked high levels of cooking confidence with lower levels of food waste (Sharp et al., 2021)",12
"Better food planning was observed to reduce food waste by minimising the purchase of surplus food that would ultimately be discarded (Jribi et al., 2020)",12
"However, several studies (Berjan et al., 2021; Filimonau, 2021; Liu et al., 2021) detected excessive food purchasing in the context of food delivery, due to difficulty determining the amount of food that was actually needed, as a source of food waste",12
"In general, the studies highlighted that such initiatives should be contextual, and thus developed in relation to the different contexts associated with consumer food waste (Hebrok & Heidenstrøm, 2019)",12
"More specifically, Hebrok and Heidenstrøm (2019) proposed that any measure to reduce and prevent food waste at a consumer level should address acquisition, storage, assessment, value, and eating",12
"Furthermore, it should aim at promoting greater flexibility in planning, buying, preparing, and eating, and increasing consumers’ sense of security regarding food safety, when assessing the edibility of certain food products (Hebrok & Heidenstrøm, 2019)",2
"Furthermore, the studies noted greater attention toward food waste among women, compared to men",12
"More specifically, women were shown to give more attention to food preparation and management, with the result that they generated less food waste than men, during the pandemic (Amicarelli et al., 2021; Jribi et al., 2020; Muresan et al., 2022; Qian et al., 2020; Vidal-Mones et al., 2021)",12
"First, some studies found that more time spent at home did not always imply a perceived reduction in food waste (Alazaiza et al., 2022; Amicarelli et al., 2021)",12
These paradoxes may be linked to the causes of reduced food waste during the pandemic,12
"In fact, some studies showed that concerns over food availability, as well as health and economic concerns (but not environmental concerns), were most effective in reducing consumer food waste at this time (Cequea et al., 2021; Jribi et al., 2020)",12
"However, this does not imply a lack of awareness of food waste on the part of consumers; rather, most scholars highlighted increased awareness regarding the impact of food waste and the value of food (Pappalardo et al., 2020; Pires et al., 2021; Qian et al., 2020; Schmitt et al., 2021)",12
"Thus, consumers may have adopted more sustainable practices (and thus reduced their food waste) due to increased awareness of the economic impact of food waste, rather than environmental concerns",12
"In addition, one of the observed drivers of the decrease in food waste during the pandemic was consumers’ concern over the effects of the pandemic on waste management, which encouraged them to acquire less-perishable items (Pappalardo et al., 2020)",12
"In fact, some scholars (Cosgrove et al., 2021; Pappalardo et al., 2020) noted increased purchasing of non-perishable items (e.g., canned food, pasta, rice), which impacted the generation of food waste",12
"In contrast, other scholars (Cosgrove et al., 2021) connected a greater purchase of perishable food (e.g., fresh fruit) to increased food waste during the pandemic",12
"In addition to the greater purchasing of perishable items, panic buying, which led people to stockpile food, was also identified as a factor that increased the generation of food waste (Cosgrove et al., 2021)",12
"Furthermore, additional causes of food waste, even in the context of an overall decrease, should be mentioned",12
"Consumers indicated poor food storage and inadequate food labelling and packaging as causes of food waste during the pandemic (Berjan et al., 2021; Schmitt et al., 2021), in addition to an excessive quantity of food purchased (Alazaiza et al., 2022), in some cases paired with online shopping and delivery (Liu et al., 2021)",12
"The reviewed papers suggest a need for informational campaigns aimed at raising awareness of the impact of food waste, alongside those promoting better information on product shelf life and the reuse of leftovers (Jribi et al., 2020)",12
"Initiatives such as the partnership between Banco Alimentare (2020) and the food delivery company Glovo to use food based on the principle of ‘food no waste’ (developed on the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste, targeting SDG 12Footnote 2) should be increasingly developed, not only by non-profit groups and private companies, but also by state actors",12
"According to a study published by the European Commission in 2018, 10% of EU food waste derives from data marking (European Commission, 2018)",12
"Some scholars claimed that such informational and educational interventions would not be effective in sufficiently reducing food waste (Hebrok & Boks, 2017), without the support of prompts, incentives, and monetary penalties (Hebrok & Boks, 2017; Jribi et al., 2020)",12
"In fact, some studies reported that consumers would likely reduce their food waste if they were forced to pay taxes on the volume of food wasted, thus leveraging the economic inconvenience of waste (Jribi et al., 2020)",12
Initiatives such as the so-called ‘Gadda Law’ – an Italian law against food waste – provide economic incentives for reducing food waste at the retail level; such initiatives could also be implemented to support the redistribution of food,12
"The studies generally agreed that the pandemic significantly altered demand, supply, distribution, consumer behaviour, and food waste (Aldaco et al., 2020; Galanakis, 2020)",12
"In addition, labour shortages reduced both agricultural productivity and incomes in the sector (Boyacι-Gündüz et al., 2021)",2
"In this situation, developing countries, which had less developed supply chains and more labour-intensive food systems, were subject to additional struggles, also related to food security (OECD, 2020b)",2
"According to the OECD (2020a), international cooperation and intervention may be effective for preventing food crises and increasing food security in these countries",2
"Significantly, disruptions in production and distribution during the pandemic led to an accumulation of food items, which affected the generation of food waste in the early stages of the supply chain",12
"While some establishments managed to minimise food waste through the adoption of in-house practices (e.g., storage, donation to staff), others were unable to respond due to operational and logistical issues (Filimonau, 2021)",12
A mismatch between operational capacity (which was significantly impacted by labour shortages and other disruptions) and the amount of surplus food implied a large quantity of food waste,12
"This resulted in an excess of food orders, which led to consumer food waste and order cancellations, and subsequently operator food waste",12
"Furthermore, several strategies were developed to target food waste in response to these disruptions",12
"For example, the Italian food bank Banco Alimentare (2021) partnered with the Hungarian Food Association and Sibahe Slovenska Banka Hrane, through their participation in the European Food Banks Federation, to redistribute a wide range of products through non-profit organisations in Hungary and Slovenia.Footnote 3 In addition, increased participation in alternative food networks aimed at preventing food waste, while building effective relationships among food supply chain actors",12
"Some of the reviewed papers suggested that technological tools could contribute to mitigating food waste in the supply chain (Di Marcantonio et al., 2021; Galanakis, 2020; Strotmann et al., 2021)",12
"In addition, the adoption of innovative and technological tools could help firms adapt to new needs, thereby reducing levels of food waste (Di Marcantonio et al., 2021)",12
"In addition, the application of digital technology to production, post-harvest, storage, and transportation could enable food loss to be mapped along the chain (Galanakis, 2020; Strotmann et al., 2021)",12
"For example, the increased diffusion of tools such as Too Good To Go (2021),Footnote 4 which aims at reducing food waste through the sale of surplus food at end of each working day, has contributed to a reduction of food waste at a retail level",12
"The literature review also highlighted some traits pertaining to production and retailing that, if targeted, could contribute to a reduction in food waste",12
"In fact, during the pandemic, the misinterpretation of expiration dates was reported as a specific driver of food waste (Principato et al., 2020)",12
"The development of labels that do not confuse consumers and packaging that prolongs product shelf life is regarded as helpful for tackling food waste (WRAP, 2019)",12
"In addition, the inclusion of motivational messages – especially related to saving or wasting money in connection with food waste (and thus exploiting the economic value of waste) or advice regarding food conservation – has been proposed as an initiative to help consumers make better and more preventive choices (WRAP, 2019)",12
The food industry should therefore improve the sizing and clarity of labels to provide consumers with the tools to prevent food waste at home,12
"An example of a policy that meets these aims is the Farm to Fork Strategy (European Commission, 2020), which aims at creating a carbon–neutral food system based on organic and sustainable agriculture",2
The adoption of sustainable practices in primary food production to enhance food system resilience is also addressed in the Farm to Fork Strategy,2
"In fact, the strategy action plan proposes several initiatives aimed at fostering sustainable food production, such as the transformation of the Farm Accountancy Data Network Regulation (used to monitor farms’ business activities and the sector-wide impact of CAP policy) into a new Farm Sustainability Data Network, to support the uptake of sustainable farming practices (European Commission, 2020); legislative initiatives to improve cooperation between primary producers in order to support their position in the food chain; and non-legislative initiatives to improve transparency (European Commission, 2020)",2
"Moreover, policy interventions targeting food waste recycling and landfill diversion could contribute to counteracting the effects of the pandemic on the food supply chain (Babbitt et al., 2021)",12
"Finally, policies should aim at consolidating positive behavioural changes that have reduced food waste since the pandemic, as summarised in Fig. 3",12
"At this stage, the durability of any new, positive patterns that were developed during the pandemic should be given significant attention, to determine the long-term effects of COVID-19 on the generation of food waste",12
"On this note, input may be increasingly affected by environmental changes due to climate change",13
"In fact, more than a year into the pandemic, studies (Scacchi et al., 2021) reported a greater awareness of the economic impact of food waste on the part of consumers",12
"Some of the new practices that arose during the pandemic had a mixed impact on the generation of food waste, including the diffusion of food delivery",12
"However, the spread of food delivery is also implicated with environmental issues, regarding the carbon footprint, food waste, and plastic waste due to packaging (Chen et al., 2021; Filimonau, 2020; Li et al., 2020; Liu et al., 2021)",12
"To this end, it has been suggested that the application of technology to convert food waste into sustainable materials (e.g., bioplastics) may support the transition toward a circular economy in the food sector and relieve agriculture of the current burden of producing bioplastics (Kochanska et al., 2021)",12
"First, the study was primarily focused on consumer food waste, in connection with only one stage of the food supply chain",12
"Therefore, it could be argued that, by partially neglecting the other stages of the supply chain, it provided a limited picture of the effects of the pandemic on the generation of food waste",12
"Lastly, the majority of the investigated papers reflected mainly on consumers’ changed perceptions of food waste, rather than their real changes in the volume of food waste generated",12
"As mentioned above, most of the studies collected data via surveys and questionnaires, which could only shed light on consumers’ reasons for engaging in behaviour that resulted (or not) in food waste (UNEP, 2021); such measures could not, however, measure precise quantities of food waste",12
"As the impacts of climate change are expected to increase each year, the issue of resilience in the food system will require greater focus over time",13
"The global challenge of food waste has been attracting increased attention by scholars, in light of its significant environmental and economic implications (UNEP, 2021)",12
"As the effects of climate change become more and more evident, food systems must increase their resiliency to survive (Boyacι-Gündüz et al., 2021)",13
"From the literature review conducted in this study, it can be argued that the pandemic changed consumers’ perceptions of food-related behaviours, resulting in a perceived reduction in food waste in some cases (Babbitt et al., 2021; Ben Hassen et al., 2021; Pappalardo et al., 2020; Principato et al., 2020)",12
"In addition, consumers reported that they acquired greater awareness of the environmental and economic impacts of food waste (Pappalardo et al., 2020; Pires et al., 2021; Qian et al., 2020) during the pandemic",12
"Although these practices seem to have been motivated by primarily economic (rather than environmental) concerns over food waste (Cequea et al., 2021; Jribi et al., 2020), the adoption of more sustainable behaviour supports progress toward desired goals, including the SDGs",12
"Furthermore, the COVID-19 crisis exposed vulnerabilities and contradictions in the food system (Boyacι-Gündüz et al., 2021), provoking disruptions in production, processing, and distribution, as well as shocks to supply and demand (Aldaco et al., 2020; Boyacι-Gündüz et al., 2021; Di Marcantonio et al., 2021), with a consequent impact on food waste",12
"However, it also triggered beneficial changes in production and consumption, such as the application of technological tools to prevent and mitigate food waste (Strotmann et al., 2021)",12
It is hoped that consumers’ increased awareness and better food practices will be supported by policies to ultimately reduce food waste.,12
"Based on the lived experience of a key GNH instigator, its nine domains are explained: Living standard, Health, Education, Ecological diversity and resilience, Cultural diversity and resilience, Community vitality, Time use, Psychological wellbeing, and Good governance",16
"Given this conundrum, it is no wonder that trying to create more sustainable cities and nations in a more sustainable planet has become a desired end result",11
"With the overwhelming, often taken-for-granted adoption of the concept of GDP, the primary function in life is to be economically productive and to have growing income in order to be able to spend more and consume more, regardless of increasing debt, social costs, and increasing environmental degradation",15
"Other statistics across the globe also highlight people’s declining sense of wellbeing, including the rates of clinical depression, crippling anxiety, and other forms of mental illness, which are damning [6], with over a million people each year ending their life, at an average of one suicide every 40 s [6]",3
He was struck by their sense of contentment even in extreme poverty and their singular desire for happiness,1
"Instead, GNH is a multidimensional measure of sustained human wellbeing across 9 domains: living standard, health, education, ecological diversity and resilience, cultural diversity and resilience, community vitality, time use, psychological wellbeing, and good governance [10]",16
"In our view, however, a far greater challenge is that, despite critiques of the conceptual problems with the GDP being the overall measure of national progress, and hence the need for alternative measures with greater diversification than economic growth, GDP has remained the dominant value as an indicator of progress [17, 18]",8
"Other national progress measures that are offered as alternatives or supplements to the GDP are listed below:
 Green GDP – an economic growth index that takes into account environmental externalities of growth, such as pollution and congestion [23]",8
"The areas, prioritised annually for budget expenditure include: mental health, child wellbeing, supporting Māori and pasifika aspirations, building a productive nation and transforming the economy",3
"Our quarterly measure of economic growth against the GDP indicator does not include the negative externalities, while companies seldom fail to exaggerate their positive spill-overs",8
"Economic security is ascertained by collecting data on, for example, land ownership, food security and employment",2
"In addition to life expectancy, mortality and morbidity rates, it incorporates individually reported health status and health risk behaviours",3
"The prevalence of sustainable resource use at the local level is measured, assisting in registering the effectiveness of renewable resource use policies",12
"Good governance – evaluating five subdomains: participation in decision-making; effectiveness of government; just and equal law; freedom and quality of media; and transparency, accountability, honesty or corruption",16
"Each domain has a set of indicators, as follows:
 Psychological wellbeing: Life satisfaction, Positive emotions, Negative emotions and Spirituality; Health: Self-reported health, Healthy days, Disability, and Mental health; Time Use: Work and Sleep; Education: Literacy, Schooling",3
"Knowledge, and Value; Cultural Diversity and Resilience: Community skills and Cultural participation; Good Governance: Political participation, Services, Government performance and Fundamental rights; Community vitality: Donation (time and money), Safety, Community relationship, Family; Ecological Vitality and Resilience: Wildlife damage, Urban issues, Responsibility towards environment, Ecological issues; Living standard: Per capita income, Assets and Housing",16
"Bhutan’s natural environment remains healthy and resilient with more than 72% of forest cover and just over half its territory declared as protected, thereby successfully conserving its extremely diverse flora and fauna [41]",15
"Indeed, the constitution of the country mandates the maintenance of 60% of forest cover for perpetuity",15
"Having started with a forest cover of 64% when Bhutan embarked on planned development in 1961, the country has been cited as proof that development need not come with ecological degradation",15
"Bhutan’s cultural heritage, founded on basic human values, continues to guide both its thinking and everyday life",11
"With the introduction of democracy, and the precedent of good governance under benevolent kings, responsive, efficient and accountable governance is a commitment of those in power and is a constant demand of the electorate",16
"The Economist magazine ranked Bhutan as the fifth fastest growing economy in the world in 2013 and as the third best performing economy for 2018 with an estimated GDP growth of 7.6%, far outpacing the average global rate of 4.4% [43]",8
"This study aimed to seek new insights from the perspective of equity, rather than efficiency such as agricultural investment and productivity which other previous studies have focused on, and quantitatively evaluated the effect of the land redistribution on the size of farmland holdings of subsistence farmers",2
"Meanwhile, the arable land in Ethiopia is only 15.2% of the total land [1]",15
"Goal 10 aims to reduce inequalities in income as well as inequalities related to age, sex, disabilities, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, and economic status or other status within a country",10
These policies share a common point in the distribution of resources to vulnerable groups through land equalization,1
"For example, the demand for land in Ethiopia is still increasing, and the issue of land scarcity and conflict in rural areas has expanded to the discussion of land intervention or informal settlements in peri-urban area [9, 10]",11
"The main aim of this study is to evaluate the objectives of this policy, namely, land shortage countermeasures and land use equalization by seeking new insights from the perspective of equity, rather than efficiency such as agricultural investment and productivity which other previous studies have focused on",2
"However, at the end of the Ethiopian Empire, the government had difficulty maintaining its political power owing to oil crisis and famine, and it collapsed after the military-led revolution in 1974, and the Derg took power [8, 12, 16]",2
"Exploiting the land ownership rights of the state, the Derg also implemented resettlement policy and villagization policy",10
The Derg referred to resettlement in Proclamation No,10
"However, such compulsory resettlement policies have difficulty obtaining public support",10
"Specifically, the proclamation called for each Regional Council to enact a law on land administration, and for these regional land management laws to confirm environmental protection and equal rights for women",15
These expropriated lands were redistributed to small-scale farmers and landless farmers,9
"For extremely poor households, married couples, and households with extremely little land, the size of the redistributed land was set to 1 ha, whereas that for landless youths, divorced persons, and unmarried persons was 0.5 ha [24]",1
"Furthermore, according to our interview survey conducted in June 2019, the staff who worked at the Environmental Protection, Land Administration and Use Office then testified that “the average size of redistributed land was about 0.5 ha.” However, this policy was not necessarily welcomed because farmers who were worried about arbitrary redistribution that would only benefit certain people went to Addis Ababa to protest when this policy was proposed [25, 26]",15
"As for the evaluation of efficiency, the results show that, although there was a decrease in productivity in the short run analysis, the land redistribution contributed to the improvement of agricultural investment and productivity in the long run",2
"This policy mainly aims to equalize land use and reduce the number of landless farmers by redistributing land from large-scale to small-scale farmers and landless farmers; therefore, the policy effect is considered a reduction in the average landholding size of farmers",9
This policy was implemented with the egalitarian aim of reducing landless farmers by redistributing the farmland drawn from a relatively large-scale farmers to small-scale farmers and landless farmers as a measure for remarkable population growth and land shortage in the Amhara Region,9
"As for the previous studies, they focused mostly on the effects of the land redistribution on agricultural investment such as fertilizer input and agricultural productivity, that is, the effects on efficiency rather than equity",2
"Second, the impact of land reforms on land management such as land conservation against soil degradation is likely to appear also in the long term, but this study could only capture the short-term impact of the land redistribution",15
"Knowing that climate change will impact major ecosystem services and the sustainability of life support systems, a critical examination of the hotspot concept and approach is undertaken to pursue synergistic responses",13
Responses to climate change and other sustainable development goals (SDGs) will require holistic approaches that simultaneously deal with major environmental and social pressures that threaten social-ecological systems (SES),13
"Here, we employ the concept of Hotspots 2.0 as a tool to identify multiple stressors and response options in areas of the world most vulnerable to climate change and therefore in need of integrated response options",13
While the concept originated in conservation science in the late 1980s with a focus on species extinction and endemism (Myers et al,15
These past developments prompt a reflection on salient questions regarding monitoring climate policy integration with DRR and human development especially the SDGs (Szabo et al,11
We underscore how integrated responses to climatic and non-climatic drivers of change can offer complementary policy directives to support National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and attaining the SDGs,13
SES approach to hotspots provides opportunities to identify and assesses entry points towards policy integration as evident in land use cover change (LUCC) or coastal deforestation (Mantyka-Pringle et al,15
"In this case, integrated resilient development outcomes will entail societal well-being, gender-sensitive livelihoods, and sustainable production and consumption (Kilroy 2015)",12
"Using the WoS categorization scheme, we found 509 (36%) cases on Ecology, 342 (24%) on Biodiversity Conservation, 320 (23%) on Environmental Sciences, 120 (9%) on Evolutionary Biology, and 119 (8%) on Multidisciplinary Studies (mostly meteorology and atmospheric sciences)",15
A transdisciplinary use of the hotspot concept beyond conservation and DRR (and consideration to climate stressors) was a major criterion for inclusion in the assessment,11
"Urban regions and landscape approach were not considered separately but inherently as part of ecosystem interactions, although key drivers of change such as ‘population’ and ‘urbanization’ were underscored",15
"The rationale for the above typology was to integrate Norman Myers—Conservation International biodiversity hotspot characteristics (e.g., endemism and species extinction risks), the Köppen Climate classification scheme paying attention to biogeographical attributes and climate stressors, and fragile or sensitive ecosystems as defined in Agenda 21",15
"For successful outcomes (e.g., resilient communities and cities), decision-making frameworks are vital in addressing trade-offs, spatial planning tools, and user conflicts over resources (Karpouzoglou and Vij 2017)",11
"In offshore marine realms, ocean acidification is causing damage to coral reef ecosystems, altering species migration and affecting seafood supply for coastal communities (Descombes et al",14
Spatial planning responses are imperative to this effect owing to raw material demand that accelerates land use cover change and environmental degradation (Wetzel et al,15
"In Papua New Guinea, for instance, ‘climate refugia’ is used as a management tool to integrate biodiversity into National Adaptation Plans (Game et al",13
"Yet, addressing these impacts in the developing world can be challenging particularly where transformational outcomes are needed but institutional capacity is low (Colloff et al",16
"In all the cases assessed, four major entry points were identified for developing integrated response strategies: (i) global strategies towards adaptation and mitigation, (ii) the sustainability of natural resource management and biodiversity conservation, (iii) natural hazards and disaster risk, and (iv) human well-being and international cooperation (Fig. 5)",15
Climate change undermines the sustainable use of natural resources and human well-being especially for the most vulnerable regions and communities,13
"In Kenya for example, livestock herders and small-medium enterprises in Maasai Mara are building resilience through integrated livelihoods that builds on on-farm activities such as eco-tourism (Bedelian and Ogutu 2017)",8
"Unlike earlier hotspot approaches that focus on a specific type of vulnerability such as biodiversity loss or natural disasters, Hotspots 2.0 offer researchers and decision-makers multiple entry points to explore interacting threats to climatic and non-climatic drivers of change through complementary responses",15
They also provide opportunities for cross-scale learning on climate-related hazards and to explore transboundary governance issues through research networks and communities of practice at multiple levels (Liu et al,13
"Because future climate change will affect all aspects of human activities (e.g., food production, commodity supply chains, essential infrastructure, and critical ecological functions), attention to both the social and natural realms is crucial for building adaptive capacity and exploring resilient outcomes",13
"Although most climate policy interventions (such as NAPs) tend to be separate and disconnected from many other sustainable development interventions (e.g., gender mainstreaming or decentralization), there is scope to explore policy windows and leverage points for cross-sectoral partnerships",5
"For the water quality topic, the interacting European collaborative projects SOLUTIONS, MARS and GLOBAQUA and the NORMAN network provide best practice examples for successful applied collaborative research including multi-stakeholder involvement",6
"The implementation of the SDG, however, faces enormous challenges at continental and global scales, including climate change [1], chemical pollution, urbanization and demographic changes [2], quantitative and qualitative shortage of freshwater for drinking water production and ecosystem functioning, and the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services [3, 4]",13
"This stands in contrast to established regulatory sectoral thinking that so far prevails in chemical safety and environmental protection, quality assessment and management",15
"Yet, the full potential of such information can only be realized if it becomes accessible to a larger scientific community and if the digitalization is complemented with tools to derive the new knowledge and options for societal problems",9
"The European Collaborative Projects SOLUTIONS [16], MARS [17], GLOBAQUA [18] and the NORMAN network ( -network.net/) [19] have demonstrated how European research can provide the platforms for such large-scale data exchange between the scientific community and regulators, taking advantage of increasing digitalization and big data mining, and providing means to transform information into knowledge useful for decision making",9
The European Union organized support for excellent international research teams within their Framework Programmes to develop coherence in the European Innovation Union [20],8
"Such an unprecedented level of integrated European environmental research efforts is seen internationally as a major success story, because it provides scientific evidence and competitive solutions directly in support of European policies and practices on environmental protection and sustainable development",15
"Establish European collaborative and interdisciplinary research projects to (i) develop options for comprehensive reduction of modern society’s footprints in the nexus of growing demands on energy, food and clean water, (ii) provide the scientific underpinnings for a non-toxic environment, and (iii) protect health, biodiversity and ecosystems goods and services from being jeopardized by exposure to increasingly complex chemical mixtures and non-chemical stressors",6
"For many developing and emerging economies, European regulation and research on chemicals and environmental protection provide valuable options as solutions for environmental problems and thus also assist in keeping anthropogenic impacts within planetary and regional boundaries as a safe operating space for humanity [36]",15
"The projects SOLUTIONS, MARS and GLOBAQUA may serve as examples, as they developed novel consistent approaches for protection, monitoring, assessment and management of water quality, chemical contamination and multiple stressors",6
"National projects provided follow-up on approaches for regional and national water bodies and river basins in close collaboration with stakeholders from agencies, water supply, wastewater treatment, agriculture, fishing industry and municipalities, NGOs, and others",6
Collaborative European environmental research is a powerful tool to identify options and alternative trajectories in a world changing to bio-based and circular economy approaches,12
"GLOBAQUA studied multiple stressor effects in rivers of southern Europe such as the Adige, Evrotas and Sava, providing methods to tailor the aforementioned approaches to water systems under water scarcity scenarios",6
"While current evaluations of chemical pollution in European surface waters focus on problem description and water quality classification, the projects SOLUTIONS, MARS and GLOBAQUA put emphasis on early exploration of prevention and abatement options considering the remedial space within the Drivers–Pressure–State–Impacts–Response (DPSIR) causal approach [32]",6
"River basin scale case studies were instrumental to benchmark performance of modelling and measurement tools for water contamination assessment, provided data necessary to identify river basin-specific pollutants, demonstrated the benefits of the technical upgrade of wastewater treatment plants, specified the potential for targeted remediation of pollution sources, and demonstrated the interactions between contamination and situations of water scarcity that need to be acknowledged",6
"Thus, we overcame a major hurdle in current water quality assessment, where ecological and ecotoxicological assessments and recommendations are derived independently, based on different principles (protection vis a vis protection and impacts) leading to diverging, if not contradictory advice for river basin management",6
"It involved major stakeholders in the fields such as DG Environment, European Environmental Agency (EEA), European Chemical Agency (ECHA), European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), International River Commissions such as International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) and the Rhine (ICPR), national environmental and chemical agencies, water industry, and NGOs",2
A moderated e-learning course for policy makers and river basin managers was provided to translate scientific understanding for end users ( -project.eu/en/content/E-Learning.93/),4
"In summary, the three projects SOLUTIONS, MARS and GLOBAQUA provided well-structured and complementary contributions to the EU policy goals on sustainable management of water resources",6
"Acknowledging a growing world population with growing demands for agricultural, industrial and energy production under conditions of climate change, land use changes and urbanization pressures and management needs emerge at a novel scale",13
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 recognizes health at the heart of disaster risk management (DRM) at the global policy level,11
"Furthermore, health actors at all levels have continued to engage in the Sendai Framework processes and have had a key role in its implementation and proposed monitoring",11
"Many national, regional, and global initiatives continue to operate with a lack of consistency and of linkages to respond to the Sendai Framework’s call for embedding health resilience in DRM, and conversely, embedding DRM in health resilience",11
"Overcoming this hurdle is important, and doing so will be a key marker of success of the next 10 years of partnership under the Sendai Framework",11
"Communicating and understanding the value of the Sendai Framework across all sectors, including for and to health professionals, is critical for progress on the health priorities",11
"The Sendai Framework recognizes that by reducing and managing conditions of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability—while building the capacity of communities and countries for prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery—losses and impacts on health from disasters can be more effectively alleviated through a multisectoral approach rather than focusing exclusively on emergency response",11
"While there were several references to health in the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015 (UNDRR 2005), the adoption of the Sendai Framework marks the first time that the fields of health and DRM have been substantially interwoven at the global multisectoral policy level",11
"2017) and explores its effects 5 years on, not just in terms of global policy and partnership, but also in terms of the effects for scientific research and data in the field of DRM",9
"It advocates the principles of evidence-based medicine as critical to health policy and practice, and in assessing the effectiveness of interventions for disease prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation (Turner et al",3
The World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners have a set of programs for managing and preventing health emergencies that predate the adoption of the Sendai Framework,11
"In particular, the International Health Regulations (IHR) (2005) constitute an important legal tool for UN member states, which is designed to facilitate the prevention of and the response to acute public health risks that have the potential to cross borders and pose global threats to health (WHO 2016a; for wider perspectives on international law, see Aronsson-Storrier 2020)",3
"Building on all this work, the Sendai Framework puts health risks and health resilience at the heart of global DRM efforts",11
"(paragraph 33 c) Supporting the convergence of global health and DRM agendas, examples of organizations long involved in DRM that are now supporting the Sendai Framework are: The World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine (WADEM) seeks to improve the delivery of prehospital and emergency care worldwide during disasters and other emergencies",11
"As a result, the WADEM was one of the organizations that were most rapid in adopting and supporting the implementation of the Sendai Framework and its impacts on health EDRM (Emergency and Disaster Risk Management) evidence, policy, and practice engagement at its various meetings and congresses since 2015",11
"The International Association of National Public Health Institutes (IANPHI), started in 2006, links, supports, and strengthens the institutes responsible for public health in countries worldwide, particularly in low resource settings",3
"The IANPHI network agreed to form a new DRM Group at their 2016 Annual Meeting in Shanghai, October 17–21, to raise new awareness of global policy and action toward DRM and possible engagement opportunities for national public health institutes",3
"Since then, work has been ongoing to embed DRM approaches into the work of national public health institutes",3
"The International Federation of Environmental Health (IFEH) is an umbrella organization whose members are the national environmental health organizations of countries, as well as universities and associated members",3
"The IFEH represents an estimated 50,000+ professionals and academics from 43 countries working in environmental health, mainly at local, regional, and state governmental levels (IFEH 2019)",3
"In May 2017, the IFEH endorsed the principles and agenda behind the Sendai Framework",11
"Being part of the UN system, the World Health Organization contributed to the lead-into the Sendai Framework and is now an active supporter and implementer of it",11
"Since the adoption of the Sendai Framework, the WHO has increasingly sought to strengthen its approach to health emergencies and DRM",11
"The GPW 13, which sets out WHO’s strategic direction for the next 5 years and was approved by the Seventy-First World Health Assembly in resolution WHA71.1 on 25 May 2018, is informed by the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and in particular SDG 3: to ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages (WHO 2018)",3
"It has at its heart a set of interconnected strategic priorities and goals through the “triple billion” target, which includes: 1 billion more people benefitting from universal health coverage; 1 billion more people better protected from health emergencies; and 1 billion more people enjoying better health and well-being (WHO 2018)",3
"It seeks to ensure that: Populations affected by health emergencies have access to essential life-saving health services and public health interventions; All countries are equipped to mitigate risk from high-threat infectious hazards; All countries assess and address critical gaps in preparedness for health emergencies, including in core capacities under the 2005 IHR and in capacities for all-hazard health emergency risk management; National health emergency programmes are supported by a well-resourced and efficient WHO Health Emergencies Programme.” (WHO 2018, p",3
"24) Recognizing the complexity of delivering on the ambitions for health in the Sendai Framework, the WHO, together with national ministries of health, UN agencies, and partners, has sought to build greater coherence and interlinkages among these actors and initiatives through the WHO Thematic Platform for Health EDRM, which has the intent to promote health resilience in a consistent manner, both within and beyond the health sector",11
"The Thematic Platform recognizes that engagement and collaboration with the wider health system and other sectors (especially at local levels) is critical in the prevention of health risks, as many of the necessary actions to reduce hazards and vulnerabilities rests with the activities of other sectors",3
"The Thematic Platform was also actively engaged during the negotiations of the Sendai Framework, providing advice on health to member states, and playing a crucial advocacy role",11
"Since 2015, the Thematic Platform has provided advice and recommendations on health issues to member states on the implementation of the Sendai Framework and advanced efforts to mainstream DRM within the work of the WHO and other health partners, as well as promoted health within DRM",11
"The WHO, along with its partners, has a number of other ongoing programs that it implements for health emergencies that support the implementation of the IHR, Sendai Framework, Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework, and other global policies",11
"Other global initiatives include the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), a non-binding coalition of countries and organizations working to strengthen capacity to respond to infectious disease threats and promote health security as a national and global priority (Bali and Taaffe 2017)",3
"Furthermore, they point to the fact that the sector is implementing many aspects of the Sendai Framework already, given its references to biological hazards and the IHR (2005)",11
There remains a lack of joined up working to fully respond to the Sendai Framework’s call for promoting health resilience in a consistent manner both within the health sector itself and more broadly across sectors,11
"The Health EDRM Framework has a clear vision—the “highest possible standard of health and well-being for all people who are at risk of emergencies, and stronger community and country resilience, health security, universal health coverage and sustainable development” (WHO 2019, p",3
"It places an emphasis on multisectoral action and, importantly, recognizes the importance of building resilience as part of the wider health system strengthening approach and the journey to achieve universal health coverage in all country contexts (see Box 1)",3
It is fully consistent with existing DRM and health emergency policies and seeks to provide a framework for aligning these in future,3
"There are a number of regional approaches established by WHO Regional Offices, which have referenced the Sendai Framework in efforts to bring together health and DRM",11
"For example, in 2015, the Regional Committee for South East Asia approved the Resolution on Response to Emergencies and Disaster, which reflects emergency and disaster risk management as a flagship priority area (WHO 2015)",11
"It makes explicit reference to the Sendai Framework as well as the IHR and SDGs, and reaffirms the need for DRM policies across sectors and at all levels of government, to ensure the effective response to disasters and other emergencies",11
"It contains four strategic lines of action that are consistent with the Sendai Framework and are aimed at reducing the health impacts of disasters and emergencies: (1) recognizing disaster risks; (2) strengthening governance of disaster risk management; (3) promoting safe and smart hospitals; and (4) strengthening the sector’s capacity for emergency and disaster preparedness, response, and recovery",11
Health based scientific research and outcomes are needed to identify needs and knowledge gaps,9
"Mental health and psychosocial support Emergencies and disasters can place significant and persistent mental health pressures on those affected, including the responders",3
Understanding the most effective approaches to embedding mental health and psychosocial support into disaster response is an essential part of Health EDRM,3
"Addressing the health risks and needs of subpopulations, including health literacy Understanding the health vulnerabilities, capacities, and inequities of communities and specific subpopulations is critical to disaster risk management",11
"The adoption of the Sendai Framework by the UN member states includes agreement on seven global targets to assess progress in DRM: Substantially reduce global disaster mortality by 2030, aiming to lower the average per 100,000 global mortality rate in the decade 2020–2030 compared to the period 2005–2015; Substantially reduce the number of affected people globally by 2030, aiming to lower the average global figure per 100,000 in the decade 2020–2030 compared to the period 2005–2015; Reduce direct disaster economic loss in relation to global gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030; Substantially reduce disaster damage to critical infrastructure and disruption of basic services, among them health and educational facilities, including through developing their resilience by 2030; Substantially increase the number of countries with national and local disaster risk reduction strategies by 2020; Substantially enhance international cooperation to developing countries through adequate and sustainable support to complement their national actions for implementation of the present Framework by 2030; Substantially increase the availability of and access to multi-hazard early warning systems and disaster risk information and assessments to people by 2030",11
Most member states have a Sendai Framework Monitoring National Focal Point with responsibility for national reporting on the Sendai Framework targets,11
"Access to these health data is integral to timely, accurate, and complete reporting to the Sendai Framework Monitor",11
"Because ministries of health hold relevant data related to health outcomes, risks, and capacities, it is vital that ministries of health are engaged with the Sendai Framework Monitoring National Focal Point and work collaboratively with relevant partners to ensure comprehensive and accurate reporting",11
"The WHO Technical Guidance Notes on Sendai Framework reporting for ministries of health is one tool that aims to facilitate this engagement, and provides guidance for the health sector on its role in data collection and reporting, as well as detailed descriptions of health specific indicators (WHO due for publication in early 2020)",11
"Health sector reporting to the Sendai Framework Monitor will enable ministries of health to measure annual trends of the effects of emergencies and disasters on health, review progress in strengthening capacities, and prioritize areas for further action",11
"Figure 1 highlights the web of links between targets of the Sendai Framework and the SDGs, including the SDG target 3d: Strengthen the capacity of all countries, in particular developing countries, for early warning, risk reduction, and management of national and global health risks",11
Links between sendai framework targets and sustainable development goals There are several benefits to building coherence between reporting for the Sendai Framework Monitor and the SDGs,11
"These include increasing awareness at national and subnational levels of government on how the two frameworks align; facilitating key partnerships, which help avoid duplication of data collection and reporting; promoting accountability; and enabling the development of overarching strategies for collective action on findings in order to maximize gains for both the health and disaster risk management sectors",11
"In the medium and longer terms, ministries of health could consider strengthening national and subnational capacities for civil registration and vital statistics, and developing national case registries for mortality and morbidity related to hazardous events, including emergencies and disasters (Green et al",16
The WHO Health EDRM Research Network was established in direct response to contributing to the Sendai Framework in general and the Sendai Framework Monitor in particular,11
"Despite the perceived success of the Framework and the Research Network, many national, regional, and global initiatives continue to operate with a lack of consistency and harmony in their response to the Sendai Framework’s call for the embedding of health resilience in DRM, and conversely, the embedding of DRM in health resilience (Wisner 2020)",11
"The health sector is implementing many aspects of the Sendai Framework already, but there is a weakness in the way it recognizes, records, and reports this implementation",11
"The policies, programs, and actions taken by governments, WHO, and partners that are aimed at reducing the risks and impacts of emergencies and disasters show the range of health sector actions that could be considered as evidence of implementing the Sendai Framework",11
This requires close collaboration with the wider health system and engagement with other sectors—a key public health approach—given that many of the actions to prevent health risks (by reducing hazards and vulnerabilities) rest with the activities of other sectors,3
"Ministries of health and their partners are encouraged to engage further with the application of the Health EDRM Framework, with the WHO Thematic Platform for Health EDRM and its associated Research Network, and in reporting to their National Focal Points for the Sendai Framework Monitor",11
"The engagement of the ministries of health will therefore be a key marker of success in the effort to nurture the partnership of health and DRM under the Sendai Framework.
",11
"In the long term, resiliency building and disaster preparedness then become part of the development cycle",11
"The women-centric goals of the MDGs and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (United Nations 2015a) are crucial milestones for development: MDG 3 committed to “Promote gender equality and empower women” (United Nations 2001, p",5
"56); SDG 5 calls to “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” (United Nations 2015b, p",5
"The different thematic areas of the MDGs—poverty eradication, health care, gender equality and empowerment, education, environmental sustainability, and overall human development—are all closely linked to the ability of a population to cope with and respond to any natural hazard-induced disaster and humanitarian crisis situations",5
"Women who have suffered severe losses, lack privilege, or have faced sexual harassment are often more vulnerable than other women",5
"Cultural norms, biological conditions (specific needs due to reproductive and maternal health), and the sociopolitical environment all add to women’s vulnerability by limiting the opportunities women have to access support services for recovery",3
"This article is based on the qualitative observations made by the researcher while implementing psychosocial support, livelihood development, microfinance and self-help group formation, health intervention projects, and so on",8
"In humanitarian crises—particularly in times of war, in refugee contexts, and during other complex emergencies—gender-based violence against women and girls is also much higher and more severe than in times of peace",5
"Violence against women and girls (VAWG) in noncrisis situations, especially in areas with poor socioeconomic standards, is much higher than men",5
"For many women in the world domestic violence and abuse are regular events, but crises and disasters greatly aggravate these situations",5
"A broader definition of VAWG includes “controlling and coercive behaviour, subordination, exploitation, disempowerment, deprivation and encompasses physical violence and the threat of physical violence, and a range of types of abuse including, but not limited to, psychological, sexual, financial and emotional abuse” (UK Home Office 2013, p",16
"Included within this definition of VAWG, sexual harassment of women is a major issue in conflict situations",5
"Similarly, in disaster situations, post-disaster cramped living conditions, lack of privacy, and living in close proximity to others can escalate sexual violence and abuse for female survivors",16
"Disaster management in India has a history dating to the early twentieth century, during the British period",11
Disaster management in India became a serious concern at the administrative and practical level in the twenty-first century,11
"This gradually led to the development of a specific administrative structure for disaster management—the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), the State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA), and the District Disaster Management Authority (DDMA); legislation—such as the Disaster Management Act of 2005, disaster management policy guidelines, and training modules; the development of responsible institutional bodies—the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), and civil defense; and academic institutions—training institutes, and specialized courses, including a postgraduate degree in disaster management",11
"Disaster management has been prioritized by various international organizations like the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Oxfam, Care International, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR); other UN agencies took major disaster response programs all over the world",11
"With respect to dealing with human suffering from various disasters and conflicts, this development includes the Sphere Hand Book and the Humanitarian Charter (The Sphere Project 2011), various Inter-Agency Standing Committee guidelines (IASC 1992), the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines (WHO 2009, 2013), the international human rights law (OHCHR 1996), and the 1951 refugee law (Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights 2015)",16
Consistent with international perspectives India took initiatives for disaster management,11
"In the 1990s, a disaster management section was established under the Ministry of Agriculture and in 2002 shifted to the Ministry of Home Affairs, now the main ministry of the government of India responsible for disaster management",11
"The Ministry enforced the Disaster Management Act 2005 (GOI 2005), which has since provided the legal and institutional framework for disaster management in India",11
"The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) was created by the Disaster Management Act 2005, allowing for the preparation of national policies, plans of action, and sectorial policies and plans of action for disaster management in the country",11
"In the National Policy on Disaster Management formulated in 2009, women, especially destitute women, are considered an important vulnerable group",11
"In community-based disaster preparedness, the participation of women in the decision-making process is being encouraged in the guideline as government departments and other disaster intervention agencies should facilitate recovery for women from the grassroots level",11
"The National Policy on Disaster Management focuses on linking recovery with safe development, and on women as a target group to encourage social, economic, and infrastructural development",11
"Internationally, The Sphere Handbook (The Sphere Project 2011) considered gender a cross-cutting issue in any disaster intervention, with women considered one of the most vulnerable groups to be focused on in every disaster intervention program",1
Gender analysis and gender mainstreaming are crucial for developing gender-sensitive programing in disaster intervention,5
Gender analysis leads to further action towards gender mainstreaming to establish gender equity,5
"Gender equality, or equality between women and men, refers to the equal enjoyment by women, girls, boys, and men of rights, opportunities, resources, and rewards",5
"The concept of gender equality works towards reducing the equality gap between males and females, and that has been a priority in the UN Millennium campaign and the MDGs (United Nations 2013)",5
Gender mainstreaming is a globally recognized strategy for achieving gender equality,5
"The Economic and Social Council of the United Nations defined gender mainstreaming as “the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programs, in all areas and at all levels” (United Nations 2002, p",5
"Accomplishment of the MDGs with respect to women’s empowerment is closely connected to the implementation of the IASC (2006) guidelines that are not only important for disaster response, but for the development of underprivileged women, who continue to live in poverty",5
"Now, in the era of SDGs (Sustainable Developmental Goals), the agenda for women’s empowerment is even more strengthened with the equal importance of environmental concerns that are the reason for intensifying disasters globally",5
"There is now significant progress in disaster management training, professional courses, and academic research in India, following a number of frequently occurring disasters in the country",11
Many social work institutes in India have started special courses on disaster management,11
"There are separate Master’s degrees and postgraduate diploma courses on disaster management at different universities and research institutes, for example the Centre for Disaster Management Studies, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi; the Jamsetji Tata Centre for Disaster Management (JTCDM), Mumbai; and the Department of Coastal Disaster Management, Pondicherry University, Port Blair",11
The technical courses under the Indian Council of Technical Education (ICTE) have made it mandatory for the students of Bachelor of Technology courses to study at least one theoretical paper on the basics of disaster management,11
Various training and capacity building courses are regularly conducted for different cadres of government officials across the country by the National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM) and its allied institutions (GOI 2009),11
"In these courses gender, psychosocial support (PSS), and working with vulnerable groups (especially women, children, and persons with challenges) are included as important topics to be covered",1
Particularly for a country with middle or lower socioeconomic standards rebuilding after disaster damage becomes a challenge,11
"In India every disaster creates additional vulnerabilities among girls and women, who can become trapped in the cycle of human trafficking",8
Both civil unrest and natural hazard-induced disasters have become major sources of human trafficking,8
During the 2002 Gujarat riots severe sexual harassment scared women and others in the community (Lakshminarayana et al,5
"As an immediate response, many organizations joined together to provide counseling and support to the women who were traumatized due to the sexual harassment",5
It was understood that identifying some women as victims of sexual harassment in a camp situation would cause more harm,5
Reproductive health issues and this psychosocial stress are very closely associated,3
Maternal health and reproductive health systems are closely connected to the mental health of women,3
The specific complications that women face are related to the disturbance of the menstrual cycle and the complications in reproductive health,3
"Sexual harassment of women and adolescent girls is also widely reported after disasters, and women have even had to sexually satisfy or meet the sexual demands of the aid worker to get humanitarian aid (Ferris 2007; Thomson Reuters Foundation 2013)",5
"In India, PSS for disaster survivors is mainly offered by the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), an agency that works in disaster response (NIMHANS and WHO 2006) and propagated the PSS program module (Murthy et al",3
"To handle these issues, the following services were provided by organizations in an attempt to provide holistic care (Ramappa and Bhadra 2004): (1) meeting women individually and with their families to address their issues and to provide support; (2) providing medical care and referral services; (3) encouraging group building as a social support system, helping women talk about their issues and providing a common platform for them; (4) creating a microcredit group to help women gain financial independence and decision-making power in the family; (5) providing legal support to women to help them gain their legal rights and compensation due to them; (6) providing housing support; and (7) forming self-help groups at various levels to facilitate awareness among the general population",3
These young girls were also supported with skill training in organized classes for sewing and stitching to promote their livelihood options,4
"These groups continued periodic interfaith meetings in different areas and celebrated various community level mass events (for example, celebration of international women’s day, birth anniversary of national leaders, India’s independence day, organized picnic for peace, sport meet for the kids) to promote peace and harmony (Bhadra and Dyer 2011)",16
"For example, many times the amount of aid received by the women as part of compensation or microfinance loans is used by male family members",8
Women’s widowed status may be a means of social exclusion for a woman to be independent in her social situation,1
Women’s potential and responsibilities for the development of resilient communities needs to be explored to accelerate the MDGs and reduce gender inequalities in development,11
Disasters threaten the food security of the poorest people worldwide and women become the worst sufferers given their roles as homemakers and their traditional responsibility to feed others before having their share,2
"Thus, gender-sensitive programing that considers gender mainstreaming is essential",5
"Similarly, on Earth a sustainable way of life requires careful handling of resources",12
"Economic growth has been shown to be not a guarantee for societal improvement in developing countries, in fact causing new problems, e.g",8
In the early 2000s solar power had not been a relevant contribution to world-wide power generation,7
"Similarly, solar power generation became a major element in human spaceflight technology, e.g",7
"Today solar cells are one important element for sustainable energy generation not just in space, but also on Earth – initially funded by the lead users of the space sector, requiring sustainable energy supply for their spacecraft",7
energy which could be coming from outside via sunlight/ solar power generation),7
"by using solar power generation, there is no strain on the closed loop",7
"These goals even stand in a certain competition with each other – fighting poverty can include economic growth or lead to more consumption, which can contradict the idea of environmental sustainability [3]",8
"Concerning SDG 7, technical solutions for even cheaper energy supply might exist, but they could be less sustainable or e.g",7
"While the SDGs are interlinked and depend on each other, certain SDGs are more susceptive for approaches of problem solving with technologies from human spaceflight programs, e.g.:
 Goal 2: Zero Hunger: Improving crop yield through artificial means while at the same time reducing the induced environmental impact can be achieved by adopting human spaceflight technologies for planetary greenhouse food production (e.g",2
"Goal 7: Affordable and clean energy: Human spaceflight has a high need for energy due to the life support systems involved, but in general spaceflight missions rely on regenerative power sources as resources are scarce",7
"Goal 11: Sustainable cities and communities: This goal is a general link to human spaceflight, as any human spaceflight mission aiming at a long-term presence, has to be a sustainable community",11
"Goal 12: Responsible consumption and production: This goal can benefit from recycling technologies and processes as well as overall production strategies benefiting recycling and resource efficiency developed from human spaceflight missions, e.g",12
by improving access to food and water,2
education to reduce poverty,1
"In general, technology – and especially human spaceflight technology – can improve the ability to attain a Circular Economy, if defined as “realization of (a) closed loop material flow in the whole economic system” [13]",12
"This would improve food security, lessen stress on existing agriculture areas and lessen the demand in agriculture resources such as water",2
"Thus, solar power generation is not sufficient for power supply and efficient energy storage is needed to provide electrical power during lunar night",7
"by energy harvesting of radiated heat, can in the long run be used for terrestrial housing as well, reducing energy consumption",7
"Especially in the area of fighting climate change and adapting human settlement towards the aggravated environmental challenges, the space community is already contributing towards solutions on Earth",13
"Generally, the data used for evaluating climate change and its impacts are often gathered by space based systems",13
NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Science has a program investigating impacts of the climate change on human life and the environment and contributed to the Climate Change and Cities report of the Urban Climate Change Research Network [14],13
"waste management, water security [14] are similar in nature to those of a sustainable space community",12
The most typical generation process for space missions is using solar power generation to supply electrical energy to the system,7
"All material flows should be based on recycling of used materials opposite to wasting resources, without reuse and having a material flow leading out of the system (and thus interrupting the closed loop)",12
"For instance if the only required outside resource is energy, this can be accumulated with solar power generation and thus not reduce the locally available resources, i.e",7
medical care and comforts required for mental health,3
"The before mentioned functions are applicable for infrastructure and communities on Earth as well, if a sustainable way of life is to be attained",12
Recycling should occur to reduce the amount of resources needed,12
"Energy consumption is expected to increase by a factor of about 1.5 until 2050, from about 420 million Terajoule to about 630 million Terajoule, with the industrial sector being the major contributor at currently about 250 million Terajoule and projected about 340 million Terajoule [20]",7
"In comparison, residential energy consumption is about 53 million Terajoule and is projected to be about 100 million Terajoule in 2050 [20]",7
Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates about 10% of commercial energy consumption are used for lighting [22],7
"Assuming a similar rate for the worldwide energy consumption for lighting means that up to 34 million Terrajoule can be gained by energy harvesting from lighting in industrial sectors alone, resp",7
"growing food locally, recycling bio-mass effectively can also be applied on an urban or home scale and thus reduce transportation effort, i.e",12
"Areas threatened by droughts due to climate change are Africa, North America, South America and Oceania [31]",13
"Similarly as in certain regions of Earth, water is scarce on Moon and Mars, requiring efficient usage and recycling of water for long-duration human spaceflight missions",12
"Recycling human waste products, e.g",12
"Aiming at a sustainable long-duration habitat, recycling- and adjoining habitat technologies are used to achieve a (nearly) fully closed-loop infrastructure",12
"It is a sort of “Petri dish” for a circular economy on a small scale, where technologies and their application can be “cultured” and investigated in test cases",12
"In particular, the investigation into the following areas shall foster future habitat technologies:
 Water recycling methods Air revitalization technologies Waste recycling (liquid & solid) Food production and processing Material utilization and advanced manu-facturing Yet, this is to be achieves in a modular system, where individual technology components can be exchanged",12
"human factors, food production and waste management, into the study, which occurred within the study location",12
waste management),12
"Besides offices for the scientists and engineers, the institute will house a dedicated business incubator, facilitating the stringent technology transfer capability (lab-to-market) of the research infrastructure towards terrestrial sustainability applications and processes",17
"water recycling systems, air purification and revitalization methods, high-density food production, advanced decentralized manufacturing) depending on previously identified research needs",12
"More efficient resource usage, smart recycling and renewable production can all contribute",12
"with a combination of water and waste treatment systems with energy and food supply sized to standard house installations), Small communities (e.g",12
"geographical advantages such as regions rich of water or sunshine as resource), Developing countries (robust low-tech solutions for a sustainable public health including water, sanitation and hygiene)",3
"Eveland [41] describes that a technology has to facilitate achieving a certain goal, if technology transfer is going to be successful",17
"Technology transfer essentially boils down to communication [41], therefore it is important to communicate similarities and differences between stakeholder needs on Earth and for space application, e.g",17
"Based on [41] The benefit of technology transfer as described here is that the fluid phase has been overcome by investment of the original application, here spaceflight",17
"from urban planning and development, can benefit future settlements on other planetary bodies",11
"More efficient energy storage and transmission are important parts of a larger product life cycle design and the confines of the circular economy, including environmental and social concerns",12
"“Sustainable design of a new material” as used in this study can refer to a new material itself, a new device to measure materials, or even a new manufacturing process, all relating to the research and development of materials science",9
"UNEP [1] shows that mining resources commonly leads to biodiversity loss, deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, and involves toxic chemicals, and that we have globally tripled resource extraction over the past 40 years",15
"On the other hand, if manufacturing organizations pursue the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) actively, an estimated US$12 trillion could be generated yearly as well as 380 million jobs, and thereby lower poverty, provide a more equal income distribution, and increase human development rankings [4]",10
"However, [4] emphasize that the industry contribution to the SDGs policies should be aimed at the life cycle phases of production, consumption, and waste management, and do not mention the design phase of products’ life cycles",12
A close examination of the targets of SDG 12 (ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns) shows that targets do not consider the design of materials specifically either [5],12
"Therefore, materials need to be designed as sustainable as possible from the very first design phase: material research and development, and include considering impacts from multiple aspects.
 In short, when considering what a sustainable material is, we must look at the entire consumption and production cycles, of which design is a part",9
The green economy is a concept that envisions an idealized version of SDG 12,12
"The green chemistry principles described by Garg [12] (summarized in Table 1) are one of the earliest efforts towards a more sustainable production process in the field of chemistry, however they do not encompasses the entire spectrum of sustainability",12
Gopalraj and Kärki [15] do examine the environmental and economic effects of a material but look at recycling and closing the loop to stimulate the circular economy,12
"Materials science and engineering literature covers recycling, reduced energy and resource consumption, enabling a cleaner environment and less toxicity, as well as accessibility and geopolitical forces, the economy, and individuals’ social needs",12
"Engineering literature comprises minimizing pollution, environmental and social impacts, energy requirements, and increasing longevity, recycling; as well as adding educational topics on population, environment, and development",12
"Efficiency, lifetime, and recyclability of the material Abundance and accessibility of resources Emission of GHG and toxic substances during manufacturing, supply chain, and end of life, to humans and the environment Effects on livelihood in the form of job creation and the availability of sufficiently trained personnel The logic behind these categories is as follows",8
"For the latter, the UNEP [42] shows that recycling is crucial, not just from the perspective of the circular or green economy",12
"Mining and refining metals are currently costing 8% of global energy supply and causing GHG emissions, whereas recycling is much less energy intensive, and especially metals can be recycled almost indefinitely [42]",12
"As with the first category, various literature in Table 1 stress the need to reduce emissions of GHG, pollutants, and substances toxic to humans and the environment which are in the third category",13
"This would include mapping impacts such as pollution, deforestation, biodiversity loss, water depletion, health, well-being, and wealth, by means of resource flows and life cycles [43]",15
"For the second event, two out of 11 participants had no idea (score 0) of the amount of training and education required for the production of their materials",4
"Training and workforce currently score high when education levels are low and many new jobs are created, though this may arguably be viewed differently (see methods)",8
"If these scores accurately reflect reality, there is much to be improved in relation to job creation and training",8
"Depending on the energy source, this can contribute more or less to climate change",13
"Moreover, an indication of how much of the manufacturing process could be supplied by locally generated renewable energy, and how various manufacturing emissions could be captured and neutralized, would be ideal",7
"We also require policy changes to enforce course evaluations, and encourage lifelong learning to guarantee both practitioners’ active working knowledge and update this where required",4
"In line with these concepts, educators would review existing students and alumni about their knowledge, offering lifelong learning opportunities",4
The one caveat of this setup is that making sustainable materials by itself is insufficient in order to reach sustainable production goals,12
"In this view, societal addictions such as lifestyles with overconsumption relying on fossil fuels, overusing pesticides, economic aggrandizing, and overfishing, similar to an individual’s cigarette or drug addictions, both have short term rewards yet continue to be used despite universal knowledge of their detrimental effects",14
"Companies and research organizations; for compliance with international and local laws, codes, and policies on sustainability, for insight in the organizations’ preparedness to successfully innovate and contribute to the circular economy and a sustainable global society",12
"Notes ://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2022/The-Sustainable-Development-Goals-Report-2022.pdf -01-2022-who-publishes-new-global-data-on-the-use-of-clean-and-polluting-fuels-for-cooking-by-fuel-type#:~:text=One%20third%20of%20the%20global,%2D%20and%20middle%2Dincome%20countries -room/fact-sheets/detail/household-air-pollution-and-health -facts/coal-electricity/ -goals/ -brief/draft-cop27-agreement-fails-to-call-for-phase-down-of-all-fossil-fuels/ -fuels/description -energy -ar6-wgiii-pressrelease/ -out-oil-gas-production -release/2022/06/01/report-covid-19-slows-progress-towards-universal-energy-access ://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/documents/publication/wcms_856649.pdf -topics/energy/what-we-do/energy-efficiency -steps-to-achieve-sustainable-energy-for-all Energy is intrinsically related to many crucial aspects of human life and inadequacy in its supplies has always been a constraint to human and economic development",8
"Of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Goal 7 is mainly focussed on ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030.Footnote 1 In past few years, demand for energy has dramatically increased mainly due to our reliance on technology, high living standards and ever growing population",7
"To close the gaps of energy supplies by 2030, we need to check the use of fossil fuels as source of energy and urgently scale up production and use of renewable sources of energy to prevent long term planetary scale consequences, the most severe product of which is climate change",13
The first and foremost target of SDG 7 i.e,7
"target 7.1 is to ensure universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services by 20301",7
"According to the latest ‘Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022’, the rate of electricity access has increased from 83% in 2010 to 91% in 2020, worldwide, and those who lived without electricity reduced from 1.2 billion to 733 million",7
"Referencing to the context, the annual electricity access rates grew by 0.5% points in 2018–2020 in comparison to 0.8% points in 2010–2018",7
"Report suggests that only 92% of the global population will gain electricity access by 2030, leaving 670 million people behind.Footnote 2 On the other hand, World health Organization (WHO) (2022) states that one third of world’s population (or 2.4 billion people) are still devoid of clean cooking and rely on polluting fuels, which impact their health",7
"The report also claims that one third of the global population will keep using polluted cooking fuels in 2030, with majority living in sub-Saharan Africa.Footnote 3 Use of inefficient and polluting fuels including wood, coal, charcoal, dung and crop waste generates huge levels of household air pollution (HAP)",7
"HAP exposure leads to non-communicable diseases, which include ischemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer.Footnote 4 Additionally, the unprocessed biomass solid fuels used for domestic cooking are also major cause of air pollution causing up to 50 times more pollution than cooking gas",3
"Furthermore, coal, which is a major contributor of CO2 emissions, is also a huge source of electricity generation in present times creating a challenge in transitioning to low carbon energy systems",7
Demand for coal is strong and plays key role in fuelling economic development in emerging markets,8
"World Coal Association reports that currently, coal power plants generate 37% of global electricity and estimates from International Energy Agency (IEA) suggest that even by 2040, coal will produce 22% of world’s electricity, maintaining its hold as the single largest source of electricity in the world.Footnote 5 Coal, oil and gas being the main drivers of global warming, phasing out coal has been one of the main objectives of 26th Conference of the Parties (COP 26) to translate the goal of ‘securing global net zero by mid-century and keeping 1.5°C within reach’ into action.Footnote 6 However, many countries expressed their disagreement and the final pact went from ‘phase out’ to ‘phase down’ giving setback to the sustainability goals (Arora and Mishra 2021)",7
"Recently held COP27 in Egypt also did not show any signs of progress in this regard, and the draft suggests to accelerate the measures towards ‘phase down’ of unabated coal power and phase out and rationalize inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.Footnote 7 Hence, intensified efforts are needed in order to make electricity accessible and adoption of clean cooking solutions particularly in low and middle income countries to boost their growth at multiple levels",7
Target 7.2 is to increase substantially the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix by 20301,7
"Ever since the industrial revolution, energy mix of most of the countries relied on fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) boosting economies for over 150 years, and currently also supplying about 80% of world’s energy",7
"Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report claims that to limit the pace of global warming, we need to make transitions in the energy sector",13
"This calls for a significant reduction in fossil fuels, ubiquitous electrification, improved energy efficiency and use of alternative fuels like hydrogen.Footnote 10 The report explains that right policies, infrastructure and technology to facilitate changes in our daily lives can result in 40–70% reduction in GHGs emission by 2050",7
"Some mainstream renewable technologies including hydropower, wind energy, solar energy, biomass energy, biofuels and geothermal energy are already contributing towards safety and sustainability of our planet (Gielen et al",7
The deployment of renewables is not only needful for climate change objectives but also to meet the global demands for energy,13
"As per the estimates shown in Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022’ for Goal 7, the share of renewables in total energy consumption attained 17.7% in 2019 i.e",7
"1.6% higher than 2010, while total renewable energy consumption increased by a quarter during the same period2",7
"In case of transport, renewable energy reached 3.6% in 2019, which was a jump up from 2.6% in 20102",7
Report further added that traditional uses of biomass remained stagnant and represented more than a third of total renewable energy use in 20192,7
"On the other hand, Our World in Data estimates show that worldwide, hydropower occupies the largest modern renewable resource occupying 4274 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2021, followed by wind and solar power with 1596 TWh and 846 TWh respectively9",7
"In case of electricity mix, renewables accounted for one-quarter of electricity generation in 2021",7
The above data shows that boosting renewable energy is of utmost importance in order to decarbonize our energy systems in coming future and meeting the global demands,7
Target 7.3 aims at doubling the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency by 20301,7
"Tracking the SDG 7: The Energy Progress Report (2022),’ published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the UN Statistics Division (UNSD), the World Bank, and WHO reveals that Target 7.3 aims to improve primary energy intensity to 2.6 in 2010–30 versus 1990–2010",7
"But from 2010 to 2019, annual energy efficiency improvement globally has attained the value of 1.9% which is below the target.Footnote 12 For early 2020, substantial decrease in intensity improvement was witnessed due to COVID-19 pandemic",7
"According to Sustainable Development Goals Report (2022), global primary energy intensity [ratio of total energy supply to gross domestic product (GDP)] has improved from 5.6 megajoules per US dollar (2017 purchasing power parity) in 2010 to 4.7 in 2019, with an average improvement rate of 1.9% annually",7
"However, the report states that in order to actually meet the targets of Goal 7, improvement in average annual energy intensity will need to reach 3.2% by 2030",7
"In fact, in order to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, the world will need to scale up the rate of energy efficiency to 4% for the rest of the decade12",7
"Among the last two targets, 7A focuses on enhancing international cooperation to facilitate access to clean energy research and technology, including renewable energy, energy efficiency and advanced and cleaner fossil-fuel technology, promote investment in energy infrastructure and clean energy technology by 2030; Target 7B is to expand infrastructure and upgrade technology for supplying modern and sustainable energy services for all in developing countries, in particular least developed countries, small island nations and landlocked developing countries by 20301",7
"Both targets rely on international financial flows, for promoting access to research, technology and investments in clean energy as well as to expand or upgrade energy services for developing countries",7
"In order to make renewable energy and its technology available for all and to achieve climate goals, swift actions are required",7
Novel biotechnologies such as bio-electrochemical cells (BEC) have lately gained attention regarding generation of clean energy,7
The concepts and mechanisms of microbes are currently being harnessed to design modern cost effective and eco-friendly energy generating cells,7
"The pigments produced by extremophilic bacteria have been evaluated in efficiently trapping solar energy, and have found their application as dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) (Silva et al",7
"To swiftly utilize these novel technologies at large scale, accelerated advancement in R&D, cutting on costs, reformed policy frameworks and business models, and enhanced international cooperation driven by governments, communities and organizations are required",9
"In this regard, strong market mechanisms should be developed to offer clean and affordable energy options to poor and marginalized populations",7
Domestic and local bankers must come forward and work in line to support the green technologies involved in providing clean energy,7
"Renewable Energy and Jobs: Annual Report (2022) has confirmed that despite multiple crises, growth in renewable energy job has hit 12.7 million in 2021, up from 12 million in 2020",7
"Almost two-thirds of all jobs are in Asia, and China alone holds 42% of the global total, followed by Eurpean Union (EU) and Brazil with 10% each, while USA and India account for 7% each.Footnote 14 Among all renewables, the fastest growing is solar photovoltaic with 4.3 million jobs in 2021 accounting for more than a third of all renewable energy workforce",7
"Next is wind power with 1.3 million jobs in 2021, followed by 2.4 million jobs in hydropower, and biofuels accounting for 2.4 million jobs14",7
"United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is also working with different partners to improve energy access and strengthen business related to energy efficiency in developing and emerging economies, making these nations gain economic and environmental profits to reduce poverty.Footnote 15 Setting up consistent policy reform agenda and strong national level targets for electrification, clean cooking and energy access by governments will help small enterprises and private sectors to operate easily",7
"Local organizations must engage in innovative and regenerative solutions through educational and hands-on learning experiences to encourage the use of renewables in everyday life, which in turn will help to combat climate crisis",13
"Our briefing spans the United Nations Youth 2019 Climate Action Summit, the post-2020 meetings organized by the youth branch of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), the UNESCO Man and Biosphere Youth forums and the results from the Global Shapers Survey of the World Economic Forum.ConclusionsWe argue that if researchers wish to facilitate youth-inclusive evidence-based decision making, research agendas must address knowledge gaps highlighted by institutional efforts to incorporate youth concerns within global sustainability policy, a recommendation that is even more relevant in the light of the COVID-19 crisis",13
"In the public sphere, there is a growing global momentum behind social movements led by youth that demand bold action in the face of inequality, climate change and biodiversity decline",13
"As a show of commitment to the younger generations, the United Nations (UN) Secretary General called the first ever UN Youth Climate Action Summit in New York in September 2019",13
"Youth are a group of special focus in sustainability policy, and feature in numerous SDGs; education (SDG4), job security (SDG9), reduction of inequalities (SDG11) and Climate Action (SDG14), as a part of the “leave no one behind” framework [5]",13
"Here we present our account of the major themes arising in international meetings for youth voices, such as the UN Youth Climate Action Summit ( -in-action) and the UN post-2030 CBD youth forums",13
"We support our conclusions with the results of the recent Global Shapers Survey (GSS) conducted by the World Economic Forum (n = 30,000) [18].
 Major themes emerging from international youth forums (UN Youth Climate Action Summit and UNESCO Man and Biosphere and CBD post-2131 forum) and the Global Shapers Survey by the World Economic Forum",13
"The green band across the circle denotes two key concepts underpinning the six themes: transdisciplinarity and systems thinking The GSS showed that “climate change/destruction of nature” was ranked as the most serious global issue with 49.9% of votes, a trend uniform across age groups [18]",13
"Numerous youth-led initiatives supported by international institutions aim to tackle and raise awareness of the environmental crisis and climate change, including the UN Summer of Solutions, the UN Climate Reboot Troops, the UNESCO Man and Biosphere (MAB) youth network, and the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GBYN)",13
"Grassroots movements have recently drawn global attention to the climate crisis, with youth climate strike mobilization statistics hitting an all-time high in September 2019, with an estimated 6 million strikers worldwide lead by youth organizations",13
"Youth declarations published across youth networks [19] speak of the need to address the biodiversity and the climate crisis as one systemic issue, calling for transformative change which holds nature-based solutions at its centre",13
"The GSS showed that “Large-scale conflict/wars” and “inequality (income, discrimination)” were ranked as the second and third most important global issues, with 39.10 and 30.9% of votes, respectively [18]",10
The GSS ranked “government accountability and transparency/corruption” as a primary concern within their own countries (46.10% of votes) [18],16
"Education and outreach have been raised as central to achieving sustainability outcomes, stressing the need to fund and implement capacitation, upskilling and awareness raising schemes across the globe",4
"In the same way, transdisciplinary and cross-sectorial efforts must create new languages and approaches [22], which are able to address the connections between inequality and unequal distribution of resources, concentration of power, failing governance systems and institutions, and the unprecedented environmental degradation, poverty and risks to young people and future generations",15
"There are multiple avenues for scientific research to foster incremental and transformative social learning opportunities which account for youth, and here we point out three simple and complementary pathways: Remembering youth as essential stakeholders and utilizing appropriate participatory and social learning methods are key steps to producing youth-inclusive research",9
(d) Engage in responsible research practices following guidelines such as the Responsible Research and Innovation framework [27],9
"There are examples, where developing countries are strengthening efforts to tackle the issue of poor water and sanitation such as ‘Clean India Mission’ was recently launched by the Government of India",6
Environmental factors have been associated with about 25% of the disease burden and premature mortality globally (Prüss-Üstün and Corvalán 2006),3
Whereas household air pollution (HAP) due to burning of biomass for cooking is a major contributor for lower respiratory infections and a range of non-communicable diseases (NCDs),3
"Further, the relative risks of disease burden due to HAP are higher among the vulnerable population (women, children and elderly) in rural areas due to daily exposure during cooking using solid biomass fuels",1
"to pay for subsidised fuel into people’s bank account (direct benefit transfer of LPG—DBTL), Give-it-Up (GIU), which focus on voluntarily giving the subsidy on LPG fuel by wealthy people and Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY)—to provide free LPG to below poverty line families (Smith 2017a)",8
"Hence, the use of clean fuel in household will not only help to mitigate the adverse impact of climate change but also to gain health benefits",13
Both WaSH and HAP significantly contribute to disease burden and premature mortality in developing countries,3
"The main aim of SDGs is to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all; the combined approach will help to achieve the SDG targets on time",1
"The aim of WaSH and HAP are better hygiene and sanitation and improved indoor air quality by adopting safe sanitation practices and using clean fuels, proper ventilation and other interventions",6
"Further, it will also be the right start to achieve United Nation SDGs, which aim to end poverty, protect the environment and ensure prosperity for all by 2030.",1
Transdisciplinary processes are central to generating context-sensitive knowledge to support decisions on CCA and DRR options that minimize trade-offs and maximize synergies and complementarities required to guide sustainable development trajectories,11
"Global initiatives in response to contemporary challenges on Planet Earth In 2015, three key global agreements were established to facilitate the implementation of global-level responsibilities to deal with DRR, human development, and CCA respectively (Fig. 1)",11
"Finally, in December, at the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC 2015), the draft of the Paris Agreement was adopted to address the immense challenges of climate change, hence facilitating government actions that encourage including risk reduction as part of efforts addressing CCA",13
"In this section, we suggest a transdisciplinary process aimed at minimizing trade-offs, and maximizing synergies and complementarities between DRR and CCA efforts",11
"Recognizing that climate change is a key hazard driver (Kelman 2015), for example, highlights the opportunity to explicitly incorporate the gradual effects of climate change when planning to reduce disaster risks",13
"But when trying to adapt to climate change, ecosystem-based adaptation options are often considered, particularly in rural landscapes (Geneletti and Zardo 2016)",13
We argue that both approaches should be strategically combined during planning of future development efforts so that adaptation to climate change is conducted simultaneously while reducing risks,13
"The Dutch “Room for the River” program,Footnote 1 established in response to the devastating 1993 and 1995 Rhine delta floods in the Netherlands, is a good example of combining DRR and CCA approaches that aims to give rivers space to flood safely in order to protect vulnerable urban and rural areas",11
"The wrong location of provisional settlements following a disaster can also lead to unplanned environmental problems (for example, deforestation) that could limit the contribution of natural ecosystems to CCA (Parker et al",15
"In contrast, The Nature Conservancy has used transdisciplinary knowledge to guide DRR actions in the case of 1-in-100 year storm events in New York City, and concludes that hybrid options offer the best protection from these storms, while also providing significant environmental benefits (Nature Conservancy 2015)",11
"Hybrid options combine biodiversity conservation with engineering options tailored for key habitats (dunes, mangroves, coral reefs, wetlands, and forests)",15
Hybrid options can also be used in urban settings to help cope with the effects of increasing mean temperature associated with climate change,13
"While hybrid options have shown significant potential, there is still limited practical evidence of their success in simultaneously addressing the impacts of DRR and CCA",11
"This is likely the result of difficulties encountered in the attempt to fully embrace transdisciplinarity during knowledge sharing and integration processes across different disciplines, sectors, and scales relevant for ecosystem management and DRR (Scholz and Steiner 2015)",11
"It is worrisome that following the West Java, Indonesia 2009 earthquake, new building reconstruction efforts did not follow the existing building codes (EERI 2009), thus increasing vulnerability by neglecting the Sendai Framework’s Priority 4 that emphasizes the need of “building back better to prevent creating new risks” (UNISDR 2015)",11
Building code challenges go beyond urban settings and can directly influence food security,2
"In Rwanda, for example, none of the postharvest facilities evaluated were designed with consideration of the emerging environmental and climate change challenges, nor were they constructed following building codes (Bendito and Twomlow 2014)",13
Existing and new infrastructures should be better adapted to the current and expected future impacts of climate change,13
The Eco-DRR/CCA approach encourages the development of hybrid options by fostering the holistic thinking required to address complex problems synthesized in the SDGs,11
"The ability of society to deal sensibly with risk and climate change, which largely occur together in time and space, would be strengthened with greater understanding of interactions between both phenomena",13
The value of transdisciplinary processes is shown to be central to research that generates context-sensitive knowledge to support decisions on CCA and DRR options that minimize trade-offs and maximize synergies and complementarities required to guide sustainable development trajectories,11
Building codes are identified as a priority entry point to integrating DRR and CCA approaches,11
"These topics were circular and sharing economy (1), public and private consumption (2), food production and consumption (3), and sustainable cities (4)",11
"These topics were circular and sharing economy (1), public and private consumption (2), food production and consumption (3), and sustainable cities (4)",11
The circular economy vision has raised awareness for the need to move from a linear economy to one where the value of materials and products is kept in the system as long as possible,12
"The UNEP/SETAC life cycle initiative argues that LCA is suited as a tool to understand the environmental and social implications of circular economy strategies, as well as identifying the most promising of those strategies (Pena et al",12
"In this forum, resource efficiency as a design principle was discussed as well as a method to systematically evaluate the environmental benefits of recycling and the quantification of sustainability benefits from sharing platforms",12
"To reach environmental sustainability in a circular economy, resource inputs thus need to be restricted to what can be safely extracted, processed, and released back into the environment (Desing et al",12
An optimal design of services and products within an economy can reduce the pressure on resources and lead the way to a circular economy,12
"While recycling is often considered to automatically lead to an environmental benefit, the actual benefit depends on the impact of the raw material, the recycling process, and the value retention (VR) after the process",12
Existing performance indicators of a circular economy fail to capture the sustainability dimension of various VR processes,12
SDG 12 of the United Nations (2015) 2030 agenda for sustainable development emphasized the need for practices to reduce the footprint of global consumption,12
Marleen Jattke (ZHAW) showed how business models can extend the lifetime of mobile internet-enabled devices and therefore contribute to more sustainable consumption (Jobin et al,12
"As discussed during the 73rd Discussion Forum on Life Cycle Assessment on global digital transformation, an increasing number of mobile Internet-enabled devices (MIEDs), whose production requires large amount of resources, energy, and causes emissions during production, are being sold (Itten et al",9
"With the aim of guiding economic development into a sustainable future, methodologies that integrate economic and environmental aspects are needed",8
"By doing this, it jointly accounts for the nutritional, health, and environmental sustainability dimensions of agri-food production systems and sustainable diets",2
"With SDG 11 in the United Nations 2030 Agenda, sustainable cities and communities are a prominent goal (United Nations 2015)",11
"The session on sustainable cities focused on the regional building material industry, sustainable housing, and a sustainable healthcare sector",11
"On this basis, policy recommendations can then be derived which promote the development of a circular economy in the building materials industry in a regional context",12
"This explorative data mining study allows incorporating effects of all the household properties (and consumption behaviours), and thus help overlap the economic aspect of the consumptions, consequence of an affordable housing policy and its final environmental impact",11
"Participants’ view on which life cycle–based approached proved to most helpful to support decision-makers in making more sustainable decisions (the number of mentions is indicated in parentheses; a total of 88 responses were submitted by participants) In addition to analysing sustainability hotspots, eco-design and circular economy were perceived as most useful in helping decision makers to choose more sustainable options",12
"(2020, 2021) can support decision makers during the design phase to reach environmental sustainability in a circular economy",12
Marleen Jattke presented how to select economically viable business models which have environmental benefits and are socially accepted to incentivize more sustainable consumption,12
"PurposeSustainable diets are an environmental, economic, and public health imperative, but identifying clear intervention points is challenging",3
The AWARE characterization model was used to offer a diet-associated water scarcity footprint,6
"Trends in diet-associated environmental impacts were interpreted in light of diet shifts, economic development trends, and other factors.Results and discussionIncreasing per capita food supply in Vietnam, and in particular increases in meat, have led to rising diet-associated per capita GHGE",8
The water use and water scarcity footprint in Vietnam follow an increasing trend comparable to food supply,6
Such developments are observable in both Vietnam and Kenya: average incomes and urbanization have risen steadily over the past two decades (although more dramatically in Vietnam than in Kenya) and childhood stunting and undernourishment have declined significantly (Kimani-Murage et al,2
"To contend with the vast interconnectivity of food systems problems and the likelihood of trade-offs across outcomes including economic growth, social equity, nutrition and health, and environmental performance, decision makers will require access to descriptive analyses from a variety of perspectives, even under the inevitable uncertainty introduced by limited data",8
"Given the range of years, specific impact assessment methods varied, introducing a source of untraceable uncertainty, but all global warming potential factors were based on a 100-year time horizon, and the majority (more than 65%) utilized factors from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment Report (IPCC 2007)",13
The impact of fresh water consumption on other users (both human and ecosystems) is dependent on the relative availability of water in a given region,6
We use the AWARE method here to quantify a water scarcity footprint associated with the food production in national average diets,6
"In this paper, we report both uncharacterized blue water use (without the water scarcity characterization factor applied), and water scarcity footprints (with AWARE factor applied)",6
"An average blue water use as well as water scarcity footprint for imports of each commodity, weighted based on relative quantity of imports from each country, was calculated",6
Values used in final diet-level assessments were then derived by weighting domestic water use (and water scarcity footprint) and imported water use (and water scarcity footprint) by the share of domestic availability (import plus domestic production),6
"“Meat, other” is an FAO category representing other meats not specified Figure 3 gives the annual water use and water scarcity footprint per capita associated with the Vietnamese diet in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s (see Fig",6
Figures show decadal trends in (a) food supply associated annual water use per capita and (b) associated water scarcity footprint per capita,6
“Other meat” is the sum of all meat supply except bovine meat The water use and water scarcity footprint per capita associated with the Kenyan diet is shown in Fig. 5 (see Fig,6
Figures show decadal trends in (a) food supply associated annual water use per capita and (b) associated water scarcity footprint per capita,6
"4a, with the exception that beverages and fish and seafood are not included In contrast to the situation in Vietnam, results for Kenya show distinct differences in distribution between water use and water scarcity footprint, particularly for cereals and grains (see the ESM, File 1, Fig",6
"The AWARE characterization factor, a measure of water stress, for Kenya is 9.7, whereas Pakistan is 62.2 (note that the AWARE scale is normalized such that world average = 1)",6
The trends seen in the Vietnamese diet can be partly explained by economic development,8
"All of these trends must be interpreted within the context of growing divides within the population: while national average undernourishment in Vietnam has fallen to 10%, childhood stunting still remains at 25% (FAO 2018a), and both measures are more severe in sub-populations such as ethnic minorities (Benny et al",2
The water use and water scarcity footprint in Vietnam follow a comparable increasing trend to food supply from the 1990s to 2010s,6
"Kenya’s economic growth in recent decades, in comparison to Vietnam, has been more modest (see the ESM, File 1, Fig",8
"Whereas the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions are felt globally in the form of climate change, the impacts of water use are primarily local to where the food is produced, and therefore invite a spatial component in assessment",13
"S5b) can be predominantly attributed to imports from Pakistan, where blue water use intensity (m3/kg) is high; the relatively high AWARE characterization factor for Pakistan, indicative of a water-stressed region, further amplifies this contribution in the water scarcity footprint",6
"For our 2011 data point, imports from Pakistan are responsible for 97% of Kenya’s water scarcity footprint for both wheat and rice (EMS, File 1, Table S3)",6
2017) whereas less than 1% of arable land receives irrigation in Kenya (World Bank: CIAT 2015),15
"To our knowledge, no comparable diet-associated water scarcity footprints based on the AWARE characterization method have been published",6
"CO2eq., respectively, and total country emissions (excluding land use change and forestry) were 247.3 Mt",15
"In addition to differences in agro-ecology, there are also seasonal cycles with different management regimes for paddy rice: summer-autumn, autumn-winter, winter, and winter-spring plantings",2
"There are known methods to reduce methane emissions and therefore GHGE associated with rice production, including alternate wetting and drying (AWD) and midseason drainage techniques, both of which are key components of Vietnam’s Nationally Determined Contribution plan in agriculture (Trung et al",13
"One aspect of this challenge is that the Food Balance Sheet data do not account for food waste in the household, which is problematic when attempting to assess nutrients consumed by the population",12
Some climate scientists and policy analysts call for greater emphasis on mitigation of short-lived climate pollutants in order to avoid self-accelerating climate change in the short term due to climate tipping points and amplifying feedbacks (Fesenfeld et al,13
"However, because international climate action deliberations are characterized and quantified at national boundaries, resources may be prioritized to landscape-level estimates rather than building an understanding of production systems and environmental efficiencies (i.e., impacts per unit of output)",13
"The demand-oriented perspective presented here—assigning emissions and water use based on the diet of a country—differs from, and should complement, typical national accounting inventories such as those for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that are oriented to national production activities",13
"For example, SDG 12 (responsible consumption and production) has been identified as being linked to problematic trade-offs with other goals (Pradhan et al",12
Progress in goals associated with higher human development and socioeconomic standards have historically been in conflict with environmental protection goals; this can be seen in the patterns for Vietnam presented in this paper,15
"The high pace of technological progress opens space for fostering economic growth but at the same time, it creates a big dilemma for humans in protecting the environmental quality",8
"Despite its importance, attention to the role of environmental-related technologies in reducing environmental degradation is limited",15
"The results endorse a long-run relationship between ecological footprint and green technologies, renewable energy, international trade, energy intensity, and real income",7
Environmental-related technologies and renewable energy consumption are found to be impetuous to sustainable development,7
"Human history indicates that all industrial revolutions, from the first to the fourth, are related to the adoption of creative and destructive technologies for efficient production and then, for more responsible consumption",12
"Therefore, the world has made a strong effort to promote the achievements of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to realize higher economic growth while still sustaining environmental quality (Bilgili et al",8
"At the same time, environmental degradation has been one of the biggest challenges for humans",15
"However, the technological advance may act as a double-edged sword where the progress in technology increases environmental degradation through the rebound effect (Bentzen 2004; Bessec and Fouquau 2008)",15
"While energy efficiency improvement is achieved at the micro-level, it may lead to more energy consumption at the macro level (Yang and Li 2017)",7
"If the rebound effect exists, the concentration of environmental-related technologies should be shifted from energy efficiency to reducing ecosystem damage such as capture, storage, disposal of polluted air or wastes",7
Wang and Wei (2020) indicate that the high levels of technological progress when combined with the heterogeneous characteristics of OECD countries make the effect of many environmental policies inter-wined and complex,8
"Based on the premises above, this study’s primary motive is to analyze the potential impact of green technologies on ecological footprint while considering the role of energy intensity, renewable energy, trade openness, and real income",7
"Because of huge investment in research and development, the production and diffusion of technologies have become prominent in OECD countries",9
"We first examine the long-term connection between ecological footprint and its determining factors, including environmental-related technologies, trade openness, energy intensity, renewable energy, and real income",7
"Moreover, previous literature often uses carbon emissions for measuring environmental degradation while the ecological footprint is considered a more comprehensive measure (Danish and Wang 2019; Destek and Sarkodie 2019; Chu and Le 2021; Ulucak and Bilgili 2018)",15
"The empirical results also posit that rather than addressing the issues related to environment, technology, and economic growth separately, a co-integrated approach that cover these interrelated factors is necessary to achieve a sustainable environment",8
"(2017) and Balsalobre et al., (2015) explore the impact of research and development on energy on GHG emissions for OECD economies over",9
The results suggest the beneficial environmental effect of energy innovation and technical innovation can correct the harmful effect of energy intensity,7
"Wang and Wei (2020) find evidence that OECD countries are at a level of excessive technological progress, which causes a rebound effect on carbon emissions",8
The findings significantly confirm the supportive roles of environmental-related technologies and renewable energy sources in achieving sustainable targets,7
"However, such beneficial effect of green technology innovations does not occur in the short-run",9
"In contrast, Su and Moaniba (2017) investigate how innovation reacts to climate change in 70 countries from 1976 to 2014",13
Empirical results show that a country’s innovation and climate change technology depends on CO2 and other GHG emissions,13
"Specifically, the empirical results endorse the existence of the EKC hypothesis together with the beneficial environmental effect of renewable energy",7
"All three factors, including renewable energy, natural resources rent, and urbanization, are found to have a beneficial impact on the environment",7
"While higher level of urbanization leads to environmental degradation in most countries, the moderation between income and urbanization significantly reduces environmental degradation",15
"(2019) examine the relationship between economic growth, bio-capacity, and ecological footprint in Pakistan",8
The ecological footprint is found to increase at the initial level of income and decrease through economic development,8
The third group combines two strands of literature by exploring the environmental impact of green technology on ecological footprint,9
"(2020a, b) employ a panel dataset from 1984 to 2016 for a group of 22 emerging countries to examine the dynamic link between ecological footprint, natural resources rent, technological innovation, and economic activities",8
The findings imply that technological innovation is an efficient way to abate the environmental damage,8
"In another interesting research, Destek and Manga (2021) aim at determining the impact of technological innovation on both carbon emissions and ecological footprint for big emerging markets",8
"While technological innovation is found to curb CO2 emissions, it proves ineffective in controlling ecological footprint",8
"The dataset includes the variables of ecological footprint, environmental-related technologies, trade openness, energy intensity, renewable energy consumption, and real income",7
"This study employs ecological footprint as a measure of environmental degradation, which is different from previous studies which mostly focus on carbon emissions (Ahmed, 2020; Alvarez-Herranz et al",15
Energy intensity indicates the efficiency of energy used to produce a unit of product,7
"Renewable energy is the proportion of total final consumed energies that are generated by renewable sources such as biomass, hydropower, geothermal, wind, and solar",7
"The data on trade openness, energy intensity, renewable energy consumption, and gross domestic products per capita are taken from the World Bank’s database",7
"This study seeks to explore the nexus between environmental-related technologies and ecological footprint while taking into account the effects of economic integration, energy usage efficiency, and renewable energy",7
"Based on the STIRPAT model, we design a model in which ecological footprint represents ecosystem degradation, income, and international trade refer to affluence, while energy intensity, renewable energy, and environmental-related technologies account for technology",7
"The model for the relationship between interested variables is proposed as follow: where EFC is ecological footprint per capita, ERT is environmental-related technologies, OPE is trade openness, ENE is energy intensity, REN is renewable energy, GDP is gross domestic product per capita",7
It sign and significance indicate whether a larger number of environmental-related technologies substantially reduces environmental degradation in OECD countries or not,15
"Therefore, not only do enterprises and research institutes invest in research and development activities related to green technologies but the governments should implement policies that encourage such activities as well as the adoption of such innovations in practice",9
"With regard to other control variables, higher trade openness and renewable energy lessen the environmental externalities while higher energy intensity and income per capita degrade the quality of environment",7
"Similarly, a 1% higher proportion of renewable energy consumption mitigates ecological footprint by 0.02 to 0.05%",7
Energy efficiency exerts a statistical impact on environmental pollution,7
A 1% increase energy intensity causes 0.6 to 0.8% surges in ecological footprint,7
"The study checks the sensitivity of the main findings by substituting environmental related technologies by its two sub-indicators, including patents related to environmental management and climate change mitigation",13
"Specifically, it provides new understandings about the dynamic impacts of environmental-related technologies, energy intensity, renewable energy, and trade openness on ecological footprint from 1990 to 2015",7
Renewable energy and international trade help control the ecosystem degradation in OECD countries (Anwar et al,7
"Similarly, the efficient use of energy should mitigate environmental degradation (Xie et al",15
"Based on empirical results, this study proposes several relevant policies related to technological innovation and environmental quality",8
"Moreover, they must consider sponsoring the research and development of green technologies through both public and public–private programs or introduce tax cuts on these activities (Bekun et al",9
"The investment cost of adopting clean technologies should be shared between all stakeholders, the governments, enterprises, and consumers through an appropriate mechanism",9
It is also the objective of SDG 17 which requires the global partnership for accelerating sustainable solutions to all the world’s biggest challenges,17
Raising the carbon price on traditional energy sources and using the revenue to sponsor renewable energy projects should in made in parallel to optimize the coordination of the two strategies (Khan et al,7
"This study applies asymmetric causality to renewable energy (REC), carbon dioxide emissions (CE), and real GDP using non-linear broadcasting between these variables through the non-linear autoregressive distributed lag model (NARDL) to examine the short- and long-run asymmetries in the inconsistency of greenhouse gas emissions among the variables and to unpack the asymmetric causality of selective variables through positive and negative shocks for time series data from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia between 1990 and 2014",7
"The presence of asymmetry between economic growth, CE, and REC could be of major substantial for more helpful policymakers and the action plan of sustainable development goals (SDGs) in Saudi Arabia",8
"Furthermore, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) aims to maximize renewable energy sources in their total energy budget through the National Renewable Energy Program (NREP) by 9.5 GW by 2023 (Ministry of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources, 2017) based on forecasting for 2030, and this aim will gradually create a new renewable industry that will lead to minimizing CO2 emissions and global warming",7
The objective of Vision 2030 is to increase renewable energy production by at least 9.5 GW over the same period (by 2030),7
Renewable energy could account for an important part of the electricity generation sector by 2030 through reducing carbon dioxide emissions and minimizing the cost of electricity production,7
"Furthermore, in the last two decades, the consumption of renewable energy in the total energy is increased and becomes clearly observed (Sinha and Shahbaz 2018)",7
"Economic growth is accelerating throughout the world, but many countries suffer from a lack of energy capacity, notably in electricity production",8
Renewable energy consumption must be augmented by at least twofold by 2030 to accompany development and meet the demand for electricity,7
"To do so, renewable energy consumption is becoming the most economical option in an increasing number of situations",7
It is now up to the nations of the world to create conditions conducive to speed up the improvement of renewable energy to pave the way for unimpeded sustainable development,7
Goal 7 of the SDGs assures access to sustainable and modern energy for all and increases significantly the part of worldwide renewable energy by 2030,7
The aim SDGs in Saudi Arabia attempts to ensure universal access to green energy utilities,7
Sustainable development needs green energy consumption in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,7
"In addition, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia might still able to reach universal energy access by 2030",7
The lag from fossil fuels to green energy such as renewable energy consumption is becoming more and more urgently,7
It is anticipated that renewable energy development will help to reach the targets which have been set under this vision plan with their great potential,7
"A various investigation has examined the relationship between renewable energy, carbon dioxide emissions, and real GDP, in linear regressions, but few studies have been devoted to the asymmetric relationship between chosen variables",7
"Indeed, EKC shows the disciplines working on global climate change and the convergence between pollution and concentration, Stern (2017)",13
"The long-term relationship illustrated by the bounds test cointegration confirmed a positive and statistically substantial relationship between real GDP and energy consumption, but the growth hypothesis between these two variables is confirmed by the Granger causality test in both short- and long-term relationships",7
"Furthermore, the growth hypothesis between real GDP and energy consumption has been used in a study by Narayan and Smyth (2008) in a panel of G7 countries",7
"Moreover, in sub-Saharan Africa, the improvement and conservation hypothesis appeared: the Granger causality dealings among energy consumption and income are bi-directional for Gambia, Ghana, and Senegal, and the Granger causality running from real GDP to energy use is unidirectional in Sudan and Zimbabwe; however, the causality link is unobservable in Nigeria, Kenya, and Togo, Akinlo (2008)",7
"Furthermore, a feedback hypothesis between these two variables (growth and energy consumption) is examined by Fuinhas and Marques (2012) in the southern European Union for the period from 1965 to 2009",7
"Likewise, the response hypothesis is confirmed between energy consumption and real GDP in 21 African districts spanning the period from 1970–2006, according to Eggoh et al",7
"The empirical estimation by a panel cointegration approach shows an expansion or reduction in energy consumption, restoring or reducing the real GDP in the selected countries",7
"Likewise, the feedback assumption between non-renewable energy and real GDP is apparent in a study by Belke et al",7
"Additionally, Apergis and Payne (2010a) examined the linkage between non-renewable energy and real GDP",7
A neutrality hypothesis between energy consumption and income has been confirmed by the research of Soytas et al,7
The long-term Granger causality dealings between income and energy consumption are unobservable,7
The dynamic links among renewable energy and GDP investigation comprise the second section of this literature review,7
The growth hypothesis between renewable energy and income is confirmed by Chien and Hu (2007) in 45 OECD and non-OECD districts from 2001–2002,7
The data envelopment analysis (DEA) model shows that an augmentation in renewable energy increases real GDP,7
Apergis and Payne (2010b) also inspected the linkages among renewable energy and gross domestic product in 20 OECD countries through the period from 1985 to 2005,7
"The panel cointegration technique reveals a positive and statistically significant long-term relationship among renewable energy and real income; in addition, the Granger causality tests indicate bi-directional causality linkages running from renewable energy to real income in both the short- and long-term",7
Fang (2011) considered the long-run relationship among renewable energy and economic welfare in China spanning the period between 1978 and 2008,7
"Furthermore, Tiwari (2011) found the dynamic relationship between renewable energy and gross domestic product through a structural VAR approach",7
The generalized variance decomposition analysis reveals that a positive shock on the renewable energy transformed real GDP,7
"In addition, the conservation hypothesis between renewable energy consumption and real income is detected in emerging economies, according to Sadorsky (2009)",7
"The empirical findings reveal a 1% expansion in real income expanded renewable energy consumption by 3.5% in the long-term, but the neutrality hypothesis between both variables is confirmed in European countries by Menegaki (2011) from 1997–2007",7
The empirical findings showed that Granger causality tests are unobservable between renewable energy and gross domestic product,7
"Third, the nexus linkages among renewable energy, CO2 emissions, and gross domestic product studies comprise the final section of the literature review",7
"The empirical evaluation by an ECM showed a long-term substantial relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and renewable energy, although renewable energy does not appear to decrease emissions in the short-run",7
Irandoust (2016) investigated where the relationships between renewable energy and carbon dioxide emissions in Nordic countries exist,7
"The obtained results by a vector autoregressive model indicate that the direction of causality from renewable energy consumption to carbon emissions in Denmark and Finland is unidirectional but is bi-directional in Sweden and Norway, and the direction of causality of renewable energy to real GDP is unobservable across the whole panel",7
The empirical evaluation of an ARDL approach shows a unidirectional causal link generated from real GDP and renewable energy to carbon emissions,7
"Jebli and Youssef (2015) examined the causal links among renewable energy and wasteful consumption, real GDP, and carbon emissions for five North African regions from 1971 to 2008",7
The long-term estimation by a panel of cointegration techniques indicates a positive incidence of carbon emissions and renewable energy consumption to real GDP,7
"Furthermore, the Error Correction Term (ECT) shows the existence of both short and long-term causality issued from combustible renewable, waste consumption, and carbon dioxide to economic growth",8
"The Dumitrescu-Hurlin heterogeneous causality approach indicates that the causal link among renewable energy and carbon dioxide emissions is bi-directional, and the causality running from real GDP to carbon dioxide emissions is unidirectional",7
"(2017) examined the relationships between renewable energy, CO2 emissions, and real GDP in Africa over the period from 1990 to 2011",7
"The empirical estimation by a PMG approach shows that the causality running from renewable energy to GDP is unidirectional if we test individual variables and bi-directionality between renewable energy, carbon dioxide, and real GDP when testing variable pairs",7
(2017) attempted to test the significance of renewable energy for the economic output spanning the period from 1990 to 2012,7
"Furthermore, in order to propose to appear policy implications for the SDGs in Saudi Arabia about renewable energy, the asymmetric causal effects, by the non-linear Autoregressive Distributed Lag model (NARDL) between the selected variables, must be robust by the non-parametric causality tests",7
"This document examines the asymmetric causality among renewable energy, real GDP, and carbon dioxide emissions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from 1990 to 2014 that encloses real GDP per capita calculated in constant 2005 dollars, carbon dioxide emissions (CE) quantified in metric tons per capita, renewable energy (REC) measured by renewable fuels, and waste % of total energy established in thousands of metric tons",7
"Logarithmic processing has been applied from the per capita GDP and the greenhouse gas emissions, but renewable energy consumption is measured in proportion",7
"The cumulative function of positive and negative changes in real GDP, renewable energy consumption (REC), and carbon dioxide emissions (CE) are respectively structured as follows: To discuss the asymmetrical short- and long-run dynamic cointegration among REC, real GDP, and carbon dioxide emissions, we introduce the positive and negative changes for the considered variables in the linear ARDL model developed by Pesaran et al",7
"In accordance with the result of the unit root test without the structural break and breakpoint ADF unit root test, we can use the bounds cointegration test without structural breaks between the models to demonstrate the long-run association between real GDP, carbon dioxide emissions, and renewable energy in the KSA",7
"As indicated in Table 5, when carbon dioxide emissions are dependent variables, only the cumulative function of positive changes has a positive impact on CE in the short-run, but in the long-run, it is apparent that the positive and negative shocks in the partial sum of renewable energy consumption reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide",7
"Furthermore, regarding the long-term asymmetric nexus between real GDP and renewable energy, policymakers are invited to augmented per capita financial investment in green energy, beyond the estimated threshold to achieve the required effect on reducing carbon dioxide emissions",7
"In order to reach the objectives of the 2030 vision for sustainable development goals, Saudi Arabia will need to assume really strong actions in all prospect, in which renewable energy consumption is well-respected to be a “multi-target way” for 2030 action plan",7
"Now, regarding the effect of renewable energy on carbon dioxide emissions in the long-term, policymakers can practically augment investment in green energy over the settled threshold to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) both directly and indirectly and incorporate the environmental regulation with 2030 vision in Saudi Arabia, which reduce the landing of emissions and take as well to a rise in the request for renewable energy",7
"This paper examined the asymmetric causality among renewable energy, CO2 emissions, and real GDP using a non-linear transmission among these selected variables and using the non-linear autoregressive distributed lag model to unpack the short- and long-run asymmetries in the inconsistency of greenhouse gas emissions among the three variables and to demonstrate the asymmetric causality among them through the positive and negative shocks for time series data from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia between 1990 and 2014, and in order to evaluate this association, we have used Granger causality test and Wald test",7
"The positive and negative components of real GDP, carbon dioxide emissions, and renewable energy results attest the signification of asymmetric causality whereas implying policy judgment, and it has equally proved how the causality direction should be well-respected in order to reach the sustainable development goals",7
The non-linear model confirms the existence of long-term asymmetry between carbon dioxide emissions and renewable energy in KSA,7
"Indeed, positive and negative shocks in the partial sum of renewable energy consumption reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide in the long-term",7
The asymmetric causal relationship is neutral from carbon dioxide emissions to renewable energy in the long-term,7
This improvement is substantial; indicating that reducing the CE in KSA will improve real GDP in the long-term and substitute renewable energy use for traditional power,7
"It also maintains the asymmetrical causal dealings between real GDP and REC in the first step, and carbon dioxide emissions and green energy in the second step with the action plan in mind, as this vision can progressively establish a new renewable industry by reducing CO2 emissions and decreasing the cost of electricity production",7
These proposals are assumed to orientate policymakers for more and more fossil energy taxation and grant for green energy in the KSA,7
"The results further exhibit the negative relationship between high-technology exports and carbon emissions, as high-technology exports have a positive impact on environmental quality in order to reduce carbon emissions across countries",13
"The relationship between ICT goods exports and carbon emissions is complimentary, while R&D expenditures have a negative relationship with carbon emissions in a given period",9
"Nevertheless, developing and least developing countries were unable to focus on those goals regarding their adaption to environmental/climate change (Dalhammar and Richter 2019)",13
"In meeting such neglecting issues, the United Nations in their 2018s, SDGs have added concern for environmental/climate change as the footprint of fossil consumption in developing countries comparing developed countries is four times greater (UN 2018)",13
That is the reason that most of the developing countries from Europe have initiative sustainable production and consumption to protect the environment,12
"Belmont Forum involved global partners in joining hands in the solution of global environmental sustainability matters and emphasized the need for environmental research, which developed the synergy of Horizon 2020",17
"This forum extended to the different collaborative research actions that faced numerous challenges related with freshwater security, food production challenges, building electronic infrastructure, conservation of biodiversity, climate vulnerability, and transformation to sustainability with big data applications and digital infrastructure",13
"European Union’s strategic research and innovation agenda on innovating cities were emphasized to meet urban challenges to make cities safe, resilient, and smart through sustainable innovation",9
The possible solutions for attaining food and water resources is to improve crops yield and reduced water scarcity in the Mediterranean basin,6
The sustainable management of agro-food production and water system drew a call for the proposal in 2018 to mobilize Euro-Mediterranean scientific communities to identify the possible remedies and solutions for sustainable water-food management nexus (Casini et al,6
"The promotion of renewable energy, especially achieving sustainability in the biofuel production and consumption, is mainly falling in the directives of EU member states to compliance green development",7
The EU nations commit to reducing carbon emissions by achieving energy efficiency through renewable energy demand,7
The EU countries amplify the need for national and international investments in R&D expenditures that could be attained by a public-private partnership,9
"EU put forward their economic policies into green policies through moving towards ecosystem-based adaptation, afforestation, forest landscape restoration, land use and land-use change, and set-up legal regulations (IUCN 2020)",15
"European countries put forward more concentrated efforts on technology advancement that not only increase the yield of sustainable farming products but also improve the quality of fertile land, quality of soil, and fertilizer, which are in line with the eco-farming practices",2
"The region strives hard to way forward for generating a high capacity of data transmission, high-quality images, and higher resolution wires that refer to the age of digitalization",9
"In contrast, it needs to manage resources for building ‘smart city’ to urban development",11
The role of cleaner technologies in mitigating carbon emissions is an essential factor that would be helpful to achieve green growth agenda (Nunes et al,8
The Guardian News (2011) report shows the top 10 breakthroughs in clean technologies in recent decades,9
"Algae biofuels used in the vehicle industry released only a 1/5th of the carbon emissions of fossil fuels; however, there is a substantial need to spend an enormous amount of R&D on reducing its production costs",9
"Clean technologies in transportation, energy, agriculture production, water, environment, and waste",9
"(2019) There are many alternative options available that could be used to control carbon emissions, i.e., through shifting traditional gasoline-powered vehicles to biofuels and by using sustainable energy resources; countries may control emissions to limit 1.5 °C (Debnath et al",7
The regulation in clean technologies is highly permissible to achieve green development,9
The significance of the digitalized technologies in advancing business operations helps to achieve long-term economic growth (Pradhan et al,8
The European Commission (EUROPA 2020b) shows that EU countries are intact with the national and regional initiatives to amplify investment through strategic partnerships and digitalized technologies that help to coordinate between the countries through a shared networking system,11
ICTs are helpful to achieve energy efficiency through shared resource-efficient networking (Lange et al,7
The study used R&D expenditures and industrial value-added as controlled variables to mediate in between the ICTs and CO2 emissions to speed up the process of green technology infrastructure with knowledge sharing and pollution-free production,9
"The importance of sustainable development in the country’s economic agenda is quite visible, while ICTs can play a pivotal role in order to diminish carbon emissions through building green technology infrastructure across Europe",9
"The real question is does ICTs decrease high mass carbon emissions via the channel of increasing R&D expenditures, financial and trade liberalization policies, and country’s per capita income? This question amplified the need for empirical analysis to evaluate the role of ICT infrastructure on environment degradation in a panel of selected European countries",9
"The more specific objectives are as follows: To examine the relationship between agricultural technology and CO2 emissions under the premises of high-technology exports, ICT exports, R&D expenditures, FDI inflows, and trade openness at different quantile distribution",9
The one stream of the literature confirmed that ICT infrastructure has a positive impact on the country’s economic growth (EG) that subsequently improves environmental quality,8
"In contrast, the other stream of literature supports the opposing argument of technological footprint, which implies that ICT infrastructure increases CO2 emissions via the channel of non-renewable energy consumption, which further translated into low country’s EG",7
"(2010) argued that the environmental sustainability agenda (ESA) could be achieved by promoting green information systems that support energy efficiency in the demand and supply-side modelling, which substantially reduces carbon emissions",7
"(2006) discussed the importance of ICTs in ESA at three levels, i.e., the first level is related with e-waste, the second level is associated with achieving energy efficiency in the production process, and at third level is about improvement in the transportation sector",7
"The results show that ICT infrastructure is less material-intensive, i.e., it generated less electronic waste, while it increases energy efficiency in the production and subsequently cost savings in the transport sector",7
The green networking is committed to reducing high operational cost that could be achieved by energy efficiency in all available network components to mitigate global warming,7
"(2017) argued that the high demand of 5G cellular technology for the future cellular networks would vastly increase high ED that needs green cellular network by spectrum sharing and ultra-dense network, which would be helpful to achieve energy efficiency in the technology spectrum",7
"Thus, for greening our future, the ICT enabler should be environmentally friendly, and it would be achieved energy efficiency through smart applications",7
"Thus, the ICT enabled growth helps to increase country's economic growth",8
The results conclude that the adoption of ICTs infrastructure is imperative to achieve energy efficiency,7
The green ICT infrastructure is essential for OECD’s long-term economic growth,8
The results are in line with the green technology that enables business competitiveness for getting sustained corporate payoffs,9
"The results show that ED is the main factor that escalates CO2 emissions across countries, whereas internet use, FD, and the country’s EG delimit the carbon intensity, which exhibits that technology-led growth (TLG) is imperative to reduce carbon emissions across Europe",13
"The plenty of studies discussed the role of FDI inflows, economic growth, and technology exports in reducing carbon emissions to substantiate the following hypotheses, firstly, the pollution haven hypothesis supported by Nassani et al",8
The key findings are that polluting industries get to reap an economic profit on the cost of environmental degradation,15
These studies confined their finding in support of a positive impact of FDI inflows on environmental quality through green technology transfers,9
These studies find the rise and fall in carbon emissions due to continued economic growth across countries,8
"The significance of the study is multifold, as EU member states are highly ambitious in terms of achieving the reduction of carbon emissions target by 2030, thus its integrated national and regional cooperation of technology transfer to increase investment in the cleaner production technologies to move forward for green and clean development",17
"Thus, the importance of green technology in mitigating carbon emissions is pivotal for long-term sustained growth across the globe",9
"The selected variables are as follows, i.e., agriculture tractor (denoted by AGRTRACT) measured in total numbers, high-technology exports (denoted by HIGHTECEXP) measured in percentage of manufactured exports, ICT goods exports (denoted by ICT) measured in % of exports goods, research and development expenditures (denoted by RESNDEV) measured in % of GDP, FDI inflows (denoted by FDI) measured in US$, trade openness (denoted by TRADE) measured in % of GDP, carbon dioxide emission intensity (denoted by CO2) measured in kg/oil equivalent energy use, telephone subscriptions (denoted by TELEPHONE) measured in total numbers, mobile subscriptions (denoted by MOBILE) measured in total numbers, internet penetration (denoted by INTERNET) measured in total % of the population using the internet, GDP per capita (denoted by GDPpc) measured in constant 2010 US$, and industry value-added (denoted by INDUSTRY) measured in constant 2010 US$",9
"The GDP per capita, industry value-added, R&D expenditures, and trade openness have average values of US$26,151.94, US$1.05E+11, 1.248% of GDP, and 111.134% of GDP, respectively",9
"The ICT infrastructure, including mobile, telephone, and internet penetration show the negative correlation with the carbon emissions that exhibit the positive impact on the environment through digitalization reforms; however, ICT goods exports tend to show a negative impact in the form of high mass carbon emission across selected European countries",9
"There is a negative correlation of FDI inflows, GDP per capita, industry value-added, and R&D expenditures with the carbon emissions, while there is a positive correlation of trade openness with the carbon emissions across countries",9
The European agenda for environmental protection should base upon research and technology development that helps to achieve a sustainability agenda for the Horizon 2020 programme (Pollex and Lenschow 2018),15
"In the importance of technologically embedded growth and environmental protection policies across Europe, the study developed three broad models in order to assess technological footprints in the panel of selected European countries, i.e.: Model -1: agriculture technology and carbon emissions Model -11: information and communication technologies and carbon emissions Model -111: GDP per capita, high-technology exports, and carbon emissions where ‘t’ shows time period, i.e., 2000–2017, ‘” shows cross-section identifiers, i.e., 26 countries, and ƹ shows error term",15
The given hypothesis shows the rise and fall in carbon emissions through utilizing sustainable agriculture technologies across countries,2
"The results expected that country’s EG initially increases CO2 emissions, while at the later stages of economic development, it would decrease CO2 emissions across countries",8
"The ADF chi-square test confirmed that CO2, HIGHTECEXP, TELEPHONE, GDPPC, INDUSTRY, and R&D expenditures are at first difference stationary while the rest of the variables are level stationary",9
"On the other side, the ICT infrastructure needs more green efforts to reduce carbon emissions across countries",13
"The results are in line with the previous studies, i.e., Dyer and Desjardins (2006) found that ED in manufacturing farm machinery is high in the farm fieldwork to consume more fossil fuel energy demand, which needs sustainable agriculture mechanization process to limit fossil consumption across countries",2
"(2016) argued that decarbonization and dematerialization could be achieved by sustainable action policies, while Bryngelsson et al",13
"(2016) concluded that bio-economy is the optimized solution in order to have a greening effect on aquaculture, food supply chains, agriculture production, horticulture, etc., which support reforestation and sustainable management policies for broad-based growth",15
"The results supported with the number of scholarly research work, i.e., Gelenbe and Caseau (2015) showed that ICT consumed high ED that released in atmosphere in the form of high CO2 emissions, while achievement of energy efficiency leads to increase green ICT infrastructure in the form of making smart buildings, virtual work, and learning that desensitize carbon emissions globally",7
"Internet by smartphone may have plenty of their other usage including internet surfing, for instance, internet by smartphone will be used for surfing green products that are good for the health, and internet by smartphone used for environmental-related campaigns and advertising, which enables ones to decide what is good and what is bad for public health and natural environment",3
"Hence, the applicability of the INTERNET, MOBILE, and TELEPHONE on environmental sustainability agenda is helpful to minimize public health issues and move forward for using greening products",3
The importance of ICT infrastructure in economic development is widely visible in the academic and research arena,8
"Though, the impact of ICTs on carbon emissions is not environmentally supported, however, the absorptive capacity of innovation technology is substantially helpful to decrease carbon emissions by increasing R&D spending on cleaner production technologies",9
The study concludes that green ICT infrastructure is imperative for long-term sustainable growth across Europe,8
"The following policy implications are desirable in a given scenario, i.e.: The results of the study verify the ‘agriculture technology Kuznets curve’, as carbon emissions first increase and later decreases through sustainable agriculture technologies used in its production",2
"The absorptive and innovative capability would be helpful to achieve environmental sustainability agenda, thus the high need for increasing innovation capabilities to spend R&D spending on technological goods deemed desirable to move forward for green development",9
Building ICT infrastructure and equipped businesses with clouding services and big analytical tools would mainly support energy efficiency and make them reduced energy embodied emissions,7
European countries should need to focus on investment in ICT infrastructure and improving their absorptive capacity to innovate technology-oriented goods to materialize long-term sustainable growth,8
The greater need for focusing smart solutions is to reduce carbon emissions that can possibly be achieved through smart electric grids and cloud computing services,13
"Society 5.0 seeks to achieve economic growth while overcoming social and environmental challenges, contributing to the welfare of the global community",8
"The results revealed that the most important indicators were “super-smart society” and “implementing circular economy to decrease environmental waste.” The novelty of this research can be found in its application of the spherical fuzzy approach to examine the impacts of Society 5.0 smart technologies on achieving sustainable development, by addressing five major dimensions (governmental, economic, social, environmental, and technological)",12
"This new transformation shapes specific relationships between individuals, things, the real world, and the cyber world, ultimately increasing human quality life and economic growth (Roblek et al",8
This era concentrates on a society that can solve social issues through economic development and advanced systems,8
"Society 5.0 seeks to figure out how and where human values can be included in smart technologies and how they can serve public interests, environmental protection, and human rights (Fukuda 2020; Serpa and Ferreira 2020)",15
"From the perspective of Society 5.0, sustainable development goals (SDGs) accommodate a new biosphere in which human beings lead wealthy and gratifying lives in harmony with social, economic, and technological progress, without harming nature (Bui and Tseng 2022)",8
"Mavrodieva and Shaw (2020), too, explain that Society 5.0 must utilize technological innovation to extend economic, social, and environmental dimensions and ultimately achieve safe and sustainable development",8
"Admittedly, the development of smart technologies has engendered a great deal of uncertainty in society, and it remains unclear to what extent these technologies positively contribute to sustainable development indicators",17
"To identify sustainable development indicators that could be affected by Society 5.0 digital transformations, steps 1–4 were followed",17
"As such, costs of waste management and resource management will be cut down (Foresti et al",12
Making smart resource management helps to return waste or used products to the production cycle and gives rise to circular economy that prevents environmental pollution,12
"As a result of this analysis, one can learn how to transfer advanced technologies and shape a super-smart society in which knowledge, technology, and new values are constantly generated and thus enhance the standards of living and economic growth (Fukuda 2020)",8
"Particularly, Society 5.0 offers opportunities for innovative technology developers",9
"Meanwhile, a smart resource management could prevent additional natural resources from entering the production line, prevent environmental pollution, and even use waste to generate biomass fuels by employing the concepts of circular economy",12
"As a result of this process, waste management and resource management costs could be reduced",12
"In fact, human activities and economic development extensively impact the ecosystem and threaten biodiversity (Tanaka 2014)",8
"When a society relies on smart resources in such areas as environmental control, energy conservation, and environmental protection, the society in question has reached a Society 5.0 level of development (Bui and Tseng 2022)",15
"Yet, societies tend to quantitatively focus on infrastructural solutions in energy production (as in biomass energy) by reducing waste, recycling materials, and recycling different energies",12
"With higher rates of human resource productivity, employees’ innovations can be rendered smart, and applying such innovations in the production process could cut down costs of warehousing and production",8
"The results of the calculations (Table 9) revealed that “establishing a super-smart society,” “implementing circular economy to decrease environmental waste,” and “employing I4.0 technology in healthcare, security, and safety operations” were the three most important indicators in achieving sustainable development in Society 5.0",12
"With smart transportation and reducing ordering costs via online shopping, platforms could improve individuals’ well-being and welfare, and through circular economy, they could reduce surplus raw material input to the production system and help to prevent environmental pollution by using waste in the system (which could also reduce the greenhouse effect)",12
Relying on renewable energy as a result of smart processes could control air pollution,7
"From a practical perspective, too, Society 5.0 introduces new technologies and thus creates new values in such areas as automated driving systems, healthcare, commercial transactions, transportation, agriculture, forestry, tourism, etc",15
Applying such processes in organizations and even urban development could enhance people’s quality of life,11
"Such a measure would not only reduce organizational costs, but also it could contribute to environmental protection by cutting down on resource consumption",15
Environmental degradation caused by various human activities has been a subject of attention over the globe,15
"To this end, this study examines the impact of agricultural development, energy use, and economic growth on CO2 emissions in the emerging seven countries that comprises China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Indonesia, and Turkey for the annual time frequency from 1990 to 2016",8
"Causality analysis shows that there is a feedback causality between economic growth and emissions, between value-added agriculture and energy usage, between emission and value-added agriculture, and between economic growth and agricultural development",8
"Furthermore, energy use does not cause emissions directly; it causes economic growth and value-added agriculture which causes emissions",8
This position aligns with the advocacy of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (UN-SDG) Targets 7 and 13 of clean energy access and mitigation of climate changes issues,7
"Given the environmental implications and increasing questions about the ability of the agriculture sector to decrease GHG pollution, the usage of clean energy power has appeared as an essential aspect of global energy use",7
"According to FAO (2016), 20% of GHG contributions from anaerobic decomposition in livestock, rice development in submerged areas through the use of NPK fertilizers in addition to waste are produced by cultivation, forestry in addition to the cultivation of land reform, contributing to anthropogenic greenhouse reform and greenhouse gases",15
"The trend, combining with a rise in energy consumption, will be fueled primarily by emerging nations such as the Emerging 7 nations commonly known as the E7 nations which are made up of Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey, and Russia—rising next to an estimated yearly pace of about percentage of 3.5 during the subsequent 34 years, opposed to just approximately 1.6% for developed G-7 nations",7
"Capital expenditure in clean energy in Brazil, India, and China, which are the biggest 3 nation within the E7, rose by 16% of $120.2 billion in 2015, while other developed nations experienced a 30% boost in the direction of $36.1 billion (Aydoğan and Vardar 2020)",7
The presence of an actual powerful clean power resource is identified as the core problem of economic development in farming as well as the extension of manufacturing of farm inputs for E7 states,8
"(2017) was based on the decision to encourage sustainable energy sources which will not only contribute to ever more restructuring of the power market, nonetheless but also help the fiscal performance in addition to corporate social responsibility goals of the various countries",7
The intuition of the carbon-income function is premised on the environmental Kuznets Curve phenomenon that expresses the relationship between environmental degradation and income level,15
"These variables combinations align with existing literature and it is time to re-visit the theme for the case of E7 in an era of global energy awareness, energy security, and a clean environment",7
"These characteristics involve economic activity, energy efficiency, clean power and non-renewable power intake, import and export, travel, urbanization, fiscal advancement, FDI, and tourism",7
"In contrast, there is indeed a considerable improvement in the influence of non-renewable power, exports, and value-added agriculture on pollutants, while the influence of clean energy on CO2 output is rising",7
"Relative to their territorial circumstances and many agricultural commodities provided along with their economic progress and extensive use of clean energy and energy utilization, the study of the position of agricultural additional value, real GDP, clean energy intake on CO2 pollution, and the development of the EKC phenomenon fills this void and adds to the analytical research",7
The intuition of the carbon-income function is premised on the environmental Kuznets curve phenomenon that expresses the relationship between environmental degradation and income level,15
"These variables include value-added agriculture (constant 2010 US$) which was denoted as AVA, second, GDP per capita (constant 2010 US$) which was symbolized as GDP, third, CO2 pollutant (metric tons per capita) which was denoted as CO2, and fourth, renewable energy consumption (% of total final energy consumption) which was denoted as EC",7
"The overview of E7 nations discussed in this study comprises China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Indonesia, and Turkey.
 This study sets to investigate the contribution of agricultural value addition, GDP, and energy consumption to emissions in the E7 countries",7
"This study considering the position of agricultural additional value, real GDP, clean energy intake on CO2 pollution, and the development of the EKC proposes the following model equations:
 The logarithmic transformation has been performed to enable the variables in the current studies to maintain constant variance across all the series highlighted in our study, where LNCO2, LNAVA, LNEC, and LNGDP are logarithmic transformations of all variables and εit, α, and βs represent the stochastic, intercept, and partial slope coefficients respectively",7
"Renewable energy consumption has a mean of 3.0 metric tons of emission produce per year, a median of 3.2 metric tons, and a maximum of 4.1 metric tons per year",7
"Nevertheless, Table 3 which shows how correlated the variables are proves that there is a negative correlation regarding CO2, value-added agriculture, and energy consumption but a positive correction regarding value-added agriculture and real GDP",7
Value-added agriculture has a negative correction with real GDP but positive correction with energy consumption,7
"Real GDP on the other hand has a negative correction with energy consumption.
 Subsequently, after accessing the correlation among the variables, it was important to prove the evidence of CD in the constructs as presented in Table 4",7
"(2017) for 4 ASEAN countries.
 On the other hand, energy use in the form of renewable energy utilization has a negative and significant coefficient at varying levels of significance",7
This outcome is not as expected as high-energy consumption is often associated with high emissions,7
"However, the negative relationship between energy use and emissions points to the sustained consumption of a significant amount of renewable energy in the E7 countries which further points to the commitment of the E7 countries to attain a cleaner environment",7
"As expected, the coefficients for economic growth are positive and significant at a 1% level of significance",8
"Specifically, a 1% increase in economic growth will lead to an increase in emissions by 0.267% to 0.307% in the focus countries",8
"Specifically, a 1% increase in economic growth will cause a rise in emissions by 0.52% in the short run in the E7 countries",8
"This implies that while economic growth causes emissions, emissions can also predict economic growth",8
"However, energy use does not cause emissions directly but it causes economic growth which causes emissions.
 Arrows (↔) represent bi-directional causality Several studies have been carried out on the nexus between agriculture value addition, energy use, economic growth, and emissions",8
"However, this study differs by complementing the extant literature in considering the role of clean energy in a carbon-income function for the case of E7 countries, namely China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Indonesia, and Turkey, for the period 1990 to 2016",7
"According to the findings, long-run regression estimates revealed that value-added agriculture and economic growth are drivers of CO2 emissions in the E7 countries while the rise in energy causes a reduction in CO2 emissions",8
"While, in the short run, economic growth has a positive impact on emissions in E7 countries, value-added agriculture and energy use have no impact on emissions in the short run",8
"Causality tests showed that there is a feedback effect between economic growth and emissions, between energy usage and value-added agriculture, between emissions and value-added agriculture, and between value-added agriculture and economic growth",8
A one-way direction of causality also exists between economic growth and pollutant emissions,8
"To further achieve fewer emissions, the increased use of renewable energy is encouraged in the E7 countries especially for economic activities given that the bloc is a huge economic and industrial hub",7
"Currently, with the growing social consent on the deteriorating environment such as climate change and scarcity of resources, sustainable development is becoming one of the hot topics for addressing the economic, social, and environmental challenges (Jan et al",13
"Corporations, being prominent actors, have notably a significant role to play in fostering long-term sustainability (Dyllick and Hockerts 2002), contributing to several multiple factors such as job creation, revenue generation, intellectual capital development, as well as the development of new products and services (Ashrafi et al",8
"To be deemed sustainable, corporations need to incorporate sustainable policies into their business plans by developing new approaches and drives that deliberately encompass stakeholders and constantly improve the economic performance, social justice, and environmental protection on a firm, regional, and/or global level (Dyllick and Muff 2016; Székely and Vom Brocke 2017)",15
"2017), corporate social responsibility (Matten and Moon 2004), green innovations practices (Khan and Johl 2019, 2020), eco-innovation and growth (Tahir et al",8
(2022) indicated that the WoS database is the largest abstract and citation database for scientific research articles and is more appropriate for bibliometric analysis,9
This fact negates the idea that banks do not harm the environment and highlights the role of the banking industry in mitigating the risk of climate change by promoting sustainability practices,13
"Poverty eradication and environmental degradation are the two crucial challenges, and they are highly interlinked in the modern era",15
"However, countries are still more emphasized in attaining poverty alleviation and alleviating environmental pollution which require enormous attention",1
"In the recent past, a great deal of attention is devoted to the issue of climate change",13
"In the recent literature in environmental economics, most of the studies have explored different areas concerning the different sectors of the economy and their impacts on climate change",13
The first sustainable development goal (SDG) is concerned with poverty reduction,1
It is an important policy solution for these two economies to mitigate the CO2 emissions; these economies should increase the share of renewable energy sources and decrease the share of coal consumption in their overall energy mix (Wolde-Rufael and Idowu 2017),7
"It is again a well-debated issue that poverty is a cause and consequence of environmental degradation particularly in developing countries, where a large segment of the society is not reaping the fruit of growth and living on or below the poverty line",15
"In most developing countries, poverty forces the poor population to exploit natural resources to fulfill their basic needs, such as energy, water, food, and shelter (Masron and Subramaniam 2019)",1
A vast majority of the extremely poor segment of the society in developing countries is relying on the agriculture sector which is strongly dependent upon natural resources,1
UNICEF (2016) claimed that poverty and environmental degradation are the two most complex and interrelated issues,15
"There are many studies which are supporting this idea that poverty is one of the main drivers of environmental degradation, whereas on the other hand, a vast majority of literature does not favor this notion",15
"In general, poverty is positively associated in developing countries but in developed countries, this linkage is not valid because developed economies have a higher share of renewable energy sources in their overall energy mix",7
"(2017) elaborated the impact of the incidence of poverty on CO2 emissions for three economies, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand",1
The study revealed a nonlinear relationship between poverty incidence and environmental degradation in these countries,15
(2020) for developing countries revealed a positive association between the incidence of poverty and CO2 emissions,1
"Even though China and India are two fast-growing economies but according to the latest available data set of the OECD, these two economies are confronting the challenge of income inequalities (Gini index for India is 0.50 and China is 0.51)",10
"In lower and middle-income countries, higher income inequality helps to mitigate CO2 emissions, whereas in upper-middle and higher-income countries, higher income is associated with a higher level of CO2 emissions",10
"However, few other studies support the negative association between income inequality and CO2 emissions for instance Bhattacharya (2020) for India, Chen et al",10
(2019) for N-11 countries revealed a positive link between income inequality and CO2 emissions,10
"We have found a plethora of literature that supports the positive association between gross domestic product (GDP) and CO2 emissions, in particular when economic growth is relying on the industrial sector which in turn depending on the higher share of fossil fuels",8
Therefore it is important to explore the issue of poverty and environmental degradation in these two developing economies,15
"Besides, concerning the SDG agenda, poverty reduction and climate actions are the two most important challenges of our time; therefore, it is important to explore these linkages for these two big economies",1
Poverty alleviation and ecological change nexus are the foremost research agendas in SDGs,1
"In adverse, they also raise energy consumption that leads to an upsurge in carbon emissions, hurting human well-being as well as green development (Baloch et al",7
(2021) for the nexus of income inequality and CO2 emissions,10
"The main goal of this inquiry is to analyze the short and long-run effects of poverty, economic growth, and population on CO2 emissions in India and China",8
Poverty increases environmental degradation through different channels,15
"As a result, the poor have a tendency to exploit the resource in an unsustainable manner.
 The loss of natural resource such as deforestation negatively contributes to environmental quality",15
The poor depend on non-renewable energy sources,7
The effect of economic growth on CO2 emissions is also positive and significant at a 1% level of significance,8
The numerical value of economic growth suggests that a 1 % increase in poverty increase CO2 emissions by 0.398%,8
The effect of economic growth on CO2 emissions remains positive and significant at 1% level of significant implying that a 1 % increase in poverty increases CO2 emissions by 1.167 %,8
"Further, India is mainly concentrating on the “scale effect” of the development, because economic growth remains dominant instead of environmental concerns",8
"Thus, “decoupling” of economic growth from CO2 emissions is not confirmed over the study period",8
"Thus, short and long-run estimates for India suggest that poverty and economic growth are the key drivers of CO2 emissions",8
The effect of economic growth on CO2 emissions is positive and significant at 1% level of significance,8
The coefficient of economic growth infers that a 1 % increase in economic growth increases CO2 emissions by 1.190%,8
"Thus, short and long-run estimates for India suggest that poverty and economic growth are the key drivers of CO2 emissions",8
The effect of economic growth on CO2 emissions remains positive and significant at 1% level of significance,8
The coefficient of economic growth shows that a 1 % increase in poverty increases CO2 emissions by 1.206 %,8
Our study scrutinizes the impacts of poverty on CO2 emissions in the presence of economic growth and population for India and China over the period 1987–2019,8
"Further, poverty eradication policies need to focus on the income growth of the poor",17
"Besides, poor people face the challenge of inadequate nutrition availability; decentralized food support programs through schools, health centers, and community places can also alleviate poverty and the pressure on natural resources.",1
"There is a glaring concern of income inequality in the light of the post-2015 global development agenda of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially for countries that are in the south of the Sahara",10
This study provides carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions thresholds that should be avoided in the nexus between financial development and income inequality in a panel of 39 countries in SSA over the period 2004–2014,10
"Financial development unconditionally decreases income inequality with an increasing negative magnitude, while the interactions between financial development and CO2 emissions have the opposite effect with an increasing positive magnitude",10
The underlying nexuses are significant exclusively in the median and top quantiles of the income inequality distribution,10
"CO2 emission thresholds that should not be exceeded for financial development to reduce income inequality continuously are 0.222, 0.200, and 0.166 (metric tons per capita) for the median, the 75th quantile, and the 90th quantile of the income inequality distribution, respectively",10
The focus of the present study on assessing carbon dioxide (CO2) emission thresholds that should not be exceeded for financial development to maintain its mitigating role on income inequality is premised on three hypotheses and three tendencies from the policy and scholarly literature,10
"The obvious three hypotheses discussed and substantiated in the “Theoretical underpinnings and testable hypotheses” section are that (i) financial development reduces income inequality; (ii) CO2 emissions dampen the underlying negative, or favorable incidence of financial development on income inequality, and (iii) the linkages differ in countries with high levels of income inequality compared with countries with low levels of income inequalityFootnote 1",10
"First, SDG 10, which consists of reducing cross-country inequality in the world, is linked to most other SDGs because their attainments are contingent on the reduction of poverty and inequality (Harsch 2018)",10
"Moreover, the main variables of interest in this study are related to the three main aspects of sustainable development, notably, the social, economic, and environmental dimensions which are broadly encapsulated in inequality, financial inclusion (within the framework of economic advancement), and ecological degradation in terms of CO2 emissions",8
"Second, the consequences of environmental degradation have been documented to be the most detrimental in SSA owing to a plethora of reasons, including (i) most of the worst systems of electricity grid in the world are located in the sub-region (Asongu et al",15
"2017, 2018; Jarrett 2017) and (ii) the destructive complications of climate change would be the most disastrous in SSA according to Asongu and Odhiambo (2020a, 2020b)",13
"This study integrates the three critical dimensions (income inequality, financial development, and environmental pollution) discussed so far by assessing critical masses of CO2 emissions that dampen the potential favorable incidence of financial development in decreasing inequality due to an apparent gap in the scholarly literature",10
"According to the first strand, environmental degradation is positively related with financial development because CO2 emissions are positively linked to such financial development",15
"In other words, the research aims to investigate how CO2 emissions mitigate the potential favorable incidence of financial development in reducing income inequality",10
"By extension, the study provides income inequality thresholds that dampen the positive relevance of financial development in reducing CO2 emissions",10
"The present study departs from Odhiambo (2020) by investigating how CO2 emissions affect the negative nexus of economic advancement on income inequality and by extension, provide CO2 emissions thresholds that should not be exceeded for the underlying favorable effect of financial development on reducing income inequality to be maintained",10
"Moreover, while Odhiambo (2020) uses the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), quantile regressions are considered in the present study to articulate all the conditional distribution of income inequality",10
The second strand on linkages between environmental pollution and energy consumption entails is mentioned the studies of Wang and Dong (2019); Adams and Nsiah (2019); Nathaniel and Iheonu (2019); Akinyemi et al,7
"This section aims to substantiate the three main hypotheses underpinning this study which are clarified in the introduction, notably: (i) the negative relationship between financial development and income inequality; (ii) the role of CO2 emissions in dampening the underlying negative nexus, and (iii) differences in the responses in terms of initial levels of income inequality",10
"According to the first standpoint, financial development mitigates income inequality, whereas the second perspective maintains that financial development cannot engender positive microeconomic and macroeconomic externalities because concerns of information asymmetry abound that restrict access to finance needed for investment and economic prosperity (Kusi and Opoku-Mensah 2018; Kusi et al",10
"Of the contending perspectives discussed, the former is more aligned with the objectives of this study because it posits that financial development is more likely to reduce income inequality, leading to the first testable hypothesis of the present study",10
"To make this feasible, the study shows that environmental degradation and financial development have a negative association",15
"In essence, there is a bulk of literature supporting the view that environmental degradation, including CO2 emissions, is negative for development outcomes (entailing financial access)",15
"This substantial bulk of the literature includes (i) the incapacity of parents to send their kids to school owing to environmental pollution and lack of good transport facilities, and the financial inability of parents to transfer their kids to other educational facilities that are less affected by the consequences of environmental degradation (Currie et al",15
2015); (iii) an increase in financial inclusion owing to financial development can improve possibilities of citizens to have better health care facilities as well as enhance odds of the community (Rich 2017; Boogaard et al,8
"2017); (iv) The income of the family can be affected by environmental degradation especially when environmental pollution reduces the prospects of workers in the family to find decent jobs (Zivin and Neidell 2012) and by extension, access to formal bank accounts which can enable them to get credit for investment purposes",15
H2: CO2 emissions dampen the favorable or negative incidence of financial development on income inequality,10
The above hypothesis is consistent with the position that the nexus between economic advancement and socio-economic development can be non-linear (Greenwood and Jovanovic 1990; Asongu and Tchamyou 2014),8
"Moreover, the two hypotheses are tested throughout the conditional distribution of the outcome variable or inequality, such that estimated coefficients emphasize countries with low, intermediate, and high existing levels of income inequality to increase room for policy implications, consistent with the motivation of the study",10
"H3: Compared with countries with high inequality levels, countries with low-income inequality levels respond differently to interactions between CO2 and financial development",10
An estimation that enables the study to account for initial levels of income inequality is the quantile regression strategy which is designed to control for various levels of the outcome variable or income inequality in the relationships between financial development and CO2 emissions (Koenker and Bassett Jr,10
"Hence, the estimation approach takes on board, low, intermediate, and high initial levels of income inequality",10
"This choice of the Gini coefficient as an indicator of inequality is motivated by contemporary income inequality literature (Naceur and Zhang 2016; Meniago and Asongu 2018; Tchamyou 2019a, b)",10
"(ii) The moderating or environmental degradation variable which is proxied by CO2 emissions (metric tons per capita) is obtained from the World Development Indicators (WDI) of the World Bank and informed by contemporary CO2 emissions literature (Asongu 2018a, b; Odhiambo 2020)",15
"As apparent in Appendix Table 2 from Asongu and Acha-Anyi (2017), other financial institutions in the definition of financial access entail financial establishments that are enlisted but not authorized by the government and central bank, notably, institutions of microfinance, micro businesses, and credit unions that involve the entrepreneurial poor fraction of the population",8
"Second, political stability is anticipated to averagely reduce income inequality because a conducive political environment characterized by political stability and no violence provides enabling conditions for investment, employment, upward social mobility, and safety income nets that benefit the poor and by extension, contributes towards a reduction of income inequality",10
"Third, trade openness is likely to reduce income inequality within the context of CO2 emissions because trading activities also offer avenues of employment and social mobility for the poor",10
"Fourth, the urban population is likely to increase income inequality",10
"Fifth, the effect of remittances on inequality is contingent on what proportion of those migrating abroad is from rich households versus poor households (Anyanwu 2011; Tchamyou et al",1
"Hence, the potential incidence cannot be established with certainty especially in the light of the fact that, in this study, the outcome variable (income inequality) is being assessed so that existing levels of income inequality are taken on board",10
"Sixth, whereas the effects of income levels and petroleum-exporting countries depend on the weight of these countries in the sample, the general tendency that most countries did not achieve the MDG extreme poverty target owing to inequality (Tchamyou 2020a, b) can explain an expectation of a negative relationship between the two dummy variables and the outcome variable, given that middle-income and petroleum-exporting countries are comparatively wealthier than low-income countries and resource-poor countries, respectively",1
"Since the discussed nexuses are assessed throughout the conditional distribution of inequality, the expected signs cannot be significant throughout the conditional distribution of income inequality owing to specificities in respective quantiles of the income distribution",10
"This study employs quantile regressions to assess the attendant nexuses throughout the conditional distribution of income inequality and investigates how interactions between financial development and CO2 emissions affect income inequality when existing levels of income inequality are low, intermediate, and high",10
The emphasis throughout the conditional distribution of income inequality is motivated by the perspective that blanket policies based on mean values of income inequality are less likely to be policy-relevant unless initial levels of income inequality are taken on board to articulate findings that are worthwhile to specificities of countries at different levels of income inequality,10
"(1) below, the θth quantile estimator of income inequality is derived by analyzing the following problem which is presented without subscripts for the purpose of simplicity where θϵ(0, 1)",10
The conditional quantile of income inequality or yi given xi is: where parameters with unique slopes are assessed for each θth specific quantile,10
(2) is analogous to E(y/x) = xi′β in the OLS slope for which the examined parameters are assessed throughout the conditional distribution of income inequality,10
"It follows from the equation that the dependent variable yi is income inequality while xi contains a constant term, CO2 emissions, financial access, mobile phone penetration, political stability, trade openness, urban population, remittances, middle-income countries, and petroleum-exporting nations",10
"It is important to note that from the left-hand side to the right-hand side, inequality increases accordingly, following the fact that at the 10th quantile, income inequality is least, whereas at the 90th quantile, income inequality is most",10
"First, H1 is valid because financial access unconditionally reduces income inequality and the mitigating effect increases in magnitude with increasing levels of income inequality in the top quantiles of the income inequality distribution",10
"Second, H2 is also valid because CO2 emissions dampen the mitigating effect of financial access on inequality owing to the corresponding positive interaction effects that consistently increase in magnitude with increasing levels of income inequality in the top quantiles of the income inequality distribution",10
"Third, H3 is also valid because H1 and H2 are exclusively valid in the median and top quantiles of the income inequality distribution",10
"The attendant hypothesis is proved to be valid because compared with countries with high inequality levels, countries with low-income inequality levels respond differently to interactions between CO2 and financial development",10
"Hence, CO2 emissions (metric tons per capita) thresholds that should not be exceeded in order for financial development to continuously reduce income inequality are computed to support public administration",10
"The attendant thresholds are 0.222 (0.0002/0.0009), 0.200 (0.0004/0.002), and 0.166 (0.0005/0.003) metric tons per capita, for the median, 75th quantile, and 90th quantile of the income inequality distribution, respectively",10
"Before concluding, it is worthwhile to clarify why the matter of inequality addressed in this study is vital on the one hand, and on the other hand, how the computed CO2 emission thresholds are distinctly relevant for economic development in Africa in the light of contemporary literature on sustainability",8
"First, the concern of inequality is particularly preoccupying in SSA because most countries in the sub-region experienced considerable growth resurgence from the mid-1990s but failed to reduce the number of people suffering from severe poverty by half in the light of the millennium development goal extreme poverty target (Tchamyou 2019a, b)",1
"On the front of environmental sustainability, policy makers and scholars are also in accordance with the fact that Africa would be the most vulnerable to the impact of CO2 emissions, and hence, CO2 emissions reduction should be a priority in the region to limit the corresponding negative consequences of global warming (Asongu et al",13
The challenges of income inequality and environmental sustainability are central to SDGs in the post-2015 global development agenda,10
"The findings of this study are relevant to policymakers on both fronts, notably since a policy framework that is focused on reducing income inequality is achieved based on the validated tested hypotheses, the computed CO2 emission thresholds which can enable the mitigation of income inequality also provide policymakers with actionable policy critical masses that should be considered in view of promoting the sustainability of the environment",10
"Moreover, the fact that the CO2 emission thresholds decrease with increasing levels of income inequality is another indication that ceteris paribus; CO2 emissions can be kept at a minimum to exert the maximum favorable effects of reducing inequality utilyzing financial access, especially with increasing levels of income inequality",10
"Hence, policymakers should focus on enhancing financial access both in the formal and non-formal financial sectors of the economy to effectively reduce income inequality for the achievement of most SDGs that are inequality-oriented",10
Financial development unconditionally decreases income inequality while the interactions between financial development and CO2 emissions have the opposite effect,10
The underlying nexuses are significant exclusively in the median and top quantiles of the income inequality distribution,10
"CO2 emission thresholds that should not be exceeded in order for financial development to continuously reduce income inequality are 0.222, 0.200, and 0.166 (metric tons per capita) for the median, 75th quantile, and 90th quantile of the income inequality distribution, respectively",10
The relevance of the findings to SDGs is discussed in terms of concerns about reducing income inequality and promoting environmental sustainability,10
"Accordingly, the established CO2 emission thresholds, which can enable the mitigation of income inequality, also provide policymakers with actionable policy critical masses that should be considered to promote environmental sustainability",10
"However, little attention has been paid to exploring its direct linkage with environmental degradation",15
"With the use of the latest maximum data from 1998 to 2017, the long-run relationships are estimated through “augmented mean group estimator (AMG), panel fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS), dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS), and Pairwise Dumitrescu Hurlin (DH) Panel Causality Tests.” According to the above-stated econometric techniques, IEI and IPP negatively affect CO2 emissions, which means the reduction in environmental degradation",15
"With the ongoing economic and financial development, the energy demand is increasing, and the use of fossil fuels is the major source of energy consumption in China, i.e., more than 90% of the energy comes from coal and oil sources (Ji and Zhang 2019)",7
"According to UNFCCC (2019), “local, national or transnational financing-drawn from public, private and alternative sources of financing-that seeks to support mitigation and adaption actions that will address climate change.” A major part of industrial pollution prevention is green bonds, and the concept of green bonds got attention in China (Berrou et al",13
"Moreover, green financing is a plausible strategy to curb environmental degradation (Y",15
"As stated above, China’s significant share in energy consumption belongs to fossil fuels, and only 10% comes from renewable sources, which leads to serious environmental issues",7
"Therefore, energy investment is a growing concern in China about fossil fuel energy options and energy security",7
"Particularly after the international treaties on the environment, all members focus on alternate of traditional finance with IPP, for example, in the Paris Agreement, 178 countries of the world have committed to take measures that may help to reduce environmental degradation (Paris Agreement 2016)",13
"Against this background, idiosyncratic scholars have identified the benefits of industrial pollution prevention towards environmental protection by drawing a track from industrial pollution prevention to a sustainable environment (Y",15
"Furthermore, in this guideline, a measure to protect ecology is proposed for Columbia for sustainable water infrastructure through a public-private partnership by industrial pollution prevention (Ruiz et al., 2016)",6
Another similar private-public partnership plan of industrial pollution prevention is proposed for investment to achieve sustainable development goals (Sachs et al,17
Green bonds and green loans are the plans targeted by the government to improve renewable energy options,7
"The government offers the green bonds to collect funds for sustainable energy sources (China's new green bond catalogue could be greener, 2020), whereas green loans are the loans offered to promote production using renewables",7
The borrowers of the green loans are the industrial units that use renewable energy sources,7
"The environmental degradation is an overall effect of greenhouse gases, water, and soil on the environment quality; however, pollution is a substantial part of it",15
"Whereas indirectly, a developed financial system can help develop such an industrial system that leads to efficient production by using renewable energy and resultantly a reduction in CO2 emissions (Nasreen et al",7
Literature is rich in explaining the positive role of energy consumption in increasing CO2 emissions (Zaidi et al,7
"In China and other panel studies, the role of energy consumption is studied by scholars, and findings report the traditional long-run positive relationship of energy consumption and CO2 emissions (Dogan and Turkekul 2016; Li et al",7
"Furthermore, in a study of 23 countries, financial development and renewable energy consumption are found to be significant sources of reduction in CO2 emissions (Dogan and Seker 2016)",7
"Nonetheless, financial development is also reported to reduce CO2 emissions and other measures of environmental degradation, i.e., industrial waste, nitrogen oxide, and industrial wastewater (Nassani et al",15
"Moreover, financial development in the form of green bonds is used to reduce carbon emissions as per the directions of the Paris Agreement",13
"In that case, it will significantly help achieve the SDGs by increasing clean energy sources from 42 to 46% and by reducing 4.7 Gt of CO2 emissions by 2030 (Gianfrate and Peri 2019; Glomsrød and Wei 2018)",7
"Interestingly, some studies found a negative role of green investment in environmental degradation, thereby challenging the traditional view of the positive role of green financing (He et al",15
They believe that green financial development does not efficiently promote renewable energy consumption and indirectly increase CO2 emissions,7
"So, green financial development without adopting clean energy sources may not be as effective as expected",7
It is argued that reduction in carbon emissions can be noted with the attainment of higher economic growth,8
"Afterward, CO2 emissions mitigation is discussed in modern theories with the addition of energy consumption (Apergis and Ozturk 2015; Shahbaz et al",7
"Furthermore, with higher economic growth, the awareness of a clean environment also takes a surge",8
The IPP and IEE are the replacement of traditional fossil fuels with renewable energy sources,7
"No doubt, according to the facts, the percentage of renewable energy is low; however, China is increasing the percentage of renewable energy sources, including solar plants, hydro, and wind",7
China has started a 100-GW project of solar and wind energy,7
"Moreover, a 400-GW project of wind energy is also started which will be operational in 2025",7
"Thus, the IPP can effectively achieve SDGs set in the Paris Agreement (Hussain et al",13
China’s economic growth is significantly higher during the last two decades and higher due to higher demand for industrial and domestic output for the continuously increasing population,8
"(2) In the case of IPP, the results are significant with negative coefficients in FMOLS, DOLS, and AMG consistently, which means that industrial pollution prevention is helping to reduce carbon emissions in China",13
These results support the SDG’s agenda to clean the environment given in the Paris Agreement,13
"Furthermore, this study also considers the role of IEI of China in environmental degradation",15
"Firstly, the unidirectional causality between industrial pollution prevention and environmental degradation is a sign of a processed linkage, which indicates the hope that the development of investment in green projects and enterprises is leading towards a sustainable environment (Liu et al",15
"Fourthly, the bidirectional causality between industrial pollution prevention and economic growth is a positive sign as the IPP supports the cleaning environment",8
It means industrial pollution prevention can cause increased economic growth in the long run and vice versa,8
Sustainable growth can only be possible with a sustainable environment,8
"Moreover, IEI and IPP are found to reduce environmental degradation significantly",15
"Secondly, the environmental degradation proxy of CO2 emissions may not measure the exact magnitude of environmental degradation",15
"Also, control variables foreign direct investments, energy consumption, industrialization, and population growth were detrimental to the sustainability of the environment",7
"Also, feedback causalities between foreign direct investments and carbon emissions, between energy consumption and the effluents of carbon, and between industrialization and environmental pollution were unraveled",7
"Also, the nations should ensure that their citizens have access to energy that is affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern (SDG 7)",7
"The above recommendations if seriously taken into consideration will help the region to combat climate change and its impacts, which is the focus of SDG 13",13
Financial development could influence environmental sustainability due to its linkage with economic development and energy utilization that are key agents of environmental pollution (Ehigiamusoe and Lean 2019; Kakar 2016; Topcu and Payne 2017),8
Growth in the financial sector contributes to environmental sustainability by assisting businesses to embrace innovative energy efficient technologies that are not damaging to the environment,7
"(2017), an advanced financial sector boosts economic growth as well as environmental performance",8
"Moreover, advancements in stock markets help to boost the financial position of establishments which empowers them to acquire new machines and other equipment for their operations, thereby surging the rate of energy consumption and, subsequently, high carbon emissions (Sadorsky 2010; Zhang 2011)",7
"According to SDG 13, GHG effusions should be reduced to zero by 2050 to help bring global warming to below 1.5 °C",13
"The study contributes to extant literature as follows: firstly, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the financial development-environmental sustainability linkage in the context of West Africa, while controlling for foreign direct investments, energy consumption, industrialization, and population growth at the same time to help minimize the consequences associated with the issue of omitted viable bias",7
The study is also viable because it will stimulate green consumption and production patterns in the region in line with SDG 12 of the United Nations,12
"According to that goal, consumption and production patterns that are sustainable promote resource and energy efficiency, long-term infrastructure, green jobs, as well as better standard of living",7
2020) researched on 11 post-transition European economies and found financial development and environmental degradation to be negatively related,15
"In this exploration, environmental sustainability was represented by carbon emissions, because it plays a crucial role in ongoing deliberations on ecological protection, climate change mitigation, and long-term growth (Kizito et al",13
"Foreign direct investments (FDI), energy consumption (EC), industrialization (IND), and population growth (POP) were controlled for to help minimize OVB issues",7
"Also, financial development could trigger investments in research and development, resulting in environmental pollution mitigation via technological innovations",9
"Moreover, energy consumption exhibited high volatility with standard deviation of 2.824, while industrialization exhibited the least volatility with a standard deviation of 0.578",7
"One can therefore remark that the maximum level of risk was associated with energy consumption, while the minimum level of risk was linked to industrialization",7
"Also, all the series were skewed negatively except energy consumption",7
"In terms of kurtosis, the distributions of energy consumption and environmental pollution were platykurtic, while the rest had leptokurtic shaped distributions",7
"The correlation between the variables were also examined, and from the discoveries shown in Table 2, all the series had significantly positive association with environmental degradation",15
"The elastic effects of financial development, foreign direct investments, energy consumption, industrialization, and population growth on CO2 emissions are displayed in Fig",7
"1.
 Elastic effects of financial development, foreign direct investments, energy consumption, industrialization, and population growth on CO2 emissions",7
A feedback causality amid energy utilization and environmental degradation was further affirmed,15
"Also, developments in the financial sector could improve environmental sustainability in the countries, if they are linked to clean energy technologies",7
"In an increasingly integrated world economy, this hypothesis posits that differences in the stringency of environmental protection between emerging and established economies may provide a comparative advantage in attracting foreign investments",15
"According to Bulus and Koc (2021), host countries should be blamed for the surge in pollution in their environments, because while home nations are busy protecting their economies via strict environmental regulations, host nations ignore environmental pollution, by focusing on economic advancements and the eradication of poverty and unemployment",8
"According to the hypothesis, foreign direct investment-transferred high-tech and best management practices contribute to create halos that reduce emissions by imposing positive externalities",13
A 1% surge in energy consumption raised environmental pollution by 4.356%,7
"Therefore, transitioning to green energy is the best solution for countries in West Africa",7
"The country’s existing power plants are inextricably linked to fossil fuel supply, exerting negative pressures on their environment",7
Migrating from dirty energies to the utilization of clean energy can therefore help to improve environmental sustainability in the region,7
(2021) and Usman et al. (2021b) who opined that transitioning to green energy was the superlative way to help boost environmental sustainability in nations,7
"However, Nathaniel and Khan (2020) disagreed with the above authors as they uncovered a trivial connection amid clean energy and environmental quality proxied by ecological footprint",7
"(2017) and Ahmed and Wang (2019) that population density decreases environmental deterioration through fostering economies of scale in enterprises and the provision of public services, resulting in technological innovation and resource efficiency",8
"Also, foreign direct investments, energy consumption, industrialization, and population growth were not beneficial to environmental quality in the region",7
"Also, feedback causalities between foreign direct investments and carbon excretions, amid energy utilization and environmental degradation, and between industrialization and carbon emissions were unraveled",15
"Finally, authorities in the countries should encourage financial institutions to invest in research and development (R&D) that will facilitate technological innovations in the region",9
"Also, foreign direct investments improved environmental degradation in West Africa, validating the pollution haven hypothesis (PHH)",15
This is not amazing given the fact that West Africa economies rely on foreign investments to fuel their economic growth,8
"In addition, foreign direct investments on power development infrastructure in the region has predominantly concentrated on electricity generation using polluting fuels",7
"Therefore, authorities in West Africa should focus on attracting foreign direct investments that are connected to the generation of clean energy",7
"In line with SDG 12, the study also recommends that, companies in the countries, particularly large and transnational ones should implement sustainable development practices into their reporting cycle",12
"Additionally, energy consumption significantly positively explained environmental pollution in West Africa",7
"Therefore, countries in the bloc should shift to the consumption of renewable energy, which is viewed as beneficial to the environment",7
"In other words, the countries should boost their renewable energy utilization capacities by enacting policies that could help to facilitate the transition of clean energies across the region",7
"Also, investments in technological innovations can help the countries to overcome the barriers that traditionally inhibited their renewable energy generation capacities",7
Since renewable energy facilities need to be equipped with modern technologies before they could function efficiently (Zeraibi et al,7
"2021), investments in technological innovations could help to advance the clean energy generation capacities of the nations",7
"Following SDG 7, the nations should ensure that their citizens have access to energy that is clean, affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern",7
"According to SDG 7, energy utilization represents of over 60% of worldwide GHG emissions",7
"The above recommendations if seriously taken into consideration will help the region to combat climate change and its impacts, which is the focus of SDG 13",13
"In examining the financial development-environmental sustainability connection in the bloc, the study controlled for foreign direct investments, energy consumption, industrialization, and population growth",7
Similar studies on the same region should be reduced to individual country level to help policymakers and other relevant parties design and implement vigorous environmental protection policies.,15
Water and land resources are limited and dwindling in quantity and quality due to pollution and the effects of climate change,13
Water and land resources are limited and their quantity and quality are declining due to pollution and the effects of climate change (Alejo and Alejandro 2022; Felisa et al,13
(2018) developed a model to support the farmers to implement the optimal use of saline and non-saline water utilization for on-farm water management under greenhouse conditions in the Mediterranean region,6
"(2018) to maximize system benefit and optimal agricultural water allocation and land resource use, taking into account the groundwater and surface water scarcity",6
"(2019) utilized a multi-objective ""model to optimize cropland decisions"" relating to regional planning features, considering social, financial, and ecological objectives, combined and distinctly",11
The model was employed in a real case of northeast China considering agricultural revenue and the effects of climate change,13
"(2019) ""presented a multi-objective optimization"" approach to assist irrigation managers in allocating scarce water resources optimally considering seepage losses through canals",6
"A ""description of the formulated model is given"" below: The objective function is written under: where in which ""Z is net annual income (₹), i represents a season, j represents crop"" (paddy, sorghum, pearl millet, cotton, sugarcane, wheat, mustard, and barley), k represents ""irrigation water quality (1 for canal water with EC of 0.35 dS/m, and 2–4 for groundwater with EC of 2, 4, and 6 dS/m)"", ""Pj is crop's market price (₹/l00 kg), Pbj is crop by-product's market price (₹/l00 kg), Yijk and Ybijk are crops and by-product's yield (100 kg/ha), Cg is the cost of groundwater withdrawal (₹825/103 m3), Cc is the cost of water from the canal (₹251/103 m3), Aijk is the area of crop j in season i grown with water quality k (ha), Nrijk is net return in season i (₹/ha), Vgik is groundwater volume of quality k (1000 m3), Vci is the volume of water from the canal (103 m3), and Cij is production cost (without the cost of irrigation) (₹/ha)"" (Singh 2022b)",6
"The ""availability of water from the canal for irrigation is inadequate in the block area",6
"The water quality in the canals is reasonably good, with EC ranging from 0.3–0.4 dS m−1",6
Effect of changing input parameters on net farm income Water and land resources are limited and dwindling in quantity and quality due to pollution and the effects of climate change,13
"Finally, the study provides several policy suggestions for the governments of the BRICS economies in order to increase agricultural productivity while tackling the environmental vulnerability",2
"Climate change has been identified by scientists from various backgrounds as the biggest threat to human and non-human existence on Earth in the near future, a threat that has been identified as pervasive by the World Economic Forum, with a reputation for its conservative ideology (Alagona 2013; Sengupta 2018)",13
"Hence, along with climate change, air pollution is one of the most severe environmental threats, particularly in large cities and densely populated areas, where it has serious health consequences (WHO 2016; Lanzi et al",13
Short-lived air pollutants such as black carbon (a major component of PM2.5) or ozone have profound impacts on agricultural productivity in both direct and indirect ways,2
"Indirectly, these pollutants can influence the pattern of temperature and precipitation and thereby affect agricultural productivity",2
The adverse effects of air pollution and climate change on human health and most importantly on the agricultural sector have dire economic consequences for both the developed and developing countries alike (Lanzi et al,13
"In terms of agricultural productivity, Russia currently has the highest figure followed by Brazil and South Africa",2
"China and India, although two of the largest economies of the world, have lowest agricultural productivity among the BRICS nations (Fig. 1)",2
"Agricultural productivity of BRICS countries Nevertheless, it is imperative to continue to improve and establish cooperation among the BRICS countries in order to ensure global food security (Ozturk 2015; Li 2017; Zhang 2018)",2
"According to Noort (2014), thanks to their unique characteristics, these countries play crucial roles in ensuring the food security worldwide",2
"However, both the climate change and air pollution will have severe consequences for human health and agricultural sector of these economies if not addressed (Zimmermann et al",13
"To foster sustainable development, the world seeks to find creative solutions to pressing environmental problems that have a positive impact on society, the economy, and the environment, as well as to create the conditions for a successful transition to sustainable consumption and production patterns (UNEP 2017)",12
It is expected that modern technology combined with information technology will further boost agricultural productivity in BRICS countries,2
"For example, it is China who is now the largest solar panel producer in the world and it also leads in electric vehicles as well as wind energy development (Chien et al",7
This study is the first to our knowledge that integrates CO2 emission and air pollution to find their individual effects on agricultural productivity in BRICS countries,2
"Hence, in this paper, we try to examine how both the CO2 and air pollution cause problem for the productivity of the agriculture sector that may put food security and human health in jeopardy",2
"Renewable energy such as biomass, solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal are considered to be the cleanest form of energy as most of them affect environmental quality positively",7
"Recently, the advancement of technology is also reshaping the role of renewable energy",7
Existing literatures provide evidence regarding both of their significant effects on agricultural productivity (Lio and Liu 2006; Zhai et al,2
"However, no study has utilized both of these indicators to see how they foster agricultural productivity in the context of BRICS economies",2
"The result from this study also aids in the formulation and implementation of appropriate policies for long-term agricultural development, thereby speeding up the achievement of the related SDGs",3
The prominent effects of environmental degradation on agricultural sector are evident across many empirical studies (Arora 2019),15
"(2014) used earth system model and specifically determined the roles of ozone pollutant and climate change on several crops such as soybean, rice, maize, and wheat",13
"They suggest that global warming will reduce crop production by more than 10% by 2050, potentially worsening global malnutrition",2
"(2020a, b) used the Johansen cointegration and ARDL bounds testing approach to cointegration to study the effect of CO2 emissions and global climate change on China’s agricultural sector from 1982 to 2014",13
(2022) also confirmed that climate change negatively affects the agricultural production,13
There are other strands of literature which found a mix of the effects of climate change on productivity of the agricultural sector in different countries (Ayinde et al,13
"All of the literature reviewed shows the inextricable association between climate change, air pollution, and agriculture, as well as the need to act swiftly so as to decrease the risk of low agricultural production, which could eventually lead to global hunger",13
"For the case of Brazil, Ben Jebli and Ben Youssef (2016) used the ARDL technique and causality test to investigate the causal relations between GDP, agriculture, renewable energy consumption, and CO2 emission",7
(2010) analyzed the use of renewable energy among the smallholder farmers in Tafresh of Iran,7
"By the mean of correlation and descriptive statistics, they provided evidence that farmers of smallholder farming system make use of clean energy technologies to a greater extent",7
They were also found to use solar energy directly,7
"In another study, Ben Jebli and Ben Youssef (2017b) analyzed the case of Tunisia for the causality between agriculture and renewable energy consumption",7
"However, the result from granger causality revealed no short-run causality from renewable energy consumption to the agriculture value added",7
"Interestingly, because the error term was found to be negative and significant, they concluded that agriculture and renewable energy consumption have bidirectional causality",7
"(2017) assessed the relationship between per capita renewable energy, agriculture, and CO2 emissions, as well as production and non-renewable energy, in a sample of BRICS countries from 1992 to 2013",7
"The long-run elasticities of the three panels show that per capita production and renewable energy have negative effects on pollution, while non-renewable energy and agriculture have positive effects on emission",7
"Several other empirical studies have found a causal association between energy consumption and agricultural value added, as well as the need for energy in agricultural production (Dogan et al",7
"(2017) investigated the effects of climatic change and technological progress on wheat yield per unit area in Henan, China’s largest agricultural province, from 1970 to 2014",8
"(2021), on the other hand, looked at the role of information access to the technology adoption behavior in the agricultural sector and yields of crop in the context of India",16
"As an indicator of institutional quality, this study also uses democracy indicator to see whether it plays any role in improving agricultural productivity",2
But previous studies are mainly concerned with the impact of corruption on agricultural performance,16
(2011) investigated the effect of corruption on farmer productivity in rice production,16
"The findings indicate that, depending on the situation and context, corruption costs can either increase or decrease performance",16
"Their discovery highlights the benefits of open markets in Bangladesh and other developing countries, as restricting markets encourage corruption",16
Corruption in the agricultural sector in Bangladesh was also investigated by Asif and Siegfried (2017),16
"Empirical evidence from their study shows that bribe-paying farmers were able to obtain their needed fertilizer and thus operated at a higher efficiency level than their counterparts who did not pay bribes, implying that limited fertilizer markets promoted corruption",16
"Alternatively, in markets where there was ample supply but farmers faced liquidity constraints, corruption made it much more difficult for farmers to collect their optimum input package, reducing production",16
"Furthermore, in their extension service, nepotism and lack of duty were the two most prevalent forms of corruption",16
Drebee and Abdul-Razak (2020) attempted to investigate the equilibrium relationship between corruption and agricultural sector growth in Iraq in their paper,16
This article found a long-run association between the growth of the agricultural sector and corruption exist in the context of Iran,16
"Furthermore, the findings revealed that corruption accounted for 29% of the variation in the agricultural growth",16
The study revealed that democratic system of the country can influence the level of agricultural output in that country in the long run,2
"Here, we use CO2 emission as a proxy for climate change because the share of this indicator in GHG emission is up to 80% (Wangzhou et al",13
Another indicator of technological growth is technological innovation and it is measured in terms of total patent applications and includes the patent application from both the residents and non-residents,8
"Apart from technology- and institution-related variables, there is another indicator which specifically focuses on controlling environmental degradation and this indicator is called environmental policy stringency which is sourced from OECD STAT",15
"Moreover, this indicator captures public investment in renewable energy which has been widely recognized to affect the agricultural production (Ben Jebli and Ben Youssef 2017b)",7
"So we introduce two models here, one with EPS and another one with renewable energy use",7
"Therefore, in a country, renewable energy investment may not be reflected in the increasing use of renewable energy",7
"Hence, we use both of these variables in different models to see how the gap manifests itself in the agricultural productivity model",2
"Considering these potential factors that affect the overall agricultural productivity, the functional expression of agricultural production function is reported in Eqs",2
"3 and 4 explore the association in a further prescribed way where all \({\beta }_{s}\) are denoted to represent the elasticity of all analyzed coefficients and \(\mu\) denotes the random error term: In order to reduce the chances of data sharpness, heteroscedasticity, and for engendering the model and sample homogeneity, this study uses the natural logarithmic algorithm that are in use for the agricultural productivity function",2
The long-run estimated coefficients from the CCEMG estimator for agricultural productivity model are presented in Table 5,2
"The results explore that there is negative effect of CO2 emission on agricultural productivity, implying that carbon dioxide emissions adversely impact agricultural productivity",2
"These outcomes are expected as the BRICS agriculture system is experiencing soil erosion primarily owing to elevated precipitation level, growing temperature variations, and high level of carbon emissions",15
A few waste materials are beneficial for agricultural crops but most of the emission sources are harmful for agricultural productivity,2
"Since the previous two to three decades, the BRICS region has practiced balanced GDP growth rates and its consequence on agricultural yield has not been perceptible as explored by our results",8
The lnPM2.5 has a statistically strong and negative impact on agricultural productivity in the long-run,2
Another important determinant of agricultural productivity is ICT which creates a massive opportunity to increase the production level through providing information about weather and offer awareness,2
"Considering the results of long-run elasticity estimates, a 1% augmentation in ICT will upsurge agricultural productivity by 1.651% in the BRICS panel",2
"Similarly, technological innovation in the agricultural sector significantly contributes to increasing agriculture production",8
Unemployed farmers (frictional unemployment) can search their job opportunity through the internet (Henderson et al,8
The empirical results of this study find a shred of strong evidence to support the argument that technological progression and ICT are powerful engine of agricultural productivity in BRICS region,2
The coefficient values of EPS and POLITY on agricultural productivity are also significant and positive in all specifications,2
"Particularly, a 1% increase in EPS and POLITY would result in a 0.086% and 0.121% increase in agricultural output respectively",2
"Flexible, institution, and market-supported tools like trading schemes and Pigovian taxes are observed to be friendlier to the growth of agricultural productivity",2
Let us now look at model 2 where we use renewable energy use,7
This suggests that renewable use will be more effective in increasing agricultural productivity than regulating industries via strict policy measures,2
"The findings reveal that the carbon dioxide emission elasticities in relation to agricultural productivity are statistically significant and adversely affect all BRICS individual countries like Brazil (0.151%), India (0.179%), China (0.123%), Russia (0.123%), and South Africa (0.199%) in the long run",2
This signifies that CO2 emission is adversely influencing agricultural productivity in all BRICS individual countries,2
"In contrast, ICT has a positive impact on agricultural productivity in countries such as China (1.886%), Russia (1.695%), and South Africa (1.857%)",2
"In this regard, the elasticity of technological innovation significantly increases the agricultural production in India (0.162%), China (0.285%), Russia (0.389%), and South Africa (0.197%)",8
"Likewise, the long-run influence of EPS on agricultural productivity in BRICS disaggregate countries found to be significant and positive in Brazil (0.111%), India (0.062%), China (0.086%), Russia (0.068%), and South Africa (0.112%)",2
"More specifically, a 1% augmentation in democracy will lead to an increase in the agricultural productivity in Brazil, India, and Russia by 0.143%, 0.157%, and 0.176% respectively",2
"For Brazil, there is no significant effect of renewable on agricultural productivity, although the two out of three coefficients tell us that it may increase agricultural productivity significantly",2
"In China, our main estimation technique, CCEMG, reveals a significant impact of renewable on agricultural productivity",2
"This makes sense because if agricultural productivity increases through ICT and technology, it will induce them more to innovate to get these benefits on a higher scale",2
The two-way causality between renewable energy and agriculture indicates that agriculture can also help renewable energy consumption increase in the economy,7
The objective of this study is to see how carbon dioxide emission along with pollution affect agricultural productivity of BRICS nations,2
The result from long-run estimation revealed that both the carbon dioxide emission and air pollution have negative effects on agricultural productivity of these nations,2
"Moreover, from model 2, we found renewable energy to be a strong influencer in enhancing the productivity of this sector",7
"To reduce the impacts of pollution as well as climate change on agriculture sector, there are several strategies which the governments of the BRICS economies should follow",13
Sufficient consideration should be provided to approach which create policy environment where investment into renewable energy as well environmental taxes embodied into the environmental policy stringency are attractive,7
The subsidies to renewable energy should be provided to a point at which renewable energy sources can compete with alternatives,7
The significant impacts of policy variable such as environmental policy stringency as well as democracy indicate that effective reduction in climate change and air pollution will require strong governmental efforts and development of polices that are environmental friendly,13
"However, barriers such as lacking of appropriate infrastructure and lower rate of energy efficiency can cause significant disruptions which must be overcome",7
"Therefore, new technologies which can improve the energy efficiency of agricultural sector in order to reduce the agricultural emissions should be promoted and advocated by diverse entities in the respective countries",7
Technological innovation in the agriculture sector involves the use of drones or robots which fall under the theme of precision agriculture,8
Our study looks at the effect of environmental vulnerability (climate change and air pollution) on agricultural sector for BRICS countries,13
"Specifically, we focused on the role of CO2 emissions and PM2.5 as indicators of climate change and air pollution, respectively",13
"However, the CO2 emission does not fully reflect the climate change since there are other emission categories as well",13
"Hence, in the future research, scholars can examine the impacts of environmental quality using comprehensive indicators of climate change and air pollution",13
But future studies can compare and contrast the effect of environmental degradation on agricultural for other regional groups as well.,15
"In the current century, the G7 countries have attached more importance to energy security, and have prioritized low-carbon sources which have necessitated the consumption of nuclear and renewable energy resources to achieve a resilient low-carbon system",7
"As such, this study employs advanced panel data econometric techniques that account for cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity issues to explore the impacts of nuclear and renewable energy use in respect of CO2 emission mitigation in six of the seven G7 countries",7
"However, renewable energy consumption is found to be statistically insignificant in explaining the variations in the CO2 emission levels",7
"On the other hand, economic growth is found to initially boost the CO2 emission level but mitigate it later on; thus, the authenticity of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis is established in the G7 context",8
"Also, renewable energy significantly curbs CO2 emissions only in Canada and France",7
"Moreover, it is also suggested that these nations adopt relevant policies to further green their consumption and production processes to ensure complementarity between economic growth and environmental development",8
"2021b). As per the theoretical framework of the EKC hypothesis, economic growth is initially responsible for worsening environmental quality, but it does contribute to environmental betterment in the latter stages provided the threshold level of national income is surpassed (Omojolaibi and Nathaniel 2020; Wang et al",8
"As far as the role of energy use in influencing the economic growth–environmental quality nexus is concerned, it is often claimed that monotonic dependency on fossil fuel consumption results in environmental adversities; since the combustion of fossil fuels profusely discharge greenhouse gases into the atmosphere",8
"Besides, it has also been highlighted in the literature that switching from the use of unclean energy resources to relatively cleaner energy alternatives simultaneously contributes to higher economic growth and lower environmental pollution (Nathaniel and Iheonu 2019; Nathaniel et al",8
"Thus, fuel diversification policies to gradually replace fossil fuel with renewable energy (RE) have become a key global energy policy agenda of the 21st century (Murshed 2021a; Murshed and Alam 2021)",7
The relevance of abating environmental deterioration along with economic growth has been extensively discussed across the global spheres,8
"In 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was formed and ratified by 197 global economies to address the climate change issues by reducing the human interference–induced climate adversities",13
"Then, the Kyoto Protocol, in 1995, laid the platform for the world economies to strengthen the global response to climate change issues",13
"Recently, the Paris Agreement stimulated the signatory member under the UNFCCC to commit to battle against climate change in order to keep the global temperature rise to below 2 °C above the preindustrial levels and further try to limit the temperature rise to below 1.5 °C (Rogelj et al",13
"For instance, SDG 11 aims to make the global cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable by particularly reducing the adverse environmental impacts of the cities (Choi et al",11
"Similarly, SDG 12 calls for restructuring the global consumption and production processes in a sustainable and environmentally friendly manner (Gasper et al",12
"On the other hand, SDG 13 urges the global economies to adopt and implement relevant policies to tackle climate change and develop resilience to the associated adverse impacts (Doni et al",13
"More importantly, SDG 7 targets to improve the global environmental quality by enhancing access to affordable, reliable, and modern energy resources (Chirambo 2018; Murshed 2021b)",7
"Hence, these global environmental development initiatives unanimously emphasize the pertinence of any economy, irrespective of the income group to which it belongs, to safeguard its environmental attributes particularly by reducing their respective share of unclean energy use in the aggregate energy consumption figures (Nathaniel 2021; Nathaniel et al",7
"Hence, it is pertinent to unearth the macroeconomic factors that are responsible for stimulating economic growth within the G7 economies but are equally accountable for the deteriorating environmental attributes of these nations",8
The shares of RE resources in the aggregate final energy consumption figures of the respective G7 nations are significantly lower than the corresponding non-RE shares,7
"According to the World Bank (2020) estimates of 2015, Canada recorded the highest RE share in its total final energy consumption basket (22.03%) followed by Italy (16.52%), Germany (14.21%), France (13.50%), USA (8.72%), UK (8.71%), and Japan (6.30%)",7
"Although from 2000 onwards, these nations have tried to elevate their renewable electricity output shares by integrating biomass into their respective energy mixes for electricity generation purposes, such energy policy reforms further aggravated the environmental woes of the G7 countries (Wang et al",7
"Apart from these two nations, the other five G7 countries are predominantly fossil fuel-dependent for electricity generation purposes",7
"Among these, the environmental effects of economic growth are often explained in light of the theoretical underpinnings of the EKC hypothesis",8
"This hypothesis postulates the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality to be non-linear, whereby the EKC is said to depict an inverse U-shape (Murshed et al",8
"The shape of the EKC is justified in terms of the scale, composition, and technique effects of economic growth on the environment",8
"As a result, the demands for energy and other determinants of economic growth tend to go up which, in turn, is believed to emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere",8
"Following the scale effect at the initial phase of economic growth, the composition effect takes place due to a structural shift within an economy; hence, the composition effect can be linked to the adverse environmental effects associated with the initial industrialization strategies pursued within an economy (Sinha et al",8
"On the other hand, the technique effect tends to emphasize the favorable environmental impacts of economic growth",8
"Furthermore, the EKC hypothesis puts forward a threshold level of economic growth at which the EKC bends (Murshed et al",8
"It is hypothesized that the scale and composition effects take place before the economy reaches the threshold level of growth; thus, a trade-off between economic welfare and environmental degradation can be expected",15
"However, as the economic growth level reaches and goes beyond this threshold, the technique effect takes place to ensure complementarity between economic and environmental welfare",8
"Apart from economic growth, various other factors directly affect the environment and also exert indirect environmental impacts by influencing the economic growth–environmental quality nexus (Murshed et al",8
"Among these, energy consumption is one such factor that impacts both the economic and the environmental attributes",7
The economic growth threshold for this case is denoted by A,8
"Secondly, a composition effect can also be expected whereby technological innovation, resulting in greater production and use of electricity generated from the cleaner energy resources, can reduce the threshold level of economic growth beyond which the complementarity between economic and environmental welfare can be reinstated",8
"Hence, under such a circumstance, the threshold level of economic growth can be given by B which, compared to the initial threshold level A, is relatively lower",8
"Therefore, it can be claimed that nuclear and RE consumption can ideally help to bend the EKC at a relatively lower level of economic growth; thus, enabling the economy to improve its environmental quality faster",8
"For the G7 countries, Raza and Shah (2018) found a long-run cointegrating relationship between RE share in aggregate energy consumption and CO2 emissions during the 1991–2016 period",7
"The results, although exhibiting country-specific variations showed that higher consumption of wind, biomass, and hydro-electricity–reduced CO2 emissions; however, in the context of solar energy consumption, no statistically significant relationship was ascertained",7
The EKC hypothesis asserts an inverse U-shaped relationship between environmental quality and economic growth (Hajko et al,8
"Conversely, Demissew Beyene and Kotosz (2019) found the relationship between CO2 emissions and economic growth for 12 East African nations, between 1990 and 2013, to exhibit a U-shape; thus, refuting the inverted U-shaped EKC hypothesis",8
(2019) asserted that economic growth in Kazakhstan led to a monotonous increment in the CO2 emissions levels,8
"In summary, there is a consensus in the literature that RE mitigates CO2 emissions, while economic growth aggravates environmental pollution",8
NE is seldom considered in the economic growth–CO2 emissions nexus,8
Italy was not considered since the nation is yet to introduce NE into its national energy mix,7
"Therefore, following these studies, the model for this current study is specified as follows:
 where lnCO, lnRE, lnNE, lnGR, and lnGR(sq) are the natural logarithm of carbon emissions, RE consumption, NE consumption, economic growth, and the squared term of economic growth, respectively",8
It is revealed that economic growth has the highest average value while RE has the lowest value over the sampled period (1990–2017),8
The RE consumption level appears to be the most volatile of the variables while economic growth is the least volatile,8
"RE consumption is positively correlated with NE consumption and economic growth, and NE consumption has a positive correlation with economic growth",8
This result could be an off-shoot of similar environmental policies in these countries and the desire of these countries to mitigate CO2 emissions and uphold the prospect of achieving environmental sustainability as signatories to the Paris Agreement,13
"This implies that there are long-run associations between CO2 emissions, NE consumption, RE consumption, and economic growth in the context of the selected G7 countries",8
"In the past few decades, G7 countries have accorded more importance to energy security by promoting the use of low-carbon energy sources like NE to achieve a resilient low-carbon system",7
Other means that have been used by the G7 to achieve low-carbon systems include the diversification of energy resources and promotion of sustainable and clean energy technologies,7
"Though these countries still consume substantial volumes of fossil fuels, it is also acknowledged that reducing fossil fuel consumption will help tackle climate change",13
"The elasticity findings further confirmed the EKC hypothesis (through the positive and negative signs of the elasticity parameter attached to economic growth and its squared term, respectively)",8
This finding reveals that economic growth is initially attained at the expense of environmental deterioration,8
"However, economic growth eventually works to reinstate environmental welfare in the G7 countries",8
"Therefore, it is necessary for policymakers in these countries to identify the factors that promote economic growth but also marginalize environmental quality in the G7 countries",8
"On the other hand, in France, about 19.6% of domestic energy consumption emanated from RE resources, which was an improvement from 14.3% supplied from renewables in 2014",7
These contrasting outcomes imply that Germany and Japan are yet to align their respective economic growth policies with the environmental welfare policies,8
The results suggest a feedback causality between NE consumption and economic growth,8
"This, in turn, can also assist in curbing the CO2 emissions to ensure complementarity between economic growth and environmental welfare",8
"Besides, the causality estimates also reveal unidirectional causality running from economic growth and NE consumption to CO2 emissions",8
"This further confirms the links between economic growth, NE consumption, and CO2 emissions in the G7 countries.
 The study examined the impact of economic growth, RE, and NE on CO2 emissions in the G7 countries",8
"We observed that the variables were cointegrated and therefore applied the AMG, CCEMG, and P-W (AR1) estimators to gain information on the impacts of NE, RE, and economic growth on CO2 emissions in the examined G7 nations",8
"On the other hand, economic growth adds to CO2 emissions",8
"Furthermore, the governments of these countries should also incentivize the private sectors to invest in setting up of nuclear power plants to elevate the NE generation and consumption levels further",7
"Besides, these policies are also likely to help these nations to achieve the environmental sustainability targets enlisted under the Paris Climate Change and SDG agendas",13
"Hence, it is ideal for these economies to scale up their respective economic growth rates",8
"In this regard, the imposition of stringent environmental rules and regulations can be expected to inhibit the use of environmentally unfriendly factors of production and, therefore, expedite economic growth without marginalizing the environmental attributes",8
This ignorance is particularly salient given that the current emphasis on the food-water-energy nexus often fails to include the important role that inland fish and fisheries play in food security and supporting livelihoods in low-income food deficit countries,2
"Moreover, if inland fisheries are recognized as important to food security, livelihoods, and human well-being, they can be more easily incorporated in regional, national, and global policies and agreements on water issues",2
"It is time to acknowledge the full value of inland fisheries, especially in the context of food security, human health, livelihoods, and tourism (see Lynch et al",2
"2016), and ensure their future sustainable management, particularly in the face of competing uses of freshwater (e.g., irrigation, hydropower, domestic and industrial use, and waste disposal)",7
"Moreover, freshwaters are subject to threats arising from extensive habitat alteration, fragmentation (i.e., dams), and invasive species, that are negatively affecting freshwater biodiversity (Bruton 1995; Dudgeon et al",15
"In the marine realm, the threats to fisheries tend to be internal to the sector (i.e., overfishing), while in inland waters the threats are largely external (Beard et al",14
"To address the challenges for inland fisheries on a global scale, FAO, in partnership with Michigan State University, convened a cross-sectoral conference in Rome, Italy, 26–28 January 2015, entitled Freshwater, fish, and the future—cross-sectoral approaches to sustain livelihoods, food security, and aquatic ecosystems ( )",2
"In areas where malnourishment is a common threat, inland fisheries provide a vital source of protein, essential fatty acids, and other micronutrients not readily found in other accessible food sources (Youn et al",2
"They also contribute to sustaining cultural identities (e.g., indigenous communities in the Pacific northwest; Kew 1992), maintaining cooperation and social cohesion among riparian people, and providing job satisfaction for millions of people (Pollnac et al",10
"
Diverse inland fish assemblages are essential to maintain ecosystem integrity and resilience, as well as the human communities that depend on these fisheries for societal well-being (Schindler et al",15
Competition for freshwater resources by various sectors is high and continues to increase; these activities external to the fishery are the greatest threat to the viability of inland fisheries (Beard et al,6
"Hydropower and navigation disrupt the integrity and connectivity of aquatic habitats, while agricultural practices and pollution from land-based activities can further impact the productivity of inland waters and their fisheries (Limburg et al",7
All too often management occurs in the absence of assessment or assessment occurs and is not directly linked to the fisheries management cycle or integrated into adaptive management or an ecosystem approach framework,14
Improved valuation of inland fisheries must be aligned with their importance to human well-being and should maintain accessibility and availability of nutrient-rich fish in areas with traditionally high fish consumption often the same regions that have higher levels of under-nourishment and malnourishment,2
"Ensuring and promoting fish availability and consumption, particularly for children in the “first 1000 days,” is important to prevent malnourishment and support cognitive development (Roos et al",2
"Better understanding of the overall nutritional contribution of inland fishes, beyond kilocalories, is essential to promote integration into effective governance strategies of freshwater management systems",16
Lack of ecosystem service valuation and effective multi-jurisdictional or cross-sectoral governance can only be addressed if current capacity to govern is improved,15
"Rather than trying to strengthen the capacity of fisheries departments, sectors with higher assessment and cross-sector and cross-scale governance capacity, such as public health and nutrition, or agriculture, could be encouraged to include inland fisheries in their programming",3
"Additionally, greater use can be made of the traditional ecological knowledge, traditional user rights, and traditional governance structures (e.g., self-organized fisher associations) that are recognized in international instruments such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries (FAO 1995) and the FAO Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication (FAO 2015)",2
"Cross-jurisdictional and -sectoral coordination can address “higher order” issues that impact on fisheries, such as those that cross political boundaries and those that relate to multiple sectors, like agricultural run-off and hydropower (Biggs et al",7
"Similarly, involving fisherfolk in decision making over both fisheries management and wider environmental management gives them a voice in management and policy (Evans et al",14
"The institutional framework of most national and international entities does not effectively address cross-sectoral issues relating to freshwater use and integrated management (i.e., responsibilities for agriculture, water management, nature conservation, and inland fisheries are often separated over multiple agencies) (Cowx 1998)",6
Integrated water resource management is often regarded as a necessity where biophysical and socio-economic elements are integrated (Newson et al,6
Aligning water resource management policy with the sustainable livelihoods approach to fisheries development within a co-management framework (See Allison and Horemans 2006) would ensure that the value of inland fisheries is realized and that societal interests are addressed (Turton et al,6
"2016), and the unknown impacts that modifications to the system will have on the food security in the region, increased awareness of the importance of inland fisheries is necessary",2
"If inland fisheries are recognized as important to food security, livelihoods, and human well-being (see Fig. 1), creating linkages between inland fish and fisheries into the post-2015 SDGs that relate to water issues will be easier",2
"Ecosystem services provided by inland fisheries support material well-being such as practical welfare and standards of living (e.g., food, nutritional, and economic security, poverty alleviation); relational well-being including personal and social relations (e.g., community building, social security and cohesion, social capital, mutual respect) and subjective well-being such as concerns, values, perceptions, and experience of an individual (e.g., sense of identity, traditions, livelihood, culture, and hope) It is our hope that the discussion of inland fisheries will be more easily incorporated into future decisions about use of the world’s inland systems",1
"These recommendations are timely given the FAO Blue Growth Initiative,Footnote 2 which recognizes the value of fish to livelihoods and food security (see Dugan et al",2
"The Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is far lag behind the sustainable targets that set out in the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which is highly needed to embark the priorities by their member countries to devise sustainable policies for accessing clean technologies, energy demand, finance, and food production to mitigate high-mass carbon emissions and conserve environmental agenda in the national policy agenda",9
"Thus, the United Nation’s sustainable development agenda is highly influenced by socio-economic and environmental factors that need sound action plans by their member countries to coordinate and collaborate with each other and work for Africa’s green growth agenda",8
"The success rate is still deprived as nearly 70% of the population lack sanitation facilities, more than 40% of the population live below the poverty line of US$1.25 a day, 33 million children out-of-school from primary schooling, etc",4
"The United Nation’s SDG goals largely focused on high rising temperature and its consequences on economic health, water supply, natural resources, industry, trade, and food security challenges, which affect the African rural-urban poor that have a survival on subsistence farming and nomadic communities",2
"The urban crisis is severally affect the Africa’s sustainable development projects and human security, as high urbanization substantially decline the pace of country’s economic growth due to massive demand of water, food, health, energy, and employment, which a country fails to provide basic necessities that raise serious issues of human security (Hove et al",8
(2003) further continue this debate under the convention of United Nation’s sustainable development for resource and environmental conservation and emphasized the need to combat climatic variations through the support of collaborative efforts of the developed and developing countries to sustained Africa through meeting the need of energy and food security,2
"Bräutigam and Knack (2004) identified three main factors that largely influenced Africa’s economic stability, including the issues of good governance, as weaker governance led to increase many social issues that cumbersome the process of humanization, while poor institutional quality and low foreign aid further enlarge the poverty gap that weaken resource stability across Africa",16
"The sustainable agriculture yield reduces food security issues all across Africa; thus, it required land reforms that devoted for agricultural cultivation by high inducement of technology for fruitful gains",2
Al-Mulali and Binti Che Sab (2012) considered a panel of 30 SSA countries to evaluate the impact of energy demand and carbon emissions on country’s economic development for a period of 1980–2008,8
The urbanization pressure and unsustainable production in the form of by using charcoal intensive demand lead to increase number of socioeconomic and environmental concerns that largely affect the Africa’s vision of sustainable development,11
"The sustainable option is by adoption of agro-forestry with improved kilns, and stoves may significantly reduce wood harvest pressures in forests that make environmental friendly atmosphere to reduce environmental issues across Africa",15
"(2016) discussed the food security issues in SSA countries and concluded that agriculture is the optimized solution to feed up the growing population of Africa; however, due to low level of agricultural yield and low mechanization process, it leads to decrease the potential of agriculture food across Africa",2
"Zaman and Moemen (2017) collected a large data set from low-, middle-, and high-income countries to evaluate the long-run relationship between energy demand, CO2 emissions, and country’s economic growth for a period of 1975–2015",8
The urban management committee is largely responsible to ensure safe water resources to prevent the population from notable diseases,11
The alternative arrangement for reduction of urbanization and provision of safe drinking water is crucial challenge for SSA to revitalize economic action plans for sustained growth,6
"Tumushabe (2018) largely provoked that SSA countries faced three main challenges, including food security issues, climate changes, and sustainable development",2
"The real motivation of the study is to access different challenges that SSA countries faced in terms of using clean fuel and technologies, finance, renewable energy projects, food challenges, and environmental concerns",7
"The study extensively surveyed on last two decade data and found the number of factors through which sustainability can be achieved, for instance, cooking fuels and stove combustion replaced with green fuels, fossil fuel energy replaced with renewable energy, financial development replaced with green financing, food challenges meet with mechanized and green farming, financial and trade liberalization polices replaced with ISO environmental certification and tight environmental regulations, etc",7
"The above significant discussions stress the need to explore this area in more refined form in the context of SSA countries, which derives out by using number of socio-economic and environmental factors to evaluate United Nation’s SDGs for resource conservation and emissions reduction in a panel of 35 selected SSA countries, during a period of 1995–2016",13
To analyze the energy-based emissions through electricity production and the role of renewable energy consumption on carbon-PM2.5 mitigating efforts across countries,7
"The study used the following variables to access the environmental sustainability agenda in a panel of 35 SSA countries, i.e., CO2 emissions (metric tons per capita), PM2.5 air pollution, mean annual exposure (micrograms per cubic meter), access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking (% of population), access to electricity (% of population), domestic credit to private sector (% of GDP), foreign direct investment, net (BoP, current US$), renewable energy consumption (% of total final energy consumption), GDP per capita (constant 2010 US$), trade (% of GDP), depth of the food deficit (kilocalories per person per day), and population density (people per sq",7
"The expected relationship of per capita income, population growth, and technologies (if not clean technologies) is positive, which implies that these factors increase high-mass emissions level across countries",9
"The rest of the hypothesis, which related with access to energy, finance, and food, includes as a control variable in conjunction with EKC, PHH, and IPAT hypothesis that confined their impact on country’s emissions level",7
The equations are as follows: where AELC shows the access to electricity; REC shows the renewable energy consumption; AFIN shows the access to finance; and AFOOD shows the access to food,7
"The African countries lag behind the United Nation’s environmental sustainability goals, which largely influenced by unsustainable production and consumption that increases human costs in the form of food shortages, high unemployment level, and increase poverty",8
"These factors negatively influenced country’s economic growth, which further translated in to natural resource depletion that caused deprive performance towards achievement of environmental sustainability across countries",8
"The results show that access to clean fuels and technology, electricity demand, access to finance, and per capita income has a positive correlation with the carbon emissions with correlation coefficient values of 0.673, p < 0.000; 0.572, p < 0.000; 0.244, p < 0.000; and 0.742, p < 0.000, respectively",7
"The impact of renewable energy consumption on carbon emissions is negative, which confirmed the importance of renewable energy consumption in mitigating high-mass carbon emissions that need to be include with more convincing policy options in the country’s sustainability agenda",7
"The correlation results with PM2.5 emission is surprisingly inverted with the carbon emissions estimates, as access to clean fuels and technologies, access to energy demand, financial development, FDI inflows, trade openness, and population density have a negative correlation with the PM2.5 emission, while renewable energy consumption has a positive correlation with the PM2.5; thus, the policy for sustainable development is still a challenge for the policymakers to refine existing environmental policies for long-term growth across SSA countries",7
"The access to clean fuels and technology for cooking is positively influenced carbon emissions, which implies that high technology is associated with high-mass carbon emissions that need to be mitigate by cleaner technologies (see Huisingh et al",7
"All these studies confined that clean technologies largely supported environmental sustainability agenda, which required cleaning mechanism in production and techniques of production to produce zero carbon emissions",9
"The sound financial sector is helpful to determine the long-term country’s growth by supporting business entities to reap sustainable profit, while renewable energy consumption further mitigates the high-mass carbon emissions; thus, both the positive results have been drawn by the given estimations, which confirmed that access to finance and renewable energy consumption substantially decreases carbon emissions across countries (see Shahbaz et al",7
"The results do not support an inverted U-shaped EKC relationship between emission and economic growth, as economic growth initially decreases carbon emissions, while it increases carbon emissions in the later stages of economic development; thus, its supported U-shaped EKC relationship between them",8
"The food production largely involved in high-mass carbon emissions, as unsustainable mode of production and unsustainable technologies damage the United Nation’s sustainability agenda, which is the serious concern for country’s economic development (see Soytas et al",8
The impact of renewable energy consumption is positive on PM2.5 emission that opens another debate for the viability of renewable energy mix in SSA countries,7
"The renewable energy sources have a huge potential to direct zero carbon emissions; however, it is required for the resource abundance to utilize country’s resources for adopting energy mix to sustained economic activities (see Panwar et al",7
"Menyah and Wolde-Rufael (2010) proclaimed the effectiveness of nuclear energy consumption that mitigate carbon emissions; however, it yet not been done due to country’s economic shocks and political disagreement across the globe",7
The need of renewable energy sources is imperative for healthy economic output and well-being,7
"Thus, high-mass carbon emissions responsible for dirty polluting industries and high population growth that need to be controlled by tight environmental regulations and population-controlled strategies including fertility reduction campaigns, quality of child well-being, health provision, and education",3
"The table further shows the response of PM2.5 emissions by specific regressors and found that access to clean technologies, electricity, per capita income, renewable consumption, and food deficit will largely influence PM2.5 emissions, while access to finance, trade openness, and population density will influenced negatively to PM.25 concentration among SSA countries over a time horizon",9
"The policies for sustainable consumption and production derive efficient instruments to reduce environmental concerns, which is imperative for healthy gains",12
"The VDA estimates show that both the CO2 equation and PM2.5 equation have their own innovation shocks by 98.942 and 97.820%, respectively; afterward, population density has a larger error variance, followed by access to clean technologies, per capita GDP, and renewable consumption",9
"In the second equation, PM2.5 emission will largely influence by high per capita income, followed by trade openness, access to clean technologies, and access to finance",9
"Thus, the policies for sustainable development are highly desirable to reduce high population density and sustained growth specific factors for green growth",8
"The results show that clean fuels and technologies for cooking, FDI inflows, and food security challenges are largely inflamed high-mass carbon emissions that need to mitigate by cleaner technologies, tight environmental regulations, and sustainable food production and consumption",2
"The positive impact of renewable energy consumption confirmed the need to adopt renewable energy mix in the countries portfolio to minimize the risk of high-mass carbon emissions, which is imperative for sustainable growth",7
"The significant discussions on the subject area proposed the following policy implications for SSA countries, i.e.: The adoption of cleaner technologies is imperative for sustainable consumption and production",12
"The high energy demand for economic production largely comes out with high emissions intensity; thus, it is viable to introduce renewable energy sources in country’s existing energy portfolios to mitigate high-mass carbon emissions",7
"The high economic growth is not only associated with the number game of high per capita income, while it is closely linked with socio-economic factors that need to sustain for inclusive growth",8
"The search for better renewable energy source is the challenge for the SSA countries that should be explored by resource abundance and resource specialization, while biofuel and biomass are the optimized solution for energy production in countries",7
1 IntroductionThe potential consequences of the climate crisis and its already-occurring effects are prompting an intensive examination of the necessity for reducing anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions,13
The next 20 years are critical as we need to radically reduce GHG emissions and simultaneously address social priorities that are embodied in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),13
"In addition to their impact on climate change, buildings, cities and infrastructure are also expected to protect people from the undesirable effects of climate change.The aim of SBE19 Graz was to promote exchanges between scientists, practitioners, politicians and the interested public to find answers to the above-mentioned challenges",13
"The focus was on the built environment: innovative construction products, sustainable buildings, appropriate design methods and tools, sustainable urban neighbourhoods and future-proof urban development",11
The potential consequences of the climate crisis and its already-occurring effects are prompting an intensive examination of the necessity for reducing anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions,13
The next 20 years are critical as we need to radically reduce GHG emissions and simultaneously address social priorities that are embodied in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),13
"In addition to their impact on climate change, buildings, cities and infrastructure are also expected to protect people from the undesirable effects of climate change",13
"The focus was on the built environment: innovative construction products, sustainable buildings, appropriate design methods and tools, sustainable urban neighbourhoods and future-proof urban development",11
"The SBE series was subsequently joined by the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB), the Sustainable Building and Climate Initiative (SBCI) of UN Environment and the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC)",9
It is a response to the high resource consumption and environmental impacts caused by built environment: Buildings account for 40% of energy consumption and 36% of GHG emissions in Europe.Footnote 4 The proportions are even greater if the manufacturing of building products is factored in,7
The Graz Declaration calls for decisive action to reduce GHG emissions,13
It also highlights the need for funding programmes that incentivise measures to reduce GHG emissions,13
The treatment includes the question of whether and to what extent the recycling and waste disposal industry can contribute its knowledge of the processes and their requirements for the quality of the expanded material,12
"In connection with the goals of a circular economy and the sustainable use of resources, the focus is on the ability to describe and assess both the use of resources and the recycling potential of buildings",12
The rapid development of BIM and digitalisation of construction activities has aided the creation of new tools and affords new opportunities for designers,9
"This has consequences not only for the provision of data, tools and benchmarks but also for education and training",4
"(2019): Business-models of gravel, cement and concrete producers in Switzerland and their relevance for resource management and economic development on regional a scale Chandrakumar et al",8
"In the wake of industrialization, it is necessary to understand the impact of energy consumption pattern on N2O emissions and revise the energy policies accordingly",7
The results obtained from the study indicate the efficacy of the renewable energy solutions in having positive impact on environmental quality by helping to reduce the level of N2O emissions,7
"Climate action is one of the most important needs in order to achieve sustainable development and reduce global warming, and it has prompted policymakers to delve deeper into the causes of climate deterioration (UNDP 2017)",13
"It has been proven by several researchers that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are one of the prime factors affecting climate change, and it has steadily increased over the past few decades",13
"However, in recent years, the rise in energy demand across the globe has increased the fossil fuel combustion, and in doing so, the number of thermal power plants is also on the rise",7
It is evident from the discussion above that increasing emissions coupled with the problem of climate change will affect both developing and developed countries,13
"This phenomenon can be theoretically explicated by environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis, which explains the relationship between income and environmental degradation",15
"The hypothesis says that when income rises at the earliest stages of economic development, emissions rise and beyond a certain threshold level of income, the emissions start to decrease (Stern et al",8
This is explained by the fact that initially environmental degradation occurs at the cost of high resource utilization to meet the increasing consumer demand,15
"This is followed by a phase known as “the richer is greener,” in which people with increasing income can now invest, afford, and adopt clean technology thereby reducing environmental degradation (Tierney 2009; Shahbaz et al",15
"Since majority of GHG emissions source from carbon dioxide, majority of studies have looked into the EKC hypothesis analysis applying different models revolving around carbon emissions and economic growth (Dinda 2004; Jalil and Mahmud 2009; Zhang and Cheng 2009; Ahmed et al",8
"In this context, it is required to mention that the economic growth being achieved by developed and developing nations across the globe is majorly dependent on the fossil fuel–based energy solutions, and due to the rise in industrialization, the agricultural activities are shrunk (Fazal 2000; van der Linden 2018)",8
"Moreover, renewable energy consumption is increasing with an annual growth rate of 2.5% (APEC 2016)",7
"APEC strives to introduce new technologies those promote greener energy solutions, in addition to improving food trade, thereby strengthening the overall agricultural productivity and growth (APEC 2016)",2
"Along with the technological progress and economic growth, APEC countries have registered a rise of 11.62% rise in N2O emissions during 1990–2015, whereas the N2O emissions across the world have shown an increase of 9.86% during this period (Fig. 1)",8
"Zambrano-Monserrate and Fernandez (2017) found a quadratic long run relationship between nitrous oxide emissions and economic growth in Germany, thus establishing EKC hypothesis for the same",8
Our study attempts to contribute to the existing literature on the fact that nitrous oxide emissions can be minimized with simultaneous generation of renewable energy (Ming et al,7
The present study aims at analyzing the impacts of renewable and nonrenewable energy consumption on N2O emissions for the APEC countries,7
"(1) is designed following this specification only, where N2O is considered as the proxy of pollution; Y, GCF, REN, and FF are considered as the proxies of economic growth and affluence; TR and RD are considered as the proxies of technological development; and POP is the proxy of population",8
"(3) has been referred to as renewable energy model, Eq",7
"This segregation allows us to look into the individual impacts of renewable and nonrenewable energy consumption on N2O emissions (for CO2 emissions, see Sinha et al",7
"This method has been applied on three models, namely (a) renewable energy model, (b) fossil fuel model, and (c) combined model",7
"This rise in urbanization is coexisting with the rise in overall population, and consequently, the economic growth in these nations is achieved at the cost of the sustainable development",8
"However, the technological innovations in pursuit of cleaner technologies brought forth by means of international trade and R&D are having negative impacts on N2O emissions, and it is visible from the coefficients of TR and RD",9
"Now, we will move towards the renewable energy model",7
"In contrast with the fossil fuel model, here, we will analyze the impact of renewable energy consumption on N2O emissions, and it is visible in Table 4 that the coefficient of REN is negative and significant",7
"Amidst the industrial growth, the emergence of renewable energy solutions has started to exert positive impact on environmental quality, by reducing the emission of GHGs",7
"For the fossil fuel model, the second turnaround point is achieved much faster than the second turnaround point in the case of renewable energy model",7
"However, this model demonstrates the scenario, if both fossil fuel and renewable energy solutions are used in a nation",7
"We can observe that the first turnaround point is higher compared to the previous two models, but the second turnaround point lies between the second turnaround points of renewable energy model and fossil fuel model",7
"Increase in the second turnaround point indicates the flattening of the EKC, thereby showing the efficacy of the renewable energy solutions in reducing the level of GHG emissions",7
"The test has been conducted on the aggregate data, as the APEC countries use both the renewable and non-renewable energy solutions in the production process",7
"Therefore, on the one hand, the economic growth pattern in these countries might lead to changes in the pattern of N2O emissions; on the other hand, the N2O emissions also have an impact on the pattern of economic growth, and existence of this bidirectionality paves the way for sustainable development in these nations",8
"By far, we have tested the EKC hypothesis for N2O emissions in APEC countries over the period of 1990–2015, and in this pursuit, we have tested three models of EKC by segregating the renewable and non-renewable energy sources, as well as by combining them",7
"In the course of analysis, we have found that the EKCs for N2O emissions in APEC countries are N-shaped, and the second turnaround point of the EKC using renewable energy consumption is higher compared to the second turnaround point of the EKC achieved using fossil fuel consumption",7
"In order to achieve these three objectives, it is necessary to look into the second objective, i.e., decent work and economic growth, as this objective largely encompasses the other two SDG objectives",8
"If the renewable energy solutions start to be implemented across these nations, then it will result in the creation of a number of new organizations, which might open up new vocational opportunities",7
"Renewable energy solutions should necessarily create more job opportunities, and thereby, uplift the livelihood of the citizens",7
This might ensure the decent work and economic growth,8
"Therefore, the policymakers in these nations should stress on endogenous capacity building, in terms of enhancement of research and innovation capabilities",9
"While providing the renewable energy solutions, the existing fossil fuel solutions can be replaced, starting with the households, and then gradually the industries",7
"For the marginalized households, the policymakers can provide the renewable energy solutions for free for a certain duration, mutually decided by the policymakers and the households",7
"In this way, a phase-wise shift from fossil fuel–based energy solutions to renewable energy solutions can be possible.",7
Climate change has been a topic of significant discourse and debate among scholars and policy makers for several decades,13
"Therefore, the present research evaluates the impact of oil consumption, hydro energy use, population density, and economic growth on ecological footprint in Turkey for the period from 1965QI to 2018Q4",8
The majority of developing and developed nations around the globe are working hard to achieve and maintain economic growth and development,8
"The strategy calls for growing domestic oil and gas exploration and production, varying the sources of oil and gas supply and related infrastructure, expanding the output of renewable sources of energy, and enhancing energy efficiency",7
"In the last 10 years, Turkey has significantly diversified its energy mix (IEA 2022)",7
"Particularly, renewable energy has shown significant development, with the output of renewable electricity doubling over the previous 10 years",7
"For a sound energy mix, renewables appear to be a preferable alternative",7
"Therefore, renewable energy derived from wind, solar, tidal, biomass, and hydro, among other sources, has been found to have a major effect on ecological sustainability (Abbasi et al",7
"Nevertheless, while renewable energy sources may assist in preventing environmental deterioration, nations may find it difficult to exploit them since they can stifle economic progress (Anwar et al",7
"(2022), socio-economic variables could obstruct the use of renewable energy, causing renewable energy consumption to fall short of expectations in terms of impacting environmental deterioration",7
"Based on the above discourse, the current paper evaluates the effect of oil consumption, hydro energy use, population density, and economic growth on the ecological footprint in Turkey",8
"Furthermore, it is also essential to understand that different levels of oil consumption, hydro energy use, population density, and economic growth may not have the same influence on all levels of ECF",8
The result gathered from this investigation shows that growth lessens environmental quality while green energy amplifies it,7
(2021) in Portugal on the time-frequency analysis between real growth and disintegrated energy using data between 1980 and 2018 revealed that real growth triggers environmental deterioration while clean energy reduces it,7
"(2022), using an AMG estimator and dataset between 1990 and 2019, reported that fossil fuel–based energy increases ecological footprint while renewable energy use decreases it",7
"In addition, renewable energy curbs emissions, while globalization and nonrenewable energy trigger emissions",7
"(2022b) evaluated the asymmetric and symmetric impact of disintegrated energy consumption on ecological dilapidation in the OECD, employing data from 1970 to 2016",7
"The study posits that in all quantile distribution of ECF, renewable energy use, as well as fossil fuel and GDP, lessens quality of the ecosystem",7
"Second, the study explores disintegrated energy (renewable or nonrenewable), economic growth, and economic complexity, which form the progressive pattern of Turkey’s ecological quality and situation",8
The data for oil consumption and hydro energy consumption are gathered from the British Petroleum database,7
"Furthermore, the data for economic growth is gathered from World Bank, while the ecological footprint data is measured as Gha per Person, and it is obtained from the Global Footprint Network database",8
(2022) for China who reported a positive association between renewable energy and ECF,7
"In 1018, coal accounted for 37.3% of total fossil fuel consumption in Turkey, while renewable energy sources such as wind and solar accounted for only 6.6% and 2.6% of total electricity generation, respectively (Republic of Turkey Ministry of Energy and Naturel Resources 2018)",7
"Because of the higher prices of renewable energy plants, Turkey’s energy output continues to be dominated by fossil fuels",7
CO2 emissions are rising in tandem with rising energy consumption,7
Using clean energy sources instead of fossil fuels should reduce the country’s energy reliance and provide price stability and energy security,7
"The positive effect of economic growth on ecological footprint is more pronounced, which is in accordance with the QQR results in all quantiles (0.1–0.95)",8
"Unlike past research, this study employed newly developed econometric approaches to evaluate the associations between ecological footprint (ECF) and energy (oil and hydro), economic growth, and population density utilizing data from 1965 to 2018 in Turkey",8
"Since the quality of the environment tends to deteriorate as income levels increase, it is reasonable to conclude that Turkey’s present economic growth path is not sustainable",8
"On the flip side, the low penetration of renewable energy (hydro energy) has a positive impact on ECF, demonstrating policy deficiencies in disseminating renewable energy alternatives",7
"A simple solution would be to substitute fossil fuel–based alternatives with renewable energy alternatives; however, this alternative may not be feasible because it may have a detrimental effect on economic progress patterns",7
Renewable energy alternatives should be encouraged in Turkey,7
"This can be accomplished by assisting REC in reaching its full potential and increasing the degree of acceptance of renewable energy in households and industry by involving residents, the public sector, and the commercial sector in raising environmental awareness",7
"In doing so, the government can offer clean and sustainable energy solutions at a pro-rata rate to households with an interest rate exemption for a duration of time",7
This move can help to increase household acceptance of renewable energy options over time,7
"To support this policy, the government can change school curricula to emphasize the environmental advantages of renewable energy alternatives",7
Industries may be given one of two alternatives: (i) take advantage of the government’s renewable energy solutions at a higher interest rate than the average household and (ii) offer a higher interest rate on loans for projects that are powered by fossil fuels,7
"As a result, businesses will be progressively deterred from adopting fossil fuel–based alternatives, and they will shift to renewable energy alternatives",7
"At this time, the current facilities for renewable energy generation may not be adequate to meet the growing demand for renewable energy solutions",7
"In this case, firms will have to depend on green energy generation companies that were established during the policy’s initial stage of execution",7
"In the last phase, appropriate regulations and rules to regulate market competition, steadily taxing fossil fuel alternatives, slowly enhancing educational curricula to institutionalize awareness about the environment via technological discoveries, and incentivizing firms to enter the renewable energy market should be facilitated by the government",7
"The implementation of such measures will eventually reduce the degradation of water and land along with ambient air emissions, and the SDG 13, 14, and 15 objectives will be met",13
"In the preceding two decades, the expansion of financial services has played a vital role in pursuing economic growth agendas in the developing Asian nations",8
2013) and financial sector development (Sharma and Kautish 2020b) have strengthened the economic growth process in the developing countries of South and Southeast,8
"Similarly, the IMF (2017) in its report mentioned that the South Asian countries have recorded a GDP growth of 6.7%, whereas the overall economic growth of the world was merely 3.2% in the same year",8
"Due to the profound population base and growing convergence between local and international markets, the high GDP growth is expected to be continued in both regions (OECD 2019)",8
"In this pursuit, the expansion of financial markets and the availability of cheap factor inputs have made emerging economies more attractive to foreign investors (IMF 2003)",17
"These developments, undeniably, are necessary for the economic growth of an economy",8
"2020) discloses the actual success story of the economic growth, as these nations are net buyers of fossil fuel",8
"At the same time, the combustion of nonrenewable energy solutions may continue to intensify environmental pollution, which, in turn, may reduce the net benefits of economic growth",8
"Therefore, these regions may likely witness the Limits to Growth phenomenon and the economic growth process may be impeded by the scarcity of natural resources (Meadows et al",8
"In the case of developing countries, a sustainable growth approach becomes even more necessary, as the long-term growth strategies in the developing regions are generally woven around the agriculture or allied industries where the possibility of environmental damages are more pronounced (Sinha and Bhattacharya 2016; Todaro and Smith 2017)",8
"Therefore, to develop a sustainable growth framework, it requires investigating the long-run association between these variables",8
"Our first objective is to assess the impacts of per capita income, energy consumption, financial development, and trade expansion on the ecological footprint in the emerging economies of South (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bangladesh) and Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand) from 1990 to 2015",7
"Lastly, we investigated whether the financial sector development has reinforced the environmental footprints through energy consumption and trade expansion, because the development in the financial sector may tend to invigorate the trade expansion and energy consumption, which, in turn, may lead to the ecological footprint",7
"In doing so, we investigated whether the association between energy consumption and environmental proxies (i.e., ecological, carbon, and land footprint) is influenced by the financial sector development",7
"By doing so, we reported the moderating effect of the financial sector development on the nexus between environmental indicators and energy consumption and environmental indicators and trade expansion",7
"Rationality in doing so lays with the fact that besides GDP growth, these factors have also witnessed an upward trend and appear to be complementary to economic growth",8
"The selection of the countries and study period appears just as the pooling of high GDP growth registering Asian countries in terms of ecological footprint, carbon footprint, and land footprint has not been addressed in the past",8
We also confirmed that the interaction of the financial sector with energy consumption and trade expansion has reinforced the environmental pollution in the long run,7
"Secondly, the study proposes the need for low pollution-intense techniques and energy resources where the role of the financial sector and trade policy is judicially established",17
"However, certain activities may be more harmful in terms of air pollution, whereas others may have a severe impact on the land or water quality",6
"To keep the literature examination systematic, we have divided it into sub-parts where the association of different environmental proxies with domestic production, energy consumption, financial sector development, and trade expansion has been examined",7
The association between economic growth and environmental quality is not at the standstill,8
"When an underdeveloped country starts expanding its economic growth horizons, the investment in growth-oriented programs may overtake the investment in environment and scale effect may get operative; as a result, the quality of the environment may get worsened",8
"In contrast, some of the study unable to find out the inverted U-shaped association while considering the ecological footprint as a variable to be explained, which indicates that all regions are not able to reap the economic growth that led to ecological improvements",8
"The rejection or ignorance of the U-shaped EKC in both studies indicates that until now, some of the countries or regions have not achieved the development stage where economic growth enabled to reduce the ecological footprint",8
"To comprehend the impact of technological innovation on environmental quality, Sinha et al",8
"Besides supplementing the economic growth, the excessive dependency on nonrenewable energy resources has imposed certain economic and environmental challenges",8
"(2020) ascertained that the nonrenewable energy consumption has played a significant role in raising the ecological footprint in 16-EU, OECD countries, and Turkey, respectively",7
"Contrarily, the literature supports that the increased consumption of renewable energy resources may help to fortify the environmental quality in the long run (Sharif et al",7
"In the given situation, the increased consumption of renewable energy resources may help to reduce imported energy dependency and pollution intensity, which is an urgent need for developing regions like South and Southeast Asia",7
Studies in the past confirmed that renewable energy can serve as a substitute for nonrenewable energy,7
"Secondly, in comparison with the latter, the negative environmental impacts of renewable energy consumption are less",7
"For mitigating the negative impacts of energy consumption, the SDG-17 underlines the need for clean and affordable energy resources",7
"With the economic expansion, the associated growth channels such as energy consumption, market size, demand for inputs, and financial services tend to improve (Ebohon 1996; Faisal et al",7
Economic openness allowed developing countries to procure necessary inputs for economic growth (Zhang and London 2011),8
"Interestingly, the results of Dogan and Seker’s (2016) study ascertained that trade expansion has fortified the environmental quality in the top ten renewable energy-consuming countries",7
"This technology spillover, in turn, helped these countries to reduce carbon emissions in the long run",13
"Therefore, by using the annual data series (i.e., 1989–2015), we intended to assess the impact of per capita income, total energy consumption, financial development, and trade expansion on the ecological footprint, carbon footprint, and land footprint where eight developing countries of South and Southeast Asia are being considered for this examination",7
(2000) ascertained that the credit supply by the private sector development may have a long-lasting impact on an economy,8
"Thereafter, for each function, we introduced the moderating effect of financial development because the availability of the financial resources with diversified financial instruments may likely to damage the environmental quality by intensifying the energy consumption and international trade in a free market place",7
"If we apply the partial differentiation with respect to TRit (trade expansion) and ENit (energy consumption) in equations (7) and (8), respectively, the actual impact of FIit can be calculated through equation (13)",7
"Further, the energy consumption in Sri Lanka has observed maximum deviation in the given country list",7
"With the given production processes, it will be difficult to achieve the goal of responsible consumption and production (SDG-11) by 2030",12
"Thus, we can contemplate that the selected developing countries by conceding the environmental responsibilities are busy in accomplishing the economic growth agendas",8
"While examining the impact of energy consumption, we observed that the increased use of energy led to a significant increase in the ecological and carbon footprint in the given countries",7
"But, the increased energy consumption may have an indirect and negative impact on land quality in the long run",7
"Here, it can be argued that the expansion of financial and international trade-related activities may intensify the movements of various necessary factors such as transportation, construction and manufacturing, services, and most importantly energy consumption",7
"In both models, even the cross-elasticity coefficients of energy consumption, financial development, and trade expansion have shown a direct impact on both footprints",7
"Likewise, the interaction between financial development and energy consumption is shown in models III, VI, and IX",7
"Contrarily, at the given level of financial development, the impact of energy consumption on land footprint has remained negative",7
"However, the increased energy consumption is not contributing significantly to intensifying the land footprint in the selected countries",7
"Therefore, to achieve sustainable growth targets, the role of the financial sector needs to be redefined",8
"Otherwise, it may continue to intensify environmental pollution directly and indirectly through other channels of economic growth",8
"In the present study, we explored the impacts of per capita income, energy consumption, financial development, and trade expansion on the ecological footprint, carbon footprint, and land footprint in the eight selected countries of South and Southeast Asia during the study period (1990–2015)",7
"Considering the interconnectedness between financial development, energy consumption, trade expansion, and environmental footprint, first of all, the government as a producer needs to reduce the nonrenewable and imported energy dependency",7
"Secondly, the renewable energy consumption may fortify the environmental quality",7
"Stating differently, in this whole process, the adaptation and diversification are crucial; otherwise, it may impede economic growth (Roy and Singh 2017; Roy et al",8
"The gradual shift from the nonrenewable to renewable energy resources may widen the new job opportunities in the less developed areas as well, because the renewable energy resources such as solar, wind, water, and biomass are easily available in the rural areas",7
"By doing so, the government can control the job loss caused by the technology shift, and in terms of economic growth, the country may continue to perform well",8
"Further, if the government industries are allied according to the endogenous energy-based processes, the other industries will automatically be motivated for the same because the marginal cost of production of renewable energy resources is comparatively very less provided the basic infrastructure be developed",7
"As a benefactor, the government can introduce suggestive and directive approaches where clearly defined Property Rights are much needed",1
"If the Property Rights are well-defined, the graduated sanctions or penalties can be imposed on the basis of the severity of the violation of the environmental regulation",1
"The even-odd vehicle number movement on the alternative days in Delhi, the capital of India, is one of the examples of Property Rights usage",1
"By providing tax-rebates or subsidies to such industries, the government can motivate the private industries to develop the renewable energy infrastructure where the financial sector can perform as a mediator",7
"For example, to develop endogenous renewable energy resources, the financial sector can issue special financial instruments and services, which should be available to the renewable energy-based industries whether serving in local or international markets",7
"The special concessions on establishing the new and renewable energy-based industries may gradually reduce the energy import bills, which in turn may reduce the negative impact of trade expansion as well",7
"ISBN: 978-0-89629-582-7.
 
 
 Free pdf download as individual chapters or entire book 
 -global-food-policy-report
 
IFPRI: 2016 Global Nutrition Report, From Promise to Impact: Ending Malnutrition by 2030
 
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington, D.C., USA: 2016, 180 pp",2
"ISSN: 2380–6443 
 
 Free pdf download as individual chapters or entire book 
 -nutrition-report-2016-promise-impact-ending-malnutrition-2030
 IFPRI: 2016 Global Nutrition Report, From Promise to Impact: Ending Malnutrition by 2030 International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington, D.C., USA: 2016, 180 pp",2
"ISSN: 2380–6443  
 Free pdf download as individual chapters or entire book 
 -nutrition-report-2016-promise-impact-ending-malnutrition-2030
 The year 2016 was a very productive one for the International Food Policy Institute (IFPRI), with nearly 30 books showing a 2016 publication date",2
"Although malnutrition is often a heavy topic, the book presents itself with a light tone suitable for a general audience",2
"They include community-led programming (Chapter 2), infant and young child feeding practices (Chapter 3), micronutrient supplementation and fortification (Chapter 4), and community-based management of acute malnutrition (Chapter 5)",2
"The second section, ‘Transforming Sectoral Actions’, is also globally relevant, covering the so-called nutrition-sensitive approaches, including agriculture (Chapter 6), social protection (Chapter 7), water, sanitation, and hygiene (Chapter 8), and obesity prevention and control (Chapter 9), the last of which would seem a better fit in the first section",1
"Indeed, the choice of chapters was influenced by the medical journal, Lancet, and its 2013 Maternal and Child Nutrition Series",2
"While all the SDGs are addressed, it particularly and cleverly illustrates SDG 2, reminding readers that ending hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture are intertwined",2
"Chapter 8, Shifting Diets: Toward a Sustainable Food Future, ostensibly a nutrition chapter, showcases agriculture as an equal partner to health in dealing with multiple burdens of malnutrition",2
"And that message is to help ensure that policies and programmes are aligned with promoting sustainable diet choices, and that governments should facilitate coherence among agriculture, health, nutrition, water, biodiversity, and climate change policies in relation to promoting sustainable diets",13
"
2016 Global Nutrition Report, From Promise to Impact: Ending Malnutrition by 2030, is the third in an annual series",2
The series is billed as ‘stocktaking of the state of the world’s nutrition points to ways to reverse this trend and end all forms of malnutrition by 2030’,2
The lead chapter is The New Challenge: End all forms of malnutrition by 2030,2
The challenge to end malnutrition is not exactly new; it has been the aspirational goal of many intergovernmental and technical reports and processes over decades,2
"Expenditure by donors and governments was divided between nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive, the latter covering food security and agriculture",2
"The oft-stated imperative of a multisectoral, transdisciplinary approach to solving the problems of malnutrition in all its forms is presented credibly and pragmatically",2
"National Development Plans, Land Use Master Plans, Green Growth Strategies) and to design the policy measures needed to implement the plan, such as taxes and regulations",8
"They can also be used by themselves in backward-looking assessments and monitoring, such as environmental-economic macro-indicators, environmental protection or restoration expenditure reviews and environmental or sustainable development monitoring (e.g",15
Water and forestry are two of the major themes for which the accounts have been used so far,15
2017) or serve as basis for sustainable forest management plans (Forest Enterprise England 2017),15
2017b) and in the assessment of forestry concessions in the Australia (Keith et al,15
"Beyond individual sectors, many countries are increasingly using NCA to monitor progress towards sustainable development and other multi-sector and holistic objectives—such as to show links between natural resources and poverty, green growth and carbon management potentials (Medrilzam 2017; Steinbach 2017; Schenau 2017; Webb 2018)",8
for monitoring the progress of the sustainable energy targets in Costa Rica (Gutiérrez-Espeleta 2017; Rivera et al,7
"The UK and the Netherlands also use NCA to identify factors affecting green growth and to monitor sustainability (Barter 2017; Schenau 2017), while the Australian Capital Territory has used NCA for State of Environment reporting (Smith et al",8
"Examples include green growth indicators in the Netherlands (Schenau 2017), energy use in Costa Rica (Rivera et al",8
Our findings also declare that consumption of renewable energies (REC) significantly increases environmental quality (EQ) while consumption of non-renewable energies (NREC) adds to environmental degradation (ED),15
"Lastly, the implications of these findings for economic-environmental policies are discussed.Graphical  Increased ED has accompanied the efforts of countries to achieve higher economic growth in recent decades",8
"Accordingly, many researchers have scrutinised the influence of economic growth on EQ (Fakher 2019; Khan et al",8
"Many theoretical and empirical studies have addressed the EKC hypothesis, resulting in different and sometimes contradictory results discussing the significance of economic growth in increasing environmental pollution",8
Types of different relationships between economic growth and ED,8
"Energy has been assumed to be the determining factor for economic growth and other production factors, and its significance has continuously increased",8
The energy sector has more interaction with different economic sectors due to its growing demand for rapid economic development and industrialisation (Khan et al,8
"Given that fossil fuels meet a large part of this demand, which has resulted in greenhouse gas emissions, economic growth seems to increase environmental pollution at first glance (Fakher et al",8
Empirical evidence shows that rapid economic development only causes a surge in pollution during the early stages of growth,8
"The increasing trend of energy consumption and environmental pollution is reduced due to energy efficiency, environmental regulations, and increased public awareness at later stages of development (Usman et al",7
The adverse impacts of energy on our environment require countries that rely on fossil energy to switch toward renewable energy because renewable energy is believed to be environmentally friendly (Ahmed et al,7
"More precisely, the study tries to scrutinise the role of economic growth on EQ, using a composite index for environmental quality within an EKC framework for selected OPEC and OECD countries, controlling for their differences in REC and NREC, FD, and trade openness (TO)",8
The results of this study will help the countries’ economic-environmental analysts and policymakers in formulating and implementing appropriate economic and environmental policies to obtain sustainable economic growth and development,8
"With numerous natural reserves such as oil reserves and fossil and mineral resources, the OPEC economies have turned to pollute industries not only by the indiscriminate consumption of natural resources but also by expanding their industrial sectors to obtain higher economic growth and development (Fakher 2019)",8
"The OPEC countries account for about 43%, indicating that these countries have abundant oil resources and consume the fossil resources such as oil to achieve economic growth",8
Source: BP Statistical Review (2020) Economic growth trend and ED,8
"These exudations are the primary reason for critical environmental problems, such as global warming and climate change, threatening the whole planet",13
B Primary energy consumption in 2018,7
"To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first empirical study using a composite index (a combination of six environmental indicators) to examine the effect of economic growth on EQ within the EKC theoretical framework in sampled OPEC and OECD countries for the period 2000–2019",8
"The first and most well-known theoretical framework for the correlation of the economy with the environment in the environmental-economic literature, which describes a non-uniform relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution, is the EKC hypothesis",8
"According to this hypothesis, natural resource and energy use increases in the early stages of economic growth due to the high priority of production and employment over a clean environment, resulting in ED (scale effect)",8
The composition of products changes from agricultural goods to industrial goods on the path of economic growth,8
"However, the ED rate is reduced when economic growth reaches a threshold (composite effect), due to the re-change of the product composition with a decrease in industrial production and an increase in services",8
The studies have led to different and sometimes contradictory results regarding the significance of economic growth in increasing environmental pollution (Fakher et al,8
"Source: Authors’ findings based on the studies in Tables 1 With respect to the significant and remarkable role of impressive economic factors (namely economic growth, FD, NREC, and TO) in EQ, many studies have been carried out in the economic-environmental literature and achieved different results (a summary of selected recent studies in Table 2)",8
(2021b) scrutinised the performance of FD in the impressionability of the CEQI from economic growth in two categories of sampled OPEC and OECD economies in the course of 2008–2019,8
"For both groups of the sampled economies, the negative performances of NREC and economic growth in the CEQI were confirmed",8
"(2021) empirical work examined the relationship between economic growth, NREC and EFI in the USA from 1965 to 2017",8
"However, there was a U-shaped relationship between economic growth and ED in Altıntaş and Kassouri (2020) and Destek and Sinha (2020) study, an inverse N-shaped relationship in Saud et al",8
(2020) scrutinised the correlations of NREC and economic growth with ED in the pattern of the EKC hypothesis in middle-income countries from 1990 to 2014,8
"The abovementioned discussion shows impressive economic factors’ significant and remarkable role, including economic growth, FD, NREC, and TO in EQ",8
"Therefore, the possible hypotheses can be stated as follows: Concerning the inconsistency in the findings of the empirical studies, the following hypotheses can be stated: Hypothesis 1 (H1): The correlation between economic growth and CEQI used in this research follows the “U-patterned EKC” or “Inverted U-shaped EKC” for the 13 selected OPEC countries and 15 OECD economies",8
Hypothesis 2 (H2): The correlation between economic growth and CEQI used in this study follows the “N- patterned EKC” or “Inverted N- patterned EKC” for the 13 selected OPEC countries and 15 OECD economies,8
Hypothesis 3 (H3): The correlation of economic growth with CEQI used in this study follows a positive or negative pattern for the selected 13 OPEC countries and 15 OECD economies,8
"In the present research, the economic growth performance in EQ was considered in the form of EKC assumption and the interaction between FD, NREC, and CTS with EQ using the CEQI",8
"\({NREC}_{it}\) and \({REC}_{it}\) also represent non-renewable energy use and consumption of renewable energies, respectively",7
REC is used as a percentage of total final energy consumption,7
"Thenceforth, the coefficients \({\alpha }_{i}\) relate to the long-term elasticities of the CEQI concerning GDP per capita (\({LGDP}_{it}\)), squared GDP per capita (\(L{GDP}_{it}^{2}\)), cubic GDP per capita (\(L{GDP}_{it}^{3}\)), non-renewable energy consumption (\(L{NREC}_{it}\)), renewable energy consumption (\(L{REC}_{it}\)), financial development (\({LFD}_{it}\)), and composite trade share (\({LCTS}_{it}\)), respectively",7
"In other words, this group of countries with more revenues from oil sales could not consume these revenues properly to achieve their goals, the most significant of which is higher economic growth",8
"In this regard, along with economic growth, they would most likely enjoy a clean environment",8
"Due to the high priority of production and employment over a clean environment, the consumption of natural reserves and energies increased in the initial stages of economic development, leading to ED",8
The inefficient consumption of energy resources as one of the motivations and instigators of economic growth seems to have led to an increase in ED in these countries,8
"Increased geothermal, nuclear, and wind energy generation should be allocated more attention",7
"In this group of countries, the context and volume of green financing to stimulate renewable energy generation should be expanded to ensure that the masses have access to low-cost green energy (SDG 7)",7
"As a result, effective and well-established financial organisations that can support green and eco-friendly enterprises and promote renewable energy developments will be helpful to ecological sustainability (SDG 7)",7
Governments should develop the required plans to improve environmental legislation and boost green technology development in these countries,9
"By utilising green technology and supporting growth, measures must be devised to increase advantages while decreasing expenses",9
"When regulations are not implemented effectively, they have a negative impact on the community and the economy by reducing their benefits and acting as a hindrance to economic progress and environmental protection",15
These countries are recommended to implement policies that prevent pollution while restricting economic development to achieve the SDGs,8
"Next, for the OECD group of countries, given the detrimental role of NREC in the quality of the environment, to boost energy effectiveness and contribute to environmental sustainability, which is one of the SDGs, OECD economies must support investment in research and development in general, and especially green technology development",9
This is why it is anticipated not only that the OECD countries concentrate on the manufacture of non-energy intensive products and activities but also that they are ascribed to variations in generation methodology as well as the transition to the employment of environmentally friendly and pro-environmental technologies in their manufacturing processes and operations (SDG 7),7
"In recent decades, the consumption of non-renewable natural resources and increasing economic growth have had many environmental consequences",8
The interaction between economic growth and ED has been one of human societies’ main issues and concerns,8
There are some common policy recommendations for two groups of OPEC and OECD economies to achieve SDGs through environmental quality improvement: These countries should minimise using non-renewable energy in manufacturing and other associated operations to enhance environmental quality through renewable energy employment,7
Enhancing creativity may be useful in converting non-renewable energy into renewable type,7
"Energy efficiency can rise together with creativity in these countries, resulting in better environmental sustainability",7
"By sponsoring eco-friendly initiatives, including renewable energy, the enhancement of financial expansion can help to minimise carbon emissions while simultaneously encouraging creativity through the financing of relevant initiatives",7
"Other than this, future studies may also need to address the causal relationship between environmental indicators and economic growth in a system of simultaneous equations to control for interactions among them",8
Developing strategies that counter the ongoing homogenization trends of home-garden agroforestry systems is required to maintain diversity and sustainability,15
This study aimed to map and characterize traditional enset-based home-garden agroforestry for managing sustainability in the Gurage socioecological landscape in Ethiopia,15
Enset-based home-garden agroforestry production has been declining in the Ethiopian landscape because of socioeconomic changes and a lack of technological inputs,15
These challenges may compromise the community’s food security with loss of the product diversity provided by the home-garden system,2
"Thus, technological adoptions and scaling up of agroforestry practices according to the home-garden types are necessary for the continue provision of multiple contributions",15
This study demonstrated site-specific spatial characterization of the agroforestry systems by considering a holistic approach to reduce the local challenges and support the development of sustainable landscape management in an altering socioecological landscape,15
Home-garden agroforestry is a recognized land use system that supports human well-being on small plots of land while enabling an ecologically sustainable landscape worldwide (Abbas et al,15
"The composition, structure, and functions of home-garden agroforestry are diverse (Gbedomon et al",15
"The survival of the home-garden agroforestry system depends on the economic, social, and political conditions of the countries where the home garden is located (Galhena et al",15
"Despite these advantages, recent trends indicate that the agroforestry systems are disappearing (Rolo et al",15
Integrating agroforestry as a central role in landscape characterization can help overcome the lack of adoption and maintenance that plagues many agroforestry practices and systems (Buck et al,15
"This approach would help in comparing the economic, ecological, and sociocultural significance of home-garden agroforestry and drive local landscape-level solutions for its sustainability (Mohri et al",15
"Many studies outline the basic characteristics of home-garden agroforestry in terms of species diversity, size, structure, and socioeconomic factors using cluster analysis (Abebe et al",15
"Nevertheless, our proposed approach offers a good opportunity for obtaining a systematic insight into different types of home gardens for sustainable landscape management",15
"In many parts of Ethiopia, there is a remarkable experience of traditional agroforestry practices mainly with parkland agroforestry practice on cultivated land, for example, in Minjar Shenkora districts",15
"For example, in the Gedeo agroforestry system, perennial crops are combined with woody trees and cereal crops in a vertical structure design (Negash et al",15
The landscape is one of the regions where the enset-based home-garden agroforestry system has been established extensively,15
"However, detailed studies are unavailable to formulate sustainable landscape management strategies according to the home-garden type",15
"To understand and identify the constraints and seek sustainable landscape development options for the improvement of the home-garden agroforestry systems, detailed information on the spatial structure, composition, agrobiodiversity, and trends is required",15
"Therefore, this study aimed to characterize the home-garden agroforestry system comprehensively for sustainable landscape management in the Gurage socioecological landscape in Ethiopia",15
Limited attention has been paid to the spatial differences within specific locations in home-garden agroforestry studies,15
"Enset is a keystone species in the landscape, giving rise to the label “enset-based home garden agroforestry.” The landscape communities adopted an enset-based home-garden agroforestry production system, similar to other regions in south and southwestern Ethiopia",15
Enset-based home-garden agroforestry exists on both sides of the Gurage Mountain chains,15
"To characterize the enset-based home-garden agroforestry system, we classified the LULC of the landscape using orthophotomosaic and conducted household surveys and focus group discussions (FGDs)",15
The orthophotos were captured and orthorectified for land administration and certification purposes in 2017 (EMA 2017),3
"However, some spatial features were confusing, such as the enset-based agroforestry with eucalyptus plantations, pasture with cereal crops, and degraded lands with built-up lands and lakes",15
"To reduce these effects, we extracted the proximate coverage area of all enset-based home-garden agroforestry through visual interpretation using ArcGIS, with the aid of field observations and a prior understanding of the landscape",15
"The ten LULC identified in this study were degraded land, grazing land/pasture, cereal crops, forest, woodland, built-up land, eucalyptus plantations, lakes, afroalpine vegetation, and enset-based home-garden agroforestry (Supplemental Material 1)",15
"Therefore, we combined all the perennial crops associated with enset in this study as enset-based agroforestry",15
"We characterized the enset-based home-garden agroforestry system by analyzing the composition, structure, agrobiodiversity, and type of home garden",15
Thirteen sites/villages were selected to represent the various configurations of home-garden agroforestry in the Gurage landscape (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Material 2),15
A large number of questions were included in the questionnaire to explore the overall characteristics of the home-garden agroforestry system in the landscape,15
The home-garden agroforestry systems include diverse plant species and a variety of crops,15
Enset-based home-garden agroforestry in the Gurage socioecological landscape is not the same in every household’s parcel of land,15
"Using these aids, we created home-garden type zones and used them as proximate explicit spatial data",3
"As a result, the LULC of the landscape includes forests, woodlands, eucalyptus plantations, afroalpine vegetation, home-garden agroforestry, cereal cropping, and open-grazing lands (Fig. 3)",15
LULC map of the Gurage socioecological landscape Enset-based agroforestry covered ~ 10.2% of the landscape,15
Degradation occurred primarily because of soil erosion,15
Enset-based home-garden agroforestry in the landscape had a horizontal structure (Fig. 4),15
"Illustration of enset-based home-garden agroforestry in the Gurage socioecological landscape (sketched from orthophotomosaic in the Gahirad locality, Enemoherena Ener district) Inside the fences of each household land parcel, there was one or more vernacular homesteads and grass cover ranging from an area of 84 to 2178 m2",15
"Large parts of each land parcel were used to cultivate cereal crops, alternated with livestock pasture to enhance soil fertility",15
"Acacia abyssinica (Girar), which is a legume plant and important for soil fertility, was grown by only 8% of the surveyed households",15
Hagenia abyssinica (Kosso) is an endangered species that survived in household plots and is rarely found in the upper catchment,15
"As a result of agroecology, the production of cereal crops is low",2
The FGD participants and interviewed households identified that a lack of technological innovation was the main reason for the decrease in production and the use of products from home gardens,8
"Enset-based agroforestry, i.e., excluding woodlots, covered ~ 10.2% (44,252 ha) of the western Gurage landscape",15
Compared with Ethiopia’s home-garden agroforestry coverage (2.32 Mha) (Brown et al,15
"Moreover, the areal coverage in western Gurage is less than the tropical home-garden agroforestry such as West Java in Indonesia (20%) (Mohri et al",15
"However, there is a major problem in estimating the area under agroforestry, and the area coverage may not show the exact conditions",15
Mapping the home-garden is challenging because diverse agroforestry systems occur in combination with multiple land use types and the home-garden systems often occur over small land areas (Rosenstock et al,15
"As we have used high spatial resolution aerial imagery in this study, consideration of advanced geospatial technologies and the development of standard procedures are required to estimate agroforestry areas (Rizvi et al",15
An overview of enset-based home-garden agroforestry looks similar in the Gurage socioecological production landscape,15
"However, the detailed characterization of home-garden agroforestry through its spatial and compositional structure led us to identify the differences within the home gardens",15
Similar differences within the home-garden agroforestry systems have been observed in tropical regions,15
"In the Gedeo and Sidama agroforestry regions in southern Ethiopia, five home-garden types were identified based on dominant component species (Mellisse et al",15
The functional structure indicates that perennial-based and parkland types of agroforestry are found in the Gurage home-garden agroforestry system,15
"The home-gardens found in upper and lower catchment areas can be categorized in parkland agroforestry, as areas where staple food crops are grown in the outer farm with trees and vegetable species and fruits are grown in the home garden",15
"Additionally, in perennial-based agroforestry, the three middle catchment home gardens can be categorized as areas similar to the central highland of Ethiopia; perennials are grown on the homestead, while staple food crops are grown in outer fields (Abebe and Bongers 2012)",15
Horizontal type of structure is followed by both types of agroforestry systems,15
This type of structure could be due to the Gurage landscape households that have a relatively large parcel of land (1.1 ha) compared with the Gedeo (0.70 ha) and Sidama (0.90 ha) agroforestry systems (Mellisse et al,15
"The variances in settlement patterns, soil fertility, topography, and climatic conditions have an impact for the differences in home-garden types",15
"Although there are pattern differences, the number of functional groups is similar to the Gedeo and Sidama home-garden agroforestry in Ethiopia (Abebe et al",15
"Although the enset-based home-garden agroforestry in Gurage hosts several edible and woody species, it is less rich in species composition than tropical region home gardens such as Gedeo and Sidama agroforestry in southern Ethiopia (Negash et al",15
"The most commonly used approaches for characterizing the home-garden agroforestry system are species composition, structure (horizontal and vertical), and management, with limited attention to their scale and layout (Mahato et al",15
"Although the uniqueness of each home garden hinders the use of a common approach, efforts are required to develop a commonly accepted framework to characterize the home-garden agroforestry systems",15
"(2018), the dynamic changes in the home garden cropping system in the Sidama and Gedeo zones were influenced by variations in population densities, market access, low prices, market liberalization policies, and a decrease in soil fertility",15
Introducing mechanical and semidigital machinery that is affordable to low-income households would address labor shortages while contributing to the long-term viability of enset-based home-garden agroforestry,15
"Past and present evidence indicate that home-garden agroforestry, as part of a multifunctional socioecological landscape, can be a viable land use option and is essential for attaining sustainability (Jose 2009)",15
"The enset-based home-garden agroforestry system in southwestern and central Ethiopia is an example of a multifunctional landscape, and the people in the landscape benefit from its multiple contributions",15
"The agroforestry system can be scaled up by focusing on farmer adoption, improving extension delivery systems as well as agroforestry technology, and developing markets for agroforestry products (Blaser et al",15
An integrated landscape management approach can help to develop strategies for scaling up agroforestry by mobilizing collaborative efforts among multisector stakeholders to address the constraints (Buck et al,15
"This study on the characterization of home-garden agroforestry in the Gurage socioecological landscape of southern Ethiopia shows that home-garden composition is not uniform throughout the landscape, and it is mainly affected by AEZ",15
"The better we characterize the types of home-garden agroforestry, the more we can understand their differences and develop suitable sustainable management strategies for each of them",15
Scaling up of home-garden agroforestry needs to be implemented for enhancing productivity and achieve diverse sustainability goals,15
Site-specific spatial characterization of agroforestry systems by considering a holistic approach to reduce the local challenges supports the development of sustainable landscape management in an altering socioecological landscapes,15
Similar studies focusing on the spatial characterization of agroforestry systems elsewhere would help to understand their value and support sustainable management.,15
"Besides, there is absence of a study which quantifies clean production (net growth-emission effects) and energy import efficiency (net growth-energy import effects) as indicators of sustainable growth",8
Evidence of the sustainable growth cannot be established for South Africa and Nigeria with and without structural break,8
"A school of thought argued that factors substitution and technical change can successfully downgrade the role of resources (energy and environment) in economic growth (Solow 1993, 1997; Bretschger 2005)",8
"(2003), most productivity growth arose from increased energy consumption, while technical change engendered by innovations largely increase productivity via consumption of more energy",7
"A balanced view is that market-oriented energy and environmental policies can induce the introduction of new technologies that reduce energy utilization and environmental degradation during production process (Porter and van der Linde 1995, 1999)",15
The need to achieve complementarity among the three SDGs was stressed in a recent special report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Global Warming (IPCC 2018),13
"In the light of the above, the emerging issues are as follows: (1) what is the nature of output-energy (import)-emission nexus in South Africa and Nigeria? (2) Are there sectoral differences in the output-energy (import)-emission nexus in these countries? (3) To what extent has energy import contributed to sustainable growth in the countries? Despite the importance of these policy questions, little or no study has addressed them over time",8
"Second, most of the existing studies analyzed the drivers of energy import in which income or economic growth plays a key role but did not recognize the fact that energy import could also propel growth",8
"Above all, a major shortcoming in the literature is the absence of a study (to the best of our knowledge) that quantifies net growth-emission effects (clean production) and net growth-energy import effects (energy import efficiency) as indicators of sustainable growth",8
They could also help in the evaluation of the energy efficiency of the economy and also provide a basis for analyzing the potential impact of public policies (such as government energy subsidy program) on aggregate and sectoral outputs and emissions,7
"Given the association between energy consumption, output, and environmental pollution, this study would be helpful in the assessment of the level of achievement of some SDGs and development of policies for managing the negative environmental effects of energy import used in the production activities",7
"This present study, therefore, quantifies and analyzes the link between refined petroleum import, economic growth, and carbon emission in South Africa and Nigeria at aggregate and sectoral levels using the most recent multivariate Granger causality method and simultaneous equation model which correct for structural breaks, while threshold analysis was also done to aid policy analysis",8
"The rest of this study is organized in a way such that Section 1.2 presents stylized facts on petroleum import, economic growth, and carbon emissions in South Africa and Nigeria while Section 2 contains the review of literature",8
The relationship between economic growth and environmental quality is popularly explained using the environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis,8
The theoretical analysis of the energy-growth-emission nexus can also be discussed based on the concept of sustainable economic development and the debates on the role of energy in production,8
"As stated in the “Introduction” section of this study, there are three pillars of sustainable economic development: social, economic, and environmental sustainability (World Summit on Sustainable Development, 2002; and Oyedepo 2012)",8
"In Nigeria, Adewuyi and Awodumi (2017b) estimated a simultaneous equation model to establish a complete feedback effects among biomass energy, carbon emissions, and economic growth between 1980 and 2010",8
(2020) employed panel quantile regression technique for six West African countries (including Nigeria) and reported a U-shaped relationship between carbon emission and economic growth over 1970–2017,8
"In a similar analysis, Awodumi and Adewuyi (2020) adopted nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag technique (NARDL) to show that both positive and negative changes in petroleum consumption reduce economic growth but promote environmental quality during the 1980–2015 period",8
"In contrast, autoregressive distributed lag technique (ARDL) estimates of Adejumo (2019) reveal that economic growth worsens environmental quality in the country between 1970 and 2014, while the reverse effect is negligible",8
"Adewuyi and Awodumi (2020) found no evidence of bivariate Granger causality among energy resource import, carbon emissions, and Nigeria’s economic growth during 1980–2019",8
Further analysis of import of petroleum products by Adewuyi (2016) indicates a positive role of economic growth between 1984 and 2013,8
"Moreover, Ziramba (2010) utilized data ranging from 1980 to 2006 in a PMG panel ARDL analysis to show that import demand for crude oil is positively affected by economic growth in the country",8
"Using Pairwise Dumitrescu-Hurlin Panel causality approach for the same country, Azam (2019) found significant bidirectional causality between growth and each of energy consumption and carbon emissions, but a unidirectional causality running from energy consumption to carbon emissions",7
Granger causality estimates of Bildirici and Bakirtas (2014) found neutral link between oil (and natural gas) consumption and economic growth in the country between 1980 and 2011,8
"FMOLS estimates of Behmiri and Manso (2013) reveal significant feedback effect between carbon emission and economic growth for South Africa, but neutral in the case of Nigeria",8
It is also limited because of its inability to quantify indicators of sustainable growth (clean production and energy import efficiency) which is part of the focus of this present study,8
"For instance, ECM-Granger causality approach of Zou and Chau (2006) revealed unidirectional causality running from oil consumption to economic growth (growth hypothesis) in China between 1953 and 2002",8
"Using the impulse response function and bootstrap corrected causality methods, Pereira and Pereira (2010) found that oil, as well as coal and natural gas, caused economic growth in Portugal during the 1977–2003 period",8
It should be stated that few studies also showed that causality runs from economic growth to oil consumption rather than the other way round,8
"Irrespective of the time horizon, some studies confirmed the feedback hypothesis between oil consumption and economic growth",8
"Al-Mulali (2011) and Apergis and Payne (2014) showed evidence of a bidirectional causality between carbon emission and economic growth among MENA countries and 7 Central American countries, respectively",8
"In Wuhan, China, Rao and Yan (2020) demonstrated that the interaction between industrial waste gas emissions and industrial wastewater emissions is detrimental for economic growth",8
"This finding is not confirmed among the European Union countries where Balsalobre-Lorente and Leitão (2020) discovered positive influence of carbon emission on growth, following climate change and greenhouse gas implication of high industrial activities",13
(2019) revealed that the link between non-renewable energy consumption and carbon emission (as well as growth) is bidirectional,7
A number of studies however proved that non-renewable energy caused carbon emission with no feedback effect,7
"This result was observed for EU countries by Dogan and Sekan (2016a) and Bolük and Mert (2014), top renewable energy countries by Dogan and Sekan (2016b), and Turkey by Dogan (2015)",7
"However, there appears to be a consensus in the energy import literature on the significant role of income or economic growth in oil import demand, which is evident across the few available studies",8
(2000) portrayed that the economic growth has positive effect on crude oil import in Thailand during 1992–2010,8
"(2013) reported that for the case of Indonesia, oil import (crude oil and petroleum product) is more affected by transportation fuel consumption while the role of economic growth is insignificant",8
This positive effect of economic growth on crude oil import has also been validated in West Africa,8
"In contrast to this finding, Ediger and Berk (2011) found that changes in crude oil imports in the same country are not significantly affected by economic growth during 1968–2007",8
"(2015), where unidirectional causality runs from aggregate energy import to economic growth from 1900 to 2012",8
Most studies analyzed the drivers of energy import in which income or economic growth plays a key role but did not recognize the fact that energy import could also propel growth,8
There is no study that quantifies net growth-emission effects (clean production) and net growth-energy import effects (energy import efficiency) as indicators of sustainable growth,8
"This present study therefore fills (or addresses) the above highlighted gaps (or shortcomings) by quantifying and analyzing the link among refined petroleum import, economic growth, and carbon emission in Nigeria and South Africa at aggregate and sectoral levels using the most recent multivariate Grange causality approach and simultaneous equation model (correct for structural breaks) with threshold regression analysis",8
This implies that the net effect of growth-emission nexus leads to fall in emission (low carbon development–clean production) combined with the net effect of growth-energy nexus which should be a reduction in energy use (energy conservation–energy efficiency),7
The endogenous growth model emphasizes the role of human capital development [L(H)—knowledge] apart from physical labor and capital (L and K—primary inputs) as well as technological efficiency (A) in driving long-run real economic (income) growth (Y) (Romer 1996; and Jones and Manuelli 1997),4
"Equation 1 can be expressed in per capita terms as follows: where y = output per capita; k = investment per capita or capital-labor ratio; H = human capital development; and a = productivity growth or efficiency parameter, which is driven by some factors including imported petroleum per capita (em) and environmental quality (carbon emission per capita—co2), financial development (F), and trade openness (T)",4
"Other drivers of productivity and long-run growth are human capital development (measured as % of primary school enrolment in gross enrolment-H), financial development (measured as % of private sector credit in total credit -“F”), and trade openness (measured as % of total trade in GDP -“T”) (Shahbaz et al",4
Higher incomes could however create incentives for an economy to adopt alternative energy sources such as renewable energy which tends to reduce petroleum import,7
"According to the feedback hypothesis, there exists bidirectional link between growth and energy consumption while the neutrality hypothesis states that no causal link exists between energy consumption and growth",7
We have the following equation in per capita term: The consideration of carbon emission implication of the energy-growth nexus becomes imperative as economic growth largely rests on increased energy (petroleum) consumption,8
"8a can be written as: A simultaneous equation model can then be specified for the link between energy import, economic growth, and environmental quality (pollution) as follows: Following from the foregoing theoretical framework, the study first adopts multivariate linear and nonlinear Granger causality to establish the causal relationship among the variables",8
This study further investigates the contingency effects of petroleum import on the link between carbon emissions and economic growth,8
"The threshold regression approach suggested by Hansen (1999, 2000) is therefore adopted to explore the nonlinear behavior of carbon emission and economic growth in the presence of petroleum import",8
"As reported in Table 3, the results of correlation analysis show weak association among explanatory variables but modest association between petroleum import per capita and agricultural output per capita for Nigeria",2
"This suggests that economic growth can cause the petroleum import-carbon emission link in Nigeria, which may be traced to the ability to promote the use of carbon-reducing techniques in the face of continual consumption of petroleum import",8
"Thus, agricultural output performance is important for the link between consumption of imported petroleum products and environmental pollution, which may in turn dictate the relationship between agricultural output and petroleum import",2
There is also linear Granger causality running jointly from carbon emission and agricultural output to petroleum import,2
"In order to properly capture these effects, there is a need to set up a simultaneous equation model which will not only clearly show the effects but will also resolve the potential endogeneity issue and provide empirical estimates that will permit the calculation of net effects of growth-emission nexus and net effect of growth-energy import link that will serve as indicator of the levels of attainment of sustainable growth in South Africa and Nigeria",8
"The complete link, as well as magnitude of impact, among energy import, economic growth, and carbon emissions is further investigated using simultaneous equation model in the presence of a number of control variables",8
This means the attainment of clean production (or low carbon development) and energy efficiency,7
"Aggregate economic growth, petroleum import, and CO2 emission in Nigeria and South Africa",8
"These results indicate the existence of feedback hypothesis between petroleum import and economic growth, in line with Saboori and Sulaiman (2013), Lim et al",8
"Also, 1% improvement in economic growth in Nigeria raises (reduces) the level of carbon emission by 0.338% (1.093%) as a similar increase in emission contributes 2.882% (0.673%) to the increase (reduction) in the economic growth without (considering) the influence of structural break (Table 6)",8
"While the results for the case of South Africa supports the growth hypothesis similar to Awodumi and Adewuyi (2020) for Angola, Egypt, and Nigeria, the findings for Nigeria follow the feedback hypothesis in the energy-growth literature as confirmed by Ziramba (2009) in the author’s hypothesis between crude oil and economic growth in South Africa",8
These results appear not compatible with sustainable development as suggested by Zuo and Ai (2011) that the contribution of growth to energy efficiency and environment is lower than those contributed by energy input (import) and environment,7
"Irrespective of the influence of structural break, complete feedback hypothesis is supported among all petroleum import, carbon emission, and economic growth in both countries (except South Africa without structural break) in the manufacturing sector",8
The implications of the above analysis for sustainable growth are evident,8
The sustainable growth proposition is not established in both countries in the manufacturing sector regardless of the existence of structural break in petroleum import,8
"Thus, in South Africa, there is no evidence of clean production and energy efficiency in the manufacturing sector",7
"In both countries, growth hypothesis is confirmed between petroleum import and economic growth in the service sector, as confirmed by Awodumi and Adewuyi (2020) where petroleum consumption is found to have a significant effect on the economic growth in Angola, Egypt, and Nigeria",8
This nexus is also confirmed for Nigeria for the aggregate and agricultural output when the structural break is neglected,2
"Links among economic growth, petroleum import, and CO2 emission in Nigeria and South Africa (with structural break dummy)",8
"Source: Author; from regression results: NG, Nigeria; SA, South Africa; AGG, aggregate GDP; AGR, agricultural GDP; MAN, manufacturing GDP; SER, service GDP Links among economic growth, petroleum import, and CO2 emission in Nigeria and South Africa (without structural break dummy)",8
"The study conducts further analysis to determine the optimal level of per capita petroleum import, carbon emission, and economic growth that is necessary to spur sustainable economic growth",8
The optimal levels of per capita petroleum import below (regime 1) or above (regime 2) for which the additional import of this energy mediates the link between economic growth and carbon emission are reported in Table 7.Footnote 8 The threshold value of petroleum import per capita for the effect of GDP per capita on carbon emission per capita is 3.42 for aggregate analysis for the case of Nigeria,8
"However, while the agricultural output per capita has a significant positive influence on the carbon emission per capita only in regime 2, the service output per capita has a similar effect only in regime 1",2
"Above or below this threshold, petroleum import per capita exerted positive effect on aggregate and agricultural output per capita",2
The effect of the agricultural output per capita on this import is negligible either below or above the threshold level of the CO2 emission per capita,2
These results suggest that the increase in petroleum import largely promotes in the economic growth both at aggregate and sectoral levels irrespective of the level of carbon emissions in both countries,8
"However, keeping carbon emission below its threshold levels enhances the positive influence of economic growth on petroleum import per capita in both countries",8
"These results imply that keeping economic growth in Nigeria below the respective threshold levels reduces petroleum import, following the improvement in environmental quality, which in turn could result from less importation of petroleum products",8
"As the economic growth rises above the threshold, any increase in carbon emission tends to discourage further import of refined petroleum product",8
"In South Africa, the economic growth appears to have no influence on the effect of carbon emission on petroleum import, as this impact largely remains insignificant below or above the threshold levels of growth",8
"The study investigates the links among refined petroleum import, economic growth, and carbon emission in South Africa and Nigeria both at aggregate and sectoral levels between 1981 and 2015",8
There is no evidence of sustainable economic growth in the two countries,8
These are inputs into trade (import) and petroleum pricing policy decisions for a sustainable economic growth,8
Future research efforts should focus on analyzing a sustainable economic growth for other African and developing economies,8
"Our findings show that the conceptual development of DRR actions has gone through three general phases: disaster management in the 1990s, risk management in the 2000s, and resilient management and development in the 2010s",11
"Gradually, CCA has been widely implemented to overcome the adverse effects of climate change",13
Global actions on climate change mitigation and adaptation also go back more than 30 years,13
"In November 1988, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme jointly established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).Footnote 1 In December 1990, the 45th session of the United Nations General Assembly endorsed resolution 45/212, deciding to establish the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (United Nations 1992a) with the participation of all member states of the United Nations, to negotiate international conventions on climate change, which was finally adopted in May 1992 (United Nations 1992a)",13
Since then DRR and CCA have become the core themes for international sustainable development,11
"Therefore, many studies have suggested that addressing CCA and DRR together could be more beneficial (Clegg et al",11
"2019), and various studies have also explored ways and barriers of integrating DRR with CCA, as well as mainstreaming both into development (Mitchell et al",11
"The Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR6) has identified over 130 key risks (KRs) that may become severe under particular conditions of climate hazards, exposure, and vulnerability",13
"These key risks are represented in eight so-called Representative Key Risk (RKR) clusters of key risks relating to low-lying coastal systems; terrestrial and ocean ecosystems; critical physical infrastructure, networks, and services; living standards; human health; food security; water security; and peace and mobility (IPCC 2022)",2
"The international scientific community has warned that without quick actions on the following three urgent issues, the severe damage and impacts of climate change and extreme events will not only put the achievement of the SDGs out of reach but also erode the hard-won development gains of the past",13
"The first issue is that as human-induced climate change, including more frequent and intense extreme events, has affected and will continue to threaten the lives and livelihoods of millions to billions of people, the challenges of how to significantly reduce the emerging risks of climate change are enormous ((IPCC 2018, 2022; Rising et al",13
Around the world 3.3−3.6 billion people live in areas of high vulnerability to climate change (IPCC 2022),13
"Deep uncertainty is mainly reflected in three aspects, including uncertain scenarios of climate change, uncertain consequences of decision making, and uncertain schemes of decision making",13
"Looking back in history can help us understand the governance of international DRR and CCA, and their important processes and context (Fig",11
IPCC: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,13
"In 1999, the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) and the UNISDR Secretariat were established as the successor arrangements for the IDNDR to be responsible for the implementation of DRR plans and strategies among UN member states, with a view to further strengthening international disaster reduction efforts",11
"The Sendai Framework set out an expected outcome and seven quantitative goals to be achieved in the following 15 years, together with four priorities for actions—understanding disaster risk, strengthening disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk, investing in DRR for resilience, and enhancing disaster preparedness for effective response and to “Build Back Better” in recovery, rehabilitation, and reconstruction (Fig",11
The endorsement of the Sendai Framework opened a new chapter for DRR and sustainable development,11
"The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015−2030: Expected outcome, strategic goals, and priorities for action (United Nations 2015a) Over the past 30 years, in general, the development of DRR and related goals and priorities for action can be divided into three stages of disaster management in the 1990s, disaster risk management in the 2000s, and resilience management and development in the 2010s",11
The three stages reflect the key characteristics and important conceptual development of DRR actions at different stages rather than being separated from each other,11
Disaster management focuses on disaster-centered approaches (Fig,11
"4), and countermeasures are focused on disaster preparedness and response",11
"Disaster risk management is to prevent new disaster risk, reduce existing disaster risk, and manage residual risk on the basis of risk-based decisions",11
"A comparison between disaster management, risk management, and resilience management The 1990s coincided with the IDNDR, which emphasized the enhancement of national disaster management capabilities in disaster prevention, mitigation, preparedness, and relief",11
"The Yokohama Strategy urged the enhancement of disaster management for achieving sustainable development, and clarified that to achieve the goals of the IDNDR, disaster prevention, mitigation, and preparedness were more effective than disaster relief (IDNDR 1994)",11
The 2000s witnessed the transition from disaster management to risk management,11
The Hyogo Framework emphasized that the focus of DRR should shift to disaster risk management and that DRR should be a national and a local priority and incorporated into national development policies (United Nations 2005),11
"In the 2010s, the concept of the DRR field further shifted to resilience building",11
"Over the past 30 years, the IPCC has issued a series of comprehensive assessment reports about the state of scientific, technical, and socioeconomic knowledge on climate change impacts, risks, and adaptation",13
"The adaptation negotiations under the UNFCCC have also made significant progress, and gradually, CCA has been widely implemented to overcome the adverse effects of climate change at all levels",13
"Since 1988, every 6−7 years, nearly a thousand scientists around the world have engaged in various fields of climate change and socioeconomic and sustainable development to provide policymakers with a comprehensive explanation of the current international scientific community’s latest understanding of climate system changes in so far six assessment reports (see Fig",13
"Since 1990, IPCC’s six climate change assessment reports have made fruitful evaluations of the scientific progress of climate system changes, the impacts and risks of climate change on natural and socioeconomic systems, and the options for limiting greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating climate change",13
"The reports have become authoritative documents for the international community’s combat of climate change, providing a scientific basis for the negotiations of the UNFCCC, and an important scientific basis for governments to formulate policies and take actions on climate change mitigation and adaptation (Qin 2018)",13
"In order to assess the relationship between climate change and extreme weather events, and their impacts on the sustainable development of society, the IPCC issued a special report on “Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation” in February 2012 (IPCC 2012)",13
"The report pointed out that the extent of damage caused by extreme weather to elements at risk depends not only on the extreme events, but also on the exposure and vulnerability of the social-ecological systems",13
"The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) summarizes the adaptation needs, options, plans, and measures of climate change, and assesses the role of adaptation, the limitations of adaptation, and the transformation of adaptation in four chapters",13
Damage and loss associated with climate change impacts have emerged as key issues underpinning climate change adaptation at the global level during recent climate change negotiations under the UNFCCC (Prabhakar et al,13
"Along with the rise in climate-related hazards, and the impacts and risks of fast-onset extremes and slow-onset changes (such as sea level rise) in the climate system, adaptation started attracting more attention at COP 10 (Conference of the Parties in 2004), then received successive boosts from the adoption of the Bali Action Plan in 2007 and the following COPs in Cancun (Mexico) in 2010 and others leading up to the 2015 Paris Agreement (Shaw et al",13
"In December 2015, the Paris Climate Change Conference reached a series of results centered on the Paris Agreement, which became an important historical and binding international framework aiming to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change (United Nations 2015b).The Paris Agreement puts forward three goals: Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and striving to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial levels; Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production; and Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development",13
"The 2010 Cancun Adaptation Framework and the 2015 Paris Agreement put forward specific action frameworks to enhance global adaptation actions, and to establish an international governance and mechanism for global adaptation to climate change, which laid a good foundation for enhancing climate resilience, reducing vulnerability, and achieving the goals of the UNFCCC (Tao 2014; Chen et al",13
"In June 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (also known as the Earth Summit) adopted a series of important documents—the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (also known as the Earth Charter); Agenda 21; the Framework Convention on Climate Change; and the Convention on Biological Diversity",13
The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification was adopted on 17 June 1994,15
These development goals all closely interact and influence climate change and disaster risks,13
"For example, one of the specific targets of Goal 1 is to build the resilience of the poor and those in vulnerable situations and reduce their exposure and vulnerability to climate-related extreme events and other economic, social, and environmental shocks and disasters by 2030",1
"Disasters put development at risk, and losses caused by climate change and extreme events may severely hinder many countries from achieving SDGs",13
"At the same time, the realization of the SDGs will also help reduce human vulnerability to climate change and disasters, thereby greatly reducing disaster risks",13
"In addition, DRR focuses more on reducing the potential losses of people and assets",11
"The synergistic effects of integrated risk management, emergency management, and climate change mitigation will effectively ensure safe growth and resilient development",13
Addressing climate change may have the potential to create or exacerbate other development concerns (Kelman et al,13
Large dams might contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation through reduced dependence on fossil fuels and regulating floods,13
"Therefore, DRR and CCA should be addressed together under integrated risk management to overcome limits and maladaptation, and optimize the use of limited resources (Mitchell et al",11
"Thus, the integration of CCA and DRR can contribute to achieving the goals of international frameworks such as the SDGs (Kelman and Gaillard 2010; UN DESA 2014; Kelman 2017; Clegg et al",11
"However, there are many factors that hinder successful integration of CCA and DRR (Amaratunga et al",11
"International funding mechanisms establish and implement independent projects of CCA, DRR, and so on in target countries through international organizations (such as different agencies of the United Nations), resulting in segmented practices",11
"A scheme showing international funding mechanisms for target countries At the national level, CCA and DRR are also frequently handled independently, separated by institutional and administrative boundaries (Schipper and Pelling 2006; Kelman 2017; Dias et al",11
"In 2022, 17 national departments jointly issued the National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy 2035, with the Ministry of Ecology and Environment as the leading department",13
"In the Philippines, DRR and CCA are operationalized independently of one another (Florano 2015; De Leon and Pittock 2017)",11
"This is also the case in national level arrangements in the UK, where DRR and CCA are managed by separate government departments (Dias et al",11
"To change this situation, effective governance mechanisms, such as policy, agreement, culture, leadership, and coordination need to be established among international organizations, as well as between international organizations and target countries, while countries also need to establish overarching national risk governance systems (Fig",16
"Integrated risk governance solution among international organizations and countries Moreover, a wide range of climate change impacts and disaster risks (especially the cascading and systemic risks) are understudied or challenging to quantify, and are missing from current evaluations of climate change and other disaster risks to lives and assets (Mamuji and Etkin 2019; Mcglade et al",13
"Over the past 30 years, the evolution of paradigms in DRR actions can be roughly divided into three stages—disaster management in the 1990s, disaster risk management in the 2000s, and resilient management and development in the 2010s",11
Climate change adaptation has been widely carried out to overcome the adverse effects of climate change,13
"This article proposes a framework for addressing climate change and disaster risks in the context of resilient, sustainable development",13
"The synergistic effects of integrated risk management, emergency management, and climate change mitigation will effectively support safe growth and resilient development",13
"To successfully integrate CCA and DRR, it is urgently needed to transform governance mechanisms, and to strengthen cooperation among international organizations, as well as between international organizations and countries, while countries also need to establish overarching national risk governance systems",11
"Moreover, better data, actionable information, and relevant knowledge are needed for understanding climate change and disaster risks in a context of deep uncertainty",13
Inherited system features and challenges that can hinder urban planning initiatives must be taken into consideration before a path towards a sustainable future can be established,11
"Based on the revised literature, the potential lock-ins of climate-friendly and sustainable urban development are not adequately discussed",11
"Moreover, while urban sustainability and resilience are often treated as overlapping areas, there is a lack of publications that carefully examine their interlinked long-term perspectives for any hindering effects",11
"To achieve the proposed mitigation and adaptation objectives, a change is required in the urban planning status quo, which is heavily burdened by the existence of path dependencies (Hurlimann et al",11
"As sharp GHG reduction targets and resilience-related efforts coincide with broader sustainability goals for urban areas, these aspects need to be integrated into current urban planning processes to avoid lock-ins and foster transformative change (A",11
"This research focuses on the areas of urban sustainability, resilience, lock-in, and the integration of these three fields in the urban context",11
"To reveal and analyze the gaps in literature aiming to integrate urban sustainability, resilience, and lock-in, the WoS database was selected",11
"The final search terms were “sustainab*” for sustainability, “resilien* or adapt*” for resilience, and “lock-in” or “path dependen*” or “lock in” or “locking in” or “embedded*” and “climate change” for lock-in, which resulted in 10 090, 5129, and 448 papers, respectively",13
"The following questions were raised to gain insights into research trends and draw conclusions regarding the simultaneous consideration of urban sustainability, adaptation, and the lock-in effect",11
"Nonetheless, by the end of the decade, practice-oriented studies on smart and/or resilient cities have become the most influential",11
"Although interdisciplinary topics, such as urban sustainability and urban resilience, are at the forefront of current urban studies, the trade-offs or co-benefits regarding the proposed interventions are rarely studied in sustainability-oriented articles",11
"(2015) published one of the first ever manuscripts focusing on climate resilience, the lock-in effect, and the related sustainability challenges in urban areas",13
"Kaika (2017) then considered potential path dependencies and lock-in effects in relation to smart and sustainable cities, which is almost entirely in contrast to what can be found in the literature from the previous year",11
"Among the papers from 2018, Zhang and Li (2018) linked urban resilience and sustainability into a common theoretical framework that can address long-term path dependencies, lock-in opportunities, or other unintended adverse impacts of an improperly designed urban development action",11
"Sharifi (2019) explored the role of urban forms in relation to the overall resilience of a given city, promoting the advantages of compact, polycentric, and landscape-connected cities. Finally, Olazabal and Gopegui (2021) strongly recommended integrating adaptation needs into the current urban development framework to ensure sustainable adaptation efforts",11
Term co-occurrence network of the most cited urban sustainability papers Those articles that primarily discuss urban resilience focused on infrastructure-related issues through green spaces and land-use patterns,11
"Among others, Meerow and Newell (2017) have proposed a framework for urban planning that facilitates the identification of high-priority areas for green infrastructure implementation",11
Several papers addressed resilience in the face of the epidemic and stated that a radical change in urban planning is required,11
(2021) introduced the concept of the 15-minute city and highlighted the importance of proximity and accessibility in urban planning,11
These aspects are overrepresented in lock-in papers and are less related to climate change issues,13
"Term co-occurrence network of the most cited urban lock-in papers Furthermore, Kaika (2017) argues that finding path dependencies should be more emphasized in urban planning instead of focusing on different labels such as safe, sustainable, resilient, and inclusive",11
"The main research questions were related to the thermal effects of different types of green spaces, the benefits of green infrastructure, urban planning implications, and residents’ usage patterns (du Toit et al",11
"Regarding urban planning and resilience theory, the introduction of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 led to a steep increase in the number of critical papers related to business-as-usual methodologies, equity issues related to resilience, and the focus on sustainability indicators (Anguelovski et al",11
"Other papers focus on urban planning, social aspects, barriers, and drivers related to green infrastructure through frameworks or case studies (Matthews et al",11
"The concept of resilience, urban planning, and—in most cases—green infrastructure appeared side by side in most qualitative studies, especially in the second half of the analysis period",11
"Finally, it should be noted that only a few studies have applied a quantitative methodology to support urban planning decisions",11
This indicates a lack of theme–methodology coupling concerning the quantitative analysis of resilient urban planning decisions,11
None of the analyzed papers applied quantitative methods related to resilience and urban planning (due to their institutional focus),11
"The majority of selected urban sustainability studies up to 2017 are related to applied aspects, such as the smart technology implementation, land-use patterns, Chinese urbanization, etc., with no or minimal consideration of resilience or lock-in effects",11
"However, as of 2017, the selected papers pointed to several conflicting issues about the long-term effects of originally sustainability-oriented urban development interventions",11
"With the spread of these highly overlapping but fundamentally different concepts (urban sustainability, resilience, and lock-in), their simultaneous consideration became essential",11
"Thus, articles related to urban sustainability and resilience defined sustainability as the ultimate goal of urban development actions",11
"Overall, the urban sustainability discourse has shifted significantly in the second half of the 2010s, looking at resilience and lock-ins in much more detail to improve and ensure broader sustainability",11
"(2016) provided the most comprehensive definition, meaning “the ability of an urban system—and all its constituent socio-ecological and socio-technical networks across temporal and spatial scales—to maintain or rapidly return to desired functions in the face of a disturbance, to adapt to change, and to quickly transform systems that limit current or future adaptive capacity.” Economic resilience is an exception, this emerging term means economic recovery (in the face of the pandemic) (Francke and Korevaar 2021; McCartney et al",8
"Interestingly, while urban planning-related adaptation papers do not tend to directly acknowledge lock-ins and path dependence, most consider them in an indirect manner",11
"Embedding flexibility, as a key resilience feature, in water-sensitive urban planning (Radhakrishnan et al",11
"In terms of resilience, lock-ins have played a central role in urban planning, primarily through institutional considerations",11
"The main issues were smart cities and urbanization in sustainability; green infrastructure, land-use, and urban planning in resilience; and housing, migration, and regional clusters in lock-in studies",11
"As we have observed, any overlap between the three paradigms was only examined in the field of urban planning, and even these studies lack the aspect of analyzing the three paradigms simultaneously",11
"As such, most articles that explore the various aspects of urban planning, mention the lock-in phenomenon without going into greater detail regarding its specifics",11
"The integration of resilience and sustainability is in a much more advanced phase, due to the launch of SDG 11 (Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable) and the New Urban Agenda",11
"Besides deeper integration of the lock-in phenomenon, we have identified another shortcoming in urban planning studies: the lack of quantitative approaches to support (ex-ante) or evaluate (ex-post) decision-making",11
"This differentiated view enabled us to compare the mutual embedding of urban sustainability, resilience, and lock-in from a macro perspective and to focus on horizontal aspects",11
"Apart from the theoretically oriented thoughts on the results of our study, through the mutually reinforcing mechanisms, carbon lock-ins play a crucial role in urban management processes by delaying further transitions (Seto et al",11
"In summary, the integration of lock-in analyses into urban sustainability and resilience studies is still in its infancy. However, all these highly interdisciplinary concepts unquestionably require the incorporation and in-depth analysis of long-term impacts and inherited system characteristics alongside barriers and trade-offs to avoid unsustainable solutions or maladaptation",11
Sustainability and resilience inherently have a positive meaning through the desired outcomes of climate-friendly and sustainable urban development processes,11
The study findings emphasize that firm size is highly influenced by sustainable economic development and significantly conditioned by a CSR strategy and a capable management team,8
"Therefore, firms can gain a significant competitive advantage on the market through more agile processes, creative and innovative solutions addressing ESG problems, or the facilitation of human capital development (Babasanya et al",4
"Additionally, the transition to sustainable growth models on a macroeconomic level creates distinct paths, even when common understanding is achieved",8
The latter’s involvement can be seen through their recommendation that firms disclose their ESG practices by 2030 to address how severe environmental threats due to climate change can be counteracted in ways that do not affect the financial performance of companies,13
"Incentives in favor of sustainable growth seem too low, discouraging companies from taking the next step toward a green economy",8
"The European Union’s Green Deal looks at environmental, social issues, innovation, and circular economy and is designed to lead to sustainable development",12
"These targets are transposed into firm sustainability practices related to transformations concerning vision, mission, objectives, policies, and processes that lead to sustainable economic development and create an organizational culture promoting continuous transformation toward sustainability (Khaled et al",8
"Instead, firms’ transformation in achieving those SDGs determines indirect positive effects on human capital-related SDGs, such as SDG1, which leads to poverty elimination through better productivity rates and premises for increases in employees’ wages, or SDG 3, which generate improvements in employees’ health and well-being",3
"Still, getting benefits from ESG efforts is often referred to as trade-offs made, especially on the objectives of SDG 12, which means that cultural factors influencing people’s behavior become even more critical",12
"Management score is included in our analysis to understand the role of management incentives in ensuring firms’ sustainable economic development, as motivated managers are more likely to obtain better sustainable economic growth through environmental and social performance (Rezaee 2017)",8
"Earnings sustainable growth represents a current dilemma in the literature, especially from the lens of methodological issues",8
"Instead, those values suggest that firms have understood how important it is to follow the approach of a sustainable economic growth approach",8
Results indicate that sustainable economic development is highly influenced by firm size (0.575) and significantly conditioned by the existence of a CSR strategy (0.739) and a capable management team (0.510),8
"Sustainable economic development does not resume only to isolated ESG projects, or compliance with minimum legal requirements, as it has to be understood beyond those boundaries, such as the design of innovative vision, objectives, and strategies, the creation of concise, clearly defined, and coherent policies, or proper monitoring and control tools",8
"Those results show the negative perspective on the efforts firms make for sustainable economic development, as ESG activities are mainly seen as expenses without immediate benefits for the firms, with a direct impact on firms’ cash flow and lower effect moderated by earnings management on ROA",8
"(2021) suggested that the impact of ESG-related project costs is observed on the next year’s level of firm reported free cash flow, while positive effects of those costs are observed only 2 years later, as the value creation generated through lean managements, cost improvements initiatives, productivity increase, employees’ motivation, or even reputational benefits are potential on short term",8
The transition to a sustainable economic growth model represents an essential objective nowadays for firms,8
"Also, managers without motivation are not expected to commit to the efforts of transition to a sustainable economic growth model agreed by shareholders and stakeholders",8
"Instead, higher profitability determines an increase in the ESG score, which might be caused by a higher awareness of the potential benefits of firms’ sustainable economic growth (\(Coef.=2.159, F stat.=6.537, Sig.<1\%\))",8
"Moreover, these results indirectly show the increasing role of the human factor in the equation of firms’ sustainable economic development",8
"It leads to higher employee motivation, directly affecting business operations profitability and indirectly affecting firms’ innovation capabilities, including digitalization and business process improvements",9
"ESG strategy and project initiatives are the basis for higher productivity, technological progress and innovation, continuous improvements and processes redesign, or simply optimal knowledge management (Kordab et al",8
Current business models for EV ownership and the transition to net-net zero emissions are not working for households in the lowest income brackets,13
"In the last couple of years, ambient air pollution and climate change concerns have reinforced the UK's ambitious policy to transition to electric vehicles (EVs)",13
"A subscription model can extend within a warranty period,—and unlocking the sustainability case for LIBs' raw materials recycling or second-life use with a low-carbon grid in mind, i.e., when LIB power falls below 70–80% of their original capacity",12
"As a responsible business model, a subscription model can be useful to stimulate net-zero emissions towards a low-carbon grid, i.e., degraded EV batteries used as stationary energy storage to offer renewable energy grid services [21]",7
"A battery modularity business model is an example of a closed-loop business model where vehicle manufacturers, dealers, or registered certified businesses take ownership of repurposing and recycling batteries and provide battery replacement solutions for consumers [9]",12
"For grid storage and net-zero emissions policy goals, 80% performance of second-life LIB is deemed good enough to power renewable energy sources from solar or wind for household energy storage applications until the end of the LIB's second life",7
"In many ways, a modularity business model via renewable energy sources can help meet peak power demand within households and improve households' energy efficiency in the over 3.5 million fuel poverty among low-income families in the UK whilst boosting household income [22]",7
"Besides, without battery technological advancements as safe energy storage devices, it will be challenging to fully harness cleaner and renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, within the built environment and the EV value chain, e.g., within households, manufacturing and decarbonising the mining sector",7
"Incentives and investments are useful for spurring consumer-end acceptance—i.e., testing, recovering, replacing, repurposing, and recycling LIBs—in such a closed-loop model designed for the second-life battery marketplace",12
"For example, the ReLiB project, including auto manufacturers and expert registered businesses such as Circular Energy Storage, can play a crucial role in improving EV battery recycling efficiency in the UK",12
"Given this, an EV battery upgrade plan (with a battery warranty for a total of 100,000 miles or five or a  maximum of 8 years, whichever comes first) should aim towards a circular economy design in generating new revenue and marketplaces that support a low-carbon grid",12
"The study acknowledges that the EV value chain and low-carbon revolution will require a substantial increase in mining several essential critical raw minerals and metals, such as lithium,  cobalt, manganese, nickel and copper, in the roll-out of charging infrastructure and wind turbines for EVs [9]",7
"This means a global value chain based on a responsible circular business model that addresses raw mineral extraction, manufacturing, transportation, operations, distribution, sales, use, reuse, repair, remanufacturing, recycling and innovation mechanisms, as shown in Fig. 2",12
" The electric vehicle transition and battery circularity sustainable business model Accordingly, a careful balance of the upstream value chain and resource scarcity as part of a responsible circular business model, e.g., in the UK's Green Industrial Revolution Plan, must address the dependency on China and other non-UK and Asian countries on EV LIB raw material sourcing and cell and module manufacturing, including pack assembly and recycling [9]",12
"Notably, millions of ICE vehicles exported from Europe, the United States, and Japan to the developing world are of poor quality, contributing significantly to air pollution and hindering efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change [24]",13
Having socially innovative business models with the right legislative frameworks will become valuable in the UK Green Industrial Revolution Plan to deliver the UN SDGs' and 2015 Paris Agreement's promises,13
Business models and future work must integrate modularity circular economy designs into EV programs to stimulate net-zero emissions and a low-carbon grid,12
New EV battery technological development and 2050 net-zero targets must ensure research and development policies are in concert with solid-state batteries and the  development of at least a Gigafactory on the UK soil by 2023,9
The international development community is off-track from meeting targets for alleviating global malnutrition,2
"Meanwhile, there is growing consensus across scientific disciplines that fish plays a crucial role in food and nutrition security",2
"The global sustainable development community is off track from meeting international targets for hunger and malnutrition (an abnormal physiological condition caused by inadequate, unbalanced, or excessive consumption of macro- and/or micronutrients)",2
"While childhood stunting prevalence has begun to decrease, the rate of decline is insufficient to achieve the desired 50% reduction by 2030; meanwhile, rates of obesity are rising in all regions of the world (FAO et al",2
"The causes of malnutrition are multifaceted, but access to diverse, nutritious, safe, and affordable food is crucial to addressing the problem",2
"Yet, because discussions of fish and food and nutrition security have traditionally been disconnected from one another (Béné et al",2
"2015), fish food systems fall short of their full potential to enhance food and nutrition security for those most in need",2
"Creating policies that support the food and nutrition security contributions of fish—both wild caught and farmed—will require food, fisheries, and aquaculture policy discourses to reframe fish as food, a subtle but meaningful departure from the dominant paradigm of fish as a natural resource",2
"Here, we outline the importance of fish to food and nutrition security",2
"We then provide evidence that international efforts to achieve food and nutrition security under-represent fish and, at the same time, that capture fisheries and aquaculture policy dialogues are disconnected from objectives of nourishing the world",2
"To help address this challenge, we identify four key pillars of research needs and policy directions that would emerge from a ‘fish as food’ global policy dialogue and enhance the role of fish in achieving food and nutrition security",2
ASF (including fish) consumption is associated with reduced childhood stunting due to higher concentrations and bioavailability of key micronutrients compared to plant-source foods (Headey et al,2
"Additionally, fish high in essential fatty acids can reduce risks for cardiovascular disease, with 1.4 million cardiovascular-related deaths worldwide in 2010 attributable to diets low in fish-source omega-3 fatty acids (Lim et al",3
"The targets for the second SDG (SDG 2—Zero Hunger) define aims for agricultural systems that are supposed to drive policy reforms and funding; for example, resilient agricultural practices, land and soil quality, plant and livestock gene banks, agricultural subsidies, and access to land.Footnote 4 Yet, SDG 2 targets do not mention fisheries or aquaculture by name, nor do they offer specific guidance relevant to fish production systems",2
"Notably, SDG 14 excludes freshwater fisheries and inland aquaculture entirely",14
"Focusing on fish exclusively as a natural resource presumes that management need only to attend to the economic and biological health of fish production sectors, providing little guidance on how policies contribute to or impede the attainment of food and nutrition security",2
Framing fish as food can stimulate innovative policies and actions that support the role of fish in contributing to global food and nutrition security,2
Policy and funding decisions are constrained by the paucity of metrics to assess and communicate the contributions of fish to food and nutrition security,2
"However, improving assessment and governance of subsistence and low-revenue fisheries may be economically—as well as socially—meaningful, given the high economic returns on investments from reducing childhood stunting (Hoddinott et al",2
This knowledge is crucial to raising the profile of fish in broader food and nutrition security policies and investment priorities,2
"Availability, access, and stability are key dimensions of food and nutrition security that can be directly influenced by policy, by linking governance of production with governance of distribution and post-harvest processes",2
"The distribution of capital and property rights to harvest and produce fish is an essential consideration in promoting equitable nutrition and livelihood benefits from fish value chains, especially given the tight links between harvesting and post-harvesting institutions in large- and small-scale commercial fisheries (Asche et al",1
"land use, water footprint, greenhouse gas emissions, overfishing) and human health impacts (e.g",14
But these same high feed prices incentivize overfishing in poorly managed fisheries that provide feed inputs,14
The salience of these trade-offs will likely increase as terrestrial food production systems become more stressed by climate change (IPCC 2019),13
There is growing consensus about the need to recognize the crucial contributions of fish to global food and nutrition security,2
Fisheries and aquaculture are falling short of their potential to contribute to nutrition and food security,2
This pattern will continue unless nutrition and food security are explicit policy and funding priorities,2
"service/input providers, processors, distributors, etc.) and related processes (e.g., processing efficiency, energy use, food loss and waste, overconsumption of protein) across fish value chains to promote sustainability (Tlusty et al",12
The food and nutrition security argument is crucial for the many small-scale and developing country fisheries around the world in which the economic costs of improving management would seem to outweigh potential economic returns on investment,2
Demonstrating the potential of these fisheries to enhance food and nutrition security can encourage governments and international development organizations to invest where they have failed to do so in the past,2
Both capture fisheries and aquaculture already make crucial contributions to global food and nutrition security,2
This research aimed to understand how civil defense experts are dealing with the climate change topic: what they learn and think about,13
The identification of civil defense’ perceptions on climate change is an important step in seeking pathways for increasing capacity building to achieve disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation,13
"However, this field of science has had a marginal role in carrying out research on climate change and in influencing climate change adaptation policy agenda (Victor 2015; Koehrsen et al",13
"Sociologists have used different approaches to study climate change, such as the sociology of loss (Elliott 2018), the drivers of climate change at macro-, meso-, and micro-scale levels and the implications for social justice (Dietz et al",13
"They have also been involved in multi- and interdisciplinary research through three main approaches: (1) coupled human-natural systems, such as sustainability science; (2) individual-level analysis; and (3) post-political framing of climate change (Weaver et al",13
"Individual-level analysis focuses on how individuals think and feel about climate change, the potential psychosocial impacts of climate change on their lives, their consumption behaviors, and the drivers that influence their perceptions and reactions to climate change",13
"It also ignores the debate about intersectionality, in which multiple discriminations as a result of gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and so on can lead to additional exposure to climate change risks and impacts (Dietz et al",13
"Most studies on perception of climate change have been carried out in developed countries, but there is a lack of knowledge about climate change perception in developing countries (Capstick et al",13
"In 2021, 2,600 civil society participants in all Brazilian states and the Federal District responded to a survey on perceptions of climate change (ITS 2021)",13
"Civil society’s perceptions about climate change are important to guide public policies, but usually the perceptions of public officers are not considered in those studies (Márquez 2015; Terorotua et al",13
"2022), and we did not find any previous work addressing the civil defense profession’s perception about climate change in Brazil",13
This study aimed to understand how civil defense experts are dealing with the topic of climate change: what they have learned and think about it,13
"Civil defense experts are assigned to carry out DRM activities, which requires knowledge about climate-related hazards (heavy rains, floods, droughts, and so on), as well as vulnerabilities, capacities, and risk mitigation measures (Wisner et al",13
"This type of social research is important for developing countries such as Brazil, where the social research on climate change is emergent (Fleury et al",13
"Subsequently, we highlight some recommendations for policy making in climate change adaptation",13
"Climate change is among the hazard drivers associated with disasters, either directly or indirectly",13
"The Ministry of Environmental Affairs published in 2015 an updated version of the National Adaptation Plan to Climate Change, proposing a number of measures in several sectors, including the civil defense and protection area (Brazil 2015)",13
"The survey had 25 questions, which were related to two main dimensions: (1) What do civil defense experts learn/know about climate change? and (2) What do they think about climate change? The multiple-choice questions used a 5-point Likert scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree",13
"The data collected were analyzed with descriptive statistics by the research team considering three main issues: (1) perceptions about climate change; (2) sources of information and levels of trust in relation to these sources; and (3) perceptions about the roles and responsibilities of civil defense to cope with disaster risks, climate change, and sustainable development goals",13
This section discusses the main findings according to three main topics: (1) perceptions about climate change; (2) sources of information and trust; and (3) civil protection in an era of climate change,13
"Most of the civil defense officers who participated in the survey (77.6%) totally agreed that climate change is happening, while 17.8% partially agreed",13
"This finding was similar to other studies conducted with the general public: respondents in Costa Rica (94%), Brazil, and Spain (both 92%) were the most likely to think that climate change is happening, while people in Indonesia (78%), Egypt, and Saudi Arabia (both 79%) were the least likely (Leiserowitz et al",13
"When considering the gender dimensions in the civil defense sector, very high percentage of females (84.2%) and LGBTQIAFootnote 1 (100%) strongly agreed that “climate change is happening.” This response is higher than in the male group (74.6%), confirming previous studies that showed similar findings when analyzing civil society participants (Finucane et al",13
"This pattern based on gender was also observed among those who strongly agreed with the statement “I am concerned about how climate change is already intensifying extreme events, which triggers disasters where I work” (Table 1)",13
"The percentages of those who strongly agreed that “climate change is happening” is on average 18.6% higher than those who were “concerned about how climate change is already intensifying extreme events” (Table 1), and the percentage differences between the two questions are higher in the LGBTQIA (20%) and female (19.7%) groups (Table 1)",13
"The formal education levels of respondents were a variable that influenced the research findings about climate change perception, as reported by some other studies",13
"For instance, a survey with 2,600 civil society participants in Brazil (ITS 2022) indicates that those with a graduate degree have more knowledge about climate change than those with a high school degree",13
"More than a half (62.4%) of the interviewees thought that climate change is triggered by a combination of human and natural factors, while 34.8% considered that it is completely anthropogenic",13
"A small proportion believed that climate change is exclusively a natural phenomenon (1.1%), others (1.2%) stressed that the causes are unknown, while 0.5% stated that “I don’t believe that climate change is happening.” When asked about human influence, 75.3% completely agreed with the affirmation “Human influence has been contributing to change the planet’s climate with uneven intensity in the last 100 years.” Regarding the question “Do you believe you can do something to reduce climate change?”, a small proportion of the respondents (8.8%) replied “no,” a larger group (28.7%) stated they “don’t know,” while 62.5% chose “yes.” The participants considered that their main contribution to the reduction of climate change effects is working on awareness campaigns directed toward the general population",13
The respondents emphasized that tackling climate change is a collective task and everyone plays a major role as a citizen,13
"In our survey, the participants had to identify the main channel through which they receive information about climate change",13
"For instance, the 2022 survey program jointly sponsored by the ITS (Instituto de Tecnologia & Sociedade do Rio), the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, and the IBOPE (Brazilian Institute of Public Opinion and Statistics) was undertaken with civil society participants whose responses indicated that media vehicles are less accessed than websites, WhatsApp groups, and social media",13
"These findings show us the importance of thinking about climate change communication initiatives using both formal and informal channels, including the public sectors that cope with weather-related extreme events, such as civil defense",13
"Most of the research participants (51.7%) partially agreed that the climate change information they received is sufficient for the civil protection actions that were part of their responsibilities, while 25.9% stated that such information is not enough",13
"Interestingly, the participants stated that they are able to understand most of the information disseminated: 26.3% completely agreed with the affirmation “I easily understand the climate change information received,” while 55.6% partially agreed",13
"It is a consensus that climate change is happening (77.6% agreed on that), but who provides the information makes a real difference",13
"The participants agreed (80.6% totally and 16.8% partially) that climate change will trigger additional challenges to DRM, demanding new strategies to act on civil protection and defense issues",13
"When questioned whether the civil defense sector is prepared to cope with more disasters intensified by climate change, most respondents (49.2%) partially agreed that the sector is prepared, while 10.1% considered they are prepared",13
"Although 60.2% had not received capacity building training in climate change topics, a similar proportion of the respondents (59.3%) believed that they are totally or partially prepared to cope with extreme events",13
A significant portion of the respondents (60.7% of participants with more than two years of experience on this issue) believed that experience in civil protection will be sufficient to cope with disasters intensified by climate change,13
We were also interested in knowing what topics the participants considered important enough to increase their capacity building on climate change issues,13
"The participants claimed that more information was needed related to mitigation and climate change adaptation (CCA) strategies (74.6%), basic notions about meteorology (68.1%), workshops about perceptions on extreme events risks (67%), social and environmental vulnerability analysis (61.3%), interpretation of technical information and weather forecasting (61%), and DRM for coastal areas (34.2%)",13
"Other suggestions, which attracted limited support among participants (8%), included specific adaptation measures according to the biomes and multiple hazards encountered locally, especially fires and droughts; risk communication and educational strategies for citizens; communication between governmental agencies in different government levels, and exchange of information through the same monitoring platforms; basic notions about hydrology and watershed modeling; detailed climate change impacts for regional and municipal scales where civil protection actions happened; exchange of knowledge between municipalities that have implemented mitigation and CCA measures; improving knowledge about environmental law; increasing accessibility to technologies and software that can support DRM actions; information about financial mechanisms for mitigation and CCA; and nature-based solutions to reduce disaster risks",13
"For the 59.3% of the respondents who believed that they are totally or partially prepared to cope with extreme events, the survey asked them to identify what the civil defense bodies could do to respond to climate change",13
"A small proportion of the participants (2.8%) indicated that responses to climate change are not included in the mission of civil protection, while others (1.3%) did not know what to do",13
Although the Resilient Cities campaign has been disseminated in the civil defense sector—Brazil had 300 cities inscribed in this campaign in October 2021—other agendas still need to be promoted,11
"In February 2020, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and partners launched the Peoples’ Climate Vote—the largest survey of public opinion on climate change ever conducted",13
"The survey aimed to provide the policymakers with reliable information on whether people considered climate change an emergency, and how they would like their countries to respond",13
"The research findings indicate that 64% of people consider climate change an emergency, and there were slight differences across regions of the world: in Western Europe and North America (72%), Eastern Europe and Central Asia (65%), Arab States (64%), Latin America and the Caribbean (63%), Asia and Pacific (63%), and Sub-Saharan Africa (61%)",13
"(1998), who stated that concern about global warming tended to be highest in Canada, most of Europe, and South America—in the survey of the UNDP and University of Oxford (2021), South America was not among the most concerned with climate change",13
"(2021), who indicated that 74% of 1,071 Americans, surveyed in October 2016, were concerned about climate change",13
Our interpretation of this recommendation led us to shed light on the perception of public sectors about climate change,13
There are few studies that investigate the perception of public authorities about climate change,13
"(2020), for instance, interviewed public authorities and assessed their perceptions on climate change in French Polynesia",13
"Although the respondents did not identify climate change as a major current issue, they were concerned about climate-related problems, such as sea-level rise",13
"Interestingly, a survey conducted with 252 public authorities in the state of Campeche, Mexico, identified the fact that they did not consider climate change as a major issue—similar to what Terorotua et al",13
"(2020) identified in French Polynesia—but, in the Campeche case, public authorities did not consider sea-level rise and coastal erosion as problems related to climate change (Márquez 2016)",13
"Márquez’s study, conducted in Campeche, showed that public authorities have a basic knowledge about climate change, obtaining information from informal channels such as the television (71%), Internet (42%), and radio (25%)",13
"Civil protection has an important role in emergency management, DRM, the promotion of climate change awareness, and the civil society’s preparedness to weather-related extreme events",13
"For instance, a survey conducted with 5,184 adults in the Philippines, between March and April 2017, “examined the association between perceptions of climate change and actions taken to prepare for disasters” (Bollettino et al",13
"Most respondents (59.9%) had not heard of, and did not feel well informed about, climate change and their awareness about it varied regionally",13
"The study indicated that the levels of disaster preparedness vary widely by region, showing that only a third of Filipinos undertake measures to prepare for disasters (Bollettino et al",11
"Civil protection in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is usually occupied by those who considered themselves as “male.” Of the 1,063 respondents in our Brazilian study, 69.7% were male; another study about climate change perception in the civil protection of Campeche State, Mexico, showed that 95% of the positions were held by males (Márquez 2015)",13
Our survey in Brazil revealed that most civil defense officers thought that climate change is happening,13
"The percentage of females and LGBTQIA persons who strongly agreed that “climate change is happening” was higher than that of the male group, confirming previous research that showed similar findings when analyzing civil society participants",13
"“There were consistently very high levels of demand for climate action among people with post-secondary education in all countries, ranging from LDCs [Least Developed Countries], such as Bhutan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (both 82%), to wealthy countries like France (87%) and Japan (82%)” (UNDP and University of Oxford, 2021, p",13
"According to these authors, the low level of concern among the institutional actors of French Polynesia with respect to climate change is not related to the absence of knowledge of the phenomenon and/or its impacts",13
Most municipal civil protection officers in Brazil completely agreed that climate change will cause additional challenges to their DRM activities,13
"The need for these capacity building activities about climate change was also recommended by Márquez (2016) after studying the climate change perception of civil protection in Campeche, Mexico",13
"Data literacy to analyze graphs and maps, skills to access software and tools, training courses to communicate disaster risks on social media, participatory methods to engage general public in formulation and implementation of CCA and DRR plans, and media training are some of civil defense needs of capacitation (Brazil 2021)",11
"Future studies about perception of civil protection should include these political dimensions, as well as investigate how climate change perception changes over time, especially in current circumstances of “infodemic,” where the activism of the climate change denial movement seems only to increase, influencing policy making, religion, the private market, and so on (Dunlap and McCright 2015)",13
Few studies have investigated the climate change perception of public sector personnel,13
The aim was to understand what civil protection officers learn and think about climate change,13
The percentage of those who strongly agreed that “climate change is happening” (77.6%) is on average 18.6% higher than those who are “concerned about how climate change is already intensifying extreme events.” This suggests that a significant portion of civil protection officers do not perceive the association between climate change and the intensification of extreme events,13
"They believe that climate change will cause additional obstacles to DRM, but they face challenges to identify indicators that the changes are happening",13
Some research projects around the world have worked to identify local indicators of climate change impacts using citizen science techniques,13
Research approaches based on ethnography would also be useful to understand the everyday challenges that civil defense officers face to deal with data and information about disaster risks and climate change,13
Receiving climate change information is not synonymous with capacity building,13
"A small portion of civil protection officers feel prepared to deal with climate change—let alone being required to institute capacity building activities about mitigation and CCA, as well as basic notions about meteorology, social and environmental vulnerability analysis, and implementation of nature-based solutions, among others",13
"The Ministry of Environmental Affairs, SEDEC, and Cemaden in Brazil need to bridge DRR and CCA by creating a joint national plan to continuously strengthen institutional capacities at the municipal level",11
The paradigm of sustainable tourism policy implications aims to prioritize the decoupling association between tourism development and environmental deterioration,12
"The regression findings affirm that higher international tourist arrivals, renewable energy use, and gross capital formation curb emissions in the long run",7
"Besides, the coefficient of the interaction term between tourist arrivals and capital formation is evidenced to be positive implying capital formation has not been conducive in the pathway of sustainable tourism practices",12
"On the other hand, the negative coefficient of the interaction term between education index and renewable energy consumption unveils the importance of educational advancement in the pathway of renewable energy penetration to thrive environmental sustainability",7
"Over the last two decades, the term “sustainable tourism” has attracted a lot of interest from researchers and policymakers (Nepal et al",12
"Consequent to the announcement of the year 2017 as International Year for Sustainable Tourism for Development by the United Nations, most of the nation’s worldwide are re-exploring the impacts of tourism and formulating policies to promote sustainable tourism practices which can contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)",12
"The beauty of the idea of sustainable tourism lies in the fact that the five pillars of sustainable tourism (UNWTO 2018) are aligned with the 17 SDGs, which means a country if targets to achieve growth in sustainable tourism will automatically also progress in all 17 SDG’s (refer Fig. 7 in Appendix)",12
"Therefore, in this study, we have analyzed the current state and impact of tourism in India on environmental development while controlling for gross capital formation (GCF), renewable energy consumption (REC), and educational progress in the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) framework",7
"Consequently, policy planning of fostering sustainable tourism practices is designed to not only advocate the social, cultural, and economic welfare of the nation but also to meet the ecological commitment through the pursuit of environmental well-being",12
"In addition, capital investment in the tourism sector can be viewed as one of the vital drivers to thrive sustainable tourism practices",12
"To begin, traditional EKC literature has used energy consumption data on renewable and fossil fuels, aggregated or disaggregated levels",7
"Supposedly, this is the first attempt in the existing vast body of literature that examines the composite effect of educational prosperity in the expansion pathway of renewable energy on environmental welfare",7
This study aims to address this interaction effect of tourism development and capital formation in the correction of environmental degradation,15
"In the modern era, climate change mitigation has been receiving serious policy attention and has become the center of policy debate throughout the globe",13
"Hence, the environmental deterioration related to CO2 emissions and its connections with tourism development, economic growth, and REC has been discussed briefly in this segment",8
"The tourism sector is crucial for the economic and financial development of a nation for its considerable contribution to driving economic growth with employment opportunities, forex earnings, and infrastructural development",8
"With the mounting concern of global warming and climate change, the developing nations are in the rapid transit phase moving towards the service industries to be benefitted from the competitive advantage, while also fostering policy thrust to the sustainability dimensions to have minimal impact on environmental quality",13
"With no exception, the Government of India has also undertaken various policy agendas in the tourism sector aimed at pursuing sustainable tourism practices in this sector",12
"Notes: Foreign tourist arrivals and CO2 emissions per capita are shown in the primary (left) and secondary (right) axes, respectively Plot of renewable energy consumption and gross capital formation",7
This can primarily be attributed to the unplanned and unregulated expansion of urbanization and industrialization with special emphasis being placed on energy-intensive manufacturing value added of GDP to resuscitate the home-grown manufacturing as an initiative to the “Make in India” project (Bandyopadhyay and Rej 2021),9
"While the present policy thrust is aimed to support the monetary motor of the nation by revitalizing the energy-intensive domestic manufacturing, the Government of India is also committed at INDC to diminish the carbon emissions intensity of GDP by 30–35% by 2030 from 2005 level through upgrading the renewable energy capacity accumulation to 40% in the countrywide energy portfolio",7
"Presently, installed capacity from all forms of renewable energy has reached 1,097,465 MW and per capita, REC has grown by 1.7 times over the year 1990–2019",7
"Strategy push of growing the portion of renewables in the energy blend and advancement of accomplishing energy proficiency measures add to decrease of CO2 emanations as well as help in a critical decrease of the significant air toxins liable for corruption of air quality like decrease of SO2 by 25%, NOx by 30%, and PM 2.5 by 20% (IEA 2020)",16
"Second, the dynamic linkage between economic growth and CO2 emissions has been discussed with special reference to the EKC hypothesis for India",8
"Third, we have focused on the literature discussing the role of renewable energy in the correction of environmental pollution",7
"While a plethora of existing literature has explored the dynamic linkage between economic growth and the CO2 emissions nexus, a limited number of studies are found to date to scrutinize the role of tourism on environmental quality",8
"(2014) reported that international tourism has a long-run positive association with CO2 emissions for Cyprus over 1970–2009 while examining the long-run dynamics among energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and international tourism",7
(2017) investigated the CO2 emissions-tourism-economic growth nexus in Pakistan over 1972–2013,8
Ehigiamusoe (2020) unveiled the beneficial effect of tourism on environmental well-being at the beginning phase of tourism growth but exacerbates the environmental quality with further expansion of tourism activity following a “U-shaped” relationship between tourism and environmental degradation for 31 African countries,15
"Katircioğlu (2014a, b) identified that tourism impacts negatively on climate change and confirmed the existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship for Singapore",13
"(2019) divulged that tourist receipts are not associated with the deterioration of environmental quality while examining the dynamic linkage between CO2 emissions, energy consumption, and international tourism in Pakistan over 1980–2016",7
(2019) suggest that climate change positively influences foreign tourist flows to small island states such as Cyprus and Malta,13
Isolating economic growth from CO2 emissions has become a global concern (Wang and Zhang 2020; Li et al,8
The pattern of relationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions following the EKC hypothesis has been evaluated empirically to various specifications in different geographic locations and time horizons by employing different econometric methodologies resulting in diverse outcomes,8
"The vast body of EKC literature tests for the linear, quadratic as well as cubic connections between economic growth and CO2 emissions",8
Several studies that have tested the quadratic association between pollution and economic growth and evidencing the existence of “inverted U”-shaped EKC hypothesis includes the empirical investigations by Katircioglu et al,8
"(2012) investigated the long-run dynamics between CO2 emissions, economic growth, energy use, and trade for India and China over 1971–2007 by employing ARDL methodology",8
"(2013) evidenced the existence of an “inverted U”-shaped EKC hypothesis for India in both the short and long run while examining the long-run association between CO2 emissions, economic growth, coal consumption, and trade openness over 1966–2009",8
"Kanjilal and Ghosh (2013) confirmed the existence of an “inverted U”-shaped EKC hypothesis for India while examining the regime shift co-integration between CO2 emissions, economic growth, energy use, and trade openness for the annual data of 1971–2008",8
"While various studies have tested for the quadratic connections between economic growth and CO2 emissions, very few studies are available for India aiming to investigate the cubic connections between the same",8
Energy is believed to be a key influencer of both economic growth and CO2 emissions (Manigandan et al,8
IEA (2019) reported that emissions from the global power sector have been evidenced a sharp decline by 170 million tonnes in the year 2019 which can primarily be attributed to the enhanced capacity addition and acceptance of renewable energy in the global energy portfolio,7
(2017) examined the role of institutions and REC on CO2 emissions reduction for 85 developed and developing nations over 1991–2012,13
This study concluded that renewable energy deployment in these economies may prompt the accelerated reduction of CO2 emissions,7
Zoundi (2017) investigated the role of renewable energy and conventional fossil fuel energy consumption on CO2 emission in the EKC framework over 1980–2012 for twenty-five selected African countries,7
This study concluded that the beneficial impact of REC has been outweighed by the fossil fuel energy consumption in these economies,7
(2017) found the beneficial effect of accelerated adoption of renewable energy on environmental quality while examining the role of stock market growth and renewable energy usage in the correction of CO2 emissions for G-20 nations over 1991–2012,7
"(2019) concluded that accelerated adoption of renewable energy may help in the reduction of CO2 emissions for Brazil, China, India, and Russia while investigating the existence of the EKC hypothesis for the period 1990–2015",7
The role of tourism as a source of economic growth has been debated in extant literature for over a decade,8
"Many studies have highlighted the positive impact of tourism on economic growth, better known as the tourism-led growth hypothesis",8
"(2015) has highlighted that the relationship between tourism and economic growth happens in more developed countries, while Figini and Vici (2010) have highlighted that tourism does not accelerate economic growth in developing countries",8
"While Ghosh (2011) identified that there is no long-run relationship between international tourist arrivals and economic growth, Tang et al",8
Ohlan (2017) identified unidirectional Granger causality from inbound tourism to economic growth,8
The dynamic linkage between economic growth and environmental pollution is symbolized as the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis,8
"In the wake of arriving at a specific income level, the climate begins improving with the further expansion of economic activity, showing non-linear linkages between economic growth and CO2 emissions that follow an “inverted U”-shaped curve (Dong et al",8
"Several studies highlighted the cubic association between economic growth and CO2 emissions following an “N-shaped” curve, according to which emissions level increases until having reached the first turnaround point",8
"The dynamic connections between tourism development and environmental degradation are well known as the tourism push emission hypothesis, according to which the expansion pathway of the tourism sector is strongly associated with the accelerated deterioration of environmental quality through enhancing the usage of energy in tourism mobility, specifically in the transportation sector",15
"Furthermore, the construction of new tourism facilities places a huge strain on restricted resources like land and water, as well as contributing to environmental degradation through soil erosion, the loss of natural habitat, and extinction of endangered species (Khan et al",15
"Enhanced acceptance of renewable energy in global energy blend can be viewed as one of the prime contributors towards reduction of CO2 emissions by enhancing the reduction of reliance on imported oil and improving energy security by diversifying the risk associated with the price volatility of imported fossil fuel (Charfeddine and Kahia 2019; Baloch et al., 2019)",7
The successive improvement in education can be viewed as an essential determinant in the expansion pathway of renewable energy adoption,7
The capital formation may aggravate the environmental deterioration if capital investment is channeled toward the acquisition of energy and resource-intensive assets like machinery and infrastructure and promoting the adoption of capital in outdated technology that reduces energy efficiency (Paramati et al,7
"On the other hand, a negative value of α7 divulges that policy thrust on enhanced capital formation has mostly been done in the ecotourism sector to promote sustainable tourism practices",12
"The current work exploits 30 years of annual time series information on CO2 emissions, foreign tourist arrival in India including nations from Pakistan and Nepal, economic growth, REC, EI, GCF, and population from 1990 to 2019",8
The empirical results tabulated in Table 7 highlight the beneficial effect of tourism development in the abatement of environmental degradation indicating a 1% increase of foreign tourist arrivals in India is associated with the 4% reduction of environmental pollution,15
Our findings suggest that the present policy thrust of India is encouraging more to promote sustainable tourism practices,12
India is always regarded as an enriched reservoir of landscape and a rich tapestry of cultural heritage with the future opportunity of generating revenue through the transformation of these resources as a preferred destination of tourist activities,11
These findings further imply that the present policy thrust of India is encouraging more to invest in energy conservative assets and prompting to mandate strict energy efficiency measures that can bolster the nation’s economic engine while reducing energy intensity at a large,7
These findings suggest that capital formation has not been conducive to sustainable tourism development in the correction of environmental pollution,12
"This result further implies, although India’s present policy planning favoring to promote sustainable tourism practices, India has not been able to generate sufficient capital investment which is essential in the expansion pathway of ecotourism development",12
The result suggests that a 1% increase of renewable energy capacity addition in the Indian energy mix corresponds to the 0.43% reduction of CO2 emissions,7
Our findings imply that accelerated capacity addition of renewable energy in the energy portfolio might assist India to achieve the INDC target of decreasing the CO2 discharge intensity of GDP by 30–35% by 2030 from 2005 levels,7
"The expansion pathway of REC may also help India in the improvement of energy security while easing energy poverty, which could have helped the nation to grow the economic engine of the country",7
These findings unveil the importance of educational advancement in developing nations like India to thrive the ecological sustainability through enhancing the creation of mass awareness to promote renewable energy usage and rational usage of energy consumption to bring down the energy expenditure,7
The possible clarification of the advantageous impact of the structural break in the neutralization of environmental pollution can be attributed to the global financial crisis in the year 2008 that negatively impact the economic growth and reduced the foreign-exchange reserves which are essential to import energy-intensive products,8
"This paper has revisited the EKC hypothesis for India with special reference to the encouraging prospects of sustainable tourism practices, growth in REC, educational advancement, and eco-friendly capital investment initiatives",12
Both the long-run and the short-run marginal impact of GDP and its square term on environmental degradation are found to be almost similar,15
These findings show that the current economic growth pattern is environmentally benign and affiliated with India’s long-term sustainable policy strategy,8
"On the one hand, the government should proactively involve in raising public awareness and spreading word of mouth about sustainable tourism activities",12
This finding shows that capital formation has not aided in the development of sustainable tourism in the mentioned time spanned of analysis,12
"Furthermore, the long-run impact of REC on CO2 emanation is demonstrated to be significantly negative succeeding renewable energy as a prospective source of energy to alleviate CO2 effluence in the long-run sustainable energy pathway",7
Enhanced espousal of renewable energy in the national energy portfolio will not only aid India to achieve the future challenges in targeted emission reductions but also can contribute to the energy security of the nation,7
"The government of India has undertaken various policy measures to promote renewables, including levying a lower goods and services tax (GST) for production of renewable energy devices, subsidizing on the tariff of renewable electricity consumption, and enacting the discriminatory subsidy on renewable tariff, i.e., tariff-based subsidy will be higher for rural poor and lower for industries",7
"The expansion pathway of renewable energy is currently facing serious policy challenges in the form of high fixed cost and maintenance cost, low-reliability factors in terms of availability and load constraint, and massive land requirements for setting up of the new renewable energy projects",7
"For a densely populated country like India, such huge availability and acquisition of land is a major stumbling block in the expansionary pathway of renewable energy penetration",7
"Hence, policy preference of promoting educational advancement has serious policy implications in the smooth transitioning pathway to renewable energy",7
The interaction term between EI and the REC is evident to have a constructive effect on environmental welfare which essentially highlights that increasing energy literacy rate and promoting mass awareness of enhancing usage of renewable energy in the economy can further aid India to achieve the strict targets of INDC commitment,7
Educational advancement may also aid in technology diffusion that may bring advanced technologies which can ensure better reliability factors in renewable technologies and aid in the reduction of life cycle land use requirement of renewable energy penetration,7
"The government of India should provide serious policy emphasis on supplying quantum of capital necessitated for the infrastructural development in ecotourism initiatives and raising capital fund through public–private partnership opportunities for developing the entire innovation chain of renewable technology growth path, to win the contest of climate change by nourishing the future targeted emission reduction plan in the international climate agreement",13
"However, both environmental sustainability and sustainable development can be achieved by clean energy (CE) consumption since it consists of noncarbohydrates energy sources that seldom or do not cause CO2 emissions",7
"Therefore, the current study considers economic policy uncertainty (EPU) to study the impacts of CE on CO2 emissions that control economic growth (GDP) and urbanization in both developed and developing nations",8
Economic growth increases CO2 emissions,8
"In recent times, greenhouse gas emissions appeared as the biggest contributor to global warming and climate change",13
"For sustaining the intergenerational equity, the depletion of natural resources, energy-led economic growth trajectory, and global consumption pattern are causing difficulty",8
The goal of SDGs is to maintain the global balance by resetting the prevailing economic growth path,8
"Hence, to tackle climatic issues, it is necessary to discover and develop clean energy (CE) solutions",7
"These days, debates over climatic issues and their mitigation policies involve the Paris Climate Change Agreement",13
The UK emphasized their breakdown in managing the climate change concerns during the group of seven (G7) Presidency of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition in 2019,13
"This emerged through the legislative argument on the energy bill, which is intended to net zero emissions by 2050 (E&T 2019)",13
This shows the importance of effective decision-making of government institutions for environmental protection,15
"In a few decades, the economic development around the globe has increased tremendously and has had a massive impact on ecological degradation",8
Significant increases in carbon emissions are linked with an increase in energy consumption from fossil fuels (Adewuyi and Awodumi 2017),7
"The global impact of environmental issues which includes climate change, global warming, and air pollution casts a negative impact on economic agents",13
"For this purpose, this work aims to answer the following research questions: (1) How does economic policy uncertainty impact CO2 emissions? (2) How do renewable energy, population, and GDP contribute to CO2 emissions in the presence of EPU? (3) Is there any difference regarding the nexus of EPU-CO2 emissions in developed and developing countries? The structure of this work is as follows: the literature is in the second section, data and methodology, results and discussion, and conclusion are in the third, fourth, and fifth sections respectively",7
"Several studies have investigated the associations between energy use, economic growth, and environmental quality",8
Studies also reveal that economic complexity may affect the ecological performance and environmental degradation of a country (Doğan et al,15
(2017a) analyzed the impacts of electricity consumption on economic growth,8
They found that electricity consumption is increasing the economic growth in Singapore,8
(2021) analyzed the impacts of renewable energy and technological innovations on transport-related CO2 emissions,7
They found that renewable energy and innovations are lowering the emissions in China,7
"(2020b), the scholars investigated the impacts of renewable and non-renewable energy on ecological sustainability in Turkey",7
They found that renewable energy lowers the EF but non-renewable energy is contributing to more EF,7
They found that overall and economic globalization are contributing to environmental degradation but political and social globalization are improving it,15
(2017b) found that tourism is contributing to economic growth in the USA,8
"(2020a) investigated the role of tourism, economic growth, and globalization on CO2 emissions in Malaysia",8
They found that economic growth and globalization are degrading the air quality but tourism is improving it,8
Many studies have been done regarding the root causes of carbon emissions and ecological footprint and their linkages with energy consumption-ecological deprivation (Yao et al,7
"Nevertheless, the effect of geopolitical risk, economic complexity, and economic policy uncertainty on energy consumption-ecological deprivation has not been explored significantly",7
Studies suggest that the jolts of policy uncertainty reduce inflation and escalate the unemployment rate (Leduc and Liu 2016),8
"Now, evolution in climate science suggests that in the formulation of economic policies, climate change dynamics play a vital role (Sheehan and Sheehan 2008; Stern 2018; Hussain et al",13
"A study conducted on Turkey by Sahinoz and Erdogan Cosar (2018) shows that extreme economic uncertainties negatively influence economic growth, consumption, and investment in the country",8
This reveals that an increase in EPU increases environmental degradation,15
The ecological modernization theory that claims urban sustainability is associated with a high urbanization level also supports our findings (Poumanyvong and Kaneko 2010),11
"Public services like water supply, waste management, sanitation, and many others are relatively less expensive to construct and run in highly urbanized areas",12
"Moreover, modernization is also encouraged by urbanization leading to efficient technology, energy efficiency, and innovation (Ahmed and Wang 2019)",7
"The current study has analyzed the effect of clean energy and economic policy uncertainty on CO2 emissions in developed and developing countries, i.e., the USA, the UK, Pakistan, China, and India, following the ARDL approach",7
The ARDL estimates indicated that economic growth and economic policy uncertainty degrade the environmental quality of sample countries,8
"However, clean energy and urbanization are environmentally friendly and contribute to improving the environmental quality of the selected countries",7
"For this purpose, clean energy sources should be deployed",7
"Moreover, clean energy sources should be preferred in urban communities",7
Technologies should be used effectively for clean energy production,7
Pakistan and India need to replace their non-renewable energy sources with renewable energy sources,7
"Therefore, attention should be to enhancing the imports of clean energy sources",7
The fraction of clean energy to the total energy expenditure is enhancing air quality,7
This indicates that these territories need to spend more on clean energy sources as it will enhance the air quality,7
Governments should give tax releases on clean energy use,7
R&D budgets should upsurge,9
"Moreover, projects and grants for introducing innovation, and clean energy technologies should be provided",7
Subsidies for the import of clean energy products should be provided,7
The integration of renewable energy and sustainable development (RE&SD) can help overcome existing obstacles and create opportunities for renewable energy deployment to achieve sustainable development goals,7
The co-word network was generated using SciMAT to reveal the dynamic aspects of the scientific research in the five subperiods,9
"The thematic evolutionary analysis identified two main RE&SD thematic areas, with the current research hotspots that involved technological, environmental, sustainable energy innovation, and sustainable biofuel contributions",7
"This study provides a systematic study of RE&SD research, and the future research of RE&SD may inevitably consider renewable energy investment and renewable energy perspective approaches to achieve sustainable development goals",7
"Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG 7), established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015, concerns access to affordable, reliable, modern, and sustainable energy by everyone (Cf, 2015; Bekun et al., 2021; Fathollahi-Fard et al., 2021)",7
"In this respect, the intimate connection between renewable energy and sustainable development comes out, and the importance of renewable energy for sustainable development has been highlighted (Omer, 2008; Bekun et al., 2019)",7
"Research on the strategies and paths of renewable energy for sustainable development has blossomed over the past few years (Danish et al., 2020; Buchmayr et al., 2021; Bekun et al., 2020)",7
"As global carbon neutrality continues to advance and the global energy transition is accelerating, a systematic review and closer integration of insights are needed to determine the structure and evolution of renewable energy for achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals",7
"Science mapping and visualization analyses have been widely used nowadays to analyze the research trends and evolutionary patterns of different research themes in the field of renewable energy, such as sources, supply and demand, low-carbon energy technology, and wastewater (Jabeen et al., 2021; Gan et al., 2020; Yu et al., 2016; Hou and Wang, 2021; Zheng et al., 2017), as well as the field of sustainable development, such as trends and future directions, sustainable technology development, and enterprise aspects (Wichaisri and Sopadang, 2018; García-Berná et al., 2019; Prashar et al., 2020)",7
"However, there are few related studies on renewable energy for sustainable development, given that previous studies have focused on renewable energy or sustainable development, respectively",7
"Considering the integrity and complexity of renewable energy for sustainable development, it is necessary to conduct a scientific structure and evolution analysis based on current science mapping (Cobo et al., 2012; Orimoloye et al., 2021) and network visualization methods (Van Eck and Waltman, 2014; Moosavi et al., 2021)",7
The present study aims to reveal the scientific structure and evolution in the field of renewable energy for sustainable development (RE&SD) through science mapping and visualization analysis approaches,7
"Therefore, a co-word network was generated using SciMAT to reveal the conceptual evolution of RE&SD, and a longitudinal framework was applied to explore the structure and dynamic aspects of the related scientific research (Cobo et al., 2012, 2011)",9
"Longitudinal analysis via science mapping (Morris and Van der Veer 2008; Börner et al., 2003; Cobo et al., 2012; Li et al., 2019) reveals the structure and dynamic aspects of scientific research",9
"There are many similar terms related to the objective of this study, such as renewable energy, sustainable energy, and green energy",7
"Co-word analysis can be conducted by SciMAT to reveal the structural and dynamic aspects of scientific research and then delimit research areas and visualize detected sub-fields (Callon et al., 1983; Li et al., 2021)",9
"The DEVELOPMENT motor theme, which focused on the development of technologies, resources, environment, and energy consumption, had high density and centrality value",7
"This subperiod mainly focused on sustainable development scenarios, policy, and renewable energy environment",7
"Topics in this area were from the impact of renewable energy consumption on CO2 emissions and economic growth in different countries towards sustainable development (Ikram et al., 2020; Yang et al., 2015; Alola et al., 2019), followed by sustainable energy policy discussions, modeling and optimization for renewable energy development, and renewable energy systems for power generation (hydropower, wind power, nuclear power, solar power, etc.) (Patlitzianas et al., 2008; Bazmi and Zahedi, 2011; Alstone et al., 2015; Nehrir et al., 2011)",7
"The evolutions in areas I and II mainly revealed the aspects of renewable energy, environment, and sustainable development",7
"Therefore, the future development of RE&SD may inevitably consider renewable energy investment and sustainable development goals",7
"The largest cluster in the latest subperiod was PHYSICS, CONDENSED MATTER, including subsets of CHEMISTRY, PHYSICAL, MATERIALS SCIENCE, MULTIDISCIPLINARY, and PHYSICS, followed by the cluster COMPUTER SCIENCE and REGIONAL & URBAN PLANNING",11
"ENERGY & FUELS, ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES, MATERIALS SCIENCE, and PHYSICS were mainstream disciplines in this field, while COMPUTER SCIENCE, ENGINEERING in natural science field, and REGIONAL & URBAN PLANNING, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS in social science field started to attach more attention recently, which is in agreement with the findings of Sovacool (2014)",11
"The hierarchical networks of secondary and three-level sub-modules of 1 PHYSICS, CONDENSED MATTER, 2 COMPUTER SCIENCE, and 3 REGIONAL & URBAN PLANNING were expanded, such as the leaf nodes of 1:1:3 MATERIALS SCIENCE, MULTIDISCIPLINARY, 2:1:3 COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS, and 3:1:3 DEVELOPMENT STUDIES",11
"Current research contributes to status and future investment potential in renewable energy, the drivers of renewable energy investments, investment risk evaluation and optimization for renewable energy project, and policy and regional discussions to generate the framework to facilitate decision making in renewable energy investments towards green and sustainable investments",7
Future research still requires energy investment needs for both the Paris Agreement and sustainable development goals,13
"According to the latest 2020 SDG report, affordable and reliable energy is now needed more than ever, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, which represents the biggest shock to the global energy system in decades and has caused tremendous uncertainly in efforts toward SDG 7 achievement (Cf, 2015; Heffron et al., 2021)",7
"However, the pandemic can either widen the sustainable energy access gaps or accelerate the path towards achieving SDGs, depending mostly on governments’ sustained policies to take the lead in pursuing structural reductions in emissions to accelerate the development and deployment of a full range of renewable energy solutions",7
The longitudinal analysis of RE&SD from the co-word networks revealed the dynamic aspects of scientific research in the five subperiods,9
"ENERGY & FUELS, ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES, MATERIALS SCIENCE, and PHYSICS were mainstream disciplines in this field, while COMPUTER SCIENCE, ENGINEERING in natural science field, and REGIONAL & URBAN PLANNING, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS in social science field started to attach more attention recently",11
The findings in this paper can provide researchers and policymakers with insights into future research directions and policy recommendations for the sustainable development of renewable energy,7
Policymakers could consider energy investment needs and renewable energy perspective approaches to achieve sustainable development goals,7
Governments’ sustained policies to accelerate the development and deployment of a full range of renewable energy solutions are critical,7
"Furthermore, evolution analysis only revealed significant structural changes in the subject data; thus, in addition to addressing the above limitations and model improvements, a perspective on the evolution of renewable energy technologies is also a viable avenue for further research.",7
"The study tests the dynamic nexus between climate risk, natural resource exploration strategy in BRICS economies, and climate change mitigation",13
Climate change protection and climate risk reduction may be efficiently funded using climate risks and natural resources,13
"In addition, the 20.5% association between climate risks and environmental drift in the BRICS nations highlights climate change concerns",13
"As a result of the study on green economic growth, decision-makers are provided with specific policy recommendations",8
"There are nine capacities of the planet, including a limit on atmospheric GHG concentrations of 348 parts per million CO2 equivalents or less, a biodiversity loss rate of no more than 11 species per million, a surface water consumer limit of no more than 4000 km3 per year, and a cropland conversion limit of no more than 15 percentage points of the world’s ice-free land (Lamperti et al",15
"In contrast, increased forest cover contributes to environmental protection by sequestering carbon and providing biomass for energy, which may replace fossil fuel–based energy sources (Prichard et al",15
"Longer growing seasons will result from climate change, but so will the utilization of new plant species",13
One of the leading causes of biodiversity loss is this,15
Climate change or excessive water usage may potentially diminish the total amount of agriculture available and increase the strain on the remaining regions,13
The primary objective of this study is to investigate the impact of climate risk on climate change mitigation in BRICS through the household decisions on changing climate comprehensively,13
"Moreover, to compensate for the rebound effects, an estimation of the carbon price is also made for the specific intensity, for which, study also intends to inquire that how climate risk and climate change mitigation effects green recovery of BRICS economies",13
"Also, the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change directly impact environmental resilience",13
Research on China’s 2020 energy strategy has shown a significant improvement in energy output while decreasing energy consumption and yearly expenses if current advancements such as heat-and-power storage are used (Markkanen and Anger-Kraavi 2019),7
"Because of this, environmental hazards have lessened, and renewable energy has grown in the total power mix due to increasing interest in environmental policies (Aryal et al",7
"To safeguard energy security and the ecosystem, additional research is required to relate financial concerns to energy utilization (Creutzig et al",7
Several studies have examined the relationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions,8
"Researchers have looked at green financing and investment in the context of other macroeconomic, ecological, and electricity factors in works such as investigating OPEC’s sustainable growth and production-based CO2 emissions to learn more about the effect of green investment (Zhang et al",8
"Sustainable production and carbon tax were suggested as effective ways to deal with environmental challenges such as energy recycling, CO2 emission reduction, and trash composting in the research",12
"(2022) into the energy system of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 2020 found that the use of the most recent technologies such as battery energy storage, heat pump heat and power, and demand response significantly increased energy efficiency and reduced fuel consumption and annual cost",7
"Because of this, putting money into green initiatives helps to minimize environmental risks while also increasing the reliance on intermittent sources of renewable energy",7
"According to, the Covid-19 outbreak has posed problems, possibilities, and a potential influence on sustainable energy techniques in both present and future situations",7
It is also important to design both short- and long-term action plans to meet renewable energy goals in an effective and sustainable manner,7
"According to, a comparison of the OPEC nations’ financial contributions to deal with climate change was made using the difference in differences (DID) approach from 2005 to 2019",13
"A carbon tax to finance climate solutions, in place of fossil fuel subsidies, might help the SDGs be achieved more quickly in the event of a Covid-19 pandemic, according to the study’s findings (Vicca et al",12
(2022) analyze the best techniques and channels for the green economic recovery and promote environmentally friendly investments,8
"Furthermore, it is stated that the current infectious pandemic resulted in a rapid fall in energy consumption, which lowers the costs of energy and hence slows down power project deployment",7
"There are several opportunities to promote renewable energy, especially in terms of clean power investment, according to writers (Kim et al",7
"Covid-19’s impact on the global energy market was also examined, as well as plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions",13
Evidence from green finance shows that investment in urban development projects like elevated rail adds favorably and considerably to green finance and green productivity,11
(2022) analyzed public expenditure and green industrial progress in the BRI area from 2008 to 2018 by just looking at the function of green financing in the region’s economic growth,8
Environmental and economic development were investigated in relation to the impact of green funding on province statistics for OPEC nations from 2010 to 2017 by,8
"Green financing has a favorable effect on environmental quality, but this effect is dependent on the economic growth of the area, according to the research",8
Climate change mitigation and climate risks have been combined to reflect two frequent risk categories in the research,13
"In the research model, climatic hazards and dealing with climate change are also considered factors of investigation",13
The extended technique of moments substantially aids in assessing and interpreting projections based on the estimated model,3
Climate risks and natural resource utilization in a given nation are essential factors in the study’s evaluation of the influence of climate change risks on reducing greenhouse gas emissions,13
"Examples include rule-based authorities such as the French government, whereas principle-based sources such as Japan’s or Switzerland prefer to pursue more market ways of addressing climate change",13
"Several developing nations have implemented required environmental and social protection policies and reporting requirements, as shown in Table 2, which may be seen here",1
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) and other development aid organizations have helped many developing countries establish green procurement policies,12
"Under France’s Energy Transition Law for Green Growth, listed companies, banks, financial institutions, and investors must disclose climate-related accounting reports",8
A historical review of climate change policy and research reveals that mitigation deterrence does not merely apply to net-zero emissions (NETs),13
"In each step, the main aim of preventing disastrous climate change is re-conceptualized, and the promises of future technology deployment are shifted",13
"As a result, decarbonization has been delayed due to a combination of these factors working together",13
"Due to increasing computer capacity and expanding scientific and technological research and innovation frontiers, modeling approaches have changed with mission framings",9
There is no evidence that this has resulted in technical planning and application but instead deferred action on decarbonization,13
"It is possible to tell a similar story about other more traditional climate change response alternatives, such as nuclear power and coal carbon capture and storage",13
It has been possible to delay (or do it very slowly and partly) the decarbonization of the economy by depending on anticipated capabilities that are ever more intrusive in the native surroundings (and even less so in the economy) and which benefit only international bankers and corporate interests,13
"Covid-19-related repercussions on economic growth and interactions have increased the pressures on capitalism, even as financial markets have grown",8
Family farms rice producers may be unable to secure loans if climate change knowledge becomes more widely available,13
"Farmers may be unable to acquire knowledge on climate change measures because of a lack of extension staff and limited transportation, according to the findings of the FGD report",13
"In developing countries, family farms and rice farmers may be price limited because of high credit management fees and the region’s sensitivity to climate change",13
"(2021) discovered in their research, credit rationing and interest rates positively linked Nigerian small-scale farmers’ lending and limitation",9
It is statically essential that the quantity of credit earned has a negative and significant effect on climate change adaptation strategy,13
"Higher separation bias in climate change mitigation and adaptation methods were considered for farmers with risk constraints, according to the IMR, which evaluates selection bias in adaptation strategy selection",13
This indicates that more climate change adaption techniques have not been included in the model’s estimate,13
"As a result, farmers’ views of climate change may vary due to the many factors influencing their reactions to climate change impacts",13
"According to one research, 54 of the world’s 135 central banks have a mission to promote sustainable economic development, but their objectives are not expressly related to global warming",8
"Still, many institutions and financial regulators have begun evaluating the detrimental consequences of climate change on their banking and non-banking financial sectors",13
"The transition, physical, and liability implications of climate change on the banking industry have previously been studied",13
"While migrating to a minimal economy, variations in energy costs may directly impact prices and macroeconomic stability and impede economic and social development in all industries and the financial sector",17
The new IPCC special report suggests that national financial institution supervisors might provide the last recourse for climate finance mechanisms to reduce systemic risk associated with stranded assets,13
Commercial banks and policymakers are gradually being expected to study climate change consequences and react as required to fulfill their responsibilities as public bodies because of the growing danger climate change poses,13
"To have a long-term impact on the economy, regional lenders, and investors, there should be a similar approach to climate change issues",13
"While conceding that there are many perspectives and opinions on this issue, one Executive Board member of the European Central Bank (ECB) claimed that the bank must but should help facilitate the decarbonization industry within its mission",13
"It is an industry run by big private enterprises since they have the scope, capacity, and expertise to conduct R&D operations and establish a substantial product line for these products",9
"People’s quality of life is positively impacted by the proliferation of digitalization (ICTs), especially when it comes to improving life for the elderly and disabled and improving the reporting, collection, and accessibility of patient records by various stakeholders in the healthcare delivery industry",9
Some banking institutions and business watchdogs have recently recommended that stockholders and asset managers assess their exposure to financial risks associated with climate change,13
Economic institutions have yet to thoroughly assess climate change’s potential influence on climate risks,13
New perspectives on climate change must be incorporated into the macro-financial analysis to provide a complete picture of climate warming change’s significance,13
National banks and financial regulators may benefit from the study results of these stakeholders by incorporating global warming concerns and green economic recovery into their policies and financial risk appraisal,8
Several climate change projects have attempted to reduce pollution by increasing human activity’s influence on greenhouse gas emissions,13
"Emissions of carbon dioxide from hydrocarbon power stations and global energy and transportation consumption boost the green economy, despite efforts to curb climate change",13
"For the time being, it makes economic and societal sense to focus less on preventing climate change and more on responding to its effects while they are less severe (if any)",13
Individuals (and taxpayers) are understandably economically cautious in opting not to support measures that primarily benefit other nations because of the local political situation.,17
"The results from FMOLS and DOLS reveal that the levels of financial development, energy consumption, and trade volume significantly contribute to overcoming the death toll occurring due to CDs",7
"As regards the growth function, the level of trade in the economy is significantly associated with economic growth",8
"In contrast, economic growth does have a negative but insignificant impact upon COVID-19",8
"The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were put forward as an aftermath of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that were designed to reduce communicable diseases like malaria etc., and child mortality rates to target improved maternal health; to combat HIV/AIDS; to ensure gender equality and women empowerment; to achieve poverty reduction; and to attain higher levels of education for all, thereby achieving sustainable development including environmental sustainability through global partnerships (United Nation 2017)",3
"(2021a, b, c) asserts that the financial services provided by the intermediaries, banks, etc., are essential for economic development and innovation for which financial education should be focused",8
(2021d) also emphasize financial inclusion for individuals and small firms’ access to essential financial services,8
"Due to the advent of the modern healthcare regime, the burden of contagious diseases has been much reduced and gradually becoming insignificant, as is also evident from the steady decline in infectious diseases mortality (IDM) and overall incidence (Sun et al",3
"However, the outbreak of several epidemics of contagious diseases, such as the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1), severe acute respiratory syndromes (SARS), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) (Castelli and Sulis 2017), and lastly the coronavirus breakout (Wu et al",3
"2020), has so far produced severe health security threats and economic impacts",3
"The regional integration also needs to respond to the CDs by effectively coordinating significant policies’ frameworks to secure the individuals from the adverse economic, financial, and health issues, especially during the COVID-19 like pandemics",11
"The aims are to support sustainability, financial inclusion, job opportunities, and to strengthen the mental and physical health of the people (OECD 2022)",8
"There are empirical shreds of evidence that highlight the strong and complex relationships among communicable diseases, economic, social, and financial variables (Ceddia et al",3
"The global integrated dynamic social, economic, and financial systems are also causing the higher rate of communicable diseases, but the impacts of such diseases are more harmful to the developing economies where the health system is not well equipped and individuals are less careful about their health as compared to their wealthier counterparts",3
"We find a sheer lack of empirical studies investigating the impacts of financial development, environmental performance, and sustainable development on communicable diseases (CDs) for the economic regional group countries of OECD",3
"Therefore, the main objective of our study is to reinvestigate the determinants of communicable diseases by bridging and modeling the abovementioned multidisciplinary concepts under the broader umbrellas of MDGs and SDGs in the context of OECD economies and adds to the contemporary research strands as follows",3
"Second, our study examines the impacts of environmental performance on the level of infectious diseases",3
"Fourth, the present study adopts the level of domestic borrowing as proxy variables for financial development to estimate their impacts on communicable diseases during the study period",3
The objective is to investigate the impact of the level of domestic borrowing extended in the economy to meet the basic needs of human beings as well as the business operations under the different schemes of the government upon the CDs,1
"Likewise, the significant epidemics of communicable diseases such as malaria, plague, cholera, AIDS, MERS, and SARS have adversely affected society and the national economy, along with accumulated losses amounting to billions of US dollars (Farooq et al",3
"Similarly, when we talk about environmental degradation, many environmental pollution and wastages are being caused every year (Habib et al",15
The growing importance of regional integration supports the member countries to achieve the common goals but is accompanied by the higher risks of the spread of CDs,11
2021i) agree that financial development can simultaneously foster economic growth and reduce environmental pollution,8
Asumadu-Sarkodie and Owusu (2016) find that a vital role is attributed to energy utilization and financial development in controlling environmental degradation in Sri Lanka,15
"The causality test results discovered the existence of unidirectional causality between greenhouse gases and economic development in Europe, Africa, and America and nonrenewable energy and greenhouse gases in Africa and America",8
They reported the prevalence of the feedback hypothesis between the RESC and GDP growth,8
(2021) has done an extensive study on the impact of financial development on economic growth and environmental performance,8
"They employ the supply–demand model, 2SLS, and dynamic GMM regression techniques to study the impacts of financial development on the economic growth of economies on the one belt-one route (OBOR) throughout 2007–2019 and report that the number of bank branches, debit, and credit cards positively impact the economic growth of sampled economies",8
"The carbon-based emissions, energy, and industry appear to positively impact economic growth, whereas agriculture negatively impacts the growth of the sampled economies",8
They conclude that financial development causes carbon emissions and economic growth to increase,8
"Further, they find that FDI and energy consumption caused increased growth and carbon emissions in the sampled economies along the OBOR",7
"As per the data compiled by IEA (2018), approximately 80% of the energy consumption for the regional commercial requirements is based on fossil fuel combustion, causing greenhouse gas emissions to rise and resulting in critical climatic changes (Dong et al",7
"Therefore, it is essential to explore and quantify the nexus between energy consumption, financial development, and carbon-based emissions in the context of OECD",7
"Based on the critical literature review, we conclude that demand for energy consumption has been increasing with the increase in economic activities",7
"But during the CDs, when the economic activities are limited, energy consumption in the business and corporate sectors may be reduced whereas an increase may occur in the domestic usage",7
"So, we expect that energy consumption may have a different consumption pattern during the CDs in the sampled OECD country panel",7
"Economic growth in boosting performance in various sectors, including health, is well established",8
Disease control programs can be carried out effectively with a high level of economic growth and adequate funding sources,8
"So, the relationship between the GDP growth and control of CDs appears to be an established empirical fact",8
"So, the rate of spread of CDs can significantly be reduced, and the GDP growth can also contribute to this phenomenon",8
(2021) report that fluctuations in the quarterly GDP negatively affect the annual infectious diseases mortality (IDM) and that the mortality of contagious diseases varies countercyclically with the business cycle in China,3
"The study offers policy implications for controlling contagious diseases by adopting effective strategies to mitigate the adverse effects of economic fluctuations on IDM, ensuring sustainable economic growth and increasing state expenditure to prevent the contagious diseases’ impact",8
Goenka and Liu (2020) employ cross-country analysis to estimate the linkages of infectious diseases and income growth,3
They find that high-income and developed economies with higher education levels have better control of infectious diseases than the middle and lower-income (poor) economies,3
There is a need to invest in health infrastructure to prevent infectious diseases,3
The poor economic conditions cause to increase the infectious diseases,3
They design a panel of 44 developed and 44 developing economies and find that infectious diseases have a more destructive role on the economy of the developing countries as compared to that of developed ones,3
"In contrast, infectious diseases have a higher magnitude of negative impacts on the trade for the developed economies than developing ones",3
The study also highlights the direct relationship between global mutual trade and infectious diseases,3
"Third, they find the lack of human adaptive behavior to respond to infectious diseases in a complex system within ecological and economic-social dimensions",3
"(2021), by enhancing the quality and quantity of core financial services such as savings mobilization, availability of credit, risk management, and mitigation regime, insurance can pave the way for sustainable production and growth, especially for relatively small and medium-sized enterprises",12
H6: The level of energy consumption is associated with the prevalence of CDs,7
The level of CO2-based emissions and fossil fuel-based energy usage are used to measure the environmental degradation level,15
Fossil fuel-based energy usage is represented by FFC and is measured as the % of total energy consumption during the period sampled,7
The economy’s performance is measured in terms of the annual percentage of GDP growth,8
"We empirically analyze the economic data to test the proposed hypotheses based on the following empirical model to investigate the determinants of infectious diseases: In Eq. 1, the term: \({\beta }_{0}\) presents the constant (intercept) of the model that shows the OECD countries’ specific characteristics",3
\({\mathrm{COVID}-19}_{ji}\) presents the communicable diseases in country j at the time i,3
"\({\mathrm{TRA}}_{ji}, {\mathrm{GDP}}_{ji}, and {\mathrm{ENG}}_{ji}\) present the trade, GDP growth, and energy usage proxy variables for sustainable development in country j at the time i",8
"In this study, we attempt to explore the effects of environmental performance, financial development, and sustainable development as the determinants of infectious diseases like COVID-19",3
"The extant literature is silent about the direct economic, financial, and environmental impacts on communicable diseases",3
"So, to the authors’ best knowledge, it is the first study that captures the influences of environmental performance, financial development, and sustainable development upon communicable diseases",3
"We measured environment performance using the proxies of CO2-based emissions and fossil fuel energy consumption, whose average values are 2.1365 and 4.1647",7
The minimum values of CO2-based emissions and fossil fuel energy consumption are 1.3036 and 2.4208,7
"We use trade proxies as % of GDP, COVID-19, energy use, and GDP growth rate for sustainable development, whose average values are 4.6066, 1.7598, 3.2089, and 0.9778",8
"COVID-19 shows a positive relationship with FD and fossil fuel energy consumption, but it positively correlates with the other variables",7
Trade shows a positive relationship with FFC but a positive link with the GDP growth rate for the OECD countries,8
"This finding contradicts the study findings by previous studies, who reported a direct association between financial inclusion and both COEM and ENG levels in the context of OECD member nations",8
"It may imply that the policy-makers must make financial development more compatible with environmental policies considering the critical nexus of financial inclusion, COEM, ENG, and GDP in the policy-making regime",8
"Another policy implication suggested is to expand the climate finance to facilitate the economically disadvantaged masses; micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs); and sole proprietorship business units to help them cope with the increasing levels of COEM",13
"In the context of the above discussion, among other SDGs, the importance of appropriate public and private investments is highly recommended for transition to a green economy with high levels of environmental sustainability as well as general public health, as was also suggested by Sachs et al",3
"Communicable diseases are more likely to spread quickly with close interactions in communities due to economic, social, commercial, and financial activities without SOPs",3
"So, we assume that better environmental performance, financial development, and sustainable development cause communicable diseases to decrease in OECD member countries",3
The results reveal that both EP variables appear to negatively affect the dependent variable of communicable diseases (COVID-19),3
The variables for the environmental performance COEM and FFC with coefficients of 0.0039 and 0.2133 negatively impact communicable diseases like COVID-19 and the earlier variants of CDs,3
"It can be postulated that a one percent increase in environmental performance by reducing carbon emissions and fossil fuels causes a decrease in the cases of communicable diseases by 0.39% and 21.33%, respectively",3
The results imply that increased environmental degradation by the more combustion of fossil fuel and carbon emission increase the number of infected cases,15
"In other words, better environmental performance boosts people’s immunity and reduces the spread of communicable diseases, as was also reported by Anser et al",3
We can safely conclude that better environmental performance boosts the people’s immunity in the OECD countries and reduces the spread of communicable diseases,3
The financial development proxy FDC appears to negatively impact communicable diseases with the coefficients of 0.1291,3
It means that 1% increases in financial development cause to decrease the communicable diseases by 12.9% and,3
It implies that the credit facility strengthens the healthcare structure and eventually reduces communicable diseases,3
The proxy of sustainable development TRA negatively impacts communicable diseases with a coefficient of 0.06997,3
It means that a 1% increase in trade volume causes to decrease the communicable diseases by 6.997%,3
These economies need to strengthen the healthcare structure and supply chain during communicable diseases to reduce the pandemic effects,3
"The elimination of poverty strengthens the advancement against communicable diseases, with other development strategies closely interlinked with the CDs (Raviglione and Maher 2017)",3
"In contrast, consumption and GDP are found insignificant; energy and as such are also corroborated by our findings that also don’t reveal any significant influences of energy consumption and GDP on the spread of viral diseases",7
"Our results remain unchanged in DOLS, showing the results’ stability and supporting our relevant hypotheses that FIN, environmental performance, and sustainable development negatively impact the infection cases of communicable diseases represented by COVID-19",3
This study takes rather intensive considerations to examine the determinants of communicable diseases in the context of the OECD member countries,3
"We use the environmental performance, financial development, and sustainable development factors to estimate their impact on morbidity levels on communicable diseases",3
"Further, these countries will have more sustainable development, financial development, and environmental performance to reduce infectious diseases",3
Our study results lead us to conclude that OECD member countries with higher levels of carbon-based emissions and fossil fuel consumption invest in healthcare structure and related items and extend bank credit to strengthen their healthcare structure and reduce infectious diseases,3
"First, there must be ensured long-term strategic planning to improve and sustain the environment by gradually adopting renewable energy sources and reducing carbon emissions",7
The member countries should search and embrace new alternatives like hydro-based and solar energy to curtail the greenhouse gasses majorly emitted from fossil fuel energy consumption,7
"So, there is a need to have an intensive implementation of policy to reduce the environmental degradation elements, for instance, carbon emission and high dependency on fossil fuels",15
"By doing so, the individuals would reduce the personal visits to the banks and ATM cabins and thereby cause the infection rates of the communicable diseases to reduce",3
"Further, OECD member countries should also introduce financial support and incentives for encouraging public–private partnerships in the health sector to control and reduce communicable diseases",3
"Third, OECD countries should broaden the scope of trade agreements to facilitate the cross-border trade for general and especially medical, surgical, and other related products and services to mitigate the effects of communicable diseases",3
"Sixth, there is an urgent need to financially support and boost the cooperation among the OECD countries to cope the environmental degradation",15
"Seventh, there should be appropriate private–public partnership programs to cope with different current and potential challenges including to achieve the green economy status and to reduce the chances of CDs pandemics, for instance, COVID-19",17
Further research may be conducted to examine the determinants of communicable diseases by taking a broader sample from a diversified set of countries to generalize the results,3
"Other social, economic, environmental, and financial development variables may be considered to estimate their impacts upon communicable diseases, such as infection rates across gender, social class, poverty, and other microlevel financial factors such as frequency of money transfers through mobile accounts, cellular phones, etc",3
"This study uses certain variables as proxies for environmental performance, financial development, and sustainable growth",8
"Secondly, given the emergence of a change from factor-driven to more technological innovation-driven financial development as posited by Xin-gang and Wei (2020) and Xin-gang et al",8
"(2021), future research may also consider the impact of the role of technological innovation upon the financial development and sustainable growth",8
"The circular economy (CE) is a proposal for a new, more sustainable, and durable economy model",12
The transition from the linear economy to the circular economy (CE) is a process observed both in theory and practice (Ferasso et al,12
"This idea of economic development is based on the principle of maintaining synergy and a balance between social, economic, and environmental dimensions (Friant et al",8
Many EU action plans already referred to the SD and emphasized the need to create more sustainable and inclusive growth in Europe (Bartniczak and Raszkowski 2019; Salvioni and Almici 2020),8
The CE concept identifies new opportunities for the simultaneous achievement of environmental benefits and economic growth (Hopkinson et al,8
2020) based on technological progress,8
The LE as a model of economic development has failed because it leads toward the destruction of biodiversity and resources depletion,8
"The CE is a foundation of the “green civilization” concept, which is characterized by the human and natural environment coexistence, by the harmonious social development, and by the technological innovation in the EGSS (Norgaard 1994)",8
"As presented in Figure 1, the CE develops not only qualitatively but also quantitatively—the new processes and jobs are created to cover material cycles (Gottwald 2012; Tomić and Schneider 2020).
 Product life cycle and its linear and circular economy implications",12
"What is more, the CE has defined processes that close resources loops (i.e., by recycling) and aims to reduce material losses by incineration and landfill (Hopkinson et al",12
The circular economy is a path of economic and social development that relies on investing in the “green recovery.” It means a transition from a LE in favor of creating Green Jobs and the shift toward the CE visible in the environmental goods and services sector,12
"In the proposed approach, these goods and services related to environmental protection are distinguished based on the main goal’s criterion",15
These actions area can be divided into environmental protection (EP) and resource nanagement (RM) activities (Steuer et al,15
"Examples are electric vehicles, catalysts, and filters to decrease pollutant emissions, wastewater, and waste treatment services, or noise insulation works",12
"Examples are renewable energy production, energy-efficient, and passive buildings, seawater desalinization, or rainwater recovery” (Eurostat 2020b)",7
"2019), which are categorized according to the Classification of Environmental Protection Activities (CEPA)",15
These expand the EGSS into new EP and RM-related processes and creates new jobs (Karaferye and Agaoglu 2017; Xu et al,8
"The approach to environmental protection changes, which is not treated as an economic burden, but constitutes a development opportunity (D’Adamo and Lupi 2021) and allows for jobs creation (Crowley 1999)",15
"Despite the lack of the GJs definition in EU documents, its main assumptions are reflected in EU initiatives targeting the so-called balance of two major concerns: the environment and economic growth",8
The potential of Green Jobs is promising as the CE should help protect the environment and ensures decent work (Toan et al,8
The International Labour Organization (ILO) has proposed the term of decent work,8
“Decent work sums up the aspirations of people in their working lives,8
"It involves opportunities for work that is productive and delivers a fair income, security in the workplace and social protection for families, better prospects for personal development and social integration, freedom for people to express their concerns, organize and participate in the decisions that affect their lives, and equality of opportunity and treatment for all women and men” (ILO 2020)",1
Decent work is recognized as part of the Sustainable Development Goals’ achievement in the formulated by the EU document titled “2030 Agenda for the SD” (United Nations 2021),8
"The research carried out by Song and Xie (2019) has already shown that economic development is influenced by the green labor participation rate, the GJs, and green talent (Song and Xie 2019)",8
The initiative is covering the impacts caused by climate change on employment and how to mitigate undesirable consequences for future programs,13
This initiative also supports governments and employers’ efforts in promoting sustainable and environmentally Green Jobs targeting climate change issues,13
"Second, some employees will be substituted—as in shifting from fossil fuels to renewables, or from truck manufacturing to rail car manufacturing, or from landfilling and waste incineration to recycling",12
"Additionally, the problem of measurability and objectivity in evaluation appears in scientific research and reporting on the GJs worldwide, and in this context, explanatory model combining CE and GJs is required (Gagliardi et al",9
This method is mostly used in the research of the economic development comparisons (Kasztelan 2016; Raszkowski 2018; Moraga et al,8
"What is more, the EGSS data are made available every year, and these data are also part of the sustainable development indicators (more than 100 overlapping variables in a very wide context), gathered in the Eurostat database grouped in 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) (Schroeder et al",17
This paper has researched the secondary data related to the CE indicators gathered for each EU member state in years 2009–2019 and published in the Eurostat database in a dedicated section entitled “Circular economy indicators” (Eurostat 2020f),12
"The shape of the proposed model underlines the circularity feature of described economy.
 Green Jobs creation model for circular economy Source: Authors’ elaboration The EGSS is a part of the circular economy and in this sector majority of the GJs are visible (Dordmond et al",12
"Thus, CE_14 (Private investments, jobs, and gross value added related to circular economy sectors) represents crucial expenditures related to the development of EGSS",12
"1 and Figure 6, the other publication uses one chosen indicator or factor like the final energy consumption from renewables and income in rural areas (Aceleanu et al",7
The importance for CE is technology development which is also crucial for the number of patents focusing on the recycling and the use of secondary raw materials (CE_15),12
Practitioners and entrepreneurs can focus also on the recycling of biowaste (CE_9) processes which also contribute to the GJs creation as presented in Figure 6,12
"Worldwide, cities are implementing circular economy (CE) strategies to reduce the resources they consume and their environmental impact",12
The Circular Economy (CE) is rapidly gaining momentum in political and corporate discourses as a vision and a mechanism to transition towards a more sustainable future,12
"It has been hailed as one of the solutions to help solve the climate crisis and reduce the overall environmental impact of the economic activity [1,2,3,4]",13
"Often, the CE is linked to “R frameworks”, based on principles such as reduce, reuse, and recycle: currently, the list of R’s stands at 10 [16], ranging from refusing to reducing, reusing, remanufacturing to recycling and recovery",12
"Reaching the goals of an ambitious CE agenda has been estimated to increase gross domestic product by 2%, increase employment opportunities by 1.6% and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by almost 25% by 2030 [27]",8
"For instance, [29] reviewed the CE plans of 89 cities and developed a framework with four target urban systems (infrastructure, social consumption, industries and businesses, and urban planning) and 21 types of initiatives",11
"Nevertheless, there are a few attempts in the literature to define a circular city to facilitate both academic debate and urban application of circular economy model principles. Several scholars have examined how the principles of the CE model are translated to the city-level and conceptualized the notion of circular cities from several perspectives (e.g., [6, 7, 32,33,34])",12
"Similarly, [37] approach city-based on a circular model of development as: “a city that in provision of urban service deliberately prioritizes and practices circular economy principles to close resource loops to the highest degree possible, to minimize the need for virgin material and energy resources, to reduce its resource footprint beyond city borders based on the principles of equitable contribution and common welfare in the transition to a circular model”",12
"A definition that is proposed by [35]: …“a circular city embeds the principles of a circular economy across all its functions, establishing an urban system that is regenerative, accessible and abundant by design",12
"It includes technical, economic, and social aspects, and emphasizes the role of digitalization",9
This paper aims to address this gap and synthesize qualitative evidence of cities’ experiences with circular economy and identify central themes around urban circularity,12
"Our analysis is guided by two questions: (1) What is the nature of the evidence base related to CE in cities? and (2) What has been the focus of the evidence in terms of sectors of implementation and application and in terms of developing urban circular strategies? To provide insights into the body of evidence around circular economy model uptake in cities, we apply an evidence mapping methodology informed by systematic mapping guidance produced by the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence [38, 39]",12
"As a result, this review provides an overview of urban circular economy transitions' spatial and sectorial distribution, by searching the academic literature for case studies on the application of CE within cities, with some additions from grey literature",12
The results may contribute to a better understanding of the potential and the abilities to adapt CE practices and principles in the urban environment based on the existing experience,11
"Articles that were excluded did not focus on circular economy per se (e.g., covered low carbon pathways, migration) or covered CE at product, national or supranational level",12
"However, this strategy might not have been not labelled as CE, but instead, as sustainable consumption and production, or instead of focusing on cities, cover household level initiatives",12
"Figure 7b demonstrates a strong focus on recycling and recovery in the waste and wastewater sector, while ‘R’s are more evenly distributed for other sectors",12
"Figure 7c suggests a strong focus on recycling and recovery in China, while much of Europe has a more even spread across ‘R’s, except for Italy, which also focuses on recovery, recycling, and refurbishing",12
Associated with the waste and wastewater industry are the R-frameworks of recycling and recovery and the recycling n construction and demolition industry,12
There is also a knowledge cluster on recycling and recovery of resources in China and Italy,12
"Some of our findings align with what other researchers have pointed out: a prevalence of the narrow focus on recycling and waste management practices leads to knowledge concentrations in specific sectors, certain lower-level R-frameworks, and certain sectors countries and cities",12
"Overall, our analysis shows that there is still quite a narrow focus on recycling and waste and energy recovery, which confirms the conclusions by [14, 65]",12
"As developing nations grow economically, it will be essential to decouple economic prosperity from material and energy consumption, which has not been proven by the CE [69,70,71]",7
"Our analysis demonstrates that instead of focusing only on end-of-life stages (e.g., recycling and energy recovery), cities need to embrace and prioritize closer and more narrow loops (including refusing and rethinking consumption and production), which are yet to be addressed",12
"With circular economy rapidly becoming a political and an industrial priority, more cities are embarking on circular economy model trajectories; our systematic map of the scientific and grey literature shows what research has been undertaken in the past decade on this topic",12
"Overall, our evidence map contains publications covering 44 countries and some 105 cities worldwide, with most publications covering recycling and recovery and the waste and wastewater industry",12
"To reduce the material and energy consumption and therefor the environmental impacts of cities, moving towards the reduce, rethink and refuse R’s in the R-frameworks, the sharing economy and transition theory could provide additional insight",7
"Functional Land Management (FLM) is proposed as an integrator for sustainability policies and assesses the functional capacity of the soil and land to deliver primary productivity, water purification and regulation, carbon cycling and storage, habitat for biodiversity and recycling of nutrients",12
Agriculture is faced with the challenge of increasing primary productivity to meet the rising global demand for food security (Alexandratos and Bruinsma 2012),2
"With United Nation (UN) population estimates of between 9.4 and 10 billion for 2050, increasing to between 10 and 12.5 billion by 2100 (UN 2015a), food security continues to be a priority on the political agenda",2
"At the same time, society expects that any emphasis on increasing agricultural output is met with an equal emphasis on sustainability (Garnett et al",2
"Agriculture is the main source of nitrate and phosphate pollution to water (OECD 2001; FAO 2003) and is a major source of methane and nitrous oxide to the atmosphere with Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) responsible for just under one-quarter of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (FAO 2003; Smith et al",15
"As well as contributing to climate change, agriculture is affected by it",13
"While warmer temperatures can support the growth of specific crops in certain part of the world up to a point, if temperatures exceed an optimal level or if there are insufficient water and nutrients, a decrease in yields is anticipated, associated with climate change (FAO 2016)",13
"By 2030, these targets seek to progressively improve soil quality, reduce soil pollution and contamination and to restore degraded soils (UN 2015b)",2
"FLM focuses on the five soil functions that are delivered through agricultural landscapes: (1) primary productivity, (2) water purification and regulation, (3) carbon cycling and storage, (4) habitat for biodiversity and (5) recycling of (external) nutrients/agro-chemicals",12
"The EU LAND Management: Assessment, Research, Knowledge base (LANDMARK) project (SFS-04-2014-soil quality and function) is quantifying the supply of soil functions across Europe",2
"These modelling studies are now underpinned by the Soil QUality Assessment and REsearch (SQUARE) project (DAFM Project Reference No: 13S468), which encompasses a national level field campaign that will provide a baseline of the delivery of the five soil functions for grassland management systems in Ireland",2
"Stakeholders must match the supply of soil functions with the societal demand for soil functions through use of land use, land use change and land management options",15
"This challenge is consistent with the demand target outlined in Ireland’s Food Harvest 2020 policy document (DAFF 2010); (b) the water quality function, by improving the water quality status from Q3 (moderate) to Q4 (good) under the EU Water Framework Directive (EU 2000)",6
"The results from catchment challenge 1 are shown in Table 2 with breakout group responses presented at workshop level clustered into three categories: land use change, land management practices and knowledge intensification measures",15
"Across all workshops, the top five options proposed were afforestation, the use of buffer strip/riparian zones, soil sampling and analysis, targeted inorganic nutrients and targeted slurry/organic amendments",15
"In relation to land use changes, afforestation, bioenergy crops, conversion to grassland and conversion to dairy were the options most frequently proposed in the optimised designs",15
"Buffer strips or fencing off high-risk areas were unanimous solutions (n = 7) towards the protection and improvement of water quality, targeted in areas considered to be critical source areas",6
"Specifically, more advisory support, training and education were emphasised by all groups",4
"In workshop 4, another example proposed was the development of a traffic light water quality navigator that could offer value in relation to sustainable branding",6
"This model is one rural development measure under the ‘Knowledge Transfer and Information Actions’ co-funded by the EU’s European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD), Pillar II of the Common Agricultural Policy and the Irish national exchequer (DAFM 2016)",2
"Across these stakeholders (workshops 1, 2, 3, 4), on average the primary productivity and the nutrient recycling functions emerged as the highest priorities",12
"Industry stakeholder groups similarly prioritised primary productivity and nutrient recycling, with the exception of the executive level processor stakeholders, who still prioritised primary productivity as highest but ranked water purification and regulation followed by carbon cycling and storage above the nutrient recycling soil function",12
This research proposes the catchment challenge method as an important tool to identify solutions and actions necessary to bridge the gap between landscape level implementation of FLM and the scientific research that underpins FLM,9
Local livestock breeds play an important role in the food security of smallholders in developing countries in the Global South,2
They are also a reservoir of potentially valuable genes for adaptation of global animal genetic resources,2
"The Creole cattle population from Pasorapa, Bolivia, is threatened by effects of climate change and unplanned crossbreeding",13
In a SWOT analysis we discussed the vulnerability of the system to climate change impacts and the contribution of this traditional system to rural mitigation,13
"Animal genetic resources are important in different aspects, from their contribution to the livelihoods of smallholders to their broad social and cultural importance, use in actual breeding programs, potential as a gene reservoir of a wide diversity of traits for future applications, role in the adaptability and resilience of production systems, and as key elements in the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [1,2,3]",2
"In developing countries in the Global South, local livestock breeds often play a crucial role in the food security, nutrition, and health of the rural community",2
"The aim of this study was to assess the current situation in a population of Creole cattle in Pasorapa, Bolivia, and to evaluate factors to be considered before implementing conservation and genetic improvement programs in order to achieve SDG 1, 2, 13 and 15",1
"Other less frequently cited causes were water scarcity, stick insects, rabies, and the disease chullpa (about 2–3% each)",6
"Affected cows have all four legs paralyzed and die owing to thirst and starvation, after having eaten all the grass close by",2
The greatest general concern among all farmers surveyed was water scarcity,6
"In addition, smallholder farming systems in low-income countries in the Global South are already experiencing impacts of climate change [14, 15]",13
"Impacts of climate change are associated with deterioration in yield and quality of feed crops and forage, water availability, diseases, and reproduction [16,17,18]",13
"Another main factor affecting productivity and causing concern to farmers, and which is common throughout the Global South, was water scarcity and drought",6
"Because of this strong interaction between the production system and the environment, the vulnerability of the system to the impact of climate change increases at the same time as animal traits related to survival, adaptation and resilience become more important",13
"Climate change is also associated with the increased occurrence of diseases [16, 21], with associated impacts on productivity",13
"However, its critical role for livelihoods of family farmers from the Global South, where most people are under the recommended nutrition standards [25], need to be taken into account",2
"Under these conditions, appropriate conservation programs for native plant species and plans for grazing and browsing areas are required (Fig. 3) in order to address targets 15.2 and 15.4 of SDG 15",15
"It is well known that rangelands play an important role in mitigation of climate change, e.g., management of rangelands can be used to counteract rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations because they store large amounts of carbon in aboveground vegetation and soils [26]",13
"From this perspective, traditional systems like the Creole cattle production system in Pasorapa may be important for climate change mitigation",13
"It has been suggested that applying an adaptive multi-paddock grazing system can improve animal and forage productivity, and also contribute to climate change mitigation through soil carbon sequestration [27]",13
"Breeding goals should therefore include traits related to reduced sensitivity to environmental variation and resilience to high temperatures, low quality feed, and diseases, making it easier to achieve target 13.1 of SDG 13",13
"In the longer term, breeding and conservation programs can be developed to further increase productivity and farmer income, and to conserve genetic diversity (SDG 1 and 2)",1
The main threats to the system relate to the environment and can be expected to worsen with climate change,13
"With the future threats of climate change and loss of genetic diversity and important genes related to resilience, disease resistance and adaptation traits, there is an urgent need to describe in detail, this and other similar production systems throughout the Global South, identify their interactions with the environment, and suggest potential improvements in the management",13
Adoption of new technologies and strategies is important to mitigate the effects of long drought periods and the impacts of climate change on the system,13
"Future breeding and conservation programs must bear in mind that it is important to retain those traits that allow Creole cattle and other native populations to succeed under the harsh environment in Pasorapa and similar regions, making it possible to achieve target 13.1 of SDG 13",13
Initiatives focusing on improving animal productivity should exploit the characteristics of these traditional systems and their benefits for mitigation of climate change through carbon sequestration,13
"Given the strong interaction between the Creole cattle population and the ecosystem, a native plant conservation program and grazing plans should be designed in order to accomplish targets 15.4 and 15.5 of SDG 15.",15
"This paper uses global economic analysis tools to assess the impacts of long-term changes in fossil fuel prices, for example, as a result of a carbon tax under the UNFCCC or in response to new, large findings of fossil energy sources, on water and food outcomes",12
"The larger population in this region is expected to be wealthier, consume more—and more water-intensive—calories, have increased access to modern energy, and enjoy enhanced access to water supplies",7
"All of the improvements require political will, significant investment, and institutional capacity",16
"Another important determinant of the close linkage between these price indexes is the increased energy intensity of agriculture and the food supply chain, particularly in some rapidly growing developing countries (Ringler et al",7
"Most previous studies linking energy and food focused on biofuel development as a source of energy affected by and affecting energy or food markets or both, as well as greenhouse gas emissions and land use change (Dodder et al",15
"Thus, they find a negative relationship between world food and energy prices—when energy price increases are not driven by overall economic growth",8
"In order to improve energy security and reduce GHG emissions from conventional fossil fuels, evidence supports the need to introduce a larger share of alternative energy sources, such as nuclear and renewable energy, into the global energy mix (IEA, 2012)",7
"These three modules allow for an assessment of climate variability and change on water availability for the agriculture and other sectors, as well as for an assessment of changes in water demand, investment in water storage and irrigation infrastructure, and technological improvements on water and food security",2
"In particular, the IGHM model simulates natural hydrological processes, thus estimating water availability, while the IWSM model simulates human appropriation of surface water and groundwater, considering water infrastructure capacity and policies, based on which we calculated water stress",6
"Moreover, changes in energy prices on the demand for hydropower development and on groundwater pumping can be simulated as exogenous changes in the modeling framework",7
"In the development of a dynamic baseline for the present study, the growth rates of labor-augmenting technical progress by region are calibrated such that the regional baseline GDP growth rates replicate the GDP growth assumed in the IMPACT baseline projections",8
"For applications of earlier GLOBE versions in a food security context, see Willenbockel (2012) and Government Office for Science (2011)",2
The resulting user price increases for the primary fossil fuels and petrol induce substitution effects towards renewable energy sources in production along with investments in more energy-efficient technologies as well as substitution effects towards less energy-intensive goods in final consumption,7
"While the promotion of biofuels as a major measure to mitigate climate change has declined, a significant share of INDCs still included biofuels in their climate change mitigation portfolio",13
"In addition, hydropower development accelerates slightly over baseline investment levels, adding 10 % additional storage to the overall surface storage portfolio by 2050; additional surface storage supports additional (largely gravity-fed) surface water withdrawals for all water uses of a similar magnitude, compensating to some extent for lost groundwater access",7
Scenario 4 (LEP) assumes that no climate policy will be agreed upon at the 2015 Paris Climate Change Meeting,13
"All four scenarios are run with and without climate change, assuming the most aggressive Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) from IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report (IPCC, 2014), 8.5, which postulates an approximate level of radiative forcing by 2100 of 8.5 watts/m2, relative to preindustrial values",13
"Over the coming four decades, population and economic growth and urbanization is shifting diets toward increased demand for livestock products as well as fruits and vegetables, sugars, and oils",8
"In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), demand is expected to grow by close to 50 % and in the East Asia and Pacific (EAP) region by more than 40 % during 2010–2050 under a no climate change scenario, while in North America (NA) and Europe, demand is expected to barely change",13
"In response, globally, production of cereals, meats, and roots and tubers is expected to increase by 51, 67, and 51 %, respectively (Table 3); demand for fruits and vegetables and pulses is expected to grow even faster, by 85 and 84 %, respectively, under a no climate change scenario",13
Prices for most commodities will increase in the range of 20 % with particular large increases expected for the price of maize at 32 % under the no climate change baseline (Table 4),13
Such price increases have direct adverse food security impacts for the poorest consumers,2
"Price increases between a climate change and a no climate change scenario are somewhat lower for livestock products, in part because these are simulated in response to changes in livestock feed prices and lower household incomes rather than direct adverse impacts from climate change on animal numbers (Table 4)",13
"Under a climate change alternative, the increase would be 120 cal lower",13
"Source: IFPRI Impact Simulations Energy access continues to improve, still driven, to a large extent by fossil fuels, but with considerable growth in renewables",7
"This share is projected to decline only slowly, to 81 % by 2050 under climate change (BaseCC) (and to 80 % under the no climate change scenario BasenoCC), balancing more rapidly growing demand for water in the domestic and urban sectors with growing evapotranspiration demands from increased food production needs and climate change",13
"Between 2010 and 2050, the population at risk of water stress—defined as the population in basin areas where water withdrawals exceed 40 % of available water resources (Alcamo et al",6
"2003; Oki and Kanae, 2006)—is expected to grow from 2.96 billion (43 % of the global population) to 4.46 billion people (50 % of the projected SSP2 global population) under the climate change scenario",13
Almost the entire population in the MENA region will live in areas with high water stress as will high shares of the South Asian population,6
"Even in NA, Europe and the FSU severe water stress can affect up to half of the residents",6
Only SSA will continue to face relatively low water stress (Fig,6
Population under water stress (withdrawal of 40 % or more of internal renewable resources),6
"Share of unmet water demands, 2010 and projected 2050, alternative scenarios with climate change",13
The pressure on prices is slightly larger under the climate change scenario,13
"On balance, the number of people at risk of hunger increases slightly more under the climate change scenario",13
"Differences are small as water stress is defined as withdrawal exceeding 40 % of water availability: Once a basin already belongs to the ‘stressed’ category, a further increase in water withdrawals would not affect its water scarcity category and for a basin below the category, a significant increase in withdrawals would be needed to move it above the 40 % mark",6
"When various measures to compensate for increased fossil fuel prices are introduced (HEPadap with and without climate change scenario), then household incomes in key developing regions decline slightly further",13
"The increased use of surface water through increased reservoir storage, on the other hand, improves water-for-food outcomes slightly but not sufficient to compensate for the declining food security situation caused by biofuel demand",2
The number of people at risk of severe water stress barely changes,6
"The final scenario, LEP, assessed the impacts of an increase in fossil fuel availability and concomitant lower energy prices on water and food security—a scenario that we have been seeing over the last few years",2
This article describes the complex relationship between energy price changes and outcomes for food and water security using two global modeling frameworks: the global CGE model GLOBE and the partial equilibrium model IMPACT assessing various energy price pathways under a climate change and a no climate change scenario out to 2050,13
"We find that higher fossil fuel prices due to a carbon tax, for example, reduce household income, particularly of countries that are net exporters of fossil fuels or net importers of refined petrol",12
When energy prices do not increase under upward pressure from economic growth but as a result of energy supply shocks,8
Carbon taxes are one important avenue supported by the Paris Agreement to shift capital flows toward climate mitigation,13
"For example, other important measures that are proposed as part of the INDCs but which we do not assess include direct investments in energy efficiency improvement, changes in land use change, changes in power transmission, and various changes in components of renewable energy sources",7
More research is needed to assess the implications of other drivers on energy prices on overall water and food security given the continued close linkages of energy with water and food outcomes as well as the continued uncertainty of energy developments out into the future,2
Empirical evidence shows that CO2 emissions trigger economic growth,8
"Thus, based on increasing environmental awareness across the globe, it is necessary to change the energy mix in South Korea to renewables to enable the use of sustainable energy sources and establish an environmentally sustainable ecosystem",7
"This result is supported by the causality analysis, which shows a one-way causality running from energy consumption to GDP in South Korea",7
These findings have far-reaching consequences for GDP growth and macroeconomic indicators in South Korea,8
Climate change is a global problem that has strengthened the international and domestic consciousness to identify ways of mitigating the growing trend (Olanrewaju et al,13
"Various economic practices, both directed at and based on economic growth, contribute to pollutants’ emissions (Ayobamiji & Kalmaz 2020; Udemba 2020)",8
"Such practices from multiple sectors (petroleum sector, manufacturing, oil extraction, agriculture) of the economy that cause GDP growth also trigger pollution (Umar et al",8
"In its NDC, South Korea is officially committed to achieving 539 MtCO2e/year except for LULUCF",13
"To achieve this target, South Korea will have to improve its climate policies significantly, even more so if the government intends to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, such as by amending and enhancing its 2030 NDC to be compliant with the Paris Accord",13
"According to the EIA (2020), in 2019, the total primary energy consumption of South Korea consisted of coal (28%), petroleum and other liquids (43%) natural gas (16%), renewable sources (3%), and nuclear (10%), as depicted in Fig",7
"Based on the fascinating energy mix of South Korea, the present research aims to examine the effects of the positive development and growth of South Korea, with an emphasis on the energy consequences of South Korea’s economic performance via urbanization, gross capital formation, and use of energy",7
"This research, therefore, explores the effects of CO2 pollution, urbanization, gross capital development, and use of energy on South Korea’s economic performance.
 South Korea total primary energy consumption by fuel 2019 It is important to recognize that, as a foremost economy in terms of growth, it is necessary to explore the economy and render appropriate economic sustainability suggestions based on analytical results",7
"That being said, considering the rapid population growth rate, significant efforts have been made to mitigate the detrimental consequences of global warming without impacting GDP growth",8
"The current research is distinct from the existing studies because it accounts for other economic growth determinants, including energy usage, CO2 emissions, gross capital formation, and urbanization",8
"The present research is considered particularly timely and deserving of inquiry, especially in the current era in which responsible energy use and environmental protection are increasingly being targeted",15
"In Kuwait, Wasti and Zaidi (2020) concluded that energy consumption and CO2 emission accelerate GDP",7
"However, economic growth Granger causes CO2 emissions",8
(2018) established a positive interaction between energy consumption and GDP in the top ten energy-consuming economies utilizing the quantile-on-quantile (QQ) approach for the period 1960Q1 to 2015Q4,7
Mutascu (2016) explored the causal association between economic growth and energy use in the G7 nations,8
"The author revealed a bidirectional link between economic growth and energy use in the USA, Canada, and Japan, but no causality was evident in the UK and Italy",8
The author revealed that there was a unidirectional linkage from energy consumption to GDP,7
(2016) utilized the TY causality to examine the link between GDP and Russia’s energy consumption,7
(2019) confirmed a positive shock moving from energy consumption to GDP in Pakistan from 1971 to 2014,7
"(2020) revealed that energy consumption positively affected China’s GDP, covering the period from 1981–2016",7
"Numerous studies have been conducted in terms of the linkage between gross capital formation and GDP growth, although their findings are mixed",8
"Table 1 presents a synopsis of related studies.
 This study’s theoretical work is based on the EKC which was built on the Kuznets curve of Kuznets (1955), which was centered on income inequality",10
Environmental economists such as (Panayotou 1997; Grossman and Krueger 1991) improved this theory by examining the association between economic growth and environmental quality,8
"The effect of GDP growth on the quality of any economy’s environment arises in 3 phases—scale effect, structural effect, and composite effects",8
"In the first phase, environmental degradation is experienced but reaching a point (turning point), the environmental quality begins to improve due to development in innovations and increasing environmental consciousness",15
This phase is related to developing nations because non-renewable energy sources promote their economic and production activities,7
"The present research explores the impact of CO2 emissions (CO2) on economic growth (GDP) and also the role of gross capital formation (GCF), energy use (EC), and urbanization (URB) in South Korea using data spanning between 1965 and 2018",8
"In the case of South Korea, the current research was conceived with the perspective of examining the connections between GDP growth, CO2 pollution, urbanization, and energy use",8
"(11) as follows:
 The Fourier Toda-Yamamoto causality with single frequencies (SF) is defined as follows:
 The present paper aims to examine the connection between CO2 emissions (CO2) and economic growth (GDP) as well as the role of urbanization (URB), gross capital formation (GCF), and energy usage (EC) in South Korea between 1965 and 2018",8
"Consequently, the elementary summary statistical characteristics that report the measure of central tendencies and dispersion outlined in Table 3 show that urbanization reveals the highest average followed by economic growth, energy use, and the least gross capital formation",8
"The outcomes of the R2 and Adj R2 illustrate that 99% and 98% variation in GDP can be explained by urbanization, gross capital formation, CO2 emissions, and energy consumption, and the remaining percentage can be attributed to error",7
"This is not unexpected given that the South Korean economy is primarily an investment-oriented and manufacturing economy that relies heavily on the utilization of energy; nonetheless, a positive side of this is the potential to minimize CO2 by shifting the energy mix to include more renewable options such as wind and solar energy (renewables)",7
"Furthermore, urbanization influences economic growth positively in South Korea, which is in harmony with a positive linkage with GDP growth and urbanization",8
We see that a 1.92% increase in GDP growth is due to a 1% increase in the urban population,8
"Otherwise, the urban infrastructure might be overwhelmed and might impede economic growth in the long run",8
We noticed that energy use improves economic growth as we noticed that a 0.23% increase in economic growth is due to an increase in energy use by a magnitude of 1%,8
This outcome implies that the South Korean economy is energy driven and cannot embark on conservative energy strategies as such action will compromise economic growth,8
b WTC between GDP and energy consumption,7
The outcomes of the gradual shift causality revealed: (i) a one-way causality from energy consumption to GDP at a significance level of 1%,7
This suggests that South Korea’s economic growth is not immune from development caused by fossil fuels,8
"(2021); (ii) a unidirectional causality from CO2 emissions to GDP growth at a 1% level of significance, which implies that CO2 emissions are a strong predictor of GDP growth in South Korea",8
"(2021).
 The current study adds to the previously existing literature by assessing the linkage between economic growth, CO2 emissions, energy usage, urbanization, and gross capital formation in South Korea using yearly data stretching between 1965 and 2019",8
The outcomes show a mix (significant and insignificant) of associations between economic growth and the regressors,8
"Furthermore, we applied the novel wavelet test to capture the correlation and causal association between economic growth and the regressors",8
"The wavelet analysis findings revealed a positive connection between economic growth and the regressors with the exemption of gross capital formation, which has a weak interconnection with economic performance",8
"The gradual shift causality test outcomes provide intuition and credibility to the linkage among economic growth and urbanization, energy usage, gross capital formation, and CO2 emissions",8
This research’s outcomes have aided us in embracing the promotion of energy intensity diversification of South Korea,7
This could be achieved by implementing a more ambitious green energy initiative that will maintain the nation’s economic momentum,7
The design and execution of successful policies to regulate South Korean energy and manufacturing sector practices will improve its sustainable growth,8
"Also, energy usage should be embraced by incorporating sustainable (renewable) energy sources, including hydropower, oceanic, and wind energy sources",7
Implementing the aforementioned policies will help to maintain sustainable economic development and South Korea’s proven environmental performance,8
This study’s outcome could also have a positive impact on neighboring nations who are willing to take the steps suggested in this paper to strengthen their sustainable growth,8
One consequence is that the pandemic has made it even harder to mobilize the financial resources needed to pursue SDG 13 (Climate Action) as a whole and to fund climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts in particular,13
This is especially acute in respect of the efforts to achieve the targets set by the Paris Agreement and by the recent decisions in Glasgow,13
"This paper looks at how the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated poverty and undermined climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts, as a result of the switches in priorities and funding",13
"Using a review of the recent literature, an analysis of international trends, and a survey among climate scientists, it identifies some of the impacts of the pandemic on climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts and discusses their implications",13
The findings indicate a decrease in funding to climate change research since the pandemic crisis,13
The bibliometric analysis reveals that a greater emphasis has been placed on the relationship between COVID-19 and poverty when compared to the interrelations between COVID-19 and climate change,13
"Addressing climate change is as urgent now as it was before the pandemic crisis started, and efforts need to be made to upkeep the levels of funding needed to support research in this field",13
"However, a post-lockdown economic recovery plan that includes and underlines an environmentally friendly future could make a significant contribution to the fight against global warming",8
"Some researchers reflected upon the challenges of today’s crisis and compiled a list of the similarities and differences between the two crises: High impact trends, with worldwide implications, Some of the changes caused by them may be irreversible, Exacerbate social inequalities, Weakening of international solidarity, and Less costly to prevent than to cure [5]",10
"While the richest countries have the financial ability to invest in reducing the impacts of climate change and rebuilding damaged infrastructures after extreme weather events, the less developed nations are much more vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis in terms of water and food insecurity, destroyed infrastructures, increased health problems, among others",13
The manufacturing industry (secondary sector) was also impacted by the pandemic,9
"Other social issues that arose from the pandemic also include increased poverty (belonging to the SDG 1 goal to end poverty everywhere), mental health issues, inequalities towards vulnerable groups, and gender-based violence",1
"Apart from the millions of people infected and the clinical cases associated with it, the financial stress triggered by the pandemic caused many people to experience mental health problems such as anxiety or depression [16]",3
"In particular, the loss of family members to the virus and the economic uncertainties caused by the pandemic led to the initiation or worsening of already existing mental health conditions [17]",3
"While the COVID-19 pandemic had impacts on finance resources worldwide, this paper looks at how it has accelerated poverty and undermined climate change adaptation efforts, as a result of the switches in priorities and funding",13
"For this reason, the effect of pandemic on SDG 13 research has been analyzed",13
"Although the rate of the impacts of both the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis is different, both have led to significant health and economic implications [19]",13
"The COVID-19 pandemic, recovery actions, and the post-crisis economic situation might undermine wealthy nations’ priorities and abilities to provide climate finance [23, 24] and alter their green plans, as in the case of China [25]",13
"However, a delay in climate action might even result in a higher cost [26,27,28]",13
Even before the pandemic both the private and public sectors were struggling with how to achieve the goal of $100 billion in annual funding to assist low-income nations in combating climate change through adaptation and mitigation measures [23],13
"Nevertheless, OECD nations’ climate finance contributions have increased in recent years, from USD 58.6 billion in 2016 to USD 78.9 billion in 2018, showing a favorable trend toward achieving the target (Fig. 2",13
"Climate finance provided and mobilized [2013–18, USD billion])",13
"(Source: OECD [23]) Public and private climate finance provided by the OECD nations between the years 2013 and 2019, USD billion",13
"Data for 2020 are expected to be available in 2022 Furthermore, the national lockdowns are expected to reduce investments in renewable energy projects in 2020 by 10% compared to 2019 [32], though this value will vary with the lockdown’s severity [30]",7
"According to the Greenness of Stimulus Index (GSI), 15 of the announced packages by the G20 will lead to an additional environmental impact or reinforce existing damages [35] by supporting sectors that heavily affect climate change and biodiversity and increase pollution",13
"Therefore, COVID-19 and climate change are currently the subject of policy debates, with the goal of reducing economic loss through implementing clean recovery stimulus packages, simultaneously addressing both problems (e.g., [36, 37])",13
"Some of the stimulus packages released by major economies do include climate change-related measures that differ in types and dimensions, though the share of the budget assigned for these purposes and implementation frames is not always stated clearly",13
"On the other hand, developing countries that already are significantly affected by climate change are facing an unprecedented economic and health crisis",13
"The pandemic not only has deepened inequalities, but also redefined priorities towards addressing climate change",13
"The objectives of the article are to provide an overview of how the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated poverty and analyze the extent to which it has undermined climate change adaptation efforts, as a result of the switches in priorities and funding",13
"To solicit expert opinions on how the COVID-19 pandemic has deepened poverty and undermined climate change adaptation efforts, we conducted an online survey of experts in the field",13
The online survey included environmental scientists and professionals from the social sciences and humanities working on climate change issues,13
The main purpose of the questionnaire was to analyze the effect of the pandemic on SDG 13 research and to find out whether climate financing projects has decreased,13
"For this purpose, we divided the questionnaire into 3 sections: (a) scientists’ background (questions about their country, gender, age, average salary); (b) scientists’ profile (asking about their professional field, the main country where they carry out their research, etc.); and (c) access to climate change research funds (asking if the amount of funding for their research changed since March 2020, among other questions)",13
"To gain an overview of the knowledge structure on the interactions between the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change policies, and poverty, we relied on the bibliometric analysis provided by VOS viewer, which is widely used for this purpose [48]",13
"Regarding the field of expertise in climate change research, several respondents mentioned more than one field (271 answers)",13
"Fields of research (see Table 2) span over a wide range, with climate change adaptation and resilience being the most popular, followed by impacts, mitigation, and vulnerability assessment",13
"The extent to which the amount of funding for their climate change research changed since March 2020 was rated by 103 respondents as follows: 35 (35%) stated that they don’t know; 29 (29%) experienced a subsequent decrease in funding; 29 (29%) experienced no change, and only 7 (7%) found themselves in the lucky situation of increased funding",13
"Regarding information about whether the researcher’s usual sources of funding stopped or postponed funding for climate change projects since March 2020, of the 96 individuals answering this question, approximately a third don’t know (N = 34/35.4%), another third (N = 32/33.3%) stated that their usual funding source stopped or postponed funding, while the remaining third (N = 30/31.3) said this did not happen",13
"We obtained 71 responses, as several respondents mentioned more than one field; the three main orientations of their research are adaptation and resilience (16%), risk and vulnerability assessments (14%), and impacts of climate change (13%)",13
We also performed an association analysis between these variables (the relevance of COVID-19 in their research agenda with their field of climate change research) and the result showed that there is no statistically significant association between the two (p-value = 0.63),13
"The future impact of COVID-19 on their climate change research, as expressed by 100 respondents, is expected to increase according to more than half of the respondents (N = 56/56%), to decrease as stated by 13 (13%) respondents, while 15 (15%) expect no change at all, and 16 (16%) don’t know",13
"Taking into account that many of the participants had stated that their funding for climate change projects had changed since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the next step was to reveal if these changes had any relation with or dependence on other variables, such as the continent where the participants work, their monthly income, their professional field, the orientation of their research, or their funding agencies",13
"This may be linked to the Recovery Package of the European Commission, which stated that 30% of the EU funds should be directed towards fighting climate change and fair climate transition, the highest share ever of the European budget",13
"The bibliometric analysis shows that connections between COVID-19 and poverty have been, relatively, more discussed than those between COVID-19 and climate change",13
"In terms of connections between COVID-19 and climate change, it is evident that implications for both mitigation and adaptation are discussed in the literature",13
"Also, given its major impacts on the global economy, it has been discussed that the pandemic will have major implications for climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts",13
"This, in particular, has been discussed about economic consequences such as poverty and unemployment",8
Increased unemployment will further reduce the adaptive capacity of citizens and increase poverty,8
"This may direct the existing governmental budget towards poverty alleviation and reduce the budget needed to implement climate actions, thereby making it difficult to implement mitigation measures such as carbon pricing, which puts more pressure on the urban poor [27]",1
The stimulus packages designed for economic recovery may also delay actions aimed at achieving climate stabilization targets,8
"Accordingly, recovery packages should be designed and implemented in a way, whereby economic growth and emissions are decoupled [36]",8
"Furthermore, enhancing adaptation and mitigation prospects requires overcoming the socio-economic inequalities that are further deepened by the pandemic",10
"The reviewed literature has also emphasized that climate change should be addressed with the same urgency as the pandemic, and it has drawn similarities between climate change and the pandemic in the sense that both affect vulnerable and poor groups disproportionately",13
"Both COVID-19 and climate change are argued to be major health threats that are closely linked and can have intensifying effects on each other [51, 52]",13
"If not designed appropriately, actions aimed at dealing with both pandemics and climate change may exacerbate inequalities",13
"For instance, lockdown measures in the absence of financial support will impact the livelihood capacities of underprivileged groups; similarly, some climate change measures such as carbon pricing affect low-income people disproportionately [49]",13
"This way, the economic distress associated with unemployment will be minimized",8
"In the term co-occurrence (Fig. 5), the term health also has a central place and is closely linked to other terms such as disparity, equity, poverty, and climate change",13
Affordable health coverage ensures universal access to preventive as well as therapeutic healthcare and is essential for dealing with COVID-19 as well as climate-induced risks [53],3
"Result of the term co-occurrence analysis This study employed a mixed-methods approach to shed light on some preliminary findings on the pandemic’s implications for poverty and climate change adaptation efforts, as a result of switching priorities and funding",13
"Utilizing a questionnaire-based survey to gather expert opinion, we attempted to examine whether priorities for climate change initiatives and projects have decreased as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic",13
"The survey results were complemented by a bibliometric analysis to gain an overview of the knowledge structure on the interactions among the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change policies, and poverty",13
"It is relevant to note that 77.8% of the respondents point out that the COVID-19 pandemic is of particular relevance for their ongoing research, and 56% confirm that the impact of the pandemic crisis on their climate change research agenda will increase in the coming years",13
"This is most evident among climate change researchers in Africa, where 41% report a decrease in project funding",13
The bibliometric analysis reveals that a greater emphasis has been placed on the relationship between COVID-19 and poverty when compared to the interrelations between COVID-19 and climate change,13
"The term co-occurrence analysis suggests that the term ‘health’ has a central place and is closely linked to terms such as ‘disparity’, ‘equity’, ‘poverty’ as well as ‘climate change’",13
"In terms of connections between COVID-19 and climate change, implications for both mitigation and adaptation are examined in the literature",13
The reviewed literature stresses that addressing climate change is as urgent as the pandemic crisis and that both affect the most vulnerable and poor social groups disproportionately,13
"Likewise, both COVID-19 and climate change are defined as major health threats that are closely interrelated and may have aggravating effects on each other",13
"The merits of the work reside in the fact that it is one of the few papers which has examined the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on climate change research, especially in respect of the availability of funding",13
This is a welcome addition to the literature since the pandemic is known to have influenced climate change initiatives in a significant way,13
"Figure 6 outlines three possible scenarios: Possible scenarios associated with funding to climate change in connection with the pandemic Scenario 1: Funding to climate change is reduced, further inhibiting efforts to tackle it",13
Scenario 3: Funding to support climate change initiatives increase,13
"In this respect, redefining climate actions under the scope of SDG 13 may provide meaningful insights towards a climate-proof and low-carbon economy in the long term",13
"Whereas the steep drop of global production and consumer demand seen during the earlier stages of the COVID-19 pandemic may have bought us a little time, there is an urgent need for well-aimed responses and to step up efforts in order to prevent the potential of the pandemic to undermine the achievement of the SDGs (especially SDG 13) worldwide",13
"While the high risk of retreating/rebounding to a business-as-usual normality is evident, policy responses need to drive climate change mitigation and adaptation away from uncoordinated priorities, and towards specific and targets, using adequate indicators",13
"To this end, further inter- and trans-disciplinary cooperation on climate mitigation and adaptation is needed, to pave the way for the measures which are now being implemented, as the world tries to recover from the pandemic",13
"The importance of climate action cannot be underestimated or ignored, as further inertia may exacerbate the current COVID-19 impacts and could undermine long-term development prospects.",13
"Bioeconomy, circular economy and circular bioeconomy are emerging as important pathways for social, economic and technical transformation of society to bring it onto a sustainable footing (Karp et al",12
"In Europe, a resource/environmental view of bioeconomy has emerged (originally focused on resources but more recently also considering the wider environment) encompassing all sectors that rely on biological resources and processing to create value-added products such as food, feed, materials and bioenergy, thus reducing reliance on non-renewable resources while limiting and adapting to climate change, strengthening competitiveness, modernising industry, creating jobs, creating circular economies, minimising waste and supporting healthy ecosystems (European Commission 2018)",13
The concept of bioeconomy goes beyond biomass flows and is starting to merge with circular economy (Ubando et al,12
"Add to this, the desire to use bioresources to make materials, even allowing for a very efficient circular economy, even then marrying the visions of bioeconomy will prove very difficult. (McCormick and Kautto 2013)",12
"It has been used to identify a range of potential environmental impacts of a product, process or service from resource extraction (cradle) to production, use, reuse, recycling and final disposal (grave) (Matthews et al",12
"Function and functional unit presentation in the sample of 83 papers The definitions of bioeconomy presented in the introduction imply that systems delivering products, processes and services within the bioeconomy should be considered holistically, including all components from cradle to production through a cycle of use, reuse, recycling and recovery and ultimately to the end of life",12
"The impact methods were not mentioned by 13/83 studies, of which 3 studies considered a single impact category (climate change impact) and 10 studies considered multiple impact categories typically including climate change impact and fossil fuel depletion",13
"The majority of the studies defined both impact categories and methods (63), with 3 defining a single category related to climate change",13
"Climate change has clearly gained the most attention, followed by terrestrial acidification, eutrophication and ecotoxicity",13
"There was a tendency not to clearly define the function of the system (82% of the studies reviewed), which means it is questionable whether the results can be used in the context of scientific research (e.g",9
"waste management, 58%)",12
Most of the LCA studies reported were conducted in Europe where the main perspective was waste management,12
"(2016) 
Environmental Science and Technology
 5 Climate Change Mitigation Challenge for Wood Utilization-The Case of Finland 2016 Finland Soimakallio et al",13
"(2016) 
Journal of Environmental Management
 8 Material flow and sustainability analyses of biorefining of municipal solid waste 2017 UK Sadhukhan and Martinez-Hernandez (2017) 
Bioresource Technology
 9 Life cycle assessment of orange peel waste management 2017 Italy Negro et al",12
"(2017) 
Resources, Conservation and Recycling
 10 Life cycle assessment of wood-plastic composites: Analysing alternative materials and identifying an environmental sound end-of-life option 2017 Germany Sommerhuber et al",12
"(2017) 
Resources, Conservation and Recycling
 11 Multi-product biorefineries from lignocelluloses: A pathway to revitalisation of the sugar industry? 2017 South Africa Farzad et al",12
"(2018b) 
Sustainable Production and Consumption
 28 Life cycle, techno-economic and dynamic simulation assessment of bioelectrochemical systems: A case of formic acid synthesis 2018 UK Shemfe et al",12
"(2018) 
Science of Total Environment
 30 Life cycle assessments for biomass derived sustainable biopolymer & energy co-generation 2018 UK Zhang, del Rio-Chanona and Shah (2018a) 
Sustainable Production and Consumption
 31 An environmental and economic analysis of the wood-pellet chain: two case studies in Southern Italy 2018 Italy Pergola et al",12
"(2018) 
Journal of Chemical and Biotechnology
 34 Life-cycle assessment on food waste valorisation to value-added products 2018 Hong Kong Lam et al",12
"(2018) 
Journal of Cleaner Production
 35 The future of Swedish food waste: An environmental assessment of existing and prospective valorization techniques 2018 Sweden Brunklaus et al",12
"(2019) 
Resources, Conservation and Recycling
 41 Comparative life cycle assessment of first- and second-generation ethanol from sugarcane in Brazil 2018 Brazil Maga et al",12
"(2019) 
International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment
 42 Sustainability of carbon delivery to an algal biorefinery: A techno-economic and life-cycle assessment 2019 USA Somers and Quinn (2019) 
Journal of CO2 Utilization
 43 Eco-efficiency analysis of recycling recovered solid wood from construction into laminated timber products 2019 Germany Risse et al",12
"(2019) 
Waste Management
 47 Sustainability and life cycle assessment (LCA) of macroalgae-derived single cell oils 2019 UK Parsons et al",12
"(2019) 
Environmental Science and Pollution Research
 51 Environmental life cycle assessment of different biorefinery platforms valorizing municipal solid waste to bioenergy, microbial protein, lactic and succinic acid 2020 Copenhagen Khoshnevisan et al",12
"(2020) 
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews
 52 Environmental impact assessments of integrated food and non-food production systems in Italy and Denmark 2020 Italy and Denmark Lehmann et al",7
"(2020) 
Resources, Conservation and Recycling
 59 Comparative life cycle assessment of microalgae cultivation for non-energy purposes using different carbon dioxide sources 2020 Italy Porcelli et al",12
"(2020) 
Resources, Conservation and Recycling
 64 Upgrading wineries to biorefineries within a Circular Economy perspective: An Italian case study 2021 Italy Ncube et al",12
"(2021) 
Resources, Conservation and Recycling
 66 Novel insights in dimethyl carbonate-based extraction of polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) 2021 Italy Mongili et al",12
"(2021) 
Algal Research
 68 Circular economy in the agro-industry: Integrated environmental assessment of dairy products 2021 Italy Oliveira et al",12
"(2021) 
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews
 69 Life cycle assessment of hetero- and phototrophic as well as combined cultivations of Galdieria sulphuraria 2021 Germany Thielemann et al",7
"(2021) 
Journal of Cleaner Production
 72 Life cycle assessment of fish oil substitute produced by microalgae using food waste 2021 Germany Bartek et al",12
"(2021) 
Sustainable Production and Consumption
 73 Environmental performance of miscanthus-lime lightweight concrete using life cycle assessment: Application in external wall assemblies 2021 UK Ntimugura et al",12
"(2021) 
Waste Management
 76 Using life cycle assessment to quantify the environmental benefit of upcycling vine shoots as fillers in biocomposite packaging materials 2020 France David et al",12
"(2021) 
Molecules
 80 Wastewater treatment using oxygenic photogranule-based process has lower environmental impact than conventional activated sludge process 2021 France Brockmann et al",6
"The World Health Organization (WHO), on January 30, 2020, declared a public health emergency of international concern",3
"As the present COVID-19 pandemic worsens, public health agencies must make better use YouTube to deliver timely and accurate information and minimize misinformation spread",3
It may assist all stakeholders for the promotion of destination and economic development,8
"(2021) concluded that for sustainable consumption and production, a green ICT infrastructure is required",12
"Recycling, optimize reuse and reduce waste generation were waste management options discussed in this study",12
(2018) correlate the population density with the organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) shares in urban household waste,12
(2021) discussed the importance of good governance to achieve environmental sustainable goals,16
"Furthermore, there is a requirement for promotion and a track record of waste reduction",12
Fabian and Lou (2019) pointed out three fundamental problems associated with waste management,12
"In the study, lack foresight and planning of authority, lack of auxiliary waste management technology, and limited capacity to recycle are highlighted as the three fundamental problems",12
"Also, Obuah and Okon (2017) discovered that clear messages and communication channels helped residents have knowledge and awareness regarding waste management and disposal procedure in the river",12
"There is an urgent global call for waste management from households, medical facilities and toxic waste to be treated as essential public service (Sarkodie and Owusu 2021)",12
"(2021) reported that there is a need to educate families to reinforce their intentions and behaviors to food waste, as well as make them aware of the social, economic, and environmental effect",12
"By doing so, nearly five SDGs can be achieved as mentioned below (Fig. 1): Climate action: Digital mode of communication will reduce daily wastage like paper and plastic",13
"Quality education: During pandemic, most of the educational institutions are closed",4
"Hence, it will help to achieve quality education",4
Responsible consumption and production: Digital communication help consumer and producer to block their deal without meeting each other,12
People are concerned regarding waste management and daily waste generation can be reduced adopting digital mode of communication,12
"There is a requirement to develop a toolkit that integrates framework with other sustainable assessments to support vaccination process, planning, and waste management",12
There is a requirement for a green supply chain framework for waste management after the usage of the awareness material.,12
This paper describes the subject matter of sustainable consumption and outlines its key features,12
"It also describes some international initiatives in this field.ResultsBy means of an international survey, the study explores the emphasis given to sustainable consumption during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the degree of preparedness in individuals to engage in the purchase of green and sustainably manufactured products",12
"The main results indicate that the pandemic offered an opportunity to promote sustainable consumption; nevertheless, the pandemic alone cannot be regarded as a ‘game changer’ in this topic.ConclusionsApart from an online survey with responses from 31 countries, which makes it one of the most representative studies on the topic, a logit model was used to analyse the main variables that affect the probability of pro-environmental consumption behaviour because of the COVID-19 pandemic",12
"The paper lists some of the technological and social innovations that may be needed, so as to guide more sustainable consumption patterns in a post-pandemic world",12
"Sustainable Consumption and Production (SPC) is embedded in the SDGs; in fact, sustainability and consumption are at the core of sustainable development [1], which aims to support a modification to sustainable patterns of production and consumption, as proposed by Goal 12, that clearly refers to the need to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns [2]",12
"Some of those patterns are related to some aspects of consumption, such as food waste",12
"Here, it is important to point out the implementation of the 10-Year Framework of Programmes on SCP for the ‘efficient use of natural resources, for cutting food and other waste, for responsible management of chemicals, for sustainable public procurement and for companies to adopt more sustainable practices’ [5, p",12
The SDG 12 includes eight specific targets (12.1 to 12.8),12
"85], these targets present a vision of sustainability that is very focused on ‘the production efficiency, in relation to use of natural resources (12.2), food production and supply related losses (12.3), management of chemicals and wastes (12.4), sustainable corporate practices and reporting (12.6) and sustainable public procurement (12.7).’ This SDG is very business-oriented, and does not emphasise the consumption side, except targets ‘to reduce food waste at the consumer level (12.3) and promote (voluntary) consumer action by ensuring universal access to information for sustainable lifestyles (12.8).’ Nevertheless, sustainable consumption is crucial due to the need for reducing the volume of goods consumption and changing consumer habits and patterns [6]",12
It is hard to find consensus regarding the definition of sustainable consumption,12
"Others tend to associate sustainable consumption with the greening of markets, or the change to simplified lifestyles",12
Adopting a sustainable lifestyle is an option that consumers can take or not,12
"It is possible to guide and educate them to follow a certain consumption pattern, but most of the time it is not possible to force them to adopt sustainable consumption actions [8]",12
"Thus, sustainable consumption is considered an umbrella concept [6]",12
Table 1 outlines some of the dimensions of sustainable consumption as it relates to the purchase of general products,12
"This paper reports on an international study on the emphasis given to sustainable consumption during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it aims to ascertain the degree of preparedness in individuals to engage in the purchase of green and sustainably manufactured products, as well as to analyse their habits and attitudes regarding consumption during this pandemic period",12
"During the COVID-19 pandemic, the social isolation associated with the evolution in digital purchasing technologies stimulated unnecessary consumption, going against what sustainable consumption preaches",12
"They are: (1) accumulation—this is the basic reaction of people in the face of crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, (2) improvisation—when people use creativity to have something instead of buying or purchasing a service; (3) repressed demand—when people postpone the acquisition of items for a later moment, as for example, a new car; (4) new consumers using technologies platforms—many people did not have the habit of buying through digital platforms and started to do this during the pandemic; (5) store delivery to house—practically everything can be obtained from home and this may stimulate impulse purchases; (6) professional and personal life in the same place—this demanded expenses not initially foreseen to adapt the homework environment; (7) online meetings with friends and family—this increased certain types of services and (8) talent discovery—with the pandemic, many people invested time and resources to develop new skills",4
"It is worth remembering that goals related to sustainable consumption have been disseminated by the United Nations since 2015, via SDG 12 [23]",12
Responsible sustainable consumption will reduce the pressure on the planet's natural resources,12
"[24], only a more conscious and sustainable consumption will change this reality",12
"It is expected that more and more people will have at their disposal relevant information for sustainable development and will adopt lifestyles in harmony with nature, as disseminated by target 12.8 [23]",12
"For Berchin and de Andrade Guerra [10], the COVID-19 pandemic generated a global crisis and highlighted the need for a more sustainable consumption model, otherwise, all SDGs will be harmed",12
"Changes in consumption habits during the COVID-19 pandemic are analysed by academic literature by considering different aspects; since people spend more time at home, due to remote work or even unemployment, this creates changes [25, 26]",8
"The authors noted an increase in the purchase of essential items, greater concern with food security, more time preparing meals at home and a greater increase in home deliveries",2
"[24] performed a study to better understand the COVID-19 pandemic’s impacts on social responsibility, sustainable consumption and environmental awareness in different generations of Brazilians and Portuguese",12
[15] analysed the energy consumption of European countries according to the governments’ responses to the crisis,7
The results showed that different blocking decisions were associated with different energy consumption profiles,7
"In some regions, less CO2 generation was observed due to less energy consumption",7
"In forcing people to remain in their homes, the COVID-19 pandemic also brought about changes in solid waste management in urban centres [26, 32,33,34]",12
The expansion of the debates about a more sustainable society during the COVID-19 pandemic also highlighted some models related to sustainable production and consumption,12
"The circular economy and the sharing economy were emphasised [37, 38]",12
"With the mission to provide a greater understanding of the influences of the COVID-19 pandemic on sustainable consumption, the research team undertook an international online survey with consumers to identify how the COVID-19 pandemic might have changed their consumption habits and reveal possible trends in the future",12
The hypothesis that guided the survey development was that the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced sustainable consumption,12
"The survey instrument consisted of 26 open and closed-ended questions, written in English, and structured in three sections: (i) the first section was related to the respondent’s background and consisted of 12 questions; (ii) the second part had 5 questions on sustainable consumption, including importance given to sustainable production and willingness to pay more for sustainable products; and (iii) the third section aggregated a set of 9 questions on COVID-19 and consumption habits",12
"In the second approach, the results of the principal component analysis were used to create four indexes: (i) sustainable consumption induced by COVID-19 pandemic (SCI-Covid19); (ii) ecological awareness; (iii) Habitual Pro-Environmental Behaviour; and (iv) Occasional Pro-Environmental Behaviour",12
"[50], the dependent variable comprises three levels of sustainable consumption behaviour: low (if SCI-Covid19 < 0.5), medium (if 0.5 ≤ SCI-Covid19 < 0.75), and high (if SCI-Covid19 ≥ 0.75)",12
"The first comprises the topics “Demographic characteristics”, “Sustainable consumption pattern”, and “Background: 115 COVID-19 and consumption habits”",12
"Descriptive statistics outline the core attributes of the sampled individuals, delineate the conscious consumption patterns that emerged during the pandemic period, and finally shed some light on understanding how the COVID-19 pandemic affects the sustainable consumption of the people surveyed",12
"The second phase, based on econometric strategies, can be understood as a step forward, as it intends to model the pro-environmental behaviour adopted by society during the pandemic onto a ‘Sustainable consumption induced by COVID-19 pandemic’ Index (SCI-Covid19)",12
"As this topic is a subject of Sustainable Development Goal 12, the survey investigated the level of agreement of the respondents with consumption patterns as supported by this goal",12
"As shown in Fig. 2a, high importance is given to sustainable production and consumption, as 76.9% strongly agree and 11.1% somewhat agree that SDG 12 encourages companies to be committed to sustainability along the whole supply chain and to protect human rights and environmental standards, while only 8.3% strongly disagree here",12
"Sustainable consumption patterns by means of a level of agreement with SDG 12, b importance given to sustainable production, c choosing to pay more for sustainable products and d frequency of choosing to pay more for sustainable products Figure 2c illustrates that 93.5% have already paid a higher price for sustainable products, which reveals that the respondents are very sensitive to the topic of sustainable consumption",12
"Among the initiatives used to improve the consumption behaviour of the sampled respondents, 48.2% reported that they made efforts to reduce food waste, 38.0% focused on regional or national products, 32.4% preferred less packaging, 30.0% recycled more, around 25.0% reported to save energy, to buy organic products, to buy less animal-based products and to save water",12
Using renewable energy (9.3%) and car sharing (5.6%) were the least frequently mentioned measures,7
"59.3% think that a more sustainable lifestyle is more expensive, 50.0% think that efforts to compensate for the lockdown period will neutralise some benefits (e.g., more international trips), whereas 44.4% think that a lack of time to dedicate to a more sustainable lifestyle will be the main challenge for a more sustainable lifestyle in terms of consumption after the COVID-19 pandemic",12
"Extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic contributed a to more sustainable lifestyles and b to make society rethink consumption habits Regarding the main drivers for a more sustainable lifestyle, Fig. 6b shows that 67.6% identify an increased awareness in terms of global problems as an important driver, 50.0% expect an increased awareness of consumption habits/amount of waste generated, 49.1% think that people will have more time to dedicate to sustainability practices at home and 20.4% think that more information about sustainable offers will be the main driver",12
"34.3% believe that, in the future, more pandemics such as COVID-19 will make us change in a moderate way to more sustainable consumption habits and lifestyles, 26.0% think to some extent, and 24.1% think that this will happen to a very little extent; only 10.2% expect an effect to a great extent, and 5.6% foresee no change at all",12
The first component is ‘sustainable consumption induced by COVID-19 pandemic’,12
This component represents our variable of interest to understand the engagement of individuals in sustainable consumption behaviour motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic,12
"On average, the sustainable consumption induced by the COVID-19 pandemic was not very high, thus confirming the information previously illustrated in Fig. 6",12
The ‘Sustainable consumption induced by COVID-19 pandemic’ Index (SCI-Covid19) was the dependent variable in the ordered logit model,12
"[50], the SCI-Covid19 index comprises three levels of sustainable consumption behaviour: low (if SCI-Covid19 < 0.5), medium (if 0.5 ≤ SCI-Covid19 < 0.75), and high (if SCI-Covid19 ≥ 0.75)",12
"Table 5 shows the distribution of the dependent variable (high sustainable consumption is scored as 2, medium and low performance as 1 and 0, respectively) and the explanatory variables for each level of sustainable consumption",12
"95), the estimated coefficients enable one to account for the effect of each explanatory factor on the probability of a specific category of sustainable consumption or ‘the sensitivity of the dependent variable to changes in explanatory factors",12
The results showed that the Occasional Pro-Environmental Behaviour index has the greatest positive effect on the probability of highly sustainable consumption behaviour,12
"In other words, a 1% increase in the index raises the probability of the individual being included in the highest category of sustainable consumption by 0.4878%",12
"Although age has a negative influence on sustainable consumption behaviour, its elasticity is very low and not significant",12
The negative sign in the coefficients of low sustainable consumption elasticity [% chg Pr(Y = 0)] indicates the percentage of probability reduction as the value of the explanatory variables increases,12
"The elasticities for gender, education, and income are not presented, because the model indicated that these variables had no significant effect on the probability of sustainable consumption induced by the COVID-19 pandemic",12
There seems to be a shift towards sustainable consumption due to the pandemic,12
"However, the smallest group is the group that shows a high sustainable consumption index followed by the group with a medium index",12
The strongest predictor for a low sustainable consumption index is the lack of ecological awareness; occasional pro-environmental behaviour has the strongest influence for a higher index,12
This study aimed to analyse sustainable consumption patterns and the perceptions of an international set of consumers of the changes triggered by the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic,12
"First of all, the increased consumption triggered by the pandemic has been paralleled by a noticeable shift towards sustainable consumption",12
"It is interesting to note that the smallest group is the group that shows a high sustainable consumption index, followed by the group with a medium index",12
A further trend identified by the study is related to the fact that some barriers seem to prevent the respondents from engaging in sustainable consumption,12
"Some of the reasons given—namely, a lack of trust about the true sustainability of some products, the problems seeing in financially affording some sustainable products, and the difficulty to find sustainable products in the cities they live—indicate that even when willing to engage in more sustainable consumption patterns, consumers were deterred by these problems",12
This is based on the fact that consumers´ trust can be an important driver for sustainable consumption,12
"The implications of this study are seen in three main areas: it provides a welcome addition to the literature on the impacts of the pandemic on sustainable consumption; it has identified some of the variables that play a role in influencing consumers’ decisions about purchasing some products; and it shows the need for more systematic efforts to better engage consumers in pandemic situations, to steer consumption habits in the right direction",12
"Finally, to maximise their relevance, studies on sustainable consumption ought to take into account the people who produce the goods as well, and whether they work under fair conditions.",12
"Energy efficiency improves air quality indicators while industry value added increases CO2 emissions, fossil fuel energy, and GHG emissions",7
Global financial crisis increases the risk of climate change across countries,13
"The study concludes that although SSA countries strive hard to take some “good” initiatives to reduce environmental degradation in a form of improved water and energy sources, however, due to lack of optimal utilization of food resources and global financial constraints, it leads to “the bad” and “the ugly” sustainability reforms in a region",15
"These factors put a serious strain on the developing countries like sub-Saharan African countries that faced the challenges of food insecurity, higher energy prices, water resources, and environmental sustainability agenda across the countries",2
"The environmental and natural resources are abundant in most of the SSA countries; however, due to financial turbulence faced by the region, these resources seriously suffered further from natural calamities and climate change (Zerbo 2016)",13
"The growth rate of GDP per unit of energy use considerably declines in Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Niger, Togo, and Zimbabwe economies, whereas the remaining SSA countries have a positive growth rate",8
"The dependency of fossil fuel energy consumption is largely found in Benin, Ghana, Niger, Sudan, and Tanzania, where the growth rate is about to 50%",7
Energy efficiency considerably increases in terms of GDP per unit of energy use in most of the SSA countries,7
"The challenges of food security further deprived this region with malnutrition, poverty, and vulnerability",2
"The SSA countries required extensive environmental transformation to take some re-corrective measures for the bad and the ugly sustainable reforms to develop an interactive environmental model, where the water-energy-food resources comply according to the Copenhagen climate change protocol",13
"The first stream of literature is related with the inverted U-shaped EKC framework, which is transmitted by different air pollutants that respond differently with the economic growth",8
"Bhattarai and Hammig (2001) established the deforestation-EKC relationship in Asia, Africa, and Latin American region",15
"Olsson (2013) emphasized the strong need for integration in water-food-energy (WFE) factors that shared the burden of climate change, food securities, population, and urbanization",13
Perrone and Hornberger (2014) concluded that food security and energy demand both are connected with the water supply that mediated the energy supply to produce food grains across the globe,2
"Rasul (2016) presented the sustainability framework for South Asia by utilizing water security, energy demand, and food resources and argued the need for strong binding in them through coherent economic and environmental policy for efficient use of resources in a region",12
The policies for cleaner technologies required renewable energy sources to reduce environmental concerns and confront the challenges of globalization in a country,7
"The following variables are used to estimate the food, water, and energy resources, i.e., food production index (2004–2006 = 100); land under cereal production in hectares; depth of the food deficit in kilocalories per person per day; electricity production from oil, gas, and coal sources as % of total energy consumption; GDP per unit of energy use in constant 2011 PPP $ per kilogram of oil equivalent; and improved water source as % of population with access",7
"The study used a set of endogenous variables, i.e., air quality indicators that include methane emissions in energy sector (thousand metric tons of CO2 equivalent), nitrous oxide emissions in energy sector (thousand metric tons of CO2 equivalent), CO2 emissions (metric tons per capita), fossil fuel energy consumption (% of total), and total greenhouse gas emissions (kt of CO2 equivalent)",7
"The energy sources are expected to increase air pollutants; as electricity production from conventional sources increases, i.e., oil, gas, and coal consumption, more will be the emissions produced while energy efficiency in terms of increasing per unit of GDP may support to decrease the intensity of air pollutants in an atmosphere",7
The global financial crisis severely affected the economic growth and natural environment of the developed and developing countries,8
"The carbon emissions have an average value of 1.110 t per capita, where as energy efficiency in a form of GDP per unit of energy use has an average value of 6.650 $ per kilogram of oil equivalent",7
"The maximum value of electricity production from conventional sources including oil, gas, and coal is about 100% of total energy consumption, and an average value is approximately half of the maximum value",7
"The average value of fossil fuel energy, food production index, GHG emissions, GDP per capita, and industry value added is about 34.196% of total energy consumption; 107.929 production index; 148,444.700 kt of CO2 equivalent; 4862.382 US$ per capita; and 27.274% of GDP, respectively",7
"The correlation matrix in Table 3 shows that there is a negative correlation of depth in food deficit, energy efficiency, food production, and improved water sanitation with the methane emissions, whereas the positive correlation has been found with electricity production, GDP per capita, industry value added, land under cereal production, and population density in a region",7
"There is a negative correlation of carbon emissions and fossil fuel energy consumption with the food resources and positive correlation with the energy resources, water source, and growth-specific factors, which confirmed that carbon emissions and fossil fuel energy escalate with the energy demand, water source, and growth factors, while optimal usage of food production factors considerably decreases carbon emissions and fossil energy across the countries",7
"There is a positive correlation between GHG emissions and food production resources, while there is a negative correlation of energy efficiency and growth-specific factors with GHG emissions",7
"The relationship between nitrous oxide emissions and other possible determinants is differential in nature, as depth of food deficit, energy efficiency, food production index, industry value added, improved water source, and population density have a negative correlation with nitrous oxide emissions, while there is a positive correlation of electricity production, per capita income, and land under cereal production with the methane emissions across the countries",7
"The energy efficiency that is measured by GDP per unit of energy use significantly declines the CO2 emissions, which implies the need for optimal utilization of energy resources that considerably decrease the CO2 emissions across the countries",7
"There is a significant and negative relationship between improved water source and CO2 emissions, as the higher the improved water resources, the lower will be the concentration of carbon emissions, which considerably decreases the prospects of water pollution in a region",6
"The growth-specific variables confirmed the viability of inverted U-shaped carbon-EKC, as carbon emissions increase along with an increase in per capita income, which substantially decreases with economic maturity at the later stages of economic development",8
"Ericksen (2008) built a sustainable food system that aligned with global environmental change to confront societal issues, i.e., ecological services, food security, and human’s vulnerability",2
"These pillars of sustainability are required food safety process, origin of food, and food distribution channel that are helpful for developing sustainable food supply channel across countries",2
"The improved water sources decrease the fossil dependency of energy consumption, which is further connected with the inverted U-shaped fossil EKC, as fossil energy increases with the income in the initial stage of development that decreases at later stages",7
The industry value added is strongly linked with the increased fossil energy consumption that is cumbersome in the sustainability policies in a region,7
"The methane emissions, in another regression apparatus, show that its impact is positive and significant with the land used under cereal production, i.e., 0.104, p < 0.000, while energy efficiency and industry value added both reduce the share of CH4 emissions; however, the intensity of energy efficiency to reduce CH4 emissions is larger than the impact of industry value added to decrease the CH4 emissions across countries",7
"The results confirmed the inverted U-shaped methane-EKC hypothesis; i.e., CH4 increases with initial per capita income that is turned down with the mature economic growth at later stages of economic development",8
"The impact of energy efficiency and industry value added both considerably reduces the share of N2O emissions; however, energy efficiency exerts a larger impact on reduction of N2O emissions as compared to the industry value added",7
"The energy efficiency decreases the GHG emissions, while industry value added largely contributes to increased GHG emissions in a region",7
The “smart food choice strategy” and investment for sustainable food process are the optimal solution to confront the food security challenges and environmental concerns across the globe,2
The environmental sustainability success rate is possible by carbon financing to upgrade land distribution and reducing forest depletion that would be helpful to reduce the threat to climate change in a region,13
"Energy efficiency supports to reduce air quality indicators except fossil fuel energy, as it escalates along with an increase in GDP per unit use of energy",7
Water quality improves environmental indicators except N2O emissions,6
"In the long run, the EKC hypothesis is confirmed with CO2 emissions, fossil fuel, and CH4 emissions, while N2O emissions increase at initial and later stages of economic development",8
"Energy efficiency, on one hand, supports to reduce CO2, CH4, N2O, and GHG emissions, while on the other side, electricity production from conventional sources increases fossil fuel energy",7
The global financial crisis increases GHG emissions that severely affected global climate change through a channel of improper utilization of food-energy-water resources in a panel of SSA countries,13
"The study concludes with some policy recommendations for the better environmental management in SSA countries that would be helpful to give a clear direction for their efforts towards sustainability agenda, i.e., Short-term policy: The sustainable food production is the main problem in front of the environmental sustainability framework in SSA countries, as the food’s carbon footprint is largely lucid with the non-organic farming methods that have a higher impact on the environment",2
"In addition, it is advisable to reduce food waste (as much possible) that largely occurred during processing in the industries",12
The organic food farming methods of cultivation of crops and breeding the animals and reduction of the food waste during processing and consumption of goods are the desirable policy instruments that would have a comparable lower impact on the environment with conventional methods of food production and farming styles,12
Sustainable water and energy efficient resources should be used,6
"To support clean energy technologies, etc",7
"Medium-term policy: Energy demand played a vital source to expedite the process of economic transformation and industrialization process; however, it is furnished with high energy prices, increased combustion of burning fossil fuel, and climate change",13
"The SSA countries required a blend of renewable energy sources such as wind energy, solar energy, and wave power energy that are helpful to mitigate the concern of global climate change, while energy efficiency leads to decreased energy prices that sustained industrial value added by low-carbon technologies",7
Climate-friendly policies would be helpful to offset the environmental degradation,15
Lower energy prices share the burden of environment to promote green energy,7
The long-term policies are required to combat the financial crisis by sound economic and sustainable framework that mitigate climate change and support food policies,13
Financial turmoil should be balance with low energy prices and improved water sources that support the global food security,2
"Although the Kyoto Protocol is not linked with the financial integration of the competitive markets, it is linked through resource market to reduce the strain of environmental pressure by least flexible and cost-effective mechanisms such as clean development, emission trading, and joint implementation programs, which helpful to reduce the supply of emissions in the atmosphere",13
SSA countries should have to consider these resource instruments for mitigating climate change and balancing the natural flora that further support the financial sectors to export carbon-free goods and import sustainable instruments to produce healthy goods,13
"For this, we investigated the Andean Trade Preference Act (ATPA), which was established in 1991 to simultaneously fight against the production, processing, and trafficking of illegal drugs while also developing alternative industries to expand economic opportunities in the Andean countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru); which are being faced with decades of narcotic violence and corruption",16
"To pioneer Peru in sustainability risk management in Ica, hence, it is recommended to act towards regional sustainable irrigation expansion by employing efficient water-saving irrigation technologies",6
"At the core of this drug policy, the “Andean Trade Preference Act (ATPA)” (ATPA 1991) was established to simultaneously fight against the production, processing, and trafficking of illegal drugs while also developing alternative industries to expand economic opportunities in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru; which are being faced with decades of narcotic violence and corruption (USITC 2018; CICAD 2019)",16
"Evidence suggests that neither the flow of cocaine has been reduced (Briones et al. 2013; UNODC 2019), nor has the alternative development goal been met (Buxton 2015; Grisaffi and Ledebur 2016)",3
"Meanwhile, the drug policy and the ATPA have endangered the livelihoods of indigenous people, threatened biodiversity, and caused forest loss in the Andean and transit countries (Bradley and Millington 2008; Briones et al. 2013; McSweeney et al",15
"The ATPA aimed at eradicating cocaine production in the “Silver Triangle,“ which is located in the Amazon basin of Peru, Colombia, and Bolivia",3
"Soon after the ATPA was enacted, water scarcity started to become a challenge in the “Ica-Villacurí” aquifer (Damonte and Boelens 2019), which is located on the other side of the Andes, in the coastal zone of Peru",6
"This alternative development strategy (ATPA) has indirectly accelerated water demand by creating a market for high-value, but water-hungry crops, and consequently became a powerful water scarcity driver in its own right: One clue to this connection lies in the robust relationship between the location and timing of increases in water abstraction and the “agricultural export miracle” (Damonte 2019), following the ATPA",6
"However, the large increase in asparagus (from ~ 410 to > 10,000 ha) and grapes (from ~ 3000 to > 5000 ha) cultivation between the early 1990s and 2013 (Damonte 2019) has considerably accelerated water demand and consequently created a water crisis in this region, which is classified as hyper-arid zone according to the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) aridity index (AI) (e.g., Sohoulande et al",6
"Second, large-scale producers benefitted most from exporting high-value luxury crops thanks to an institutional framework created by the government in order to foster economic development (Schwarz et al",8
"Such reforms led to the establishment of different institutions, policies, laws, certificates, and agreements that: (i) facilitate access to natural resources, most importantly land and water; (ii) build new and promote existing export infrastructures; (iii) improve the quality of crops for meeting international standards; (iv) attract both foreign and domestic investors; (v) lower the tax burden for agricultural export companies; and (vi) secure a stable international market demand by signing new free trade agreements (FTAs) with other partners (most notably the U.S., the EU, and China) that, for example, reduced the tariffs for the Peruvian fresh asparagus from 66% to 1990 to 3.4% in 2011 (Schwarz et al",1
"This has led to substantial increases in social inequalities and a significant deepening of poverty for local farmers at the bottom of the social structure in Ica (Martin-Preve and Kim 2015), e.g., smaller farmers cannot afford, or face regulatory constraints, to deepen their wells once they dry up (Fernández-Escalante et al",10
"It encompasses three different dimensions of power: (i) economic capacity for acquiring land, groundwater, and advanced technologies to generate profit from production; (ii) advanced technical knowledge and know-how and (iii) coercive capacity in the form of physical violence, discrediting the reputation of individuals or impeding government attempts for monitoring and regulating groundwater extraction (Wåhlin 2018; Damonte 2019)",16
The present drinking water supply system in Ica (EMAPICA) does not ensure equal access: It provides 12-h service during a day to upper-class areas and only a couple of hours to mostly poor neighborhoods,6
"In the context of supply-side drug eradication policies, the cultivation of profitable cash crops was encouraged about 30 years ago through the ATPA to provide an alternative legal economic opportunity for cocaine producers and transit countries in the Andean region (Buxton 2015; USITC 2018)",3
"Triggering favorable FTAs, this strategy not only caused a boom in the cultivation of water-hungry asparagus but also attracted poor agrarian laborers from different parts of the country (including the so-called Cocaine Valley) to the hyper-arid environment of Ica in Peru",3
"This seriously threatens not only SDG6 (“Clean Water and Sanitation”) but also SDG1 (“No Poverty”), since freshwater resilience (Rockström et al",6
"2014) plays a key role in agricultural export development, one of the main pillars of Peruvian economic growth",8
"2021), sustainable irrigation expansion can assure sufficient freshwater resources required for human activities (rights to water) and nature (rights of waters) (Jenkins et al",6
2019) in arid regions with high economic dependency on the cultivation of high-value but water-intensive crops should be added to the unintentional consequences resulting from the overwhelming focus on economic growth policies,8
"Such a conscious rethinking of the agribusiness expansion policies and agreements could successfully act towards achieving the SDG1 (“No Poverty”) and SDG6 (“Clean Water and Sanitation”) (UN 2015), particularly in the Andean region.",6
"Climate change, rapid urbanization and infrastructure development trends push the global community toward higher exposure to natural hazards",13
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Report 2019 points out that “The world is not on track to end poverty by 2030” (United Nations 2019a),1
"DRR comprises of several disciplines, such as disaster management, mitigation and preparedness, which all align with the principle of sustainable development (UNISDR 2015)",11
Global and local initiatives are being implemented through the Sendai Framework for DRR (SFDRR) to achieve SDG (United Nations 2015),11
"Recently published guidance from the UNDRR delineates from the SFDRR, focusing on local disaster risk reduction and resilience which explains the localization of DRR through the principle of sustainable development (UNDRR 2019)",11
"Figure 1 shows a summary of the major engagement and components that must be considered on an individual, community and institutional level for DRR",11
Two major parts of DRR are risk assessment and early warning under preparedness and awareness,11
"Even though institutional DRR is on the right track, these negative consequences are not reducing, but rather soaring each year",11
Response and recovery on an institutional level is improving but there are gaps in the individual and community level which derail the goal of DRR,11
"There were several organizations involved in advocating the DRR, have several programs conducted through government and nongovernmental organizations, even though one study found that the perception and preparedness state for disaster prevention education is not properly placed (Tuladhar et al",11
early warning) is another factor that hinders effective DRR,11
"Hence, a paradigm shift in planning and implementing DRR is essential in international and national strategies",11
"Knowledge in holistic disaster scenarios should be increased among actual citizens, which would ultimately motivate and enable them to reduce their own exposure and risk, instead of solely relying on law enforcement",16
"Increased disaster risk knowledge will not only help their perception, reaction and response, but can also provide a qualitative source of crowd data along with their feeling of engagement in disaster risk management",11
"Now, strategic plans should be placed in fostering effective DRR to achieve proper local impact",11
"This study is conducted to identify some of the drivers behind the increasing sustainability issues and tried to investigate the impact of natural resources, financial development, and economic growth on the ecological footprint in Malaysia from the year 1980–2019 by utilizing the dynamic simulated autoregressive distribution lag approach",8
"It was identified that financial development, economic growth, and natural resources are the determinants behind the upsurge of the ecological footprint as all three show a positive and significant effect on ecological footprint",8
The trend of economic growth due to industrialization is one of the prime causes behind the hot issue of sustainability,8
Environmental degradation in recent years has moved from a low priority concern to the most pressing issue globally (Shrinkhal 2019; Dogan et al,15
"In the context of economic growth (EG), failure in the attainment of the objectives of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13, i.e., climate action along with SDG 7 that is named as green and inexpensive power, eventually results in affecting the attainment of SDG 8 which is specified as decent work and economic growth",8
"Since the initial period of the 1990s, the nexus between EG and environmental degradation (ED) was tested by employing the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) theory",15
"Further, in the early phase of EG, there is a boost in ED but to a certain level, and then this trend reverses and environmental conditions start improving at higher economic growth levels (Dinda 2004; Stern 2004; Beyene and Kotosz 2019)",8
"If this theory holds true, then economic development according to a popular view would not be considered a threat to the environment (Stern 2004)",8
"To measure the environmental degradation, two proxies are usually utilized, ecological footprint (ECF) and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission",15
"It is widely acknowledged that society and nature are interrelated; consequently, social and environmental health are also related",3
"Malaysia’s journey of sustainable growth started in the 1970s, and since then it has been taking several initiatives to achieve its vision 2030 of sustainable development goals",8
The drastic rise in environmental degradation and related concerns encourage the researchers to investigate the phenomenon by considering different factors that may play a role in the escalation of this sustainability situation,15
"It was discovered that ecological footprint is positively responsive to economic growth, i.e., 1% boost in economic growth boosts the ECF by 0.205%",8
"It was revealed that initially economic growth upsurges the ECF; however, later it improves the quality of climate",8
(2013) studied the influence of economic growth on the ECF in 150 countries using spatial econometric techniques,8
"EKC hypothesis was not supported; however, a positive linear nexus was discovered between economic growth and ECF",8
(2008) researched it in 141 countries taking economic growth and ECF into account,8
"EKC hypothesis was found true for the ecological footprint proxy of environmental degradation, whereas EKC was not validated for CO2 emission",15
Empirical findings depict that both FD and economic growth upsurge the ECF,8
It was found that sustainable usage of natural resources results in reduced environmental degradation,15
"Sarkodie (2018) states that environmental degradation occurs due to human activities like deforestation, agriculture, and mining",15
"The authors explored that with economic growth, NR upsurges the possibility of ECF",8
"(2020) consider the natural resources, utilization of renewable energy, and urbanization in BRICS nations from 1992 to 2016",7
"Ten percent boost in EG depicts negative influence on ECF in Malaysia in the short run but positive influence in the long run, whereas 10% decline in EG depicts negative influence in the short run as well as in the long run but finally changes to a positive influence in the long run.
 Economic growth and ecological footprint: the above figure depicts ±10% in EG and its influence on ECF",8
"Under both cases, i.e., 10% boost or decrease in EG2 depicts a negative influence on ECF at initial stages, but the influence becomes positive afterwards, i.e., in the long run.
 Square of economic growth and ecological footprint: the above figure depicts ±10% in EG2 and its influence on ECF",8
"Environmental degradation has been drawing a lot of attention from policymakers, governmental bodies, the United Nations, and researchers altogether",15
"It was identified that ecological footprint upsurges due to financial development, economic growth, and natural resources",8
The square of economic growth is negative which indicates the presence of the EKC hypothesis in Malaysia,8
"So, a shift in thinking is already in progress due to the emphasis on sustainable economic growth around the world",8
(2018) believe that nations with abundant natural resources may reduce the level of environmental degradation by restraining imports and fossil fuel consumption,15
Leveraging industries with environmental conducive practices and imposing taxes on industries that pollute the environment with their inefficient and unhealthy practices would assist to achieve sustainable growth,8
"Besides, research and development must be induced with capital investment to innovate the current production and management practices",9
Increased awareness among the public to adopt sustainable practices is the need of the hour,12
It is recommended to increase awareness among the public to adopt sustainable practices every day,12
"Land system change, the biogeochemical cycle, and climate change are impending as the most important domains to be focused on regarding globalisation",13
Global academia has recently (from the last decade) been interested in interpreting the adverse effects of globalisation on environmental degradation,15
(Alam 2010) has shown that increased globalisation caused to decrease in the rate of environmental degradation in Pakistan,15
Analysing the relationships between globalisation and environmental degradation or resource use has recently sparked a lot of interest in the scientific community,15
"It is clearly understood that CO2 and GHG emissions, for climate change, are the most important and highlighted indicators to assess changes in environmental status",13
"CAIT), arable land use, nitrogen, and phosphorus use (Food and Agriculture Organization Corporate Statistical Database, i.e",15
22 Gt CO2-e) was used as the global scale PB for climate change,13
"Using the top-down approach (dividing with the 2015 world population from FAOSTAT), the average per capita climate change PB becomes 2.98 t CO2-e",13
"For phosphorus use, (Carpenter and Bennett 2011) have provided an estimation of 6.2–11.2 Tg year−1 phosphorus flow from fertilisers to erodible soils, a riverine water quality criterion of 160 mg/m3 and a flow rate to the ocean of 9 Tg P year−1",6
It means these countries need serious attention to keep their GHG emissions in check if they want to remain as well as maintain themselves within the climate change SOS,13
"A few countries, like Kazakhstan, Russia, Lithuania, etc., are the top arable land users (per capita), which means they must reduce their maximum to come down under the SOS",15
The global average per capita arable land use (0.18 ha) has also crossed SOS,15
"Some countries that were within SOS, as well as the lowest arable land users, were Singapore, Bahrain, Kuwait, etc",15
"Among these, some countries, like Brunei, Sri Lanka, Slovenia, etc., have a higher rate of increase in arable land use",15
"Globally, there has been a 15.3% decrease in per capita arable land use",15
"For GHG emissions, arable land use, phosphorus uses and MF, the decreasing order of grouping is informational (KOFInGI) & social (KOFSoGI) > interpersonal (KOFIpGI) > overall (KOFGI) > political (KOFPoGI) > cultural (KOFCuGI) globalisation",15
"For GHG emissions, arable land use, nitrogen use, and EF, more than 70% of countries are correlated positively, negatively, positively, and positively, respectively",15
"As per this, 85.93% of countries could exceed the SOS for climate change (2.57t CO2-e)",13
"Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, and others have the highest per capita arable land use (> 0.5 ha), whilst Singapore, Bahrain, Kuwait, and others have the lowest (0.005 ha)",15
"Among these, some countries would see the highest increase (> 0.02 ha; in Ukraine, Latvia, Laos, etc.) and some would see the highest decrease (> 0.04 ha; in Montenegro, Czech Rep., Kazakhstan, etc.) in per capita arable land use",15
"In this context, if we bring in the SOS of 2015, it is seen that more than 39% of countries would have exceeded the climate change PB",13
"For per capita arable land use (Fig. 5A (ii)), some of the highest arable land-using (> 0.9 ha) countries would be Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, etc., and some of the lowest land-using countries would be Latvia, Lithuania, Sri Lanka, etc",15
The global average per capita arable land use would stand at 0.39 ha,15
Nearly 30% of countries would use more arable land than the global average,15
Almost 8% of countries would experience negative arable land use,15
The SOS would scope < 0.12 ha in 2030 for arable land use (Fig. 5B (ii)),15
"Among the biophysical resources in countries, GHG emissions, nitrogen use, EF, and MF have a higher level of positive correlation with globalisation than arable land use and phosphorus use",15
"This means, if a more connected and globalised nature is to be nurtured in these countries under the Belt and Road Initiative in the future, the top 3 biophysical resource usage (among the 6, used in this study) that are to be monitored and kept in check would be land system change, biogeochemical cycle, and climate change",13
"Thus, this study has many new contributions, not seen in previous studies in similar research domain: (a) including a group of ecological or environmental indicators (arable land use, nitrogen use, phosphorus use, etc.), instead of the usual 1–2 indicators (viz",15
"These economies should establish and coordinate their globalisation strategies, so that they achieve sufficient levels of economic development without causing irreversible changes in environmental quality",8
"It is recommended that governments of BRI countries take steps to encourage greater participation in globalisation processes, particularly among intra- and international trading partners, such as lowering or eliminating trade barriers and enacting stricter environmental regulations, with a focus on enacting laws and policies aimed at preserving nature and natural resources",17
Environmental protection and sustainable development are inextricably linked,15
"Amazingly, limited studies on the connection between energy consumption and environmental quality has been conducted to help with policy options to minimize the above menace in the region",7
"Inspired by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, this study contributed to filling this gap by examining the energy consumption–CO2 emission nexus in North Africa for the period 1990 to 2018",7
"The cross-sectional augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) and the dynamic common correlated effects mean group (DCCEMG) estimators were adopted to explore the elasticities of the explanatory variables and from the results, energy consumption worsened environmental quality in the region due to its positive influence on CO2 emissions",7
"Also, urbanization and economic growth increased the rate of CO2 emissions in the countries",8
"As reported by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the world’s energy consumption grew by 2.3% in 2018, which is almost twice the average growth rate since the year 2010",7
"Also, according to the World Bank (2015), energy consumption particularly, fossil fuel outpaced alternative energy sources including clean and renewable energy, accounting for 79.67% of the world’s total figure",7
"Amidst such high energy demand and its associated emissions, energy planners often recommend the adoption of energy efficient technologies and the integration of renewable energy sources into the national energy mix (Murshed 2020; Kumar et al",7
"Thus, transiting to energy efficiency and the utilization of renewable energy are the credible means through which pollutant emissions connected to the consumption of dirty energies could be minimized (Sharif et al",7
North African countries cannot be left out when discussing issues relating to energy consumption and its adverse consequences on the environment,7
"Thus, as economic growth in the region increases, so does the rate of pollution due to the consumption of carbon-induced fossil fuels",8
Shifting to the consumption of renewables is one of the best alternatives to attain low-carbon economy as enshrined in the Paris Agreement (2015) and other international treaties (Ozturk 2015; Murshed et al,13
"2021), however, North Africa is yet to achieve a higher proportion of renewables in its overall energy mix (World Bank 2021)",7
Numerous studies have been conducted on the nexus between energy consumption and CO2 emissions,7
"For instance, Ali et al.’s (2018) research on Nigeria, Jian et al.’s (2019) investigation on China, Rahman et al.’s (2019) study on BRIC and NAFTA countries, Nkengfack and Fotio’s (2019) exploration on three African nations, and Sulaiman and Abdul-Rahim’s (2017) research on Malaysia, all affirmed energy consumption as a significantly positive predictor of CO2 emissions, while Liu et al.’s (2017) investigation on Asian nations, Solarin et al.’s (2017) study on India, Dong et al.’s (2018) exploration on China, Zoundi’s (2017) research on some African countries, and Sinha and Shahbaz’s (2018) investigation on India, all confirmed energy consumption as a substantially adverse predictor of CO2 emissions",7
"Notwithstanding the plentiful studies conducted to examine the connection between energy consumption and CO2 emissions, studies of such types are limited in North Africa",7
"Therefore, since North African economies depend traditionally on non-renewable energy sources to back their development activities which end up worsening their environments, it is pertinent for the nations to shift from the conventional energy sources to more renewable sources that could make them sustainable",7
"Against this backdrop, the study sought answers to the following research questions: (1) How does energy consumption influence CO2 emissions in North Africa? (2) What is the causal relationship between energy consumption and CO2 emissions in North Africa? Deductions from these questions will propel the nations to invest in green and energy-saving technologies that could help them to achieve low-carbon economy",7
"First, countless explorations on the linkage between energy consumption and CO2 emissions have been conducted on different geographical environments (e.g., Asongu et al",7
"(2021a) who employed the EKC framework to model the connection between energy consumption and CO2 emissions in North Africa, there has been no other studies on energy consumption–CO2 emission nexus in the region to the best of our knowledge",7
"For the past three decades too, majority of countries in the region have been enjoying higher economic growth by transforming their economies from primary agricultural sector to energy-led industrial sector",8
"(2020), urbanization and economic growth are correspondingly vital determinants of CO2 emissions",8
"To the best of our knowledge, there has been no study on the energy consumption–CO2 emission connection in North Africa that controlled for the above variables except Musah et al",7
"Energy consumption is the amount of energy consumed by residents or organizations, or to the process or system of such consumption",7
The connection between energy consumption and CO2 emissions have been thoroughly investigated with contradictory discoveries,7
"From the results, energy consumption had a significantly positive influence on CO2 emissions in the region",7
"Also, the EKC hypothesis was validated only for Bangladesh and India while in the context of Pakistan, the economic growth–carbon dioxide emission nexus demonstrated a U-shaped association",8
"Contrarily, economic growth monotonically decreased CO2 emissions in Sri Lanka and Nepal",8
"From MG, CCEMG, AMG, and PMG estimates of the study, energy consumption had a detrimental influence on environmental quality",7
"However, renewable energy consumption improved environmental quality over the same period",7
"(2016) examined the impact of income, energy consumption, and population growth on CO2 emissions on India, Indonesia, China, and Brazil for the period 1970–2012",7
"From the study’s ARDL estimates, CO2 emissions increased significantly with an increase in energy consumption",7
"The study suggested that the concerned countries should reduce their monotonic dependency on the consumption of fossil fuels, particularly oil, and should gradually incorporate renewable energy resources into their energy-mix, particularly within their respective service sectors",7
"On a sample of 47 Emerging Market and Developing Economies (EMDEs), Le and Ozturk (2020) examined the effects of globalization, financial development, government expenditures, and institutional quality on CO2 emissions, incorporating energy consumption, and GDP per capita in an EKC framework from 1990 to 2014",7
"From the CCEMG, AMG, and DCCE estimates, energy consumption increased CO2 emissions",7
(2021d) reinvigorated the role of clean energy transition for achieving a low-carbon economy in Bangladesh for the period 1975–2016,7
"From the study’s findings, aggregate energy consumption, fossil fuel consumption, and natural gas consumption boosted carbon footprint in the country",7
"This implies, transitioning to clean energy within the Bangladesh economy could be the panacea to the nation's persistently aggravating environmental hardships",7
"In order to attain the carbon-neutrality agenda of China, the study recommended that, the country should prioritize the use of renewable energy resources to help boost its environmental quality",7
"Thus, investments in renewable energy production could be a key energy policy for China",7
(2020) studied oil producing African countries from 1970 to 2016 and confirmed energy consumption as an immaterial predictor of CO2 emissions,7
"The study recommended among others that, South Africa should embrace policies that encourage the consumption of renewable energy",7
"This exploration is very vital, however, the interpretation of its outcomes warrants some caution, because it used only coal energy consumption as its variable of interests",7
"If the other components of energy consumption or the aggregate energy consumption was to be considered for the study, the discoveries might not be the same",7
"(2020) studied 70 countries for the period 1994 to 2013, and discovered a positive linkage between energy consumption and CO2 emissions",7
"This disclosure backs the need for a global shift to a low carbon economy, which will aid to boost large-scale investments in clean energy, a requirement to help abate the emissions of CO2",7
"Non-renewable energy on the other hand, escalated the rate of pollution in the region",7
"Adebayo and Kirikkaleli (2021) performed a wavelet analysis on Japan, and confirmed renewable energy as friendly to the country’s environment",7
"Also, only renewable energy was considered for the analysis",7
"This signifies that, the outcome cannot be generalized for the other components of energy consumption",7
"From the exploration’s FMOLS estimates, the long-run elasticity of transport carbon emissions (TCE) to transport energy consumption (TEN) was almost equal to the long-run elasticity of TEN to TCE",7
"From the AMG estimates of the study, non-renewable energy deteriorated the countries’ environment significantly",7
"If the nations continue to consume non-renewable energy, without transiting to renewables, then their ambition of attaining clean environment, alongside economic viability cannot be materialized",7
"The conflicting outcomes signify that, the argument on the linkage between energy consumption and CO2 emissions is unceasing and needs more explorations like ours",7
Discoveries of the study confirmed energy consumption as environmentally harmful,7
"(2020) studied the linkage between energy consumption and environmental quality, and established from the ARDL estimates that, energy consumption added to environmental pollution",7
"From the disclosures, renewable energy consumption mitigated CO2 emissions, while non-renewable energy consumption escalated the emissions of CO2 in the region",7
(2021) conducted a study on South Africa and affirmed energy consumption as harmful to the countries’ environmental quality,7
"From the study’s non-linear ARDL estimates, positive variations in renewable energy consumption enhanced environmental quality in the country",7
"Summarily, numerous explorations have affirmed energy consumption as harmful to environmental quality in different geographical environments (Yang et al",7
"2021 among others), while others have also confirmed energy consumption as beneficial to the environment (Danish and Khan 2020; Adebayo et al",7
These contrasting outcomes signpost that the energy consumption–CO2 emission argument is endless and demands for more investigations,7
"(2018) and Chen and Lei (2018), energy consumption was considered a predictor of CO2 emissions",7
"Further, nations’ primary factors of production improve as economic growth increases",8
"(2018), economic growth was used as a predictor of CO2 emissions",8
"Based on the above justifications, the following function was proposed for the study: Where CO2 emissions and energy consumption (EC) are the output and input series correspondingly",7
"To help minimize omitted variable bias issues, urbanization (URB) and economic growth (GDP) were introduced into the function as control variables",8
"Expectedly, the marginal impact of energy consumption on CO2 emissions was expected to be positive \( \left(\ {\beta}_1=\frac{\partial \mathit{\ln} CO{2}_{it}}{\partial {lnEC}_{it}}>0\right) \)if the energy consumed in North Africa was from dirty sources that promoted CO2 emissions (Bekun et al",7
"Otherwise, energy consumption was to have an adverse influence on CO2 emissions \( \left(\ {\beta}_1=\frac{\partial \mathit{\ln} CO{2}_{it}}{\partial {lnEC}_{it}}<0\right) \) if the energy used was from clean sources that mitigated the emissions of CO2 in the bloc (Zafar et al",7
"Finally, the marginal influence of economic growth on CO2 emissions was to be positive \( \left(\ {\beta}_3=\frac{\partial \mathit{\ln} CO{2}_{it}}{\partial {lnGDP}_{it}}>0\right) \) if activities undertaken to help develop the economies of North Africa were linked to the consumption of high-polluting energies (Ali et al",8
"Otherwise, β3 was to be negative \( \left(\ {\beta}_3=\frac{\partial \mathit{\ln} CO{2}_{it}}{\partial {lnGDP}_{it}}<0\right) \) if economic activities undertaken in the region were linked to green energy sources (Bekhet et al",7
"From the table, economic growth had the uppermost mean value, while CO2 emissions had the least mean value",8
"From the results displayed in Table 5, a 1% rise in energy consumption worsened environmental quality by 0.77% in North Africa",7
It can therefore be said that the nations undergoing renewable energy transition to ensure environmental sustainability is comparatively the most effective option they have to choose,7
The positive association between energy consumption and CO2 emissions discovered by this study collaborates those of Phong et al,7
It is therefore not surprising that the rate of environmental degradation in North Africa is galloping of late,15
"Similarly, economic growth was harmful to environmental sustainability in North Africa via high CO2 emissions",8
"As depicted by the results, a 1% surge in economic growth escalated CO2 emissions by 0.296% at the 5% level",8
This suggests that economic growth did not help to improve environmental welfare by curbing CO2 emissions,8
"Therefore, as a recommendation, policy makers should factor environmental quality into their economic development policies (Perkins et al",8
The positive connection between economic growth and CO2 emissions discovered by this study is in line with Munir et al,8
"From the results indicated in Table 6, a bilateral association between energy consumption and CO2 emissions was discovered",7
"In other words, the aggravation of the CO2 emission levels is likely to motivate the nations to undergo renewable energy transition, particularly thorough phasing-out of traditional energy sources like fossil fuels",7
"(2017) for China contrast the above discovery.
 Similarly, a bilateral causality between economic growth and CO2 emissions was affirmed",8
This implies that the two macroeconomic variables were interlinked such that economic development could not be sustained without ensuring environmental sustainability in tandem,8
"Furthermore, a mutual connection amid urbanization and energy consumption was established",7
"This implies, energy consumption was reliant on the rate of urbanization in the bloc",7
"This signposts that economic growth led to more energy utilization in the region supporting the exploration of Esen and Bayrak (2017) for net energy-importing countries, but conflicting to those of Comfort et al",8
"Finally, a single-directional causality running from economic growth to urbanization was revealed",8
This discovery suggests that a surge in economic growth raised the level of urban population in the region,8
"However, economic growth was not dependent on the upsurge of urban population",8
"Irrespective of the numerous explorations in the energy and environmental economics field, limited studies (if any) have been conducted to investigate the connection between energy consumption and CO2 emissions in North Africa to the best of our knowledge",7
"To help fill the above gap, a study to examine the energy consumption-CO2 emissions nexus in the context of North Africa over the period 1990 to 2018 was conducted",7
"Also, urbanization and economic growth unanimously promoted CO2 emissions in the region",8
"First, energy consumption escalated CO2 emissions in North Africa",7
"(2021), enhancing financial inclusivity can play a major role by facilitating the financing of renewable energy development projects",7
"(2021), the economies can also look forward to attracting foreign direct investments into their respective renewable energy sectors whereby technological spillover effects can be expected to enhance their renewable energy generation capacities further",7
"Besides, improvements in environmental regulatory standards, particularly, the ones related to renewable energy and energy-saving technologies will be beneficial to the nations",7
"Through this, the citizens will be well informed about the relevance of embracing renewable energy technologies that could help boost environmental quality",7
"As a recommendation, job creation and improvement in the living conditions of people in remote areas should be factored into the plans of the nations",8
"(2020) who postulated that existing infrastructure should be improved to make it more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly in order to help urban dwellers boost their living conditions, because the recent spread of many infectious diseases in developing countries is a bad sign",3
"Also, the countries need to adopt a sustainable urbanization model rather than an erratic or an unsustainable urbanization model in their management of migration and its related environmental issues",11
"Lastly, economic growth worsened environmental quality in North Africa",8
"However, economic development and environmental quality can move together",8
"Therefore, the nations should have a good balance between economic development and environmental quality, by engaging in activities that can boost economic growth at no cost to the environment",8
"Also, countries in North Africa should expedite their respective economic growth rates to the level that they could gain environmental sustainability",8
"Summarily, energy consumption, urbanization, and economic advancement policies in North Africa should idyllically be made more environmentally friendly whereby greener initiatives could be undertaken to negate their adverse environmental impacts",7
"However, to the best of my knowledge, there has been no research on the connection between financial inclusion and environmental sustainability in the country",8
"The DARDL estimator with the support of the conventional ARDL estimator was adopted to explore the marginal effects of the predictors on the explained variable, and from the results, financial inclusion worsened environmental sustainability in the nation via high carbon emissions",8
"Finally, trade openness, population growth, and energy consumption were detrimental to environmental sustainability in the nation",7
"On the causal directions amidst the series, unidirectional causalities from financial inclusion and trade openness to carbon effusions were disclosed",8
"Also, feedback causalities between foreign direct investments and carbon emissions; between population growth and carbon effluents; and between energy consumption and carbon exudates were unfolded",7
"Financial inclusion (FI) has been regarded as a critical component of economic development, because it nurtures the financial sector and institutions in an economy (Le and Le 2021) ",8
"However, allowing households and small businesses greater access to financial services can result in increased consumption and consequently, more carbon emissions (Renzhi  and Baek, 2020)",1
"(2021), inclusive financial services attract research and development, and FDI inflows that help to boost ES",9
"In this context, accessibility to modern technologies may promote energy efficiency and other eco-friendly activities, thereby stimulating ecological quality (Abbasi and Riaz 2016)",7
"For instance, FI as an adaptation measure can help to reduce poverty which is the focus of SDG 1 (Renzhi and Baek 2020)",1
"Also, FI help in attaining SDG 6 by stimulating the management of water and sanitation in various economies",6
"Additionally, FI facilitates the attainment of SDG 9 by encouraging sustainable industrialization and eco-friendly innovations",9
"Finally, financial inclusivity help in attaining SDG 13 by backing investments in activities that minimize climate change and its adversities",13
"According to the 2021 Climate Action Tracker (CAT) governance report for Ghana, there are structures in place for horizontal and vertical climate coordination in the country, however, the structures are ineffective",13
"To the report, Ghana has institutional frameworks in place to mobilize and manage climate finance; however, to date, the government has struggled to raise adequate funding for climate action",13
It is also outlined in the report that Ghana has no long-term strategy for decarbonization,13
"Moreover, the green energy act which establishes the framework for clean energy production, is the only climate-related law in the country, and there are no indications that the government intends to develop more of such regulations",7
"According to the CAT report, the government has made a concerted effort to raise public knowledge on climate change issues, but there is still much work to be done, as only a fifth of the country’s population is aware of climate change and its negative consequences",13
"Therefore, undertaken this study to help the country contribute to the global fight against climate change and its adversities was worthwhile",13
"Finally, aside foreign direct investment (FDI) that was included in the model to test whether the hypothesis of pollution haven or pollution halo existed for Ghana, the study also controlled for trade openness (TO), population growth (POP), and energy consumption (EC) to help minimize omitted variable bias (OVB) issues",7
This study is essential because it comes out with recommendations to help combat climate change and promote sustainable development in the country,13
The exploration is further beneficial because it advocates for feasible financial markets and institutions that focus on green growth strategies that help to curtail ecological pollution,8
Financial inclusion (FI) is defined by Grant (2020) as efforts to make financial products and services accessible and affordable to all persons and entities regardless of their personal wealth or firm size,8
"The study’s finding was robust to the diverse proxies of FI and reasonable adjustments to the specified model, and advocated for the incorporation of the variable into the emission mitigation strategies of the nations to help advance ecological quality",13
"Thus, at the early stages, FI stimulated consumers’ access to financial services at low cost, influencing them to go in for carbon-intensive items, resulting in more CO2 effusions",1
(2021) studied the connection between FI and environmental degradation in 15 highest emitting nations in the globe,15
This implies FI played a vital role in the fight against climate change in the world,13
"The study concluded that there was no coherence amidst FI and emission mitigation strategies in South Asia, and advocated for such coherence to help combat climate change in the region",13
"To help minimize omitted variable bias issues, the study controlled for trade openness (TO), population growth (POP), and energy consumption (EC)",7
"(2020), and Park and Mercado (2015), depositors of commercial banks per 1,000 adults, domestic credit to GDP ratio, borrowers from commercial banks per 1,000 adults, commercial bank branches per 100,000 adults, and automated teller machines (ATMs) per 100,000 adults all extracted from WDI (2021) were used in computing the financial inclusion index (FII)",8
Greenhouse gas emissions caused by anthropogenic human and industrial activities are the main causes of climate change in the globe (Yuelan et al,13
"Despite the numerous explorations on the determinants of environmental sustainability (ES) in Ghana, there has been no study that particularly sought to analyze the financial inclusion (FI) and ES connection in the country to the best of my knowledge",8
"In attaining the above goal, the following function was proposed; where environmental sustainability (ES) is the explained variable epitomized by CO2 emissions while financial inclusion index (FII) is the main predictor of concern",8
"Finally, trade openness (TO), population growth (POP), and energy consumption (EC) were included in the function as control variables to help mitigate omitted variable bias",7
"Otherwise, the influence of FDI on emissions was to be negative \(\left({\mathrm\beta}_2=\frac{\partial{\mathrm{lnCO}}_{2\mathrm t}}{{\partial\mathrm{lnFDI}}_{\mathrm t}}<0\right)\), if FDI inflows into the country were linked to clean technologies that could add to the nation’s ecological quality (Dhrifi et al., 2020)",9
"Transitioning to the consumption of clean energies might also stimulate economic progress in the country, since green energies can also be used for electricity generation, transportation and heating (Danish and Ulucak 2020)",7
Positive 5% shock in financial inclusion index (FII),8
"Note: The dots denote average predicted values while dark blue to light blue lines represent 75%, 90%, and 95% confidence intervals Negative 5% shock in financial inclusion index (FII)",8
"Note: The dots denote average predicted values while dark blue to light blue lines represent 75%, 90%, and 95% confidence intervals Positive 5% shock in energy consumption (EC)",7
"Note: The dots denote average predicted values while dark blue to light blue lines represent 75%, 90%, and 95% confidence intervals Negative 5% shock in energy consumption (EC)",7
"Also, a bilateral association between FDI and environmental degradation was confirmed",15
This point supports the assertion of ResearchFDI (2021) that the facilities and equipment provided by foreign investors can increase a workforce’s productivity in the target country,17
"(2021), climate finance in Ghana should be broadened to help curtail the rising levels of emissions in economically disadvantaged societies",13
"Therefore, open and fair trade networks between Ghana and its allies should be encouraged, because they may facilitate the transfer of technology and expertise needed to boost ES in the country",17
The country’s policies on POP should be directed towards clean energy utilization while simultaneously minimizing the consumption of dirty energies,7
"Therefore, the nation should limit its monotonic reliance on fossil fuels and other dirty sources of energy by transitioning to clean energy alternatives",7
"However, due to infrastructure and technological constraints, augmenting clean energy into the country’s energy mix might not be easy",7
"Therefore, the nation should first replace the high-polluting energies with less-polluting ones to serve as transitionary option, while it gradually overcomes its clean energy generation obstacles",7
"Hence, there must be industrial structure adjustments to help abate the energy intensity rate of the country",7
"For instance, the influence of financial inclusion on environmental quality could differ at different quantiles, and it is the only estimator that can provide such information.",8
Soil loss is one of the most important concerns that experts are looking into for successful watershed management,6
"As a result, yearly average soil loss for the entire watershed is 41.2t/ha/year and sub-watersheds (1, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 20) are among the 21 sub-watersheds with very significant soil erosion, contributing roughly 28 percent of the watershed's sediment yield",15
The outcome is very important for planners and resource managers in terms of immediate and long-term planning through integrated water resource management (IWRM),6
"Water and wind are the primary causes of soil erosion (Borrelli et al., 2020)",15
"Global soil degradation impacts 1.9 billion hectares), and is rising at a rate from 5 to 7 million hectares every year (Gossa, 2011)",15
"Numerous studies have shown that soil erosion is a major problem in Ethiopia's highlands (Bekele & Brook, 2021; Getnet & Mulu, 2021; Issaka & Muhammad, 2017; Tiruneh & Ayalew, 2015)",15
Tsegaye (2019) estimates that Ethiopia loses $106 million per year due to soil and nutrient loss as a result of land degradation,15
"Soil erosion and river sedimentation can have a global impact on the environment, ecology, and economy (Yang et al., 2003)",15
"Following sedimentation in the Blue Nile River Basin's downstream portion, soil erosion from the upstream area resulted in a rapid loss of storage capacity (Betrie, 2011)",15
"This study region is located in the Blue Nile River basin, which has witnessed land use change, environmental degradation, and significant erosion issues, with annual soil losses ranging from 24 to 160 million tons per hectare per year (Tefera & Sterk, 2010)",15
"Land use and land cover changes are the main source of soil erosion and environmental degradation, according to earlier research in this watershed (Kenea et al., 2021; Tefera & Geert, 2008)",15
"To reduce the effects of soil erosion and sediment yield, it is critical to determine soil loss from the watershed and undertake conservation management",15
"The SWAT model has been shown in several studies to be capable of simulating runoff, sediment output, nutrient losses, and watershed management measures",6
"As a result, the result is critical for planning, implementation, decision-making, and future solutions for Finca'aa watershed best watershed management practices",6
In the watershed there is Finca’aa hydropower reservoir which was constructed in 1973 E.C that fed through Chome lake and discharging into Finca’aa river near to Finca’aa town,7
"SWAT is a versatile model that integrates numerous environmental processes, which supports more effective watershed management and the creation of better-informed policy",6
"The Ministry of Water, Irrigation, and Electricity of Ethiopia (MoWIEoE), the Ethiopian Mapping Agency, the National Meteorological Agency, and the International Water Management Institute provided the information (Table 1)",6
"In comparison, because to soil degradation caused by agricultural operations, sub-basin 11 in the Finca'aa watershed has the highest risk of erosion at the sub-basin level",15
Soil erosion prone areas were categorized into four classes (Table 7) and geographically depicted in (Fig. 10) based on erosion rate classifications in Ethiopia's highlands,15
"As a result, approximately 28 percent of the Finca'aa watershed is experiencing significant soil losses, and responsible bodies should undertake appropriate watershed management methods to address the Finca'aa watershed deterioration.",6
"The global warming issue arises from climate change, which draws scientists’ attention toward cleaner energy sources",13
"The findings affirm that renewable and nuclear energy use and technological innovation tend to curb CO2 emissions, whereas fossil fuel consumption and economic expansion trigger CO2 emissions",8
"As a result, in order to achieve SDGs 7 and 13 and support an environmentally friendly ecosystem, Mexico’s energy mix must be changed to renewables and nuclear",7
"The classical growth theories propounded by Adam Smith and David Ricardo state that labor, international trade, and capital accumulation are the main protagonists of economic growth",8
"However, these theories disregarded the effect of technology on economic development",8
"The economic development since the industrial revolution was based on fossil fuels; nevertheless, the role of energy in the growth model has been neglected (Stern 2019)",8
"Without energy, concurrent economic development would have never been achieved",8
"Consequently, augmented economic development has brought an opposite reaction which is unbearable for our world",8
"However, the transition from fossils to renewable energy (REN) is not facile, especially for nations lagging in technological advancement",7
"Therefore, the world’s decarbonization policy will remain futile until the policymakers adopt sustainable maneuvers to diversify the energy sources",13
"Since the inception of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 26 Conference of the Parties (COP) have been held globally",13
"The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) took place in Glasgow, an initiative to scrutinize the current progress on where we stand to curb the ongoing pollution to combat global warming",13
"Every COP, including the last COP26, works on an agenda to execute the Paris Agreement, which stands on the building blocks of sustainable development, environmental sustainability, and atmospheric carbon neutrality (United Nations 2021)",13
"The “Glasgow Climate Pact” obtained during COP26, which is a constructive pathway for net zero emission, will undoubtedly assist in keeping the global temperature below 1.5 °C, given that the world leaders work according to their commitment",13
"Most importantly, TI boosts energy efficiency and dwindles output loss during production and distribution, which soars the effective per capita energy consumption and reduces energy poverty",7
"The scenario of overall electricity generation from the REN, non-renewable, and nuclear sources is incorporated in Fig",7
Energy generation from heterogeneous fuel sources in Mexico in 2019 (British Petroleum Energy Review 2020) The adverse effects of the consumption of non-renewables can be mitigated by choosing an energy mix that has a considerable contribution from renewables and nuclear energy,7
The effectiveness of the REN and nuclear energies in lowering CO2 emission is still a highly debated topic as some studies unveiled that REN is more effective than nuclear energy in subsiding environmental degradation (Jin and Kim 2018; Hassan et al,15
"In line with the sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, both REN and nuclear energies are apt for ensuring affordable and clean energy (SDG 7) across the world",7
"(2) With the rise of economic growth, Mexico has been upsurging its fossil consumption",8
The relationship between energy consumption and environmental quality has drawn substantial academic interest,7
"As a result of this dependence, environmental challenges such as pollution, climate change, and global warming have arisen (Farhani and Shahbaz 2014; Koçak and Şarkgüneşi 2017; Abokyi et al",13
"(2019), the use of non-renewable energy has a positive influence on environmental deterioration, whereas REN has a negative impact and helps to mitigate environmental dangers",7
"When compared to non-renewable energy consumption, REN is thought to be less harmful to the environment",7
"To enhance renewable energy production, numerous countries provide tax incentives and subsidies to investors (Bowden and Payne 2009)",7
"In addition to traditional energy sources, rising energy demands have prompted policymakers and planners to consider renewable energy alternatives (Khan et al",7
"Renewable energy, such as geothermal, solar, and hydropower, can be utilized as a pertinent alternative to fossil fuels because they do not contribute to climate change or global warming and can help with energy security",7
Several countries have shifted to renewable energy in order to lessen their reliance on fossil fuels and minimize pollution (Bölük and Mert 2015),7
The inclusion of renewable energy consumption in the EKC estimation studies started in the mid-2000s,7
"On the contrary, some studies established a positive or insignificant connection between technological innovation and CO2 emissions (Mughal et al",8
Previous studies have produced mixed results while analyzing the connections between carbon emission and economic growth,8
Grossman and Krueger (1991) first discovered the inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and environmental quality and proved the EKC hypothesis,8
"(2022), for example, employed the wavelet Coherence technique to examine the co-movements and feedback relationships between CO2 emissions and globalization, economic growth, and coal use",8
"Using data from 1970Q1 to 2017Q4, Adebayo (2022) examined the connections between load capacity factor, fossil fuel, renewable energy, economic complexity, and foreign direct investment in Spain",7
"The author used the cutting-edge wavelet coherence technique to analyze the relationship and discovered that although renewable energy improves the quality of the environment, fossil fuels diminish it",7
"(2021a) re-examined the connection between South Korea’s urbanization, CO2 emissions, gross capital creation, energy usage, and economic growth",8
"Furthermore, using wavelet methods, Adebayo and Rjoub (2022) investigated the impact of renewable and non-renewable energy use on CO2 emissions in Argentina",7
"With one of the largest economies in the world and the highest pollutants among the North American nations, Mexico’s economic growth is directly proportional to the amount of energy consumed",8
"Besides, there is still a vacuum in our understanding of environmental sustainability as it relates to the energy mix, particularly the relationship between nuclear energy and the environment",7
"Thus, this study emphasizes the link between disaggregated energy sources, technological innovation, and the environment in the context of Mexico in order to narrow the gap",8
"Therefore, GDP per capita is used to gauge economic growth, while TI is computed by adding resident and non-resident total patent applications",8
"Further, to curb the menace of environmental pollution, Mexico has been adopting other green sources of energy generation, e.g., renewable energy and nuclear energy",7
"CO2 emission is the dependent variable in this study, while GDP, TI, fossil fuel energy consumption, REN, and nuclear energy consumption are the independent variables",7
"(2021) by adjusting for additional environmental degradation catalysts such as different energy sources such as fossil fuels, renewables, and nuclear",15
"The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, wavelet tool, and spectral causality technique are used in the empirical modeling that has been overlooked in previous literature assessing Mexico’s environmental degradation",15
The inverted “U”-shaped EKC suggests that Mexico’s economic growth path is amicable for environmental well-being and well-aligned with the Government of Mexico’s policy favoring charting a cleaner growth trajectory,8
"The long-run coefficient of fossil fuel energy consumption is positive and significant at a 5% level of significance, indicating that a 1% increase in fossil fuel energy consumption may exacerbate the CO2 emissions by 0.3%",7
Our findings suggest that fossil fuel energy consumption is one of the key factors of upsurging CO2 emissions in Mexico,7
"Hence, a paradigm shift of carbon-intensive fossil fuel energy consumption to a low carbon energy consumption growth path through the adoption of renewable and nuclear energy pathways may aid Mexico to achieve its nationally determined contributions (NDCs) commitments",7
"The long-run coefficients of renewable energy and nuclear energy consumption are found to be negative and significant at a 5% level of significance, inferring that increasing the share of nuclear and renewable energy sources in the energy mix of Mexico may essentially aid in the reduction of CO2 emissions",7
"Since the coefficient of nuclear energy consumption is found to be almost three times higher than renewable energy consumption, nuclear energy sources can be viewed as a prominent factor in reducing CO2 emissions in Mexico",7
"In addition, technological innovation is also associated with reducing CO2 emissions in Mexico; a 1% increase in technological innovation reduces CO2 emissions by 0.47%",8
This further lifts the country’s energy security and diminishes energy poverty to a certain extent,7
"The short-run coefficient of renewable and nuclear energy is observed to be quite lesser than the long-run coefficient, while the coefficient associated with fossil fuel energy consumption is found to be quite substantial in the short-run than the long run",7
"Furthermore, the coefficient of technological innovation is also observed as positive but non-significant in the short run",8
"Wavelet coherence between A economic growth and CO2e; B EFF and CO2e; C REN and CO2e; D NEC and CO2e; E TI and CO2e The WC between GDP and CO2 emission, presented in Fig",8
"However, some arrows are right-down in the 4–8 quarter cycle, indicating that GDP growth leads to CO2e for Mexico, but in the 8–16 quarter cycle, CO2e is leading GDP",8
"Therefore, it can be construed that economic growth and CO2e are showing an in-phase relationship, whereby initially GDP was leading CO2e, but in the later phase, CO2e is leading GDP",8
Figure 4B presents the WC between energy consumption from fossil fuels and CO2e,7
"Further, in the 2019–2020 period, the significant zone shows right-up pointing arrows, which shows that carbon emission is leading fossil energy consumption in the short and medium run",7
A Spectral causality from economic growth to CO2e; B spectral causality from EFF to CO2e; C spectral causality from REN to CO2e; D spectral causality from NEC to CO2e; E spectral causality from TI to CO2e The causal effect of economic growth on CO2 emissions is depicted in Fig,8
The presence of causality from nuclear energy consumption to CO2 emission is depicted in Fig,7
"The current paper attempts to fill this research gap, particularly in the context of Mexico, where (i) the CO2 emission into the atmosphere is the second-highest in the North American region after the United States (WRI 2020), (ii) over 90% of energy is derived from non-renewable sources, and Mexico has a target to produce at least 43% of its total energy from renewable sources by 2030 to achieve SDGs 7, (iii) finally, the COP26 pledge get immense attention in order to achieve a decarbonization policy",13
"Based on the ARDL estimates, the analysis demonstrated a positive and significant correlation between economic growth and CO2 emissions both in the short and long run, implying EKC occurrence in Mexico",8
"Renewable and nuclear energy consumption has negative and significant long- and short-run coefficients, implying that these energy sources are necessary to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in Mexico",7
"As a result, nuclear and renewable energy sources must take precedence in Mexico’s energy mix if the country is to meet its carbon neutrality target",7
"Furthermore, technological innovation has been linked to a reduction in CO2 emissions in Mexico in the long run",8
"Based on these findings, the Mexican government should exercise caution when adopting policies that promote economic growth at the expense of the environment since economic growth has a detrimental influence on the environment",8
"In addition, the government should aggressively promote the adoption of innovative technology that supports the eco-friendly economy",9
Our empirical analysis also suggests that renewable energy consumption use is a critical strategy for reducing CO2 emissions,7
It is completely obvious that renewable energy consumption emits less carbon than traditional energy sources like fossil fuels,7
"The implementation of various renewable energy producing plants, particularly solar, wind, and hydro power plants, has become a critical step for the government in increasing the total percentage of renewable energy consumption in Mexico’s energy mix",7
"In addition, the following suggestions are made: (1) converting to a low-carbon economy based on renewable energy usage and increasing energy efficiency, (2) reducing CO2 emissions with carbon storage and capture technologies, and (3) the findings show that including nuclear energy in the traditional energy mix can help reduce CO2 emissions, so it would be beneficial to generate more clean energy by building additional nuclear power plants",7
"However, when the government attempts to establish a nuclear power plant, the disposal of nuclear energy trash and its recycling must be taken into account, as this would largely eliminate the safety concerns associated with atomic energy usage",12
This would most likely provide additional insight into global economic policy to advance energy security objectives,7
"The more dynamic environmental degradation indicators, such as load capacity factor and ecological footprint, may be used in future studies.",15
"The results show that positive shocks to economic growth have detrimental long- and short-term effects on environmental quality, whereas negative shocks have no effect",8
"Furthermore, in short-, medium-, and long-term frequency, spectral causality demonstrates unidirectional causation from CCI to environmental-related technological innovation",8
Bidirectional causation is demonstrated between the CCI and renewable energy consumption in the short and medium term,7
"In addition, environmental-related technological innovation and foreign direct investment are demonstrating a bidirectional relationship in the short term",8
"Climate change (CC) is the most pressing issue these days, owing to its inalienable liaison with civilization",13
"The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, are the most significant contributor to CC and environmental degradation (Olivier and Peters 2017)",15
"Since the inception of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 26 Conference of the Parties (COP) have been held globally to combat the CC consequences",13
"Among them, the Paris Agreement (COP21) sets a target to unify collective worldwide initiatives led by world leaders to restrict global temperature increases to below 2 °C during the pre-industrial era and to promote further steps not to exceed 1.5 °C in order to combat increasing climate attrition (Abbasi et al. 2022; Civilsdaily 2015)",13
"(2020b) conducted a follow-up study for Asia–Pacific countries, which found that current innovation policies in these countries are unsuccessful in mitigating environmental degradation",15
"The indicators of ETECH comprise innovation in (a) energy production, transmission, and distribution; (b) production of goods and services; (c) developing information and communication systems; (d) improvement in transportation; (e) development in real estate technologies; and (f) waste management (OECD 2022)",12
"Although ETECH involves several dimensions, innovation in the energy mix has received the most primal attention. Scientists are concerned about the environmental consequences of skyrocketing energy consumption",7
"Every country in the modern world is stepping up energy production and import to stay up with demand and maintain economic growth (GDPPC) (Neog and Yadava, 2020)",8
"In comparison to other developing nations, the dynamics of environmental degradation in India have been way more pronounced",15
"Furthermore, as stated by the OECD (2013), investments in green energy are frequently thought to be less carbon intensive than investments in conventional energy",7
"By encouraging the use of renewable energy, India may advance environmental sustainability and create a secure and sustainable world",7
"In this sense, FDI may be a key driver of the introduction of new eco-friendly technologies in the production of clean energy",7
"Although it is logical to believe that the greater the share of green technologies, renewable energy use, and FDI inflow in clean form, the better the environment quality, there is no empirical study in India to support this notion",7
"In the existing literature, the majority of the researchers have symmetrically measured the impact of these important variables on climate change and thus the studies are lacking in terms of capturing the asymmetric influence of these important drivers of climate change in the context of India",13
"In addition, the majority of studies employ CO2 emissions or ecological footprint as indices of environmental quality or climate change",13
"This study differs from the other studies in the sense that it used climate change index (CCI) as a new proxy for climate change, developed by NASA’s Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC)",13
"Therefore, this study used the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model to capture the asymmetrical impact of these major drivers of climate change and tried to close the aforementioned research gaps, which is the major contribution of this study to the existing literature",13
Environmental deterioration is also accelerated by long-term negative shocks to the use of renewable energy,7
Several researches from multiple countries have looked into the consequences of green technology on CC,9
"According to Popp (2012), achieving green technology goals requires large startup expenses, which are out of achieving for developing countries’ firms. Policymakers are pushing for technological improvements that will improve environmental quality since public attention to environmental issues advances",9
(2016) focus their research on the environmental benefits of R&D in advanced countries,9
Technological innovation has an influential role in the enhancement of environmental quality in both France and the USA (Shahbaz et al,8
(2018) discovered inconsistencies in OECD data on the influence of technological innovation on CC,8
"Between 1971 and 2013, Yii and Geetha (2017) looked for a link between technological innovation and CO2 emissions in Malaysia using the Granger causality test and the ARDL approach",8
"Certain studies look at the effects of technological innovation on production, economic strength, and pollution (Santra, 2017; Álvarez-Herránz et al",8
"According to the findings of these researches, technological innovation has a substantial influence on economic performance and is critical in lowering emissions and environmental damage",8
"Climate change, energy use, and long-term GDPC have recently been the focus of many scholars and policymakers",13
"Environmental limitations and rules, according to some economists and policymakers, limit the manufacturing possibilities available, which could impede economic growth in the long run (Ricci 2007)",8
They indicated that a number of eco-legislations are inevitable in order to establish a sustainable and green growth trajectory,8
This study reported that unplanned economic growth degrades the environmental quality,8
"(2022) claimed the same conclusion of a negative linkage between economic growth and the environment for EU states and E7 countries, respectively",8
(2020) found a significant negative impact of economic growth on environmental quality in Malaysia for the period 1970–2018,8
"According to the first, foreign investors’ actions that relocate the manufacturing of pollution-intensive goods to emerging and developing nations harm local economies because such economies have inadequate environmental regulations (Copeland and Taylor 2005)",17
The utilization of clean energy and the impact of environmental issues have been the subject of several earlier studies,7
"(2021) asserted that because renewable energy exhibits a negative and statistical association with CO2 emission across the studied time, renewables are considered a miracle cure to minimize pollution emissions for E7 countries",7
"For India, Bekun (2022) revealed an inverse relationship between CO2 emissions and renewable energy",7
"(2020), who used the QARDL technique, renewable energy reduced Turkey’s ecological footprint on a long-term basis on each quantile between 1965Q1 and 2017Q4",7
"(2021), both the use of renewable energy sources and innovation have a detrimental effect on China’s CO2 emissions from transportation",7
(2021) used the quantile ARDL technique to discover that renewable energy improves environmental quality in the USA,7
"Similar to this, Pata (2021) discovered that renewable energy helps lessen environmental deterioration in the USA using the VECM model",7
"(2021), renewable energy also lowers emissions in G-7 countries",7
"The data for FDI and renewable energy consumption have been sourced from WDI and IEA, respectively",7
Our findings also suggest that India’s current economic growth path does not coincide with the improvement of environmental quality,8
"This result could be explained by a lack of green investment in cleaner technology, a lack of understanding of energy efficiency, extensive use of carbon-intensive energy sources, and a lack of energy literacy",7
"As a result, India’s government should have implemented the required policy measures to protect the environment without endangering the country’s economic growth engine",8
"This research also shows that a long-run negative shock to the number of patents in environmental technologies accelerates environmental degradation, whereas a positive shock has no effect on environmental quality",15
Our findings also suggest that a drop in environmental technology as a result of a lack of capital investment in research and development (R&D) could function as a catalyst to jeopardize environmental quality,9
"As a result, the government should devote sufficient policy attention to investing sufficient money in the R&D industry in order to generate technological spillover that could aid in improving environmental quality",9
"Although our findings show that improving environmental technology has limited ability to increase environmental quality, it will assist in overcoming the negative impact on environmental quality in the event of a decrease in R&D spending",9
"In addition, in the long run, negative shock on renewable energy consumption stimulates environmental damage whereas the positive shock to the same has been evidencing insignificant impact on the environment",7
"Our findings infer that while meeting the exponentially growing energy demand of the country, India should have to maintain its renewable energy share in the energy portfolio of the nation",7
"Hence, India should have to increase the installed capacity of renewable energy sources to avoid any consequences on the environmental quality of the country",7
"Moreover, negative shock on renewable energy consumption is found to be harmful to environmental sustainability in the short run",7
"In addition, at a 5% significance level, “H0: no asymmetric association between the same pair of variables” can be rejected, indicating that there is a short-run asymmetry between GDPPC and the CCI, between the number of patents in environmental technologies and the CCI, as well as between renewable energy consumption and CCI",7
It highlights that climate change has necessitated the urge for scientific knowledge development and patent applications related to environmental technologies,13
"Furthermore, LNETECH is unidirectionally leading GDP in the medium-term domain, thereby suggesting that development in environmental technologies helps in GDP growth",8
"Depiction of spectral causality plot In the modern era, environmental degradation has become one of the world’s most urgent challenges",15
"As India is one of the major contributors to global climate change, Indian officials have pledged to achieve carbon neutrality through effective initiatives, one of which is promoting the use of environmentally friendly technology",13
"Unlike earlier studies, this one incorporates a unique climate change indicator, the climate change index, which takes into account both the benefits and hazards indicators of transitioning to a low-carbon economy",13
"In the long term, a negative shock to the number of patents in environmental technology accelerates environmental degradation, but a positive shock has an insignificant effect on environmental quality in the long run",15
"In addition, negative shocks to the use of renewable energy, in the long run, encourage environmental harm, while positive shocks to the same have shown insignificant effects on the environment in the short and long terms",7
"A long-term asymmetry between GDP per capita and the climate change index, environmental technology patents and the climate change index, as well as FDI and the climate change index is strongly supported by the Wald test",13
"During economic booms, the Indian government might promote green R&D policies by sponsoring green research activities of various commercial and public organizations or public research programs",9
"However, because India is still developing its green technology capacities, these projects may require financial assistance",9
"As a result, the Indian government may establish a public–private partnership (PPP) in the early phases of technological development and adoption. During the early phase, governments may explore importing clean technologies from industrialized countries via FDI and making such technologies available to the industrial sector by easing banking sector lending facilities",9
"Once this phase has been established, domestic players may focus on developing their own firm of green technology with government financial and regulatory backing",9
"To address the negative externalities of FDI, for instance, the spillover effect should make it easier to transfer green technology into India",9
"In addition, as we unearthed that negative shock on the consumption of renewable energy will result in environmental harm, India must allocate a substantial amount of funds to advance the penetration of renewable energy in the overall energy portfolio",7
"Given that India’s share of renewable power consumption as a proportion of total electricity consumption is quite low, the policy should be aligned with the government’s current plans for the advancement of the broad use of renewable energy",7
"Other fascinating variables such as green finance, R&D investment, globalization, and institutional regulation may be studied further",9
"Future research, however, can assess the impact of climate change drivers in two separate models by taking into account two different environmental indicators, such as the load capacity factor and the climate change index; thus, it will allow the comprehensive comparison between them.",13
"This current research explores the asymmetric effect of financial globalization on carbon emissions, while controlling for non-renewable energy utilization, renewable energy consumption, and economic expansion",7
The outcomes of the NARDL unveiled that (i) a positive (negative) shock in non-renewable energy utilization increases (decrease) carbon emissions; (ii) favorable (unfavorable) variations in renewable energy consumption decrease carbon emissions; (iii) a favorable shock in financial development contributes to carbon emissions; and (iv) a positive shock in growth impacts carbon emissions positively,7
"Else, increased consumption on non-renewable energy sources among the few rich in India and any other countries struggling with implementing green economy would be devastating to both the immediate and future generations",7
investment banks in many countries of the world or where technological progress reduce transport costs and liberalize policies,8
"Generally, since 1990s, rapid increase in capital flows in India has been associated with gradual development of domestic financial markets as it integrates with world financial market, coupled with higher economic growth (India Independent Center Report 2015)",8
"These factors among others motivate the authors to investigate the relationship that empirically exist between financial globalization and environmental degradation, most especially for the sample country",15
"We are of the opinion that the increase (positive shocks) and/or decrease (negative shocks) in financial globalization may result in random shocks to environmental degradation, which would erode or improve environmental sustainability targets of the sampled country",15
Inflows of investment create employment opportunities; availability of income makes it easy for people to consume more of a renewable energy (away from non-renewable energy) and energy-saving technologies especially for the households and firms and vice versa,7
"Financial liberalization in this regard would enhance renewable energy consumption, reduce non-renewable energy utilization, and in turn, promote the use of energy-saving and energy-efficient technologies for both household and firms, and thus, promote real income and sustainable environment",7
"We therefore link this to financial globalization that might have resulted to an increase in wealth creation among the wealthiest few in India, who have contributed largely to environmental degradation as discussed earlier",15
"Methodologically, this study is the first or among the few studies that have examined the complexity nature of financial globalization on environmental degradation in the case of India",15
It is predicted that the connection between renewable energy consumption and environmental contamination would be negative,7
"This implies that increasing the use of renewable energy would decrease CO2, i.e., \(({\vartheta }_{4}= \frac{\partial {\mathrm{CO}}_{2}}{\partial \mathrm{REC}}<0)\)",7
"Based on this outcome, reaching SDG 13 targets will be problematic in India",13
A positive shift and a negative shift in renewable energy utilization decrease CO2 emissions,7
"From India’s perspective, this result is sensible because the nation has implemented a repertoire of initiatives to increase renewable energy usage and decrease the consumption of fossil fuel",7
"When discussing India’s concerns about meeting the goals of SDG 7, the effects of directional shocks in energy utilization on CO2 emissions must be considered",7
"Whilst also introducing forth the policy intervention, it should be recognized that this consumption of energy is also propelled by the unending natural resources utilization, which may pose a significant impediment to achieving the objectives of SDG 12",12
Figure 4a depicts causality from renewable energy use to CO2 emissions at different frequencies,7
"Therefore in long and medium term, renewable energy consumption Granger causes CO2 emissions",7
"Moreover, Fig. 4b depicts causality from economic growth to CO2 emissions",8
We fail to accept the null hypothesis of “no causality” from economic growth to CO2 emissions at 10% level of significance,8
"Therefore in long term, economic growth Granger causes CO2 emissions",8
"Lastly, Fig. 4d shows the causality from non-renewable energy consumption to CO2 emissions",7
"Therefore in long, medium, and short term, non-renewable energy consumption Granger causes CO2 emissions",7
"d Spectral causality from NREC to CO2 Utilizing Indian case, the current research explores the asymmetric effect of energy consumption (EC), financial globalization (FGLO), renewable energy consumption (REC) and economic expansion (GDP) on carbon emissions (CO2)",7
The non-linear linkage between carbon emissions and economic growth suggests that India has sacrificed ecological sustainability at the expense of economic expansion,8
"In addition, when discussing India’s concerns about meeting the goals of SDG 7, the effects of directional shocks in energy utilization on CO2 emissions must be considered",7
"Whilst also introducing forth the policy intervention, it should be recognized that this consumption of energy is also propelled by the unending natural resources utilization, which may pose a significant impediment to achieving the objectives of SDG 12",12
"Conclusively, the negative connection from renewable energy consumption and carbon emissions is most likely since renewable technology uses pure and green sources of energy that are capable of meeting present and future needs, as well as being a source of pollution abatement",7
"From India’s perspective, this result is relatable because the nation has implemented a repertoire of initiatives to increase renewable energy usage and decrease the consumption of fossil fuel",7
Government and policy makers have to intensify efforts at implementing and encouraging increased consumption (by households and usage in production activities by the firms) of renewable energy sources in achieving the benefits of the nation being financially opened to the rest of the world,7
"We are of the opinion that without appropriate environmental policy that would emphasize the importance of renewable driven economy via energy-saving and energy-efficient technologies, increased consumption on non-renewable energy sources of the rich few in India and other countries struggling with implementing green economy would be doing the opposite of financial globalization as reported in India.",7
hieving environmental sustainability has become a global initiative while addressing climate change and its effects,13
"However, the role of energy production and consumption in economic development remains critical amidst environmental pollution",8
"Thus, the need for innovation and clean energy alternatives is critical while pursuing sustainable development",7
"This country-specific study focuses on Argentina, where economic growth trajectory is embedded with high CO2 emissions",8
This study assesses the long-term and causal impact of financial development and renewables on environmental pollution while accounting for the role of economic development and globalization using yearly data spanning 1980 to 2017,8
This finding suggests pollution-driven economic growth trajectory in Argentina with high dependence on fossil fuels,8
Argentina’s pathway in achieving sustainable development requires gradual and inclusive economic shift towards green growth,8
Environmental issues including climate change and its long-term effects are widespread––especially among industrialized and emerging economies,13
"In 2015, natural gas, which is extensively utilized in manufacturing, residential sectors, and electricity generation accounted for 52% of total primary energy utilization",7
"Oil is the main fuel utilized in the transport industry, accounting for 36% of overall primary energy demand; however, hydropower is the 3rd largest primary source of energy",7
"A lower proportion of the nation’s overall energy use to generate electricity can be traced to the utilization of coal, hydroelectric power, and nuclear, whereas other renewable options are utilized in the production of biofuels for transportation.
 Economic expansion is reliant on energy production and consumption––due to its role in improving income generation and development, stimulating employment, and accelerating productivity",7
"This stance is reinforced by the optimistic association between consumption of fossil fuels and economic growth––which implies that GDP growth contributes to higher utilization of energy and higher CO2 emissions, respectively (Asongu et al",8
"The dependence on fossil fuels has caused significant environmental harm, triggering the necessity for green energy innovations and a switch to environmentally friendly and sustainable options (renewables) that can guarantee energy efficiency (Owusu and Asumadu, 2016; Sarkodie and Owusu, 2021; Sharif et al",7
"By increasing the stock of capital accessible for investment in sustainable energy resources intended to decrease CO2 emissions, financial development can influence the efficiency of the ecosystem",7
"Financial development, as established by the supply-leading hypothesis, can also impact environmental sustainability via its positive effects on economic growth (Iorember et al",8
"Recently, several scholars have assessed the association between environmental degradation and globalization; however, outcomes are mixed, making it difficult to determine the exact effect of globalization on environmental degradation",15
"This infers that globalization may eliminate tariffs and taxation and free up financial development and trade, which may stimulate economic growth (Kirikkaleli et al",8
"This study evaluates the interaction and causal impacts of globalization, renewables, and economic development on Argentina’s environmental sustainability",8
The primary additions of this research include (i) the introduction of financial development index into the framework for Argentina and utilization of green energy resources rather than traditional energy utilization in existing studies (see Zhang et al,7
"CO2 emissions: SDG 13 seeks to enhance atmospheric and habitat quality by lowering GHG emissions to optimal levels, thus illustrating the unparallel danger of global warming to human lives due to upsurge in CO2 emissions",13
Economic growth: Decent employment and productivity with aim of encouraging the vast unemployed to build work and entrepreneurship,8
SDG 8 seeks to guarantee that all employees that are qualified have full employment and good jobs,8
Globalization: The aim of SDG 17 is to enhance global cooperation in all related areas and to utilize tactical alliances to achieve sustainability objectives,17
The overall aim will result in open access to technology and information for sustainable growth and development,8
SDG 9 aims at achieving sustainable development through the positive effects of financial development,9
This aims to enhance sustainability targets through technological innovations including growing efficient resources and achieving energy efficiency,7
"1, CO2 denotes carbon emissions, FD signifies financial development index, GLO stands for globalization, and REN illustrates renewable energy",7
"Thus, an increase in financial development would also increase environmental degradation, i.e., \( \left({\beta}_2=\frac{\delta {CO}_2}{\delta FD}<0\right) \) otherwise \( \left({\beta}_2=\frac{\delta {CO}_2}{\delta FD}>0\right) \) if not eco-friendly",15
"(2020), we incorporate renewable energy into the model",7
Renewable energy is anticipated to decrease CO2 emissions (Kirikkaleli and Adebayo 2021),7
"The outcome of the ECT is −0.70, which illustrates evidence of cointegration among the parameters, and further signifies the capability of CO2 to witness 70% speed of adjustment to verify the alignment to equilibrium in the long-run due to the effect of GDP, REN, FD, and GLO.
 We observe in Table 9 that economic growth exerts positive impact on CO2 emissions––which implies economic expansion in Argentina deteriorates environmental quality",8
"Thus, keeping all indicators constant, 1% increase in GDP growth increases CO2 by 0.48%",8
Numerous studies document the positive link between economic growth and energy use,8
"However, if fossil fuel energy consumption is substituted with renewables, environmental quality increases",7
The results reveal 1% increase in renewable energy utilization decreases CO2 emissions by 0.14%,7
This indicates the need to improve the energy consumption structure from conventional energy sources to renewables,7
Evidence of negative linkage between globalization and CO2 emissions illustrates that nations with higher globalization level/openness observe less environmental degradation,15
Globalization can boost economic expansion while minimizing environmental degradation (Zaidi et al,15
"Regarding the effects of identified structural breaks, the results show that the break date (i.e., 2008) for economic growth is significant in explaining CO2 emissions–economic growth relationship",8
"The results of FMOLS and DOLS as presented in Table 10, showing both renewable and globalization, improve environmental quality, whereas economic growth impedes environmental quality in Argentina",8
The findings of the causality test presented in Table 11 show (a) unidirectional causality from economic growth to CO2 emissions,8
This infers that globalization is a significant factor in predicting CO2 emissions: (c) one-way causality from renewable energy consumption to CO2 emissions––implying renewable energy consumption can predict CO2 emissions,7
"As a policy implication, the evidence of unidirectional causality highlights that economic growth-induced pollution is worthy of caution for environmental stakeholders",8
"Moreover, this study demonstrates a negative relationship between globalization and emissions, showing the importance of global partnership on environmental sustainability",17
"Environmental degradation can decline by creating opportunities and flexibility for renewable technology imports, as well as clear laws and regulations for environmental protection",15
"Argentina can also deepen relations with its international trading partners to alleviate poverty, raise the number of new work opportunities, and boost imports and exports",1
This proposes the need to expand the financial base particularly public-private partnerships in clean and sustainable energy consumption to foster clean energy (SDG-7) and clean environment (SDG-13),7
This suggests that policymakers in Argentina could formulate policies that increase economic growth while improving environmental sustainability,8
"Thus, there is a need to arrive at a balance between Argentina’s energy mix, environmental strategies, and macroeconomic objectives by designing robust energy conservative policies",7
This will foster sustainable economic growth without compromising energy-cut,8
"This study explored the long-run association among greenhouse gases (GHGs), financial development, forest area, improved sanitation, renewable energy, urbanization, and trade in 24 lower middle-income countries from Asia, Europe, Africa, and America (South and North) by using panel data from 1990 to 2015",7
"The bi-directional causality was established among urbanization and GHGs (Asia), financial development and forest (Asia), energy use and renewable energy (Asia), renewable energy and forest (Asia), improved sanitation and forest (Asia, Africa, America), urbanization and forest (Asia), and improved sanitation and financial development (Europe)",7
"The GHG emission also shows one-way causality is running from financial development to GHG (America), energy to GHG (Asia), renewable energy to GHG (America), forest area to GHG (America), trade openness to GHG (Africa), urbanization to GHG (Europe), GHG to financial development (Europe), GHG to energy use (Europe, Africa, and America), and GHG to trade openness (Asia)",7
"On the basis of fully modified ordinary least square and generalized method of moment, the reciprocal relationship of GHGs was observed due to financial development in Asia and Africa; renewable energy in all panels; forest area in Asia, Europe, and America; improved sanitation in Asia, Africa, and America; trade openness in Africa; and urbanization in Europe and America",7
The impact of climate change is observed in each country or each continent,13
"The greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which is increasing day by day, is a driving force behind the climate change (United Nations 2018)",13
The United Nations (UN) and World Economic Forum (WEF) tried to decrease the economic and physical loss due to climate change (Farhani et al,13
The impact of climate change was more in the developing countries,13
The countries are adopting a different precautionary measure for a safe and clean economy like the increasing share of renewable energy,7
The implementation of Paris Agreement 2015 in full spirit is needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),13
"The economists, environmental activists, and policymakers realized the problems due to environmental degradation (Shahbaz et al",15
“Clean water and sanitation” is the sixth SDG set by the UN,6
"The water shortage, poor quality of water, and improper sanitation decreases the living standard, food security, and education in the world (United Nations 2018)",2
2016) due to its significant role for the economy and public health (Minh and Hung 2011),3
"“Affordable and clean energy” is the seventh SDG set by the UN (United Nations 2018), especially for the reduction in GHG emission in the environment",7
The economic growth showed a direct association with the consumption of energy (Armeanu et al,8
"The rate of increase in energy consumption was more than the rate of increase in population growth, and the expected rise in energy utilization will be 56% from 2010 to 2040",7
The energy demand rises due to economic growth (Islam et al,8
"The policymakers tried to introduce the alternative energy plans like energy saving, reduction in energy intensity, energy efficiency, and concentrate on safe energy sources (Farhani and Ozturk 2015)",7
The increase in renewable energy consumption was beneficial for energy security and has the ability to tackle the rise in global temperature (Armeanu et al,7
"The renewable energy is acquired from the tide and wave, wind, waste, sun, geothermal, wood, and biomass",7
“Decent work and economic growth” is the eighth SDG set by the UN,8
The sustainable growth in the economy allowed the people to enjoy quality jobs for the prosperity without damaging the environment (United Nations 2018),8
"In general, the trade and financial development had a positive role in economic growth",8
"It showed the ability to increase the investment efficiency, business opportunity, energy efficiency, technological improvement, and exchange of goods and services (Al-mulali and Sab 2012; Islam et al",7
"The provision of bank loans to projects and investments could increase the renewable energy, energy savings, and energy efficiency, which were proved helpful for the reduction in environmental loss (Al-Mulali et al",7
"Second, the financial development attracted foreign direct investment, which was also responsible for economic growth as well as CO2 emission",8
"The World Trade Organization (WTO), International Trade Centre (ITC), and International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) reported the strong association between trade and environment (Farhani et al",17
“Sustainable cities and communities” is the 11th SDG set by the UN (United Nations 2018) because the world is facing the historically highest wave of urbanization,11
It was found that the imbalance in the carbon cycle was a major factor behind global warming and climate change,13
"Therefore, this study aims to investigate the nexus between financial development, energy use, renewable energy, forest area, trade openness, improved sanitation, and urbanization in 24 LMICs namely Armenia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Morocco, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tunisia, Ukraine, Vietnam, and Zambia, in a multivariate framework",7
"Thirdly, this study first time includes the forest area and improved sanitation in the energy-environment-trade-urbanization-financial development nexus, especially for lower middle-income countries, facing the double pressure of environmental cleanliness and economic growth",8
"2017), economic growth (Shahbaz et al",8
"2015b), renewable energy (Al-Mulali et al",7
"2018), economic growth (Sadeghieh 2016), and forest area (Khan et al",8
Particulate matter (PM2.5) is also used as a proxy of environmental degradation (Yaseen et al,15
"The increase in energy utilization also leads to economic growth and financial development (Al-mulali and Sab 2012), and the demand of energy increases due to financial development (Rafindadi and Ozturk 2016), economic growth (Rafindadi and Ozturk 2016; Shahbaz et al",8
The inverted U-type association was observed among economic growth and CO2 emission (Shahbaz et al,8
"2016), economic growth and energy utilization (Al-mulali et al",8
"2015), trade and economic growth (Ayeche et al",8
"2017), economic growth to CO2 emission (Farhani et al",8
"2018), energy consumption to CO2 emission (Farhani et al",7
"2014a), economic growth to energy use (Farhani et al",8
"2014), trade openness to renewable energy use (Jebli et al",7
"2015), CO2 to renewable energy (Jebli et al",7
"2017), CO2 to energy utilization (Asumadu-Sarkodie and Owusu 2016a), CO2 to economic growth (Asumadu-Sarkodie and Owusu 2016a), energy use to economic growth (Rafindadi and Ozturk 2016), and urbanization to energy use (Shahbaz et al",8
It is required the sanitation and forestry in the energy-growth-environment nexus; (c) literature does not show the situation of above-mentioned variables in lower middle-income countries from different continents; (d) literature does not show regression coefficient of GHG emission individually for the 24 LMICs,15
"GHG emission, financial development, energy consumption, renewable energy, forest area, improved sanitation access, trade openness, and urbanization were selected variables",7
"per capita), but the share of renewable energy was more in Africa (58.44%) than America (50.26%), Asia (49.93%), and Europe (4.98%)",7
The trend of greenhouse gas emission in LMICs (1990–2015) The trend of financial development index in LMICs (1990–2015) The trend of energy consumption in LMICs (1990–2015) The trend of renewable energy consumption in LMICs (1990–2015) The trend of forest area in LMICs (1990–2015) The trend of improved sanitation facilities in LMICs (1990–2015) The trend of trade openness in LMICs (1990–2015) The trend of urbanization in LMICs (1990–2015) Country-wise mean of greenhouse gas emission in LMICs (1990–2015) Country-wise mean of financial development index in LMICs (1990–2015) Country-wise mean of energy consumption in LMICs (1990–2015) Country-wise mean of renewable energy consumption in LMICs (1990–2015) Country-wise mean of forest area in LMICs (1990–2015) Country-wise mean of improved sanitation facilities in LMICs (1990–2015) Country-wise mean of trade openness in LMICs (1990–2015) Country-wise mean of urbanization in LMICs (1990–2015) The empirical analysis was performed by using a double-log model (Hossain 2011) expressed as The natural logarithm was taken on both sides to reduce the problem of heteroskedasticity and Eq,7
REN shows the percent share of renewable energy,7
"Here, α1, α2, α3, α4, α5, α6, and α7 represent the elasticity of GHG with respect to financial development, energy utilization, renewable energy, forest area, improved sanitation, trade openness, and urbanization, respectively",7
"The error correction model was applied for the estimation of short-run elasticity of GHG with respect to financial development, energy utilization, renewable energy, forest area, improved sanitation, trade openness, and urbanization",7
"Table 8 reveals the Granger causality between GHG emission and financial development, improved sanitation, energy utilization, renewable energy, forest area, trade openness, and urbanization in the four panels",7
"It shows that a one-way causality is running from financial development to GHG emission in America; energy use to GHG in Asia; renewable energy consumption to GHG in America; forest area to GHG in America; trade openness to GHG emission in Africa; urbanization to GHG emission in Europe; GHG emission to financial development in Europe; GHG emission to energy use in Europe, Africa, and America; and GHG emission to trade openness in Asia",7
"It showed one-way causality running from financial development to energy utilization (Asia), urbanization to energy use (Asia, Europe), financial development to renewable energy (Asia), urbanization to renewable energy (Asia), trade to improved sanitation (Asia), renewable energy to trade (Asia), forest area to trade openness (Asia, Africa), financial development to urbanization (Asia), trade openness to urbanization (Asia, Africa), renewable energy to financial development (Europe, Africa), forest area to financial development (Europe), trade openness to financial development (Europe, Africa), urbanization to financial development (Europe, Africa, and America), improved sanitation to energy consumption (Europe), forest area to renewable energy consumption (Europe), forest area to improved sanitation (Europe), urbanization to improved sanitation (Europe), renewable energy to urbanization (Europe and Africa), renewable energy to energy consumption (Africa and America), energy utilization to improved sanitation (Africa), improved sanitation to trade openness (Africa and America), forest area to urbanization (Africa), forest area to energy consumption (America), trade openness to forest area (America), renewable energy to improved sanitation (America)",7
"Figure 17 also shows the establishment of bi-directional causality among forest area and financial development (Asia), energy use and renewable energy (Asia), renewable energy and forest area (Asia), improved sanitation and forest area (Asia, Africa, and America), urbanization and forest area (Asia), improved sanitation and financial development (Europe)",7
A positive short-run impact was determined from energy use to GHG in Europe while the significant GHG reduction was observed for the rise in renewable energy in Europe,7
"It implies the 0.632% increase and 0.100% decrease in per-capita GHG for 1% increase in energy utilization and renewable energy, respectively",7
"The panel of Asian countries showed GHG emission reduction by 0.200, 0.419, 0.118, and 0.548% for 1% rise in financial development, renewable energy, forest area, and improved sanitation, respectively",7
"According to GMM results, the panel of countries showed significant GHG emission reduction by 0.400, 0.165, and 0.470% for 1% rise in renewable energy, forest area, and improved sanitation, respectively",7
"The country-wise regression results described a significant GHG emission reduction for 1% rise in financial development (India), renewable energy (Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan), forest area (India, Philippines, Sri Lanka), improved sanitation (Bangladesh, Sri Lanka), and trade openness (Sri Lanka)",7
Schwerhoff and Sy (2017) mentioned the climate investment fund (CIF) which was funded by the World Bank in order to encounter the GHGs in the developing countries,13
The GHG emission reduction due to increase in renewable energy pointed out the importance of renewable energy in environmental safety,7
"The renewable energy also had a causal influence from financial development, energy utilization, forest area, and urban population",7
The rise in renewable energy was important because the impact of energy utilization was not beneficial for the clean environment,7
"It implies the indirect role of financial development, forest area, and urbanization for environmental cleaning via renewable energy",7
"The significant reduction in GHG was 0.108 and 30.812% for 1% rise in renewable energy and forest area, respectively",7
"Country-wise regression results revealed the reduction in per-capita GHG for 1% increase in renewable energy (Ukraine) and forest area (Armenia, Ukraine)",7
"In Europe, the contribution of renewable energy, forest area, and urbanization was favorable for GHG reduction",7
"The causality from renewable energy to urbanization was also explored, and it is required to increase the share of renewable energy",7
"The forest area also showed causality towards renewable energy, financial development, and improved sanitation",7
"On the other hand, the significant GHG emission reduction by 1.431 and 6.702% was observed for 1% rise in renewable energy and improved sanitation, respectively",7
"However, the reduction in GHG was 0.838, 2.007, and 1.507% for 1% rise in financial development, renewable energy, and trade openness, respectively",7
"The country-wise regression results showed a significant reduction in GHG emission for 1% rise in financial development (Egypt), renewable energy (Egypt, Zambia), forest area (Sudan), improved sanitation (Cameroon, Egypt, Sudan), trade openness (Tunisia), and urbanization (Morocco, Tunisia, Zambia)",7
"The rise in GHG emission was found for 1% increase in financial development (Ghana, Tunisia), energy utilization (Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia), renewable energy (Cote d’Ivoire, Sudan), forest area (Cameroon, Egypt, Tunisia, Zambia), improved sanitation (Morocco), trade openness (Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia), and urbanization (Cameroon, Egypt, Nigeria)",7
The increase in CO2 emission due to energy consumption in case of Tunisia has a support from literature (Farhani et al,7
Çetin and Ecevit (2015) claimed that the energy use and urbanization were main determinants behind the environmental degradation for sub-Saharan countries,15
Owusu and Asumadu-Sarkodie (2016) claimed that the increase in the use of renewables is an excellent technique to encounter the environmental degradation and fulfill the demand of energy for coming generations,15
"Moreover, Asumadu-Sarkodie and Owusu (2016c) stated that an affordable and clean energy will be beneficial for the achievement of SDGs",7
The access to energy plays a vital role in the achievement of SDGs by 2030 (Asumadu Sarkodie 2017),7
"Asumadu-Sarkodie and Owusu (2017d) stated that the increase in CO2 emission will be 307.9 kt for 1% rise in the total production of energy from waste and combustible renewables, while the reduction in CO2 emission will be 267.3 kt for 1% rise in the production of energy from hydroelectric sources in Ghana",7
Owusu and Asumadu-Sarkodie (2017) mentioned the increase in GHG emission due to increase in deforestation in Ghana,15
"The increase in CO2 emission also disturbed the agriculture sector in Ghana, creating a hurdle for the achievement of food security Asumadu-Sarkodie and Owusu (2016e)",2
"According to FMOLS regression results, the significant GHG emission reduction was 1.519, 2.353, 3.596, and 3.240% for 1% rise in renewable energy, forest area, improved sanitation, and urbanization, respectively",7
"Similarly, the GMM regression explored a significant GHG emission reduction by 1.246, 2.309, 2.825, and 3.198% for 1% rise in renewable energy, forest area, improved sanitation, and urbanization, respectively",7
"The country-wise decrease in per-capita GHG was observed for 1% increase in financial development (Honduras), energy utilization (Nicaragua), renewable energy (El Salvador, Guatemala), forest area (Bolivia, El Salvador), and improved sanitation (Bolivia)",7
"The significant increase in GHG was revealed for 1% increase in financial development (El Salvador, Nicaragua), energy utilization (El Salvador, Honduras), renewable energy (Honduras), forest area (Nicaragua), improved sanitation (Nicaragua), and urbanization (Bolivia)",7
"The policy maker should concentrate on renewable energy, forest area, improved sanitation and urbanization for the protection of the environment",7
The renewable energy showed a direct impact on GHG emission due to unidirectional causality from renewable energy to GHG emission but the renewable energy also affect the GHG emission indirectly by putting a causal impact on improved sanitation,7
"This study established the long-run association between per-capita GHG emission, energy utilization, improved sanitation, financial development, forest area, renewable energy, trade openness, and urbanization in LMICs from Asia, Europe, Africa, and America by using annual data from 1990 to 2015",7
"Moreover, the one-way causality is running from financial development to GHG in America; from energy use to GHG in Asia; from renewable energy consumption to GHG in America; from forest area to GHG emission in America; from trade openness to GHG emission in Africa; from urbanization to GHG emission in Europe; from GHG emission to financial development in Europe; from GHG emission to energy consumption in Europe, Africa, and America; and from GHG emission to trade openness in Asia",7
"Other than GHG emission, the bi-directional Granger causal relationship was observed among financial development and forest area (Asia); energy use and renewable energy use (Asia); renewable energy consumption and forest area (Asia); improved sanitation and forest area (Asia, Africa, America); and urbanization and forest area (Asia); and improved sanitation and financial development (Europe)",7
"The policymakers should focus on financial development, forest area, improved sanitation and renewable energy in Asia for the reduction in GHG emission",7
"The forest should be an integral part of environmental policies due to their direct as well as an indirect role for emission reduction by showing causality towards improved sanitation, renewable energy, and financial development",7
The governments should increase renewable energy consumption and forest area in Europe due to their significant role in the reduction of GHG emission,7
The renewable energy also had a short causality effect on urbanization,7
"The environmental policies in Africa should recognize the contribution of financial development, sanitation, renewable energy, and trade for the reduction in GHG emission",7
"Similarly, the indirect effect of renewable energy also exists due to its causality with improved sanitation",7
"It is beneficial for the American countries to focus on renewable energy, forest area, improved sanitation, and urbanization for GHG emission reduction",7
"It is urgently required to adopt these emission reduction measures to encounter the rise in GHG emission, especially due to energy consumption",7
"The country-wise GHG emission showed a significant reduction for 1% increase in financial development (India, Egypt, Honduras), energy consumption (Nicaragua), renewable energy consumption (Bangladesh, Egypt, El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Pakistan, Ukraine, Zambia), forest area (Armenia, Bolivia, El Salvador, India, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Ukraine), improved sanitation (Bangladesh, Bolivia, Cameroon, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Sudan), trade openness (Sri Lanka, Tunisia), and urbanization (Morocco, Tunisia, Zambia)",7
"Fourthly, the investment is required in the renewable energy sector because the increasing share of renewable energy and improvement in energy efficiency is required to control the energy crisis in developing countries as well as for the protection of the environment",7
(b) It is also possible to explore some other environmental degradation indicators such as temperature rise,15
(c) It is also important to estimate the health impacts of environmental degradation in the economy,15
Investing in green technology to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is among the most important objective of the SDGs,9
"In addition, a bidirectional relationship is detected between GDP and R&D and CO2 emissions and REC Granger causes GDP",9
"In the long run, REC, R&D, and GDP Granger cause CO2 emissions, while REC, R&D, and CO2 emissions Granger cause GDP",9
The long-run elasticities show that R&D and GDP impact positively CO2 emissions whereas REC affects it,9
"Thus, R&D increases pollution but REC reduces it",9
Environmental degradation is perhaps related to the excessive consumption of fossil energy in most activities,15
Encouraging R&D of low carbon technologies and applying several taxations for non-renewable fuel adoption may also constitute a useful strategy to protect the environment,9
"Historically, the USA has been disproportionately affected by climate change",13
"Increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, especially carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, have been the root cause of climate change since the Industrial Revolution",13
"As a part of universal cooperation, states across the USA must reduce carbon emissions and protect the environment",13
"This economic growth has brought some environmental problems, such as the increase in CO2 emissions from 334.5 million tons in 1987 to 395.3 million tons in 2007",8
"Therefore, the transition to renewable energy has been a driving force in achieving carbon neutrality and in improving environmental quality",7
"In addition, it is ranked first in R&D expenditure and according to Bloomberg’s newest California; the “Golden State” is the most innovative economy in America",9
"In particular, it investigates the contribution of R&D and REC with the help of Granger causality tests and the ARDL bounds approach",9
The study of Koçak and Ulucak (2019) examines how investment in R&D can influence pollution in OECD countries from 2003 to 2015,9
(2020) used a panel of 30 OECD from 1996 to 2013 and linear regression to show that R&D harms the growth of CO2 emissions,9
(2018) try to prove empirically that investing in R&D reduce significantly carbon emissions,9
"In a conclusion, the effect of R&D on carbon emissions can be negative, positive and insignificant",9
They examine how R&D can affect the emissions of CO2 in the atmosphere in 16 OECD countries by employing panel methods with heterogeneous coefficients,9
Previous research has discussed a lot of the interaction that takes place between renewable energy consumption and pollution,7
Empirical results showed that an increasing share of renewable energy sources in electricity generation will decrease carbon emissions,7
"In addition, Li and Su (2017) analyze data over the period 1990–2015 for the USA and prove that renewable energy adoption reduces pollution",7
"Similarly, the consumption of renewable energy in Nordic countries improves environmental sustainability and also international trade",7
They prove that renewable energy consumption protects the environment by reducing pollution emissions,7
Non-renewable energy increases carbon emissions and damages the environment,7
They found that renewable energy consumption decreases the level of carbon emitted in all countries and rising pollution in the lower-middle-income countries,7
"The author found the existence of a positive correlation between gross domestic products and carbon emissions, between population and CO2 emissions, while there is no correlation between the production of renewable energy and pollution in this data set",7
They use a hierarchical regression to witness that gross domestic product and population affect positively carbon emissions while green energy protects the environment,7
"In Australia, economic growth supposes to have a positive link with CO2 emissions all the time while the economic growth of Canada increases pollution in the long run only",8
"Our study is the first that focuses on the dynamic link between R&D, RE, CO2 emissions, and GDP in California",9
"However, few studies are modeling the impact of environmental policy to reduce carbon emissions",13
They found that CO2 emissions are correlated with economic growth,8
"Also, they show that despite the cap-and-trade policy (policy to curb emissions), the trajectory of emissions in California did not change",17
"The present study will fill the gap and it will differ from the existent literature by taking a deeper look into the link between REC, R&D, CO2 emissions, and GDP using various cointegration tests and approaches such as the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds and Granger causality tests for the case of California",9
It will also give implications and policy recommendations for environmental protection and global warming reduction,15
"To describe the main factors contributing to the increase in climate change impacts in California, we collected an annual series for the period 1987–2017",13
"It is expressed in million metric tons and collected from Energy Information Administration (2020).Footnote 1 We collected data on real gross domestic product (GDP) in million of chained (2012) dollars as a proxy for economic growth in the US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis.Footnote 2 From the past studies, innovations occupy a crucial place in mitigating ecological footprint and achieving sustainable development targets",8
This indicator is measured in millions of constant dollars and obtained from the National Science Foundation/Division of Science Resources Statistics (2020).Footnote 3 Renewable energy consumption (REC) is also employed in this research,7
"It is obtained by summing conventional hydroelectric power, geothermal energy, solar thermal and photovoltaic energy, biomass waste energy, wood energy, and wind energy",7
"Table 3 presented below synthesizes some descriptive statistics for CO2 emissions, GDP, R&D, and REC",9
"Real GDP (in million chained, 2012 dollars) According to Fig. 3, the R&D is increasing from 1987 to 2006 by a level of 170% then it has fallen",9
"The main part of this study is to assess how our variables (REC, GDP, and R&D) affect CO2 emissions",9
"As can be seen in Table 4, the natural log values of CO2 and R&D are non-stationary at level, and after applying one order differencing turn into stationary in ADF and PP at a 1% significance level",9
"Thus, we reject H0 and we confirm that between CO2 emissions, GDP, REC, and R&D, there is a long-run connection",9
"Interestingly, R&D, GDP, and the REC explain significantly the CO2 emissions in California at 1% and 5% levels",9
This result confirms the idea that higher economic growth is a result of higher production and a well-developed economic activity in the state,8
"Previous studies have proven that economic growth had an irreversible consequence on the environment and air pollution, like Chen et al",8
"Besides, one standard deviation in R&D would raise CO2 emissions by 0.047%",9
This suggests that R&D in California generates more and more CO2 emissions,9
"This result is worrying because innovation, in most cases, protects the environment and encourages sustainable economic growth",8
"But in our sample, the result supposes that R&D increases CO2 emissions",9
"The cause for this impact may be that investing in R&D needs a well-developed financial system, and therefore excessive use of pollutant energy sources",9
This can raise economic growth and worsens the environment (increasing carbon emissions),8
We can conclude that renewable and non-renewable energy in California is seen as substitutable goods,7
This finding resembles that of Saidi and Omri (2020) who proved the existence of two-way causality linking CO2 emissions and renewable energy in the short run for 15 countries,7
This link can be explained by the fact that the advantages of renewable energy cannot be observed in the short term,7
"R&D can increase efficiency, improve management, save costs, and increase productivity and gross domestic product",9
"They find unidirectional causality from GDP to R&D for Russia, India, and South Africa",9
Like previous studies such as Lin (2021) who find a one way causality running from R&D to CO2 emissions and Shao et al,9
"(2021) who study for the case of US economy, and detect the existence of a bidirectional causality between R&D and CO2 emissions, our causalities found that R&D Granger causes CO2 emissions",9
"Therefore, any changes in California R&D will have a short-term impact on CO2 emissions",9
"Otherwise, investing in R&D can seem like a daunting task",9
"It requires significant investment in materials and can lead to environmental problems (increased fossil energy consumption, thereby stimulating emission levels)",7
This result proves that CO2 emissions and RECs are the main drivers of economic growth in our sample,8
"Thus, all the considered variables Granger cause economic growth and CO2 emissions while there is two-way causality between CO2 emissions and economic growth",8
"Conforming to our long-term elasticities, R&D and GDP have a long-run unidirectional causality on carbon emissions",9
"Indeed, more research and development in California need a hard investment (material, high carbon technologies transport, labor…), which may increase carbon emissions",9
(2021) who found that R&D expenditure enhances the quality of the environment and resembles the findings of Cheng et al,9
"On the other hand, any increase in CO2 emissions means economic growth",8
These later find feedback causality between renewable energy and CO2 in the long run and for Australia and Canada,7
"It, therefore, allows for saving money and improving economic growth",8
"This study evaluates the link between REC, CO2 emissions, GDP, and R&D for California using annual series spanning the period 1987–2017",9
"In addition, a bidirectional connection is found between GDP and R&D",9
"We can consider that the presence of unidirectional causality from REC, R&D, and GDP to CO2 emissions also the feedback causality among CO2 emissions and GDP in California is interesting and new results",9
The obtained results imply that research and development expenditures are very beneficial to the Golden States whether in the short or the long term,9
"Encouraging the green industry, green building, green urbanization, and green investment are beneficial to taking care of the environment and promoting sustainable economic growth",8
"Contrary to our expectation, R&D in California increase carbon dioxide emissions",9
Renewable energy reduces considerably the carbon emission,7
"Therefore, every source of non-renewable energy must be avoided",7
"In this regard, increasing the share of renewable energy is crucial to combat global warming",7
More effort is recommended to multiply the renewable energy sources and discover new ones,7
Policymakers should also encourage the use of green energy by offering incentives and applying several taxes to the consumption of non-renewable fuels,7
"They must take the necessary steps to achieve the 17 SDG by 2030, then tackle global warming, reduce climate change and improve lives",13
"The poverty-stricken areas may face the dilemma of a “vicious circle of poverty.” The complex ecological conditions have intertwined with poverty alleviation, which makes the demand for ecological poverty alleviation particularly prominent in these areas",1
"To explore the impact of agro-ecological efficiency on poverty reduction, we adopt the panel data model based on cross-correlation and regression coefficient, using the data from 25 counties/districts in the Three Gorges Reservoir Region (TGRR) from 2006 to 2017",1
"The results show that (1) there is significant heterogeneity in agro-ecological efficiency in the TGRR, and the agro-ecological efficiency in the middle area is significantly lower than that of the head and tail areas of the TGRR; (2) the improvement of regional agro-ecological efficiency could accelerate the alleviation of poverty; and (3) the widening of urban–rural income disparity is not conducive to poverty alleviation and eradication",1
"2018a; United Nations 2015b), health problems (Beggs and Bambrick 2005, Collins 2001), and land degradation (Daba 2003, Darkoh 1998, Gisladottir and Stocking 2005)",15
"Additionally, extreme climate change will lead to the increase of poverty (Jin et al",13
"Instead, the improvement of the ecological and environmental conditions could help to alleviate poverty (Huang et al",1
2011) and the negative coupling of economic development and environmental pressure (Lu et al,8
"With the rapid growth of economy in China, the level of agricultural output has also continued to increase (Liu et al",2
"Part of China’s main agricultural production areas were trapped in a vicious cycle (Guo 2005) of “fertilizer application-soil depletion-more fertilizer application-soil degradation,” relying too much on land instead of agricultural production technology, which leads to the depletion of land and the failure to increase food production",15
"The answers to this question are significant for comprehensively evaluating the efficiency of ecological poverty alleviation, promoting, and ultimately achieving rural revitalization as well as the SDGs",1
"In the current situation of insufficient scale agricultural development, agricultural poverty reduction efficiency is slower compared with other industries (Hong et al",1
"The input set and output set of any region are expressed as Eqs. (2) and (3): Correspondingly, the formula of the SE-DEA model is shown in Eq. (4): Some components that affect the explanatory variables (such as poverty reduction policies) are not introduced into the model as explanatory variables, which forms the error term",1
"2002, Qiu and Zhu 2007, Zhu and Qiu 2008), this paper constructs an index system to measure the ecological efficiency of agriculture and takes pollution from agricultural production and consumption of agricultural resources as input indicators and economic development as output indicators (Table 1)",8
"In terms of output indicators, we choose the development of agricultural economy as the output direction and take the total output value of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, sideline and fishery, the added value of the primary industry, and grain yield as specific input indicators",15
"The “economy-environmental harmonize change” in the TGRR showed that the area with the coordinated economy and ecology is expanding, but the economic growth of this area is under increasing ecological pressure (Gu et al",8
"The data of the following indicators are collected from the statistical yearbooks of each county/district: such as per capita GDP, agricultural population, cultivated area, agricultural investment, disposable income of urban residents, per capita net income of farmers, primary industry output value, and regional GDP",2
"Therefore, each county/district in the reservoir region should take differentiated and sustainable measures to reduce poverty as well as reduce the burden of resource and environmental bearing capacity",1
"Its regional economic development, the tourism economy, and agricultural economy complement each other and promote each other",8
"Compared with the main urban areas, the economic development of these districts is relatively slow, but they have been developed rapidly driven by the leading role of economic development in main urban areas",8
The economic development of Badong and Zigui Counties are relatively slow in these areas,8
"If they keep the development with low agro-ecological efficiency, they may fall into the vicious cycle of ecological and economic development (Ding et al",8
"According to the heterogeneity of agro-ecological efficiency in the TGRR, differentiated and sustainable poverty alleviation policies should be adopted (Liu et al",1
"For areas with high agro-ecological efficiency, it is necessary to maintain agricultural development with high ecological efficiency, which would be essential to realize the win–win situation of regional environmental protection and sustainable agricultural development (Hou et al",15
"With many high mountains and lofty hills, the arable land resources of the TGRR are limited",15
"Specifically, the head area of the TGRR could promote economic development of Badong with the development advantages of Yiling and Zigui, which could help to reverse the development trend of polarization",8
"The middle area in the TGRR could transform natural resources into natural capital, develop eco-tourism, and share its own tourism resources with the head area (such as Yichang) and the tail area in Chongqing, which could promote the shared development of the economy without destroying the ecology and environment (Yang et al",8
"Based on the estimates of the four models of POLS, FE, MG, and CCEMG, the higher the agro-ecological efficiency, the faster the poverty alleviation rate would be in the TGRR",1
Some studies have shown that improvements in the ecology and environment can significantly reduce poverty (Huang et al,1
The treatment programs for environmental pollution and disasters could help to reduce the incidence of poverty (Shuai et al,1
"Therefore, poverty alleviation in the new era should be considered from the perspective of ecological civilization, and relevant measures of “ecological poverty alleviation” should be taken (Cao et al",1
"In view of the great differences in the economic development level, industrial structure, and resource endowment of the counties/districts in the TGRR, the interest demands of various places would lead to the lack of cooperative incentives",8
"Additionally, it would be difficult to judge and define the service-benefit relationship among regions in many aspects of ecosystem services, such as atmospheric quality impact, biodiversity conservation, natural ecosystem security, and the burden of compensation in this regard is mostly borne by provincial governments (Shen and Xie 2020, Zhang 2016)",15
The rural–urban disparity is a potential economic and social risk for all the countries (Wang et al,1
Although China has achieved great achievements in poverty alleviation over the past three decades (Liu et al,1
"2019), and the evolution of multidimensional poverty could be affected by institutional factors and market factors (Li et al",1
"Therefore, better public health services can help more impoverished households to lift out of poverty indirectly (Arsyad et al",3
The implementation of targeted poverty alleviation could help to overcome the islanding effect of poverty distribution in rural China (Guo et al,1
"2019) and the income inequality are both geographically gathered, which involved in the process of marketization, globalization, decentralization, and urbanization (Gao et al",10
"Therefore, the government could provide preferential and solid land policies support for poverty-stricken areas, and formulate policies according to regional characteristics, and thus would help to alleviate income inequality (Gao et al",10
"With the improvement of agro-ecological efficiency in the TGRR, the ecological resources required for local economic output could be reduced, which could help the impoverished households gradually get rid of the “vicious circle of ecological degradation and poverty deepening.” (3) The widening of urban–rural income disparity is not conducive to poverty alleviation and eradication",1
"Under this dual model of urban–rural development, the process of rural modernization would be hindered, and the land cannot retain farmers and support the population, which is not conducive to poverty alleviation",1
"In the advancement of targeted poverty alleviation and rural revitalization, ecological conservation should be given priority, and the ecological compensation mechanism should be established to clarify the compensation responsibilities of regions with excessive resource consumption, which could further promote the restoration of the ecology in the Yangtze River Economic Belt",1
"Therefore, the strategy of ecological priority poverty alleviation should be further considered and promoted in the TGRR",1
The new index provided in this research would help in better understanding stream watershed conditions and deliver recommendations for watershed management authorities in regions deficient in hydrometric and erosion yield datasets,6
The findings arising out of this study will provide tangible inputs for watershed management authorities in the region typically characterized as deficient in hydrometric and erosion yield datasets,6
"But, unfortunately, several studies in recent times have observed either watershed degradation or leaning toward deterioration due to human interferences and climate change (Sciera et al",13
The higher sediment rates in reservoirs and streambeds result in water quality degradation and reduce the potential for irrigation and power generation while augmenting occurrence and severity of floods downstream (Wolde 2016; Pourghasemi et al,6
"In this context, the present approach involves delineation of morphometric attributes for sustainable watershed management planning of the Jhelum River Basin",6
"The research work therefore can support in achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) related to land degradation, fluvial disasters, human and economic loss",15
The Jhelum River Basin is selected for this study in view of witnessing clear signs of climate change in terms of disproportion in precipitation forms,13
"In this study, thus, it is imperative to develop management strategies about stream watersheds which are at high degree of risk for soil erosion and flash floods",15
"High susceptibility of watersheds to erosion and flash floods, as determined by EFSI, increases the risk of diminishing the value of land availability and freshwater resources",6
Intensive agriculture and deforestation are major causes of land degradation involving soil erosion (Dar et al,15
"Adopting appropriate conservation practices such as establishing water retention basins, building terraces and intercropping can significantly reduce soil erosion in high-risk areas like Sind, Lidder, Lower Jhelum, Pohru, Bringi, Vishav, Arapal, Rembiara, Madhumati, Erin, Doodhganga and Sukhnag",15
"Further, watersheds such as Sind, Lidder, Lower Jhelum, Pohru, Bringi, Vishav, Arapal, Rembiara, Madhumati, Erin, Doodhganga and Sukhnag can be taken for agroforestry—wherein there is a deliberate integration of woody perennial plants (trees and shrubs) with crops or livestock",15
"The trees and shrubs in agroforestry systems can be selectively protected and regenerated, or planted and managed",15
Nature of such tasks not only reduces land degradation but also maintains water table high enough which can be utilized in dry spells through extraction (Kumar et al,15
Promotion of controlling factors in high erosion and flash flood-prone areas will substantially increase water use efficiency across these areas and would ensure sustainable withdrawals and supply of freshwater to address water scarcity challenge (SDG 6),6
The management procedures when applied to highly susceptible zones as recognized by the present work would significantly reduce the number of deaths and affected people besides considerably decreasing the direct economic losses from fluvial floods (SDG 11),11
Energy consumption for sustainable development has become a crucial issue in recent years,7
The anthropogenic effects of traditional energy sources (non-renewables) underscore the need for renewable energy and efforts to promote its adoption have comprised policy makers’ strategies to achieve sustainable development,7
The findings reveal a significantly positive influence for renewable energy and a significantly adverse impact for non-renewable energy with respect to sustainable development in ASEAN countries,7
"Among the SDGs, the seventh goal (SDG-7) intends to make sure all people’s access to an equitable, dependable, sustainable, and up-to-date energy system, and it identifies the practice of renewable energy (henceforth RE) technology as a proper means to attain this goal (United Nations, 2015) without depriving future generations of resource availability",7
Various multinational companies (MNCs) and state authorities have thus sought to strengthen renewable energy technology to ensure a stable energy transition and to develop a local electrification system to enhance environmental safety,7
"In addition, they are increasingly utilizing RE technology to improve people’s access to energy and meet intensifying demands for energy in a sustainable way (Almeshqab and Ustun 2019)",7
"The resources of renewable energy—e.g., solar, wind, biomass, biofuels, and geothermal—ensure sustainable development by reducing the level of environmental pollution",7
"Thus, renewable energy or its different sources have become a precondition for sustained energy scheme and thereby sustainable development (Østergaard et al. 2020)",7
"Although some developed countries and supranational institutions are inclined to employ RE technology, most countries remain adamant in their conviction that fossil fuels, i.e., non-renewable energy sources (coal, petroleum, and natural gas), are necessary to attain higher growth and sustainable development",7
Projections estimate that fossil fuels will comprise 78% of aggregate energy consumption in the year 2040,7
"In addition, coal-bed methane, and shale and tight gases are predicted to join natural gas as preferred fossil fuels, compared to coal and petroleum, in the energy mix of various economies",7
"Thus, although petroleum-based liquid fuels are projected to stay the greatest global energy resource, their portion in the global market of energy consumption is expected to decline by 3% over a 28-year period from 33% in 2012 to 30% in 2040 (Pedraza 2019)",7
These institutions can also address inequalities in resource distribution and externalities or transaction costs that hinder sustainable growth (Iqbal and Daly 2014),8
"Indeed, the use of renewable resources may be cost-effective for any economy if strong institutions can eschew non-renewable resources, which are detrimental to both environmental quality and sustainable development",16
"Once again, however, the strength and efficiency of these local institutions are essential to decreasing CO2 emissions, and this finding holds for countries at both lower and higher stages of economic development (Lau et al. 2014)",8
All of these issues ultimately degrade environmental safety by ignoring ecological externalities and economic growth-related consequences (Slesman et al. 2015),8
"Recent decades have witnessed increasing economic growth, which has increased energy demands in the region by more than 50%",8
"The region faces tremendous challenges in ensuring affordable, secure, and sustainable energy supplies (IRENA 2016)",7
"At present, ASEAN energy consumption relies largely on non-renewable resources, and its consumption level is extremely high in terms of environmentally harmful emissions",7
"Consequently, the region is increasingly susceptible to pollution and climate change, due to environmental deterioration stemming from the excessive use of non-renewables (Rosenzweig et al",13
"By 2025, they anticipate using renewable energy for 23% of their primary resources, compared to 9.4% of the same sources used in 2014",7
"At present, relevant policies have taken effect, and the region has already achieved a 17% use of total renewable energy, leaving a 6% gap to satisfy its prescribed goal (IRENA 2016)",7
"In association with the “International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the ASEAN Centre for Energy” and 10 ASEAN member states have worked intensively to explore a pathway for hastening the exploitation of renewable energy required to meet the region’s goal",7
"More importantly, increasing dependence on renewable energy resources would reduce overall expenses and generate greater savings for these economies, while promoting cleaner urban areas and a relatively safe and healthy supply of energy (Nathaniel and Khan 2020)",7
"It would also tap into the ASEAN region’s enormous potential in supplying geothermal, hydro, biomass, and other renewable energy resources for sustainable development",7
"For example, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos, which comprise the Greater Mekong Sub-region, exhibit immense possibilities for sustainable energy production via hydroelectric generation (Lu et al",7
"In such an environment, efforts to adopt renewable technologies and reduce fossil fuel (non-renewable energy) consumption can be hindered because technology providers and countries might be discouraged by the role of weak institutions in ASEAN countries",7
Developed countries and their enterprises positively influence environmental quality and sustainable energy systems by effectively managing their technologies in the context of developing economies (Demena and Afesorgbor 2020),7
(2004) emphasized maintaining high institutional quality with a vibrant governance framework across the ASEAN economies to enhance effective public policy and thereby stimulate private sector development,8
"Empirical investigations exploring the influences of renewable and non-renewable energies on SD are quite scarce, and they predominantly utilize economic growth as the proxy for sustainable development",8
(2020) on 38 renewable energy-consuming-countries; Waheed et al,7
(2020) on 103 OECD and non-OECD countries; Saidi and Omri (2020) on 15 major renewable energy-consuming economies; Le and Sarkodie (2020) on 45 emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs); Ali et al,7
"Finally, the role of institutional quality in economic growth was investigated by some recent studies conducted by Shah et al",8
(2019) and Lee (2019) on different developing and developed countries—have likewise investigated the influence of renewable energy sources on sustainable development,7
"(2020) explored 57 indicators of sustainable energy development for different economies, while Solarin (2020) identified the influence of non-renewable energy (fossil fuel) subsidies on sustainable development",7
"More importantly, our study contributes to examining the influence of both the renewable and non-renewable energy and institutional quality on sustainable development in the ASEAN economies while extending the data range from 1980 to 2016",7
"Our study also includes a control variable, namely institutional quality, which consists of 12 indicators: “government stability, socio-economic conditions, investment profile, internal conflict, external conflict, corruption, military influence, religious tensions, law and order, ethnic tensions, democratic accountability and bureaucratic quality” extracted from PRS Group (2019)",16
Two recent human developments “enhanced lifestyle” and “higher economic growth” are generally considered positive,8
"Developed countries, which have 25% of total global population, use global energy’s 75%, causing global warming and thereby degrading environmental safety through depleting ozone, precipitating acid, emitting radiations, polluting air, and cutting down trees (deforestation)",15
"Indeed, an energy transformation system based on RE technology can reduce the higher expenses related to fossil fuel consumption and promote the cost-effective and flexible execution of renewable energy systems (Dincer 2000); (Khan and Hou 2021)",7
"Also recognized as sustainable energy sources, wastes and biomass fuels can be used for sustainable energy system without harming society (Dincer and Rosen 1998)",7
"First, renewables supply more clean energy technologies by exerting stringent control over traditional energy resources, such as fossil fuels",7
"Thus, the sensible use of renewable energy sources via effective application ensures a dependable and sustainable energy supply ad infinitum",7
"Finally, renewable energy technology supports a decentralized power system, which has the potential to increase localized and more efficient energy supplies, even to remote locations (L",7
"Fully exploiting renewable energy technologies requires efforts to overcome the institutional, technical, and economic challenges associated with the progress and usages of renewable energy sources (Han et al. 2021); (Chen et al. 2021); (X",7
"Moreover, institutions can devote greater resources towards research and development (R&D), evaluation of technology, standard progress of technology, and transfer of technology (Dincer 2000)",9
The sole objective of the current research is to delve into the influence of renewable energy (REN) and non-renewable energy (NRE) on sustainable development (SD) in the company of institutional quality (INQ) in ASEAN economies,7
"By incorporating institutional quality as a control variable, the current study constructs a panel model as follows:
 In Eq. (1), \(i\) indicates the \(i\mathrm{th}\) country in the panel; \(t\) denotes the time period (1980–2018); \(\alpha\) symbolizes the constant; \(\beta\), \(\gamma\), and \(\theta\) represent the coefficients of renewable energy (\(lnREN\)), non-renewable energy (\(lnNRE\)), and institutional quality (\(INQ\)), respectively; \(lnSD\) represents sustainable development; and \({\varepsilon }_{it}\) denotes the error term",7
"This research utilizes a panel dataset encompassing RNE (renewable energy), NRE (non-renewable energy), INQ (institutional quality), and SD (sustainable development) for the period of 1980–2018 in seven ASEAN countries",7
"As the traditional mode of economic growth has shifted to sustainable development, two important issues have arisen: the world-wide needs of people in light of existing sustainable development technology and social associations’ that are incapable of securing both current and prospective wants of people (Bruntland 1987)",8
"Besides, per capita GDP cannot measure sustainable development as this type of GDP appears as a flow indicator",17
"The growth path of an economy becomes sustainable when its overall capital stock assets, including non-renewable energy resources and human capital, remain constant or increase over time (Güney 2019)",7
"If capital reserves decrease for a certain period, economic growth will temporarily decline even as long-term social welfare is maintained (Aidt 2011)",8
"This study also measures renewable energy (as % of total final energy consumption) and non-renewable energy as fossil fuel energy consumption (% of total); meanwhile, it assesses institutional quality via country risk indicators (CRI) and financial development is measured by domestic credit provided by financial sector (% of GDP)",7
"The PRS group identifies “12 country risk indicators and assign a range of risk points to each as follows: (1) Government Stability (0–12); (2) Socio-economic conditions (0–12); (3) Investment profile (0–12); (4) Internal conflict (0–12); (5) External conflict (0–12); (6) Corruption (0–6); (7) Military in politics (0–6); (8) Religious tensions (0–6); (9) Law and order (0–6); (10) Ethnic tensions (0–6); (11) Democratic accountability (0–6); and (12) Bureaucratic quality (0–4).” In this study, all the components of ICRG are converted into a single variable—i.e., institutional quality—by computing principal component analysis (PCA)",16
"In other words, the long-term relationship among renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, financial development and institutional quality is evident with a strong level of statistical significance (p < 0.01)",7
The results in Table 7 reveal that the coefficient of renewable energy is positively related to sustainable development and statistically significant at a 1% level under MG and CCEMG specifications and at a 5% level under AMG specification,7
Non-renewable energy shows a negative relationship at a 1% level of significance in MG and CCEMG and a 5% level in AMG,7
"The findings indicate that in ASEAN economies, renewable energy has an insignificant effect on sustainable development in the short term but a significantly positive impact in the long term (Table 8)",7
"Efforts to exploit RE potentials in agriculture, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and social services are also increasing",1
"However, this loss of capital expenses is ultimately offset by more affordable energy prices, expanded services, and increasing employment in the RE sectors (Karim et al. 2019)",7
"According to Nathaniel and Khan (2020), some ASEAN nations have relied on renewable energy resources to reduce their energy consumption expenses and thereby stimulate savings",7
"Overall, major countries of this region have attempted to exploit the potential of geothermal, hydro, biomass, and other renewable energy resources for sustainable development",7
"Thus, renewable energies in ASEAN countries are instrumental in promoting individual savings, national economic growth, and hence sustainable development",8
"(2008), Güney (2019), Klepacka (2019), Lee (2019), and Ahmed and Shimada (2019) who established renewable energy resources as a potentially essential element in efforts to achieve sustainable development and meet societies’ current needs while avoiding heavy dependence on fossil fuels and the depletion of resources for future generations",7
This study’s results also underscore that ASEAN countries’ sustainable development is adversely impacted by non-renewable energy consumption in both the long and short term (Table 8),7
"Non-renewable energy resources are extremely costly and require, in particular, significant upfront costs for the construction of power development projects",7
"The outputs or service-related costs of non-renewable energy resources typically exceed the ability of recipients to pay for them, which impedes savings (Karim et al. 2019)",7
"If the ability of financers to invest in the development, extraction, and reserve of non-renewables is impeded, the favorable path to non-renewable energy price is hampered, and the price burden of non-renewables shifts to consumers who must bear the increasing costs of non-renewable energy use (Cairns and Lasserre 1991; Powell and Oren 1989)",7
"Furthermore, capital investment in non-renewable energy development is non-malleable because capital that is invested in oil, gas, and other fossil fuels cannot easily be shifted to other investments",7
"Therefore, developers typically set higher prices for energy consumption, which increases energy consumption costs and decreases the saving capacity of users",7
Lower interest rates also enhances non-renewable energy conservation if it corresponds to high user costs and low capital costs (Krautkraemer and Toman 2004),7
Emerging economies are facing increasing health care challenges from widespread environmental degradation and extensive economic activities (Usman et al. 2019),15
"Moreover, continuous emissions of various GHGs contribute to the damage of environment and pose a risk at public health (Apergis et al. 2018a, b)",3
"Another significant factor in regional development is health care spending, which arguably is exacerbated by environmental pollutants, particularly from non-renewable energy sources",7
"Thus, health expenditures driven by non-renewable energy consumption impede the adjusted net savings—the variable of SD as considered in this study for ASEAN countries",7
"However, the result is inconsistent with Güney (2019) who found less of an adverse impact for non-renewable energy than for renewable energy on SD in 73 developing and 40 advanced countries",7
"Weak institutions reduce sustainable growth and a nation’s savings, which in turn constrains future sustainable growth (Bulman et al. 2014)",8
"The mismanagement of resources, including renewable and non-renewable energy, contributes to this deterioration",7
"It also increases consumers’ already high energy costs as private contractors pursue economic profits and attempt to compete with non-renewable energy producers via payments that facilitate the functions of different institutional tools, such as controllers, transport-based supervisors, free utility services, and universal organizational principles Michalena and Hills (2013)",7
"In addition, some administrative and policy-making problems, including payments for consumption, benefits of tax, and additional surplus expenditures, disadvantage the financers of RE projects relative to investors in non-renewable energy projects (Klass and Wilson 2014)",7
"At present, therefore, ASEAN countries must navigate an unpredictable and uncertain political situation while maintaining their impressive trade relationships, massive investment base and rapid economic growth",8
"In this context, political volatility rooted in poor institutional mechanisms places the ASEAN region’s influence as a driver of Asian economic development at risk (Vatikiotis 2019)",8
The results we obtained regarding the impact of renewable energy in the short-term estimation diverge from the long-term results,7
"In the short term, renewable energy has no significant influence on SD",7
"However, renewable energy exerts a significant favorable influence on SD in the long term",7
"Meanwhile, non-renewable energy, financial development and institutional quality are negative and statistically significant at the 1% and 10% levels, respectively, which is in line with the long-term findings of the PMG estimation",7
"Evidence from Table 9 reveals that the estimated coefficients of renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, financial development and institutional quality under FMOLS, DOLS, and CCR corroborate the long-run estimation from the PMG estimator",7
Bidirectional causal links from both renewable energy and institutional quality to sustainable development are evident,7
"The findings also establish unidirectional causal links from sustainable development to non-renewable energy, non-renewable energy to renewable energy, and institutional quality to renewable and non-renewable energy",7
"Finally, the evidence reveals no causal link from non-renewable to sustainable development, renewable energy to non-renewable energy, renewable energy to institutional quality, and non-renewable energy to institutional quality",7
"If the use of environmentally friendly technologies for energy consumption can secure savings for people and regions, it is reasonable to call this outcome “sustainable development (SD).” Indeed, this correspondence represents the core motivation of the study in selecting adjusted net savings as the variable of SD",7
"In light of this, our research analyzes the effects of renewable energy usage, non-renewable energy usage, financial development and institutional performance on the ASEAN region’s adjusted net savings as well as sustainable development",7
"It reveals that the growing use of renewable energy engenders an increase in adjusted net savings, i.e., sustainable development, in these countries, while non-renewable energy does not",7
"As renewable energy consumption exerts a favorable influence on sustainable development, ASEAN countries that utilize renewable resources to produce energy are likely to exhibit increasing levels of sustainable development",7
"Notably, fossil fuel use, which produces almost 60% of worldwide GHG emissions, has become the most powerful driver of global climate change (United Nations 2016)",13
"To reduce these emissions and achieve SDG-7, ASEAN countries must build a comprehensive, safe, affordable, and modern energy system by 2030",7
"In this respect, countries should initiate additional renewable energy projects to augment the production of renewable energy by 2030 and ensure that administrative and tax directives ease the implementation of RE projects",7
"Therefore, promoting the sustainable management of non-renewable energy and increasing the production of renewable energy by strengthening financial development and institutional quality can ensure sustainable development in ASEAN countries.",7
The development of the energy sector has played a major role in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and pollution,7
"Due to its calamitous social, environmental, and economic impacts, climate change is on top of the global environmental agenda (Iqbal and Khan 2018; Zheng et al",13
Industrial revolution is considered the main driver behind climate change,13
"In the past, industrial growth relied on non-renewable energy to run the system, which resulted in financial development and high levels of carbon emissions",7
"However, at later stages, financial development helped to reduce carbon emissions (Khan et al",13
"The reason behind this is greater awareness about climate change and its impact, and limits set for industrialized countries after United Nation Framework Convention (UNFCCC) in 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol in 1997",13
"Later, during the Conference of Parties (COP21) in 2015, 196 countries committed to set national targets known as the Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and maintain the temperature less than 2 °C above the pre-industrial level till 2030 (UNFCCC 2016; Fekete et al",13
"This will require the establishment of institutional structures comprised of state and non-state actors, increasing capacities of the existing institutions to effectively coordinate with the whole governance process, integrating climate change priorities in different sectoral and cross sectoral programs, training relevant staff, engaging all stakeholders, streamlining the regulatory framework, and monitoring and reporting progress (Van Asselt and Hale 2016; Kuramochi et al",13
"The trends of global CO2 emissions commensurate with global energy consumption trends representing a contribution of 89%, with share of coal (39%), oil (31%), and gas (18%)",7
"The cost of reshaping infrastructure, investing in the renewable energy sector, eliminating fossil-energy infrastructure, increasing access to technology, and facilitating the involvement of multiple actors makes the transition towards low-carbon energy more challenging",7
The role of key actors (state and non-state) becomes more crucial after the Paris Agreement,13
"While discussing global GHG emissions, renewable energy solutions, and low carbon pathways, several researchers like Andonova et al",7
"Contrary to that, research to determine the role and capacities of state and non-state actors in aligning energy and climate change policy remained less studied and limited to a contextual setting",13
"Many countries failed to mention the roles and capabilities of these actors in the first round of the NDC review cycle; thus, the situation demands an insight analysis (Lin and Ahmad 2017; Kuramochi et al",13
The share of renewables is just 4% of its total energy supplies (Aziz and Abdulaziz 2010; Anwar 2016; Zafar et al,7
"Despite a < 1% share in global GHG emissions, Pakistan is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change, which makes the country’s achievement of sustainable development goals more challenging",13
This pressure has led the government to focus on short-term energy generation projects like independent power plants and utilization of coal reserves (Valasai et al,7
"With the current energy mix in Pakistan, 100 years of global warming potential from electricity generation is expected to increase from 22.2 Mt CO2e in 2012 to 55.2 Mt CO2e in 2030 (Aized et al",7
"Hence, the impact of projects under CPEC must also be given serious consideration as this is the largest investment program ever in Pakistan but with 75% energy projects, mostly coal-based, 13% road infrastructure development, 8% train, and 4% transport; all are contributors to GHG emissions and numerous environmental and climate change impacts (Zubedi et al",13
"At the same time, due to its geographical location and topography, Pakistan has an enormous potential to develop renewable energy resources including solar, wind, biomass, hydro, and geothermal",7
"2019) and alternate and renewable energy governance, barriers, and opportunities in Pakistan discussed by Hassan et al",7
"To address climate change, Pakistan has developed a governance framework in 2012 by launching a National Climate Change Policy (GoP 2012) and a framework for its implementation in 2013 followed by enactment of the Pakistan Climate Change Act in 2017 (GoP 2017) and establishment of the Pakistan Climate Change Council in 2018",13
The establishment of a national climate change authority is in process,13
"Whereas for energy governance, the National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (NEECA) was established through the National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act of 2016",7
(2019) concluded that energy policies in Pakistan lack the capacity to vouch for the SDGs and combat climate change and are devoid of indispensable criteria to strengthen energy governance for low carbon development,13
A coherent and integrated energy governance system needs effective institutions beside policy and legal instruments,16
"The study employed the second climate principle “ensure climate competence, capacity and active role of the line government departments (CP2),” which was formulated during an umbrella study focusing on climate governance in Pakistan, aimed at developing the sectoral indices for assessing the adequacy and state of governance for CCD",13
"source: PhD dissertation of first author) Study design and methodological steps’ process flow ( In light of the findings from three consecutive focus group discussions (FGDs) with experts, 58 composite indicators were determined against nine CCD criteria for GC-2 (capacity of the line government departments), CP2 (ensure climate competence, capacity and active role of the line government departments) and six of the World Bank’s good governance principles (Kartodihardjo et al",16
2013) which used six components of the basic governance with only six criteria and good governance principles,16
"During the same time period, investment in the renewable energy sector grew all around the globe (Kamran et al",7
"Provincial energy efficiency and conservation authorities were established after the National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act, 2016, while, at the federal level, institutions to promote energy efficiency and determine renewable energy options were already in place",7
These institutions are better aligned with the Ministry of Climate Change (federal) by participating in decision-making and execution of different plans and projects in mutual collaboration,13
"Keeping this in view, the Ministry of Climate Change engages these institutions in climate change-related projects",13
"Consequently, progress in the energy sector after the 18th amendment remained slow.
 Climate change response in the case of Pakistan is multi-sectoral and multidimensional in nature (Khan et al",13
"For this purpose, the study employed nine criteria (Table 2) that effectively cover different dimensions of climate change response in relation to the energy sector",13
Lower score (2.17) at district levels were correlated with inadequate capacities of line departments for disaster preparedness and rehabilitation work,11
"Almost two decades have passed since Pakistan acceded the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1994 as a Non-Annex I party and Kyoto Protocol in 2005, and started receiving funding for identifying priority areas, need assessments, fulfilling reporting requirements, developing policies and action plans, and executing various projects",13
"Over two decades have passed, yet the government has not succeeded in effectively integrating climate change concerns in sectoral policies for energy, water, food, health, and agriculture",13
"At the same time, high demand for energy for increasing economic growth, inadequate resources, pollution from power generation, inconsistent oil prices, and fickle supplies triggered the government to develop long-term and secure energy sources",8
"Alternative and renewable energy sources are an anticipation of securing a long term, clean, and sustainable future of energy",7
Pakistan has potential for developing alternative and renewable energy and has set a target of a 5% share in the energy mix by 2030 (GoP 2006; Awan and Rashid 2012; Irfan et al,7
"However, responses during FGD and KII revealed a lack of collaborative mechanisms among departments, meager penetration of alternative and renewable energy technologies in masses (World Bank 2019; Shah et al",7
The United Nations SDG Report 2020 links poor progress with issues of capacity and climate finance,13
"The district arms may be instrumental in harnessing the RE solutions along with energy efficiency and energy management best practices, which are important to control air pollution with low-carbon development strategies.",7
"The present study uses both carbon dioxide emission and ecological footprints as proxies for environmental degradation to examine the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for the top three emitters from Asia, i.e., China, India, and Japan",15
The panel analysis indicates the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve with both proxies of environmental degradation,15
"Besides, human capital and renewable energy promote environmental sustainability, while non-renewable energy use hinders environmental quality",7
"Efforts of governments worldwide thrive on energy efficiency, energy conservation, and capacity building in renewable energy",7
"The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) directed a protocol in Kyoto, Japan, in 1992 where 160 countries advised the developed countries to reduce emissions by 5.2% below the 1990 levels by 2008–2012",13
"The primary goal of the convention was to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere through technological advancements in the energy sector, regular energy audits, incentives for solar energy, and the use of compressed natural gas (CNG) in vehicles",7
"The developed countries launched the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), in which they invest in technologies that reduce GHG emissions in developing countries",13
"Furthermore, large developing nations such as China and India were not bound by the protocol, which did not reduce emissions by 1990 levels",13
India believes that the developed world bears a greater responsibility to reduce emissions,13
"However, Western nations exerted pressure on India and China to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as industrialization, urbanization, and economic growth increased",8
"This study found that economic growth, globalization, and population increase the material-footprint in the top eleven material-consuming countries",8
"Thus, the ecological footprint presents a positive indicator of environmental degradation",15
"Subsequently, our study uses two proxies of environmental degradation, carbon dioxide emissions and ecological footprint, to give a more comprehensive exploration of the legitimacy of the EKC theory",15
The dramatic rise of fossil fuel energy consumption currently has a profound influence on the energy market,7
"Fossil fuel supply and energy security are the most critical issues in all three countries (Sovacool and Vivoda, 2015)",7
"First, contrary to the existing studies, our research introduces ecological footprint as a representative of the environmental deterioration to examine the robustness of the inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution",8
"The evidence on the inverted U-shaped relationship between economic output and environmental quality decline support our hypothesis, implicating that environmental degradation declines after attaining a certain threshold level of income",15
"Addressing that panel data are more informative, the empirical part also uses the panel ARDL model to scrutinize the EKC hypothesis’s legitimacy for both indicators of environmental degradation",15
"Just as importantly, quite a few of the existing papers utilize both panel and individual country-specific examinations to support the inverted U-shaped relationship between economic output and environmental degradation",15
"As discussed in the introduction, the EKC hypothesis is tested using either CO2 emission or environmental footprint (EFP) as a proxy for environmental degradation",15
"Besides, human capital as one of the determinants of environmental degradation is less explored in the literature",15
"Therefore, we broadly categorize the existing literature on two sub-heads; one is related to validating the EKC hypothesis; second, it relates to finding the determinants of environmental degradation",15
"Dogan and Turkekul (2016) used the ARDL bound tests to analyze the association between CO2, real output, energy consumption, trade, and financial development in USA",7
"However, the energy intensity of growth demands optimal use of alternative energy for the African nations",7
The research reiterates the importance of efficient energy policy and renewable energy sources,7
"Thus, adopting a diverse path, many studies used ecological footprint instead of CO2 emission as a proxy for environmental degradation (Charfeddine 2017; Dogan et al",15
"(2019) used the Bayer-Hanck cointegration tests and VECM Granger causality to examine the association between ecological footprints and GDP growth, human capital growth, and urbanization in Pakistan",8
The study reports an adverse effect of GDP growth on ecological footprints,8
"Moreover, they found a U-shaped relationship between ecological footprints and economic growth in the non-oil-exporting MENA countries",8
"Another study on the BRICS countries confirmed inverted U-shaped EKC and also a negative effect on natural resources, renewable energy consumption, and urbanization of ecological footprints (Danish et al. 2020)",7
"Significant evidence is that for the developed countries, the EKC hypothesis was valid irrespective of the choice of variables representing environmental degradation and methods; however, the theory was falsified in poor and low-middle-income countries",15
 The second part of the survey is related to the identification of determinants of environmental degradation and the channel of their operations,15
A positive association was estimated between energy consumption and CO2 emission (Apergis and Payne 2009; Halicioglu 2009; Zhang and Cheng 2009; Huskic and Satrovic 2020),7
"Can and Gozgor (2017) examined the effects of energy consumption and economic complexity on CO2 emission in France, and validated the EKC hypothesis",7
"Furthermore, positive energy consumption and asymmetric shocks on oil prices also influence CO2 emission (Mujtaba and Jena 2021)",7
"In contrast, an adverse but insignificant impact of energy consumption was detected for 36 OECD countries (Chen et al",7
"Renewable energy consumption contributed less to CO2 emission than fossil energy consumption, and thus, shifting to alternative energy sources helps prevent GHG emissions in European countries (Boluk and Mert 2014)",7
The authors found results supporting the use of renewable energy sources in Turkey (Boluk and Mert 2015),7
Several studies concluded that non-renewable energy sources were detrimental to environmental quality when proxied by CO2 emissions (Ahmed et al,7
Many other studies reported the deteriorating effect of non-renewable energy use on ecological footprints (Destek and Sarkodie 2019; Ma et al,7
(2020a) studied the differentiated effect of renewable and non-renewable energy consumption on the ecological footprints using an augmented mean group algorithm and Westerlund cointegration for 13 MENA countries,7
"Furthermore, urbanization and non-renewable energy consumption deteriorate the environment in both MENA and CIVETS countries",7
"The study reported growth in urban population, energy consumption, per capita income, and financial development were the main significant determinants of ecological footprints and CO2 emission",7
"To summarize, a consensus on the detrimental effects of non-renewable energy consumption on the environment is reached",7
"Besides, several other factors like human capital, urbanization, population, labor force, trade openness, and foreign direct investments cause environmental degradation",15
Several researchers have undertaken studies to find the association between urbanization and environmental degradation,15
"From the above survey of the literature, we can observe that the use and comparison of CO2 emission and ecological footprints as a proxy for environmental degradation remain unexplored except for Nathaniel and Adeleye (2021)",15
"Thus, more research is required to track the causal effects of renewable and non-renewable energy sources’ on environmental quality",7
One of the key contributors to environmental degradation is human activities which are geared towards enhancing the standard of living comes an increase in consumption and demand for energy (Adedoyin et al,15
"Moreso, since environmental challenges are rising as a result of increasing carbon emissions from the conventional energy source, more attention is being given to renewable energy",7
Adams and Nsiah (2019) and Nathaniel and Adeleye (2021) noted that renewable energy resource availability makes it a preferred source of energy consumption as proposed by the United Nations in SDG 7 mainly as it emits less carbon compared to the traditional source of energy,7
"For instance, economic growth requires human capital which is an important factor of production",8
\({\beta }_{2}>0;\) U-shape of association between economic growth and CO2 emissions,8
"Moreover, non-renewable energy consumption contributes to increasing CO2 emissions in India and Japan",7
Renewable energy consumption shows an insignificant association with CO2 emissions in India and Japan,7
"Similarly, India adhered to the Kyoto protocol in 2005–2006 and committed herself to reduce emissions by shifting energy resources by 2030, subsequently causing a break in 2007",13
"In 1997, Japan hosted the third conference of the parties for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Kyoto",13
"However, in India, there is an inverted U-shaped link between EG and environmental degradation",15
Consumption of non-renewable energy contributes to increasing EF both in India and Japan,7
Renewable energy consumption shows an insignificant association with EF in Japan,7
"The elasticities of EG and EG2 are 0.11 and − 0.00, which are significant at a 1% level, signifying that the carbon emissions rise to a threshold level initially with the increasing economic growth, then the emissions start to decline",8
Non-renewable energy consumption shows a positive and significant association with CO2 emissions,7
"In essence, non-renewable energy consumption contributes to increasing CO2 emissions",7
The policymakers should frame such policies that help attain sustainable economic growth,8
These findings demonstrated an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and ecological footprint,8
"The findings of this study are highly linked with the seventh goal of the United Nations (Affordable and Clean Energy); to achieve this goal, the findings urge the policymakers and stakeholders of the sampled countries mainly focus on clean energy production through potential financial instruments like Green Bonds",7
"Moreover, the U-shaped relationship between economic growth and ecological footprint in China reveals that anthropogenic activities negatively affect the environment",8
"(2020) that the BRI could have a significant impact on ecosystems and terrestrial and marine biodiversity in Southeast Asia, affecting plant and animal habitats resulting in a violation of the United Nations rules in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 8, 11, 13, and 15)",14
This novel study uses annual data from 1980 to 2016 and two main proxies of environmental degradation—carbon dioxide emissions and ecological footprint,15
"Using each proxy of environmental degradation and considering only the long-run impacts, country-level results are mixed",15
"Outcomes show that with carbon dioxide emissions, (1) the EKC holds in China but not in India and Japan; (2) human capital reduces degradation in China and Japan; (3) non-renewable energy exacerbates degradation in India and Japan; and (4) renewable energy promotes environmental sustainability in China",7
"For ecological footprint, (1) an inverted U-shaped EKC exists in Japan but not in China and India; (2) human capital significantly reduces degradation in Japan; (3) non-renewable energy exacerbates degradation in India and Japan; and (4) renewable energy aggravates the environment in China and India",7
The panel data results reveal that (1) the EKC hypothesis holds; (2) human capital and renewable energy promote environmental sustainability; while (3) non-renewable energy exerts devastating environmental impact,7
"For instance, investments in hydro-power, wind, and solar energy may drive the needed innovations in the manufacturing, construction, tourism, and transportation sectors, to mention a few",7
"Lastly, combating climate change and ensuring a sustainable environment (SDG13) require that de-carbonization measures be pursued to enable a healthy environment that will reduce health impacts due to energy-related air pollution (SDG3) by 2030",13
"Climate change is arguably the most alarming global concern of the twenty-first century, particularly due to the increased frequency of meteorological extremes, e.g., heatwaves, droughts, and floods",13
"Heatwaves are considered a potential health risk and urge further study, robust preparedness, and policy framing",3
"Due to its adverse effects on health and the environment, heatwaves have become a serious concern in India, particularly for disaster management under the current warming trends/projections",11
GCMs are effective at projecting future temperature variations under various climate change scenarios on the global scale,13
"According to previous studies, a profound rise in the temperature profile over India is anticipated under various climate change scenarios, i.e., the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios formulated by Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) (Basha et al",13
"This is further supplemented by the rampant urbanization that leads to urban heat island effects, which in turn exacerbates the warming of the urban environment, particularly in developing countries (Pandey et al",11
The Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI) also recommends percentile-based approaches in several of its meteorological extreme metrics (Swain et al,13
"The heatwaves in the future over the cities will be more frequent and intense under climate change, which may also continue for consecutive (multiple) days, thereby causing drastic consequences",13
Such a high frequency and severity of heatwave days under climate change over the three Indian cities urge for necessary attention towards these problems and robust policy framing to combat the pernicious impacts of the heatwaves in the future,13
"Overall, the results reported in this study clearly depict the threats of heatwaves in the future under climate change, which will be further exacerbated by anthropogenic activities",13
"Further, heatwaves are also considered a potential health risk, as the increasing ambient temperatures and the extreme temperature conditions are linked to several serious health disorders, such as diabetes mellitus morbidity (Song et al",3
2020) have reported an increasing frequency and severity of extremes under climate change with severe repercussions over the urban centers,13
"Some of the proactive measures in this regard include afforestation, smart growth practices, installing green roofs, urban inland water bodies, and using high-albedo materials in external building surfaces (O’Malley et al",15
"Considering the rising concerns of climate change impacts in terms of frequent climatic extremes, this study aimed to assess the heatwave characteristics for historical (1980–2014), near-future (2021–2055), and far-future (2056–2090) scenarios over three highly populated cities of South India, i.e., Bangalore, Chennai, and Hyderabad",13
"With the growing awareness of the linkage among open defecation (OD), environment, and health, it is important to understand the factors responsible for OD",6
It is a necessary step toward developing a strategy to end open defecation for ensuring a better environment and human health,6
"There is a need to resolve the problem of open defecation (OD) because disposal of human faces in fields, forests, bushes, open bodies of water, beaches, or other open spaces damages the environment",6
"According to Abubakar (2017), OD is a strong expression of extreme poverty and a threat to the environment, human health, dignity, and safety",1
"It causes many diseases such as diarrhea, trachoma, hepatitis, and typhoid through contaminated water and food (Mara 2017; Spears et al",3
"The development economists, environmentalists, health practitioners, and international development agencies are focusing more than ever before on the practice of open defecation (OD) around the globe (Desai et al",6
The international development agenda of the United Nations gives due importance to end the OD by 2030 as mentioned in Sustainable Development Goal 6.2,6
"Ending OD is also strongly correlated with environment-related SDGs, for instance, SDG 13, 14, and 15",13
"In Pakistan, the Ministry of Climate Change is the custodian of the National Sanitation Policy 2006 at the Federal level",13
"At the Federal level, the Ministry of Climate change is the custodian of this policy",13
"The 18th Constitutional amendment in 2011 has made the provinces autonomous to allocate and distribute resources, including for water and sanitation",6
"It depicts that the respective provincial and local governments are least focusing to eliminate the practice of open defecation in their respective territories, especially in rural areas",6
This study thus provides a strategy to optimally meet the OD coverage as per SDG 6.2 and ensures an environment healthy for human life,6
The first category (focus) requires to be defined in the target population practicing open defecation and the desired behavior,6
"The second category (opportunity) includes external factors that are beyond the control of the target population and influence the chance of OD, such as social norms and access to latrines (Coombes and Devine 2010)",6
"(2013) found similar results for sub-Saharan Africa, such that aid disbursement for water and sanitation is an important determinant for reducing OD practice",6
"For Ghana and Ethiopia, region, access to drinking water, household size, education, intervention, and gender are important factors to deal with the OD",6
"Pakistan has the highest rate of urbanization, stood at 3%, in South Asia wherein 36.4% according to population census 2017 in comparison with 32.5 percent in 1998",17
This research examines the prevalence and determinants of open defecation in Pakistan,6
"EBs were drawn with a probability proportional to their size, which is the number of households residing in the EB at the time of the population census conducted in 2017",17
The outcome variable for this study is “open defecation” practice by households measured by the household’s self-reporting response,6
Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics to describe the characteristics of the study participants and to report the prevalence of open defecation,6
"Secondly, the chi-square test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to examine the individual association between open defecation and the independent variables",6
"Interestingly, access to electricity is found to be insignificant, that is, access to electricity does not predict OD",7
"Socioeconomic characteristics that require special attention to target are rural households, uneducated households, poor households, households residing in Punjab, and Sind Provinces",1
"Therefore, all tiers of governments especially the provincial governments should focus on meeting the SDGs related to education and poverty that will have strong implications on meeting SDG 6.2 and other environment-related SDGs",6
It is also important to end OD for improved public health and the environment.,3
"In this regard, understanding the factors responsible for environmental degradation is particularly important for developing nations",15
"On the other hand, non-renewable and renewable energy consumptions are found to increase and decrease the ecological footprints, respectively",7
"Moreover, renewable energy use and environmental regulations are found to jointly reduce the ecological footprints further",7
"Fossil fuels have played major roles in facilitating economic growth in the majority of the South Asian nations (Xue et al., 2021)",8
Such monotonic fuel dependency has inflicted a trade-off between higher economic growth and lower environmental quality in these countries (Murshed 2021a),8
"The existing economic growth policies pursued across South Asia have, by and large, thwarted the prospects of improving the quality of the environment within this region (Murshed, 2020a; 2021a)",8
"Thus, keeping the sustainability of both economic and environmental developments into cognizance, it is time the South Asian nations ensure complementarity between their respective economic growth and environmental welfare strategies",8
"These nations, despite having the intention of mitigating their monotonic dependency on non-renewable energy use, have not managed to enhance their renewable energy shares in the respective aggregate energy consumption figures (World Bank 2020; Murshed 2021b)",7
It is believed that ensuring energy security is essential for achieving environmental sustainability in South Asia (Shah et al,7
"Hence, instead of importing more fossil fuels, it is ideal for these nations to promote regional cooperation within South Asia to facilitate cross-border energy trade, especially import renewable electricity from the relatively renewable energy-surplus South Asian countries like Nepal and Bhutan (Singh et al",7
"However, despite having the provision for cross-border renewable energy trade, the South Asian nations are yet to comprehensively exercise this channel to boost their renewable energy consumption levels",7
"Thus, undergoing renewable energy transition (RET)Footnote 1 has been a major challenge for the fossil fuel-dependent South Asian nations which, in turn, has bottlenecked the environmental sustainability objectives of these nations",7
"Besides, these regulations can also be expected to stimulate energy efficiency improvements to reduce the overall level of energy use (Shahzad 2020)",7
"Consequently, energy consumption-induced greenhouse gas emissions can be expected to decline",7
"This takes place since the developed countries, due to having strong environmental stipulations, tend to off-shore pollution-intensive production processes to the developing nations in which the the environmental protection measures are not so pronounced",15
"Against this milieu, this current study attempts to scrutinize the effects of environmental regulations and other vital macroeconomic aggregates (economic growth, energy use, and FDI inflows) on the environmental quality in four fossil fuel-dependent South Asian countries: India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka",8
"The EKC hypothesis claims economic growth to initially marginalize the quality of the environment but it does reinstate environmental welfare in the later phases of growth (Pata 2018; Adeel-Farooq et al., 2020)",8
"Thus, the outcomes of this study can be expected to help the South Asian country to adopt relevant environmental protection policies and enable them to comply with the pledges made under the Paris Accord",15
"For instance, the SDG 13 calls for undertaking actions for tackling climate change; particularly limiting global warming through the reduction in the emission of greenhouse gasses",13
"Furthermore, SDG 12 emphasizes engaging in responsible consumption and production processes through recycling of resources to avoid resource waste and ecological depletion",12
"On the other hand, SDG 7 indirectly stresses the notion of environmental sustainability by targeting to enhance access to clean, reliable, and affordable energy resources which can help mitigate the fossil fuel combustion-induced greenhouse gas emissions",7
It has been acknowledged in the literature that environmental degradation can take several forms whereby addressing the multidimensionality of environmental welfare is important (Ulucak and Bilgili 2018),15
"Therefore, Wackernagel and Rees (1998) introduced the EF which tends to cover several aspects of environmental degradation",15
Economic growth and environmental quality are often asserted to influence one another (Iheonu et al,8
"Hence, sustaining economic growth is doubtful without ensuring environmental sustainability in tandem",8
"As a result, the nexus between economic growth and environmental quality has been a major area of research in the contemporary era",8
"Among the popular theories explaining the association between these variables, the EKC hypothesis, put forward by Grossman and Krueger (1991), posits a non-linear relationship between the economic growth of a nation and its environmental quality",8
"Then, as the economy grows and its national income level increases further, a composition effect emerges which further degrades the environment while securing higher economic growth achievements",8
This phenomenon is believed to be triggered by the technique effect (Muhammad and Long 2021) which portrays the importance of technological innovation for phasing-out the trade-off between economic and environmental development (Sarkodie 2018),8
"As per the theoretical underpinnings, the EKC hypothesis is valid if economic growth initially degrades the environment by increasing the EF and later on improves the environment by decreasing the EF.
 The environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for ecological footprints",8
"Source: Authors’ own However, it has been acknowledged in the literature that the shape and the curvature of the EKC are conditional on several other macroeconomic aggregates which directly and indirectly impact the nexus between economic growth and environmental quality",8
"This is because, enactment of environmental laws and imposition of pollution taxes are likely to reduce the use of dirty energy resources which, in turn, can mitigate environmental degradation (Ulucak and Kassouri 2020)",15
The EKC denoted by E1 refers to a situation where no environmental regulations are enforced within an economy or the situation where the environmental regulations are ineffective in reducing environmental degradation,15
"This phenomenon can be explained in light of the energy push emission hypothesis which postulates that as the aggregate energy consumption level within an economy increases, it is likely to boost the greenhouse gas emissions as well (Khan et al. 2019c)",7
"For instance, it is believed that the consumption of fossil fuels stimulates environmental degradation (Pata 2018)",15
"This is because the combustion of these environmentally-unfriendly energy resources boosts the emissions of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere; thus, leading to environmental degradation to a large extent",15
"Conversely, reducing fossil fuel use and adopting renewable energy alternatives can be hypothesized to reinstate environmental welfare",7
The renewable energy resources are environmentally-friendly since the combustion of these resources nullifies the possibility of the greenhouse gas emission levels rising (Bekun et al,7
"Hence, considering these heterogeneous environmental impacts of energy use, SDG 7 has called for an energy transition for reducing the global fossil fuel dependency to ensure environmental sustainability worldwide",7
"Parallel to the CO2 emission-induced EKC hypothesis narrative, the ambiguous relationship between economic growth and EF was also reported in the EKC literature",8
(2020) revealed that the economic growth-EF nexus states depict an inverted U-shaped association,8
Pata and Caglar (2021) asserted that the economic growth-EF nexus in the case of China portrays a U-shaped association,8
"Thus, several existing studies have explored the dynamic impacts of environmental protection policies on the environment in anticipation of trying to understand how imposing regulations can stimulate environmental improvement",15
(2018) highlighted that environmental regulations can be effective in reducing energy consumption-induced CO2 emissions in China,7
"However, a persistent rise in the stringency of environmental regulations is eventually beneficial in limiting environmental degradation",15
"Since energy use is inextricably linked to economic growth, it is quite likely that it would have an impact on the environment as well (Destek and Sarkodie 2019; Murshed et al",8
(2019) found evidence of higher aggregate energy consumption levels aggravating the CO2 emissions in Pakistan,7
(2019a) claimed that higher energy consumption levels led to the aggravation of the carbon emissions figures in Pakistan. The more recent studies have also assessed the heterogeneous impacts of renewable and non-renewable energy use on CO2 emissions,7
"In a panel study on 42 developed nations, Ito (2017) claimed that non-renewable energy consumption boosts the CO2 emissions while renewable energy use assists in CO2 abatement",7
(2019) also found renewable energy consumption to be useful in curbing the CO2 emissions across 16 selected European Union nations,7
"However, noncarbohydrate energy consumption was found to reduce the CO2 emissions in Turkey",7
Khan and Hou (2020) found statistical evidence of per capita energy consumption and EF being positively correlated in the context of selected International Energy Agency (IEA) nations,7
"(2020) and Nathaniel and Adeleye (2021) found higher energy consumption levels to boost the EF figures of the Group of Seven (G7) and 44 African countries, respectively",7
"Therefore, these preceding studies have highlighted the adverse environmental impacts associated with energy consumption across the aforementioned economies",7
"However, since the impacts of energy use on the quality of the environment are believed to be determined by the nature of the energy resource consumed, many existing studies have probed into the heterogeneous impacts of renewable and non-renewable energy use on the EF",7
(2020) found higher renewable energy consumption levels to be effective in reducing the EF in high- and upper-middle-income nations but not in lower-middle- and low-income nations,7
"Thus, in light of these contrasting findings, the authors argued that it is easier for the relatively developed economies to ensure environmental sustainability through the augmentation of renewable energy resources into their respective energy-mixes",7
"Likewise, Destek and Sinha (2020) found renewable energy use to be effective in curbing the EF of selected OECD countries",7
"Although the majority of these studies have portrayed the favorable environmental outcomes of renewable energy use, several existing studies have failed to prove this statement",7
(2020) found renewable energy use to adversely impact the quality of the environment in the case of the 15 highest carbon-emitting nations,7
The authors asserted that both renewable and non-renewable energy use stimulates the degradation of the environment by boosting the EF,7
"However, their findings also showed that the environmental adversities associated with renewable energy use are relatively lower than those associated with non-renewable energy use",7
"On the other hand, Nathaniel and Khan (2020) opined that renewable energy use does not influence the EF in the ASEAN states; however, higher non-renewable energy consumption levels were said to be responsible for boosting the EF",7
"In another similar study on the MENA countries, (Nathaniel et al., 2020a) also found evidence of renewable energy use being ineffective in explaining the variations in the EF figures of these nations as a whole",7
"As per the theoretical framework of the EKC hypothesis, the positive and negative signs of the predicted elasticity parameters δ1 and δ2 would validate the inverted U-shaped nexus between economic growth and EF (Saqib and Benhmad, 2020)",8
"The variable lnNRE stands for the natural logarithm of the per capita non-renewable energy consumption levels which comprise of coal, gas and oil consumption levels",7
"Since non-renewable energy resources are not environmentally-friendly, higher consumption of non-renewable energy can be expected to boost the EF",7
"On the other hand, the variable lnRE abbreviates for the natural logarithm of the per capita renewable energy consumption levels",7
The per capita hydroelectricity consumption levels are used to proxy for the per capita renewable energy consumption levels of the South Asian countriesFootnote 4,7
"As per the preconceived notion of renewable energy use resulting in environmental improvement, the sign of the predicted elasticity parameter δ4 can be expected to be negative (Naqvi et al",7
Environmental regulations can also be expected to facilitate the RET phenomenon by obligating the replacement of the use of environmentally-unfriendly non-renewable energy resources by the relatively environmentally-friendly renewable energy alternatives,7
"In line with this notion, the joint impacts of renewable energy use and environmental regulations on the EF are also evaluated",7
"The augmented version of model (2) can be specified as:
 where the variable (lnRE*lnER) is the interaction term between per capita renewable energy consumption and environmental regulations",7
"In contrast, a positive sign of the elasticity parameter δ7 would reveal the joint adverse environmental impacts of renewable energy use and environmental regulations",7
"For instance, these nations vary in terms of several macroeconomic aggregates including the per capita EF figures, energy consumption levels, renewable energy structures, national income levels, etc",7
"In the context of model (1), it can be seen that economic growth initially increases the per capita EF",8
"Hence, it can be said that economic growth in the selected South Asian countries exerts adverse environmental impacts",8
"Hence, these findings imply that although economic growth initially degrades the environment, it is ineffective in explaining the variations in the per capita EF levels as the economies of the South Asian countries tend to grow",8
"Hence, it can be said that environmental regulations play a major part in phasing out the economic growth-environmental pollution trade-off that takes place in the early phases of growth",8
"Besides, the relative magnitudes of the elasticity estimates, across the three models, reveal that upon controlling for environmental regulations, the initial adverse environmental impacts of economic growth are found to be comparatively higher",8
"In contrast, controlling for environmental regulations is also seen to increase the favorable environmental impacts of economic growth",8
"Therefore, these findings tend to suggest that environmental regulations act as a means of controlling and reducing environmental degradation across the selected South Asian economies",15
This implies that environmental protection measures are necessary for facilitating environmental sustainability by curbing the EF figures across South Asia,15
The elasticity estimates also reveal that non-renewable energy consumption degrades the environment while renewable energy consumption improves it,7
"The corresponding elasticity estimates show that a 1% rise in the per capita non-renewable and renewable energy consumption levels increases and decreases the per capita EF by 0.16–0.39% and 0.04–0.11%, respectively, ceteris paribus",7
"Simultaneously, these nations should try to integrate renewable energy into their respective energy systems to improve the quality of the environment in South Asia",7
The positive non-renewable energy use-EF nexus was also found in the studies by Nathaniel and Khan (2020) for ASEAN countries and Nathaniel et al,7
"However, the elasticity estimates also reveal two more important findings concerning the energy consumption-EF nexus in South Asia",7
"First, it can be seen that controlling for environmental regulations within the model tends to correct for the over-estimation bias regarding the marginal positive impacts of non-renewable energy consumption on the per capita EF levels",7
"Conversely, controlling for environmental regulations is found to correct for the under-estimate bias regarding the marginal negative impacts of renewable energy use on the per capita EF figures",7
"Hence, once again it can be asserted that environmental regulations are necessary for minimizing the adverse environmental impacts of non-renewable energy use and also for increasing the favorable environmental impacts of renewable energy use in South Asia",7
This could be due to environmental regulations putting an obligation on the users of non-renewable energy to reduce their energy consumption levels,7
"On the other hand, environmental regulations can also be a means of incentivizing the use of renewable energy in South Asia",7
"Secondly, the positive sign of the statistically significant elasticity parameter attached to the interaction term, between renewable energy use and environmental regulations, suggests that these variables jointly reduce the EF",7
"As a result, the South Asian nations are likely to have been targeted by foreign investors to outsource the production of pollution-intensive goods and services",17
"However, the adverse environmental impacts of non-renewable energy consumption were found to be homogeneous for all four countries",7
"Besides, the relatively larger magnitudes of the elasticity estimates in the case of Pakistan indicate that the adverse impacts of non-renewable energy consumption on the environment, in comparison to those in the other three South Asian nations, are comparatively greater for Pakistan",7
"On the other hand, higher renewable energy consumption was seen to improve the environmental quality in Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka but not in the context of Pakistan",7
"Furthermore, renewable energy consumption and environmental regulations are found to jointly reduce the EF in Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka only",7
The statistical significance of the predicted test statistic reveals bidirectional causality between EF and economic growth in the case of the selected fossil fuel-dependent South Asian nations,8
"Simultaneously, the economic growth strategies of these nations should be exploited in favor of reinstating environmental welfare across South Asia",8
"Besides, the causality estimates also certify a unidirectional causal association running from non-renewable energy use and EF",7
This finding supports the corresponding elasticity estimate to portray the environmental adversities associated with non-renewable energy employment within South Asia,7
"On the other hand, renewable energy consumption and EF were found to be bidirectionally associated",7
"Hence, in light of this finding, it can be said that environmental regulations do have the capacity to mitigate environmental degradation.
 Environmental sustainability has become a major global agenda",15
"On the other hand, higher volumes of per capita non-renewable and renewable energy consumptions were found to increase and decrease the EF levels, respectively",7
"Moreover, renewable energy use and environmental regulations were found to jointly reduce the EF figures further",7
"Besides, renewable energy use was seen to be ineffective in reducing the EF of Pakistan but effective in reducing it for the other three nations",7
"In this regard, the South Asian government should ideally incentivize the private sector to undertake investments necessary for discovering technologies that can mitigate environmental degradation",15
"Simultaneously, it is also suggested that the existing environmental protection laws in South Asia are strengthened and better implemented to facilitate the attainment of the environmental sustainability objectives",15
"Simultaneously, monetary incentives to undertake environmental protection activities can also be provided to the associated stakeholders",15
"Secondly, considering the heterogeneous environmental impacts of non-renewable and renewable energy uses, the fossil fuel-dependent South Asian nations must diversify their respective energy-mix through the inclusion of renewable energy resources into their energy consumption basket",7
"Besides, to further curb the fossil fuel dependency, the governments can impose larger tariffs on fossil fuel imports while relaxing the taxes and duties on renewable energy imports",7
"Additionally, it is recommended for the government to incentivize private sector participation in the development of the renewable energy sector through appropriate unbundling of the power generation, transmission, and distribution processes",7
"Thirdly, the growth policies pursued by the South Asian countries need to be restructured for promoting sustainable production and consumption activities",12
"Hence, ensuring provision for integrating the environmental sustainability objectives into the economic growth strategies is crucial for the attainment of the SDG by the South Asian nations of concern",8
"In this regard, the adoption of green growth strategies should be a major agenda of the associated governments",8
"In this regard, strengthening the environmental regulations is critically important since stringent environmental protection laws are likely to inhibit the flows of dirty FDI into South Asia",15
"On the other hand, it is ideal for the South Asian economies to attract relatively cleaner FDI, especially for the development of their respective renewable energy sectors through technological spillover that could stem from such FDI inflows",7
"However, they ignored the impact of technological innovations and renewable energy consumption on CO2e in developed countries",7
"Therefore, this study examines the relationship between CO2e, energy consumption, gross domestic product (GDP), renewable energy consumption, and technology innovations in G-7 countries by employing cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed (CS-ARDL) lag and wavelet coherence techniques during 1990–2020",7
The results depict that GDP and renewable energy consumption are inversely related to CO2e,7
A 1% increase in CO2e will decrease GDP and renewable energy consumption by 0.459 and 0.172% in the long run and by 0.471 and 0.183% in the short run in G7 countries,7
The UN SDGs were established for the world population’s socioeconomic development and environmental protection,15
"People around the world are facing challenges due to increasing temperatures and concentration of CO2 that results in a change in weather patterns, sea level rise, biodiversity loss, and health risks (Wang et al",15
"According to the Paris Agreement 2015 on climate change mitigation, every country is responsible for limiting the world average temperature below 1.5–2.0 °C compared to the pre-industrial level for environmental sustainability (Murshed et al",13
"Global investment in renewables (rooftop solar booms, wind farms, and solar parks) has increased from $46.6 billion in 2004 to $285.9 billion in 2015 (Natural Capital Partners 2020), which is further increased to 820 billion dollars in 2021 to keep the atmospheric temperature well below 2 ○C rise and to reduce the frequency of extreme events like droughts, precipitation deficits, and water stress (Hoegh-Guldberg et al",6
"Europe is raising its investment in energy from biomass and waste products to $3.1 billion in the previous year, while in France offshore wind initiative is leading in green energy with a worth of $3.5 billion (McCrone et al",7
"Temporal variations of CO2 emission, technology innovations, and renewable energy consumption during 1990–2020 in G-7 countries G7 (Canada, Italy, France, Japan, Germany, the UK, and the USA) is a group of the world’s seven leading economies established in 1975",7
"The governments of these countries formulate global policies including the global economy, development, climate change, and foreign and security issues at the annual summit",13
"Because of their major contribution toward global economy, investment in renewables, and high risks of extreme weather events, G-7 countries are selected",13
"Some researchers suggest that economic growth, globalization, trade, foreign direct investment, and technological innovation lower CO2e (Lau et al",8
"2022), while others proposed that globalization would be responsible for environmental degradation if the developing nations did not use advanced technologies for energy production (Tariq et al",15
(2022) analyzed the role of renewable energy on CO2e in G7 countries by utilizing the method of moments-quantile regression (MM-QR),7
"In addition, earlier studies have yet to simultaneously consider the increase and decrease in technology innovations and renewable energy consumption (REC) in developed countries",7
"Globally, renewable energy production has yet to expand enormously, as 60% of the electricity supply is still based on coal and natural gas",7
"As of 2020, the contribution of renewables in electricity generation was ~ 11.73%, which is not promising to reduce CO2 emission levels (Li and Haneklaus 2022)",7
"Several studies discuss the association among institutional quality, economic growth, GDP, globalization, CO2e, temperature variability, EC in different regions, and time using more or less different statistical techniques (Miguel et al",8
They found energy consumption as an effective predictor for both countries,7
Only a few studies have been conducted to analyze the relationship between REC/clean energy and CO2e,7
They suggest that LPG can be used as a temporary fuel before adopting renewable energy sources,7
Mahmood (2022a) found that renewable energy consumption decreased the CO2e in South American countries from 1990 to 2018,7
(2022) found the positive relationship between CO2e with biocapacity and economic growth and a negative association between REC and CO2e in the USA of America,8
"Contrary to this, Japan, USA, and Russian Federations produce most of their energy from renewable sources to meet economic growth targets and impose strict environmental policies, e.g., the British Thermal Unit tax program",8
(2017) have examined that clean energy consumption positively affects economic production while negatively affecting CO2e,7
The improvement in energy efficiency and use of renewable energy for electricity production lowered the CO2e in the Next Eleven countries in the long run by utilizing the common correlated effects mean group estimator (CCEMG) (Khan et al,7
Technological innovation reduced the CO2e in Bangladesh during 1972–2020 by employing the ARDL approach,8
(2022b) observed that the use of renewable energy in all energy generation sectors for G7 economies would be more effective than in limited sectors during 1995–2016,7
"(2022a) displayed that a 1% increase in energy efficiency would reduce the CO2e by 0.3%, and financial globalization increased E7 countries’ emissions from 2007 to 2018",7
Lin and Ma (2022) found that green technology innovations can reduce CO2e due to structural changes in industrial sectors,9
"Furthermore, studies examining the relation of renewable energy with technology innovations are given in Table 1",7
"This study investigates the relationship among CO2e, energy use per capita (EC), renewable energy consumption (REC), technology innovations, and GDP in G7 countries during 1990–2020",7
Energy consumption from nonrenewable energy sources generates greenhouse gasses including CO2,7
"(1) is formed: where EC and CO2e are the input and output series, respectively, while renewable energy consumption (REC), technology innovations (TI), and GDP are taken as control parameters to reduce bias in the omitted parameters results",7
"Since the increasing energy demands are followed by increasing economic growth and, therefore, often lead to high CO2 emission levels (Qin et al",8
"Lastly, if γ4> 0 or \(\frac{\partial {\textrm{lnCO}}_{2\left(i,t\right)}e}{\partial {\textrm{lnGDP}}_{i,t}}>0\) and γ4< 0 or \(\frac{\partial {\textrm{lnCO}}_{2\left(i,t\right)}e}{\partial {\textrm{lnGDP}}_{i,t}}<0\) and economic activities are associated with high pollution emission and green energy, then CO2e has positive and negative marginal impacts",7
"(2015), can be written as follows: This study analyzes panel data on energy use, renewable energy consumption, technology innovations, GDP, and CO2e of G7 economies during 1990–2020",7
The parameters’ distribution is positively skewed except for renewable energy consumption,7
"Regarding kurtosis, the distributions of CO2e, GDP, and renewable energy consumption are leptokurtic, while those of energy use and technology innovations are platykurtic",7
"In the fifth step, the CS-ARDL technique is applied to evaluate the robust effects of EC, technology innovations, renewable energy consumption, and GDP on CO2e in G7 economies",7
"As far as renewable energy consumption is concerned, usage of renewable energy negatively impacts CO2e",7
Every 1% rise in renewable energy consumption diminishes CO2e by 0.183% in the short run and 0.172% in the long run,7
"The maximum renewable energy consumption was recorded during the 1970s in Germany and the USA, the 1990s in the UK, and 2000 in Japan, Italy, France, and Canada",7
"This shows the commitment, devotion and vigilant of environmental effects that are obvious in signing up for the Paris Agreement by G7 economies",13
"This initiative was geared up for tackling climate change, enhancing global health, attaining gender impartiality, and developing digital infrastructure",13
"(2020) found statistically insignificant consequences of technological innovation in energy, transportation, and other industrial sectors",8
"They also revealed that any upsurge in technological innovation in the industrial and construction sectors leads to reducing and raising CO2e, respectively",8
They also recommend that promoting technology innovation and greener and cleaner energy generation for reducing energy consumption causes CO2e,7
"The wavelet coherence plots between CO2e and technology innovations for a Canada, b France, c Germany, d Italy, e Japan, f the UK, and g USA from 1990 to 2018 In this study, we investigate the association among CO2e, energy consumption, renewable energy consumption, technology innovations, and GDP in G7 economies using the CS-ARDL approach during 1990–2020",7
The outcomes of the CS-ARDL approach depict that CO2e is directly related to energy consumption both in the long and short runs,7
"Energy consumption from fossil fuels deteriorated environmental quality by 0.863 and 0.944% in the long and short runs, respectively",7
The CO2e is inversely related to GDP and renewable energy consumption in the long and short runs,7
"A 1% increase in CO2e will decrease GDP and renewable energy consumption by 0.459 and 0.172% in the long run and by 0.471 and 0.183% in the short run, respectively, in G7 countries",7
"Considering the findings of this work, it is important to invest in research and development, because technological innovations are improving air quality in G7 nations",9
Recent studies also reported a reduction in CO2e in China with the advancement in technology innovations and renewable energy consumption,7
"To reduce environmental degradation, the governments of G7 countries must go for total dependence on environmentally friendly energy sources for all sectors leading to the economic progress of these countries",15
Economic growth is not contributing to air pollution,8
This means that G7 nations are adopting a service-based economical system and prefer renewable energy in other economic sectors,7
"Although nuclear energy has emerged as an alternative cleaner energy source and is receiving immense policy attention, however, the role of nuclear energy in the environmental degradation mitigation remains inconclusive in the extant literature",15
"Therefore, this study examines the dynamic linkages between gross domestic product, foreign direct investment inflows, nuclear energy consumption, trade openness, and CO2 emissions for India within the environmental Kuznets curve framework over the period 1978–2019 through various robust econometric models that takes into consideration the presence of structural break in the data",7
Trade openness is also found to have a beneficial effect on environmental quality implying the trade policy of India encourages green trade activities to safeguard the environment,17
"The empirical results also reveal the beneficial effect of nuclear energy consumption on air quality, thereby suggesting an accelerated adoption of nuclear energy in the Indian energy mix",7
The results also highlight that nuclear energy adoption in this booming phase can facilitate a “tunnelling effect” for sustainable economic growth for India,8
"Hence, these findings may provide key policy recommendations regarding energy transition and environmentally sustainable economic growth",8
"It will be difficult for India to achieve both the commitments simultaneously relying on the existing energy sources considering the realistic exponential growth prospect for the Indian economy, rapid industrialization, and rising household energy consumption consequently leading to the increase of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions",7
"As of 2019, India has witnessed a total primary energy consumption of 570 million tonnes of oil equivalent (mtoe) and it is predicted to be grown by 63 % in the coming decade (Energy Statistics 2020)",7
"With the evidence of upward movement of India in the Human Development Index (HDI), improvement in the standard of living and quality of life of the exponentially growing population of the nation may anticipate to be related with a rise in per capita energy consumption (Rej and Nag 2018); the immediate impact of which may essentially increase the per capita GHG emissions of the country",7
"Moreover, the adoption of nuclear energy in Indian national energy portfolio may help in fulfilling the requirement of SDG-7 by inviting “international co-operation” by promoting “investment in clean energy technologies” through FDI",7
"Therefore, on one hand, full-fledged nuclear energy adoption can accelerate economic growth, FDI inflow, and international trade; on the other hand, it reduces the share of GHG emission from the energy generation process",8
"Consequently, the adoption and implementation of nuclear energy in energy portfolio are intended to not only endorse environmental welfare, particularly through reduction of CO2 emissions, but also aiding to achieve energy security objectives (Nathaniel et al",7
"For instance, various studies articulate that the beneficial effect of adoption of nuclear energy in energy mix can mitigate the detrimental effect of CO2 emissions (Apergis et al",7
"In addition, various studies have investigated the role FDI in the correction of environmental degradation",15
While some studies articulated the beneficial role of FDI on CO2 emissions reduction (Ahmad et al,13
"First, conventional EKC literatures in the context of India have investigated the existence of EKC using aggregated or disaggregated energy consumption data either on renewables or non-renewables",7
"To the best of our knowledge, this is probably the first paper in the context of India that uses nuclear energy consumption as an alternate energy resource in the way of investigating the existence of EKC",7
The problem of CO2 emissions is particularly concerning for the developing countries since these nations tend to prioritize economic development over environmental betterment (Ma et al,8
"The environmental degradation of India can primarily be attributed to the uncontrolled and imbalanced growth of social, economic, and institutional development (Chopra 2016)",15
The social factors include the uncontrolled and unplanned growth of industrialization and urbanization due to exponentially increasing bore going population along with high degree of existence of income inequality and poverty in the economy accelerate the movement of rural poor to urban slums putting enormous strain on urban infrastructure and resources resulting in gradual deterioration of environmental quality,10
Institutional factors for environmental degradation can be attributed to the glitches in the implementation of overall policy framework to the protection and conservation of environment along with disintegration and lack of coordination among different body of Ministries/Institutions at the planning stage of environmental development,15
"The most commonly identified sources responsible for deterioration of air quality in India include expansion of energy sector due to rapidly growing demand for energy requirement, rapid growth of energy intensive industry and transportation sector, inefficient combustion of fossil fuels, utilizing low-quality coal in thermal power plants, and high degree of dependency on solid biomass and wood for cooking in majority of Indian rural households (Guttikunda et al",7
Energy is considered as the key driver for achieving economic growth of a nation,8
"India’s per capita GDP and per capita primary energy consumption have been increasing by 3.9 times and 3.2 times, respectively, over the period 1978–2019, where per capita CO2 emission has been increasing by 3.4 times over the same horizon as depicted in Figure 1",7
India’s per capita nuclear energy consumption has been evidencing a record growth by 9 times over the time period 1978–2019 and presently installed capacity of nuclear energy is about 1.64% of total installed capacity of the nation (Energy Statistics 2020),7
"Policy preference of increasing the share of zero carbon footprint energy resources, i.e., nuclear energy adoption in energy mix and promotion of achieving energy efficiency, can significantly reduce the major air pollutants responsible for degradation of air quality like reduction of SO2 by 25%, NOx by 30%, and PM 2.5 by 20% (IEA 2020).
 Plot of GDP per capita and CO2 emission per capita",7
"Moreover, lack of energy efficiency measure and investment in outdated technology to incentivize additional profit making from industry prompting the significant air quality degradation in India",7
"After reaching the positive peak, pollution level starts decreasing with the further expansion of the economy with the usage of environment-friendly advanced technology and shifting the energy consumption pattern towards modern cleaner energy, which follows an “inverted U shaped” relationship (Xue et al",7
"Some studies also evidenced the presence of “inverted N shape” EKC, according to that environmental quality improves initially with the economic growth, after reaching negative peak then starts deteriorating with economic expansion and again improving with further economic development (Musolesi et al",8
"The relationship between FDI and environmental degradation has been debated in academic studies for a long time now, and the results show mixed shreds of evidence depending on the region of study and corresponding stage of FDI",15
(2019) also identified that BRICS and MINT countries illustrate a negative bidirectional causal relationship between FDI and environmental degradation,15
(2020) studied the impact of FDI inflow on environmental degradation and identified a positive relationship for India,15
"(2021) also identified the positive contribution of FDI in environmental degradation; however, the study suggests the utilization of total foreign aid on long-run investment in environmental sustainability to mitigate the impact",15
Murthy and Gambhir (2018) analyzed a cubic EKC with FDI for India and identified a small but significant positive contribution of FDI on environmental degradation,15
"In recent years, various studies have focused on the impact of nuclear energy consumption on CO2 emissions",7
IEA (2019) suggests that nuclear energy can play a vital role in the transition of cleaner energy pathways and can strengthen the global combat against climate change by aiding in the reduction of 1 billion tonnes of global CO2 emissions annually,13
(2010) examined the impact of nuclear energy consumption on CO2 emissions in the EKC framework over the period 1960–2003 for France,7
Their findings reveal that nuclear energy consumption has a long-run negative impact on CO2 emissions,7
Menyah and Wolde-Rufael (2010) evidenced a unidirectional long-run causality from nuclear energy consumption to CO2 emissions over the period 1960–2007 for the USA,7
Al-Mulali (2014) investigated the impact of nuclear energy consumption on CO2 emissions over the period 1990–2010 for 30 major nuclear energy-consuming countries and found that nuclear energy consumption has no long-run impact on CO2 emissions,7
Baek (2015) examined the impact of nuclear energy consumption on CO2 emissions in the EKC framework for data spanning 1980–2009 for 12 major nuclear energy-consuming countries and confirmed that nuclear energy consumption has a long-run negative impact on CO2 emissions,7
(2017) evidenced that nuclear energy consumption reduces the CO2 emissions in the long run for 30 nuclear energy-consuming countries over the period 1970–2015,7
"(2018, b) studied the relationship for China for the period for 1993–2016 and highlighted that nuclear energy consumption can mitigate CO2 emissions in both the long run and short run",7
(2021) investigated the role of nuclear energy consumption in the abatement of CO2 emissions in G-7 countries for the data period 1990–2017 and concluded that the adoption of nuclear energy will be beneficial for environmental quality in G-7 nations,7
"While various studies suggested that the adoption of nuclear energy may substantially reduce CO2 emissions, Saidi and Omri (2020) have shown that enhancement of nuclear energy consumption may increase CO2 emissions for South Korea over the period 1990–2018",7
(2020) reported that nuclear energy consumption stimulated CO2 emissions in the long run over the period 1973–2017 for Pakistan,7
"Overall, the impact of nuclear energy consumption on CO2 emissions is found to be inconclusive in the existing body of literature",7
"To the best of our knowledge, no empirical investigations have been attempted to date to explore the impact of nuclear energy consumption on CO2 emissions in India",7
The inclusion of nuclear energy consumption in the EKC framework is done to address the existing literature gap and examining the long-run relationship between nuclear energy consumption on CO2 emissions for India,7
"According to this hypothesis, environmental pollution increases with the expansion of economic growth, and then the trend reveres after reaching the turnaround point with the further development of the economy",8
The dynamic linkage between environmental degradation and FDI can be tested through the pollution haven/pollution halo hypothesis,15
The pollution halo hypothesis suggests that if FDI is channelized through environment-friendly and energy-efficient-advanced technology to improve energy efficiency through “technique effect” may improve the environmental quality (Pazienza 2015),7
"With the growing concern of energy security and environmental sustainability, the dynamic association between nuclear energy consumption and CO2 emissions is more contextual in the EKC framework as the expansion of nuclear energy consumption in the energy portfolio may reduce the dependence on oil import, increase the supply of reliable energy with the reduction of price volatility of imported fossil fuel, and contribute towards the reduction of CO2 emissions as well (Lee et al",7
"The estimation of EKC with the presence of FDI, nuclear energy consumption, and trade openness can be specified as follows:
 The above specification is converted into log-linear form as log-linear estimation can produce more efficient and consistent estimates as compared to a linear model (Lau et al",7
NEC stands for nuclear energy consumption per capita and TO stands for trade openness and ɛt is the random error term,7
"The sign of different α parameters decides the shape of the EKC as follows:
 α1 = α2 = α3 =0 inferring no relationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions",8
"α1 > 0, and α2 = α3 =0 inferring a monotonically increasing relationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions",8
"α1 < 0, and α2 = α3 =0 inferring a monotonically decreasing relationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions",8
"The data of CO2 emissions and nuclear energy consumption are taken from BP Statistical Energy of World Review, 2020",7
This is the indication of India achieving the negative peak of EKC at a very early stage of economic development and then reached the positive peak of EKC in the year 2015,8
"The inflection point estimated as USD 601.2 is observed to stay within the two turnaround points in the year 1993, observing a gradual increase in CO2 emissions as the prevailing scale effect surpassing the FDI and trade induced negative composition effect and technique effect.
 The empirical results also demonstrate the long-run beneficial effect of linear and square terms of FDI on environmental degradation",15
The long-run coefficient of nuclear energy consumption is found to be negative and significant at a 1% level of significance suggesting that a 1% expansion of the share of nuclear energy consumption in the Indian energy mix can be associated with the reduction of the CO2 emission by 0.136%,7
Our findings suggest that policy favoring the promotion and adoption of nuclear energy consumption along with the expansion of renewables in the energy mix may aid India to fulfill the INDC commitment by 2030 and achieve India’s energy security objectives as a supplement of SDG-7 along with providing a significant direction in the pathway of eradicating energy poverty issues associated with India,7
The result suggests that trade openness in India encourages various policy measures for improvement of energy efficiency leading to “negative technique effect” and optimal re-allocation of resources in the less energy-intensive expanding sector utilizing the comparative advantage to boost economic efficiency leading to “negative composition effect” aiding to the diminishing of CO2 emissions in India,7
The short-run coefficient of nuclear energy consumption is observed as inelastic and negative but not significant,7
"The upper triangular network implies that economic growth can thrive more FDI but at the cost of polluting the environment, while the lower triangular network suggests green economic development by enhancing capacity addition in nuclear through promoting the policy measures of attracting foreign investments",8
This study yields several unique insights regarding the sustainable economic growth practices of India,8
"The empirical findings confirm the “inverted N shape” relationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions for India, which is the unique contribution to the existing EKC literature for India and implying that the EKC hypothesis does not hold for India",8
"Then, the environment starts degrading with the further economic expansion after reaching the negative peak and again starts improving after reaching a positive peak in the year 2015 with the further economic development",8
These findings suggest that the present trend in economic growth is environment-friendly and beneficial for the sustainable growth of India,8
"India has witnessed a meager contribution of 2.6% share of nuclear energy in total generated electricity by 2017–18, mainly attributed to the trade restrictions with the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) after being excluded from the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty due to the Indian nuclear explosion by 1974 which is reflected in the absence of causality in either direction between trade openness and nuclear energy consumption",7
The proliferation of nuclear development is associated with a huge quantum of capital requirements that demands government support and investment from foreign and domestic parties to finance the entire innovation chain starting from endogenously develop nuclear technology to establishing full-scale nuclear plant which is reflected in the bi-directional causality between FDI and nuclear energy consumption,7
"So, policy attraction of adoption of enhance capacity addition of nuclear energy in the Indian energy mix can effectively provide an optimal balance in addressing the existing energy policy trilemma of enhancing the energy security objectives by supplying reliable and affordable power to all the citizens under SDG-7, aiding in targeted carbon reductions plans under INDC commitments by 2030 and providing sustainable solutions to the existing socio-economic implications that takes into account its “domestic circumstances and capabilities” as articulated in the Paris climate agreement (Rej and Nag 2021b)",7
"The present energy policy of India needs to be reformed and re-aligned with the green trade policies to allow more green trade activities and attracting more FDI inflows in alternative cleaner technologies, and promotion of energy efficiency measures may dissuade India from reaching the negative peak and allowing India to continuously climbing down through the third arm of inverted N",7
"Secondly, despite the fact that nuclear energy is low carbon source of electricity, operational safety and radioactive waste management are important aspects for safe and cost-effective long-term power generation",12
"Over the last few decades, the globe is facing tremendous effects due to the unnecessary piling of municipal solid waste among which food waste holds a greater portion",12
This practice not only affects the environment in terms of generating greenhouse gas emissions but when left dumped in landfills will also trigger poverty and malnutrition,2
"This also attempted to address food waste valorization techniques, the combined applications of various processes for an enhanced yield of different compounds, and addressed various challenges",12
"Thus, the present review has successfully addressed the circular bio-economy in food waste valorization",12
"Food waste is also considered a moral issue and is defined as organic or biodegradable waste originating from different sources namely food processing industries, households, hospitality sectors, restaurants, and commercial kitchens (Paritosh et al",12
The exact quantification of food waste generated each year by various countries is quite a tedious process,12
"According to FAO (Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction), the approximate amount of food waste in developed (industrialized) countries is $680 billion and $310 billion in developing countries, i.e., an estimated food waste of about 1.6 giga tonnes produced annually (as of FAO 2013 report on Food Wastage Footprint-Impacts on natural resources)",12
Food waste comprises the main fraction of total municipal waste across the globe (IPCC 2020),12
"The United Nations Environment Programme-Food Waste Index Report 2021 pinned down the estimated value of food waste generated in 2019 as around 931 million tonnes of which 61% were from households, whereas 26% and 13% were from food service and retail respectively (United Nations Environment Programme 2021)",12
"As the population continues to shoot out coupled with the effects of climate change, the larger swathes of once-fertile land around the world now turn useless",13
"So, we need to ensure a global sustainable food supply to meet the world population’s demands for ensuring food security",2
"According to the United Nations 2019 Sustainable Development Goals, it is expected to “halve global food waste per capita at the retail and consumer level and reduce food loss across the production and supply chains by 2030 (SDG 12.3).” The progress towards SDG Target 12.3 is measured by FAO and the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) through two separate indices: the Food Loss Index and the Food Waste Index",12
"FAO 2019 also points out that food loss reduction and its wastage also help in contributing to other SDGs, including the Zero Hunger goal (SDG 2), which calls for an end to hunger, also in achieving food security and improved nutrition, and the promotion of sustainable agriculture",2
Eriksson and Spångberg (2017) reported that stepping from energy recovery options to reusing surplus food for human consumption is a possible way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in terms of food waste valorization,12
"(2020) conveyed a detailed explanation that the waste-to-energy process is the most favorable alternative for a reduction in GHG emissions owing to its lower equivalents, or CO2e when compared to traditional methods",12
"Other than the food waste generation in various sectors, there are many by-products such as food processing waste and food residual generations associated",12
"The biotechnological interventions, particularly the usage of microorganisms like Lactobacillus acidophilus, Actinobacillus succinogenes, Bacillus cereus, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and Lactobacillus casei, in the food waste by-product valorization, have added onto its wide acceptance from the past decade (Longanesi et al",12
The prime objective of this review article is to address the issue of food wastage and provide an update on various existing biotechnological potentialities in waste management techniques,12
The current review also pointed out the research works published in the past years (2018–2022) on the use of genetically modified microorganisms in food waste valorization for producing value-added products,12
"Moreover, the review attempted to compare the recently published review articles in the past 5 years to understand the state of knowledge of food waste valorization using microorganisms, and the various challenges faced in different bioprocesses (Table 1)",12
"(2020a, b) made a systematic study about the food waste composition and its variability thus allowing to find out the best valorization pathway and providing a good starting point to set up the basis of food waste biorefinery",12
Some of the recent biotransformation techniques used in food waste valorization The commonly used technologies for the generation of biofuels from food waste include aerobic digestion and anaerobic digestion as well as the microbial fermentation process,12
These processes are aided by hydrothermal liquefaction and carbonization techniques gaining their importance in biofuel production over thermal processes because of their ability to produce maximum yield by generating a minimum amount of emissions and can handle the high moisture content of food waste (Nayak and Bhushan 2019),12
"The use of microorganisms is a promising step that contributes to environmental protection and to obtaining valuable metabolic products, thus opening up new possibilities for their industrial use (Kieliszek et al",15
But the process of management used for a given waste is selected based on the properties and composition of food waste and individual groups of microorganisms,12
"One of the possible measures for reducing GHG emissions includes the alternative use of fossil fuels and other non-renewable energy sources and opting for renewable energy sources like bio-diesel, bio-ethanol, and bio-methane (Fig. 2)",7
Various literature has been successful in citing the application of food waste treatment for value-added products,12
"The potential of household food waste in dried form (referred to as FORBI) for the effective production of bio-methane, bio-ethanol, and bio-hydrogen was mentioned in Antonopoulou et al",12
Many countries have taken initiatives in processing food waste for producing bio-methane as an alternative for diesel in vehicles,12
"(2018) mentioned that in Mexico, approximately 42.32 PJ bio-methane (to 6.5% of the equivalent energy from diesel used in transport in 2015) was generated from food waste for use as fuel in urban buses, and was successful in reducing 17.91 MtCO2e, thereby targeting 6.06% reduction in GHG emissions by 2050",12
"Moreover, restaurant food waste which is one of the most recognized kinds of food waste compared with food waste of domestic origin has been utilized for biogas production in various parts (Meng et al",12
"(2018) conducted a study that indicates the enormous opportunity for the production of biogas from restaurant food waste in China and reported that the annual biogas potential from available restaurant food waste (44.1 million metric tons annually) from 2014 to 2016 amounted to 4,209 million m3",12
The enhancement of biogas production from food waste as well as waste-activated sludge using biological co-pretreatment in anaerobic co-digestion was evaluated by Zhang et al,12
(2017) suggested implications for national policy after conducting a performance evaluation of food waste obtained from the restaurant and transforming biowaste into biogas at a pilot scale in China,12
"The reason for wide recognition of food waste as well as waste cooking oil for the production of bio-diesel is because it is a low-cost, low-value resource that is not competitive with edible food (Ginni et al",12
(2018) portrayed the lipid conversion from food waste to bio-diesel via transesterification reactions using Soxhlet extraction of the lipid fraction of food waste from different restaurants which is a not widely executed process,12
"(2020a, b) used food waste from the hospitality sector to derive microbial oil (showed a fatty acid profile similar to soybean oil and solid food waste oil) using Aspergillus awamori and oleaginous yeast Rhodosporidium toruloides for bio-diesel production Patel et al",12
(2017) pointed out the efficient conversion of food waste that is sugar-rich to ethanol and thus used for making bio-diesel,12
"Commercially, bio-ethanol production from food waste is done by carbohydrases and Saccharomyces cerevisiae (as the fermentative microorganism), using either separate hydrolysis, or fermentation or simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (Kim et al",12
"(2020), they developed a green thermophilic bioprocess to produce bio-ethanol using Geobacillus thermoglucosidasius and Thermoanaerobacter ethanolicus from the food waste in which scaling up of substrate quantity (40 L) resulted in an overall yield of 18.4 g/L when the sequential culturing of organisms was done",12
The food waste was pre-hydrolyzed with a fungal mash (produced by Aspergillus oryzae) rich in various hydrolytic enzymes which were produced from the same food waste,12
"(2019) and Neha and Remya (2021) used RSM to optimize the conditions for obtaining maximum bio-oil, where microwave-assisted pyrolysis of food waste at different microwave power levels yielded maximum bio-oil of 30.24 wt% under 400 °C temperature, 30-min residence time, and 50 mL min−1 of nitrogen flow rate at the microwave power of 450 W (Kadlimatti et al",12
"2019), whereas microwave co-pyrolysis of food waste and low-density polyethylene (LDPE) from it yielded 17–42 wt% at a residence time of 7 s, LDPE in the feed being 13% and 550 °C (Neha and Remya, 2021)",12
"(2021), food waste was exploited for the study of nutrient release at various thermal hydrolysis temperatures (140, 160, 180, 200, and 220 °C), along with the possibility of using the hydrolyzed liquor as a liquid organic fertilizer where its phytotoxicity and biotoxicity were investigated using wheat seed and Pseudomonas putida",12
(2016) experimented with the feasibility of bio-hydrogen production from enzymatic hydrolysis (glucoamylase to release glucose) of food waste in batch and continuous systems,12
(2020) investigated H2 production in a continuous-flow pyrolysis reactor by co-pyrolyzing food waste with lignocellulosic biomass (wood bark) (at a weight ratio of 1:1 at 700 °C),12
"In another study, the co-pyrolysis of food waste and herbal medicine byproducts’ weight ratio of 1:3 for the highest H2 yield of 0.4 wt% at 700 °C was investigated (Lee et al",12
"Bio-hydrogen production combined with other bio-based technologies like methane from dairy and other organic industrial waste has been upgraded as the next level in sustainable and green energy from waste according to Aziz (2016), and Kothari et al",7
"2009), followed by bio-methane which is known as promising energy from food waste valorization",12
"Generally, it is believed that for food waste processing, a continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) could be considered the best option for growing acidogenic microbes and their complete mixing and suspension in the digestate (Wang et al",12
Food waste has been touted as a promising source of commercially important enzymes because this method can reduce the cost-intensive process of commercial enzyme production (Klein-Marcuschamer et al,12
"The major enzymes produced using organic food waste residues include amylase, cellulase, laccase, lipase, phytase, and xylanase (which are collectively called oxidative enzymes) (Narra et al",12
"(2022) valorized food wastes (50%), sugarcane bagasse (10%), wheat bran (40%), and corn steep liquor (20%) utilizing a cell-substrate recycling system, where Rhizopus oligosporus was cultured by SSF for the production of amylase (260.9 U/g) and protease (665.5 U/g)",12
"Since the major components in food are hydrolyzable by microorganisms, numerous researchers are working on food waste biotransformation into valuable enzymes",12
"(2020a, b) investigated lactic acid synthesis from food waste and waste-activated sludge utilizing lactic acid bacteria such as Bifidobacterium, Alkaliphilus, Enterococcus, and Dysgonomonas",12
"In another study, food waste and municipal sludge were co-digested in a batch fermenter with the probiotic bacterial strain Lactobacillus rhamnosus AW3 obtained from date processing waste to produce lactic acid (Al-Dhabi et al",12
"It is also notable that these bioactive compounds are acceptable since they lower the risk of developing diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, cancer, leukemia, cataracts, hypolipidemia, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease (Kumar et al",3
"For example, the by-product from vineries (specifically grape skin) has been discovered to be high in antioxidant resveratrol (3,5,4′-trihydroxystilbene), which has multiple functions including enhancing the anti-inflammatory response of NF cells to reduce inflammatory responses enhancing the activity of cytochrome P-450 enzyme which aids in hepatic detoxification, free radical scavenging activity, and reducing gene mutations, cellular damage, and even mitochondrial dysfunctions (Ortega and Campos 2019)",3
(2016) showed that growing heterotrophic microalga Chlorella pyrenoidosa on mixed restaurant food waste produced fatty acid,12
"Bioplastic production using these feedstocks is currently a problem for these enterprises in terms of food waste valorization, but it has the potential to give modern society an environmentally benign, sustainable, and renewable biomaterial that can replace polyethylene",12
"Even though the production of bioplastics from food waste is very promising, it has so many more hurdles that need to be overcome before scale-up that need to be analyzed and addressed at their initial stage of processing",12
"Food waste, a public nuisance, has been employed recently in tackling various other economic constraints",12
"(2021) brought an alternative for fish oil, which is an algae oil rich in docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), produced by the heterotrophic algae Crypthecodinium cohnii that utilized carbon from food waste",12
(2022) addressed the food waste and fashion pollution by producing a feasible and alternative textile material having leather-like properties from fungal biomass (Rhizopus delemar) cultivated on bread waste in submerged cultivation,12
"Membrane technology (mainly, microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nano-filtration, reverse osmosis, membrane distillation, and osmotic distillation) being an effective method has been recognized and used for various waste treatment (liquid streams) for a decade, such as for the extraction of phenolics from olive mill wastewaters and artichoke processing wastewaters (Garcia-Castello et al",12
"When compared to other separation techniques, the advantages of membrane technology compared to the traditional methods for removing oil droplets (especially below 10 μm) include lesser energy consumption, production of high-quality resulting products, higher efficiency, maintained effluent quality, and the separation which could be based on size, charges, or shapes (Ladhe and Kumar 2010)",7
"For an improved ethanol production from cellobiose, overexpression of a glucose transporter or cellobiose transport system from Neurosporo crasssa (Li et al",11
"When compared to the studies that happened in the past 5 years on obtaining renewable energy sources and value-added products from food wastes using microorganisms, the literature addressing GMOs in the respective application is not half of the literature on normal microorganisms in the area",7
The current review detailed the current perspectives and prospects of food waste valorization with minimum waste generation—a step towards a circular economy,12
"Thus, the food waste biorefinery approach upon the coordination with biotechnological potentialities in the near future can achieve a sustainable green route with the least environmental impact",12
"Even though many researchers addressed various valorization techniques, all regulations and policies are aiming at wastage management in the latter phases by segregating them for different management strategies only and not giving attention to food waste at the source (Joshi and Visvanathan 2019)",12
"In the current review, the main aim was to mention the currently available techniques that utilize food waste to yield renewable sources of energy and other useful secondary metabolites, like enzymes, nutraceuticals, and bioplastics",12
"Even though the municipal solid waste management system in most cities comprises waste collection, transportation, and disposal, Siddiqqui (2018) commented that it necessitates sufficient infrastructure, maintenance, and update for all operations, which is becoming increasingly expensive and difficult as cities continue to grow in an unplanned manner",12
"A similar concern is paused by torrefaction, as a pre-treatment method which is usually carried higher that requires higher energy consumption, and can be overcome by researching other combination technologies such as torrefaction-pyrolysis, and AD-torrefaction, with various biomass wastes, residue, and product characterization, and tuning of operational parameters",7
"For increasing the carbon and nutrient sources for microbial growth in the bioreactors, particularly in two-stage processes, mixing food waste (of concern) with other organic wastes such as agricultural residues (lignocellulosic biomass) and municipal wastes and livestock residues (e.g., manure) can be employed",12
"The most common strategy employed to limit fouling, and biogas sparging, also has its limitation in terms of energy consumption and increased production cost",7
"The mechanism and working principles of microalgae cultivated in food wastewater processing and food waste hydrolysate are still unpredictable and scarce which can be explored by genetic engineering based on several genome editing tools such as CRISPR-Cas9, TAL, TALEN, and ZFN",12
"have demonstrated better PHB production performance using food waste as substrate, their use is still limited due to their reduced adaptability to digest a range of waste present in many wastes",12
"The review focused on an important environmental issue, the management of food waste",12
The review has been successful to point out major bio-energies and value-added products produced during food waste valorization employing microorganisms,12
"The switching of non-renewable energy sources like fossils, by employing some of the renewable and energy-efficient sources like bio-hydrogen, bio-methane, bio-diesel, and bio-hythane, has been detailed along with the major challenges faced and the future perspectives",7
"In all the mentioned valorization techniques, it was highlighted that, through significant research and development efforts, co-culturing the food wastes with other substrates, use of more than one microorganism for carrying out the bioprocesses, and employing genetically modified microorganisms, the inherent merits, such as enhanced digestibility due to synergistic effects of co-substrates, higher yield with better nutrient value, and better process stability are likely to be expected",9
"Beyond the recognition of food waste valorization as a waste degradation (removal) that assists in a circular economy, it can also be emphasized as a step towards sustainable development of many value-added products for the generation of revenue.",12
"Indeed, there is a need for a paradigm shift in sustainable water resource management, particularly groundwater systems",6
"As a result, the urgent need to develop a reliable research program supported by tight cooperation with populations, local authorities, water management agencies, academia, practitioners and representatives of rural groups and water user communities is emphasised",6
"Therefore, sound methods and techniques are essential to achieve a comprehensive utilisation in rural areas, from field inventory and mapping to water quality, vulnerability, hydrodynamic studies, and improve well sitting, construction and monitoring techniques and also socio-hydrogeology, geoethical and environmental law studies",6
"This transdisciplinary approach will allow the transfer of science, technology, and information to support sustainable water resources management decisions and design nature-based solutions in rural communities within a hydrogeoethical framework",6
The conceptual site model based on Earth systems has proven its value in sustainable groundwater systems for urban planning (Chaminé et al,11
"In addition, climate change poses increasing pressures in urban areas, particularly in groundwater blueprint governance (Howard 2015)",13
"That is linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and related targets, mainly SDG 6—“Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” and SDG 11—“Making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient sustainable” (details in UN 2020)",6
"Also, not forgetting rural sustainable water resources management while ensuring water quality status reduces pollution and contamination with intermittent supply systems (Simukonda et al",6
"In fact, for decades, the water rural areas studies and programmes were focused on developing countries with severe water management issues (e.g., Holmes et al",6
"Furthermore, water supply in rural communities is a great challenge for implementing the European regulations concerning water protection and management and water quality for human consumption (Naves et al",6
"Lastly, the impressive thoughts in 2004 of Asit Biswas are still actual “even without direct and deliberate integration of water and regional development activities in the past, current indications are that water development projects have an impact on regional economic growth",8
"2013, 2014): (i) to predict short-term recharge/discharge areas and to assess their role concerning the evaluation of water resources; (ii) to identify constraints related to groundwater management towards long-term sustainable abstraction, (iii) to identify potential groundwater contaminants and estimate their transport in space and time; and (iv) to support better decision making about climate change and variability",13
"Nevertheless, climate change will address several threats to groundwater, namely: (i) in areas where surface water resources decrease, groundwater will play an enlarged role in fighting droughts, and there will be significant increases in abstractions, (ii) during periods of drought, which will tend to be longer, domestic and agricultural consumption will be higher, and, (ii) higher temperatures will lead vegetation to consume more water, so an increment in agricultural extractions is also to be expected",13
The need to put into practice sustainable water conservation strategies is imperative,6
"Schematic overview for a sustainable Integrated Groundwater Resources Management for Rural Areas: issues, challenges and players Following the UN’s 2030 Agenda’s goals and targets, peri-urban and rural areas must be developed inclusively and sustainably in a climate change environment",13
"Furthermore, a multidisciplinary approach should be implemented in rural groundwater resources studies, including field monitoring, GIS mapping, spatial analysis, modelling, geotechnologies development for hydrogeology, urban planning, and socio-hydrology",11
"That will contribute to the development of guidelines for achieving a more sustainable groundwater resources management in rural areas in a context of climate change, as well as to improve territorial planning and to promote the local socio-economy while communicating with clearness the values of the geoethical approach between the populations and all agents involved",13
Promoting pro-environmental behaviour among individuals could help to mitigate climate change,13
"In this research, we tested the effect of self-determined motivation on pro-environmental behaviours related to household energy consumption",7
A questionnaire survey was conducted in Hong Kong (n = 1004) to examine the importance of self-determined motivation on pro-environmental behaviours that promote climate change mitigation,13
Our results indicated that incorporating self-determined motivation into a model of goal-directed behaviour (MGB) improved its predictive power and that both the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations of an individual were important predictors of pro-environmental energy consumption behaviour,7
"As the earth’s average surface temperature increases, extreme weather events are occurring more frequently and the ice in the polar zone is melting more rapidly",13
"It is well-established that climate change due to increased anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) is one of the most imperative challenges to address in the coming decades (European Commission 2007, 2009)",13
"Government-level initiatives, including financial rewards, discounts and penalties, have been developed and implemented to reduce energy consumption at national, community and household levels",7
Household heating accounts for 30 to 40 % of total energy consumption (Abrahamse et al,7
"China’s rapid economic development has improved residents’ living standards, and city dwellers now consume more energy (Wang et al",8
"Electricity generation is one of the major sources of GHG emission in China, and most of China’s GHG emission occurs in the major cities (Chen 2015; Yu et al",7
More than 60 % of GHG emission is sourced from electricity generation (Li et al,7
"We believe that the findings of this study will provide valuable information that can be used to inform the design and implementation of long-term sustainable energy reduction strategies in the Chinese community, especially in Hong Kong",7
"2013
 To respond to this limitation of the TPB, researchers (Perugini and Bagozzi 2001) developed the MGB, which is based on the TPB but examines goal-directed behaviours such as household energy saving by including other constructs, such as desires, anticipated affects and past behaviour",7
"Some financial rewards or charging schemes particularly those for waste management have been adopted by the Hong Kong government in recent decades, and the effectiveness of these schemes is indicated encouraging results",12
Enhancing individuals’ intrinsic motivation is the most effective and long-lasting way to facilitate individual intention to adopt energy-saving behaviour and subsequently reduce GHG emission (van der Werff et al,13
"Therefore, the enhancement of extrinsic motivation could facilitate the rapid improvement of energy-saving behaviours and reduce GHG emissions",13
The Hong Kong government has long been planning to contribute to the mitigation of global warming by reducing energy consumption,7
The government has primarily formulated measures to enhance the energy efficiency of electrical appliances and encourage electricity companies to produce electricity using renewable sources,7
"However, large-scale development of renewable energy production, such as wind and solar energy generation, may not be feasible in a city as small as Hong Kong",7
An alternative method of reducing electricity consumption is to focus on the demand side to encourage local residents to reduce energy consumption,7
Both long- and short-term strategies should be considered by the government; implementing long-term education to nurture environmentally aware residents and offering incentives to energy savers may be effective measures such as external rewards or subsiding for purchasing energy-efficient equipment for reducing energy consumption in the short term,7
The evaluation of fairness is limited to basic needs,1
Collaboration with ethical trade labelling initiatives is also recommended to address these challenges and to gain policy impact,17
Poverty remains a priority for sustainability with about 800 million people in extreme poverty in the world (UN 2015a),1
"The living wage is a measure of absolute poverty (Anker 2006) based on costs for basic needs such as nutrition, shelter and working conditions and is applied equally to men and women",1
"As a result, the living wage directly addresses SDG 1 no poverty and 2",1
Zero hunger for workers and their families,2
The S-LCA Guidelines also consider a fair salary as a measure for SDG 8 decent work and economic growth (UNEP 2020),8
"Most national statistical offices use a ‘cost of basic needs’ approach to quantify absolute poverty (UN 2005, p33)",1
The costs of basic needs method have two challenges which the World Bank summarises as the ‘referencing problem’ and the ‘identification problem’ (World Bank 2015),1
Ankers method (Anker and Anker 2017) addresses these challenges by defining absolute poverty using the concept of living wages,1
"In particular, the concept of the living wage can be used to consider whether prevailing industry and minimum wages are sufficient to meet basic needs (UNEP 2013)",1
"The SHDB considers a category of labour rights and decent work with indicators for 5 themes, namely, wage assessments, poverty, child labour, forced labour and excessive working hours",8
"However, the term ‘decent’ is not explicitly defined and is a normative term that is used by the ILO, such as its work on decent work in global supply chains (ILO 2016)",8
"(2003) define the six dimensions of the ILO’s concept of decent work as ‘opportunities for work’, ‘work in conditions of freedom’, ‘productive work’, ‘equity in work’, ‘security at work’ and ‘dignity at work’ and considers 11 measurement categories and 30 indicators",8
The SHDB characterises wage assessments as the ‘risk of sector average wage being lower than the country’s non-poverty guideline’ and the ‘risk of sector average wage being lower than the country’s minimum wage’ (Benoit-Norris and Norris 2015),8
Croes and Vermeulen (2016) use an absolute and a relative measure to define the fair minimum wage,8
The absolute fair minimum wage (AMW) is based on ILO standards and the World Bank poverty line of $2 per day,8
The relative standard for the fair minimum wage is based on a benchmark group of the top 20% of countries in the Sustainable Society Index—human wellbeing,8
"(2017) draw upon Anker’s definition of living wages, who also defines the living wage as a measure of absolute poverty (Anker 2006, 2011)",1
"(2018) also specifically considers tax and social security contributions to ensure that the living wage is not underestimated, which are now explicitly defined in Ankers method (Anker and Anker 2017)",1
"That is, by definition, a living wage ensures that the worker is not below the absolute poverty line but this does not necessarily mean that the living wage is a measure of fairness",1
At best it captures primary social goods that are supported by income and wealth to meet basic needs,1
"Since the publication of the S-LCA methodological sheets, a consortium of ethical trade standards organisations has formed the Global Living Wage Coalition (GLWC) (ISEAL 2013) to support the development of Ankers method and applications for living wage assessments—known as living wage benchmarks (LWB)",17
"However, the UN notes that most national statistical agencies use a ‘cost of basic needs’ measure of poverty, which includes the living wage, because it correlates to a broader definition of well-being (UN 2005)",1
"Where an individual’s wage is greater than the LWB, then there is no LWG because the individual’s wage is above the absolute poverty line as defined by the LWB",1
This provided a focus for collecting detailed data for cotton production for calculating the living wage gap for a T-shirt (Hall 2019),2
Accreditation processes have also been developed to support data collection based on Ankers method by ethical trade groups such as IDH (IDH 2020),17
"For example, the GLWC has an active program for collecting LWBs in countries around the world (GLWC   Accessed 29 September 2020) to support ethical trade and product labelling initiatives",17
The LWG is type II midpoint indicator for the fair salary subcategory and is a measure of absolute poverty which follows ‘cost of basic needs’ methods used by statistical agencies around the world,1
"Among them, Pakistan is the fifth most vulnerable country, and climate change has harmfully affected the ecological and socio-economic conditions of the country",13
"In this regard, this study aimed to investigate the role of green energy consumption, eco-innovation, and urbanization while explaining the dream of low-carbon economy and environmental sustainability in the context of Pakistan using annual time series dataset spanning from 1990 to 2020",7
"The findings of the study demonstrated that low-carbon economy, green energy consumption, ecological innovation, urbanization, GDP per capita, and labor force are cointegrated for the long-term association in symmetric, asymmetric, and quantile autoregressive distributed lag models",7
"Furthermore, green energy consumption and effective eco-innovation are the most important paths to ensure environmental sustainability, while urbanization, GDP per capita, and labor force contribute negatively to the low-carbon economy",7
Decarbonization of the society is the root to address the climate change challenge and to ensure ecological sustainability in the coming decades because the world has confronted significant challenge of global warming as a result of the massive growth in carbon emissions,13
"In the same regards, sustainable development goals particularly (SDG-7) has given more emphasis on the provision of affordable and clean energy investments, so that these solutions can be used to achieve the dream of low-carbon economy across the globe (Hussain et al",7
"Therefore, nations across the globe have recognized the role of green energy in Kyoto Agreement that imposes legal restrictions on the nations to cut their carbon emissions and promote green energy sources in the production process (Abrar and Farzaneh 2021; Murshed et al",7
"2021) as well as in the agenda 2030 in the form of SDG 7 “affordable and clean energy.” The higher demands of fossil fuels to generate electricity and energy due to increasing population, industrialization, and rapid urbanization in developing countries are the key obstacles in the path of achieving the dream of low-carbon economy (Chien et al",7
"This is because in most of the developing nations, natural resource exploitation is made to produce electricity which adversely affects ecological conditions in the form of climate change (Su et al",13
"2020); therefore, eco-friendly technological innovations ensure environmental sustainability and sustainable economic development via reducing dependency on natural resources like forests, coal, and crude oil for energy demand (Umar et al",8
"2021b), which in return reduce the negative effects of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere",13
"2020a); therefore, green technological innovations are considered one of the key driver of low-carbon economy and recognized its role in SDG 9 under “industry, innovation and infrastructure” to achieve the global objective of sustainable development",9
The country is on the list of 10 most effected nations by climate change,13
"According to Global climate risk index (2020), Pakistan have observed 152 extreme weather events, lost 9989 lives, and suffered economic losses of worth $3.8 billion from 1999 to 2018",13
"On the basis of empirical data, the report ranked Pakistan as the fifth most vulnerable country due to the adverse impacts of climate change and revealed that Pakistan’s vulnerability to climate change is increasing over time",13
"Second, energy consumption in Pakistan has increased in recent decades, and is expected to follow the same trend in the future (Tareen et al",7
Fossil fuels constitute 64% of total energy production in Pakistan and less than 35% comes from renewable energy (Aslam et al,7
The commitment of Pakistan in (COP21) was to increase the share of renewable energy up to 60% and reduce the GHG emissions by 20% till 2030,7
"Thus, Pakistan is going way-off in meeting its NDC targets; therefore, the country requires changes in its energy strategy and financing",13
"The contributions of this study to the environmental economics literature in several ways are as follows: First, although the relationship between CO2 emissions, green energy consumption, and technological innovations has been studied by few researchers in Pakistan, no studies test these links under the present and low-carbon economy framework",7
"To capture environmental cost of economic growth in Pakistan, we introduced a proxy variable low-carbon economy by dividing carbon emission from one unit of output",8
(sustainable production and consumption),12
"As opposed to “carbon economy” paradigm which refers to the conventional economy based on conventional dirty energy consumption for energy generation, the idea of low-carbon economy also called environmental sustainability states that the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions should remain at the lowest level during the production process (Samargandi and Sohag 2022) and the rate at which natural resources are depleting should be lower than their replenishment rate (Hussain et al",7
Literature also showed positive relationship among green energy consumption and environmental quality as Wang and Dong (2019) in the study of 14 sub-Sahara African nations concluded that green energy has substantially improved environmental quality by improving the existing conditions of ecological footprint,7
"In similar lines, Destek and Sinha (2020) also found significant positive impact of green energy consumption on environmental quality in OECD economies and African continent, respectively",7
Green energy consumption ensures environmental quality and sustainability by reducing CO2 emissions (Cheng et al,7
Almost all empirical studies in the literature found positive synergy among clean energy consumption and environmental quality,7
2021) have documented the positive and significant nexus between green technological innovations and green economic growth,8
(2019) emphasized on the reformation of the financial markets to promote green technology and sustainable development,9
(2021c) examined the relationship among technological innovations and green economic growth and found positive contribution of green technological innovations to green economic growth via dealing various environmental issues like reduction in carbon dioxide emissions,8
"In similar lines, Padilla-Pérez and Gaudin (2014) found positive and significant association among science, technology, innovations, and level of green economic growth for Central American countries",8
"(2022a, b) also found positive and significant impacts of urbanization on CO2 emissions and concluded that urbanization along with foreign direct investment has an environmental degradation driving impact in the country",15
"(2018) in the context of BRICS economies found positive impact of energy use and financial growth on environmental degradation while the associations among globalization, urbanization, and environmental degradation were negative and significant",15
"In similar lines, Huang and Wang (2016) in the case of Chinese economy established that urbanization and fossil energy consumption are the main culprits of ecological degradation",7
"In conclusion, the empirical research on the relationship between energy, innovation, and urbanization ignored the significance of green energy innovation in explain the low-carbon economy",7
"Similarly, the environmental policy studies omitted other essential factors such as green energy consumption and urbanization",7
"The growth-emission relationship is crucial; nevertheless, these studies mostly employed energy consumption as a tool to link the variables, while in a few instances, prior research overlooked the importance of innovation and other key drivers",7
"But later on, as environmental quality improves due to green energy consumption, green innovation, and by controlling other pollutants, this relationship becomes positive (Ahmad et al",7
"According to Dinda (2004) overt the period of time, economic growth in a production-intensive economy influences environmental quality at three stages",8
"At the second stage, with the expansion in production activities (scale effect), the demand for fossil energy and other raw materials increases; therefore at this stage, economic development deteriorates ecological quality",8
"Finally, via technique effect, countries can improve environmental quality and mitigates environmental degradation by adopting eco-friendly technologies and by substituting fossil energy sources to cleaner energy sources in the production process",15
"The theoretical background to explain low economy and urbanization nexus rounds around three major theories, i.e., urban environment transition (UET), compact city (CC), and ecological modernization (EM) theory (Sadorsky 2014)",11
"Therefore, unplanned urbanization deteriorates environmental quality while at the same time sustainable urbanization can mitigate the adverse environmental impacts associated with urbanization ( Ahmad et al",11
"Furthermore, low-carbon economy dream can be achieved by green energy consumption and green innovations in renewable energy (wind, solar, thermal, and biomass) production which significantly reduce CO2 emissions and mitigate environmental degradation by reducing the consumption of fossil energy fuels (crude oil, coal, and gas) in the production process and by improving production efficiency of the firms (Khan et al",7
"(2021), the functional form of the low-carbon economy (LCE) model is expressed as: The functional form of Eq. (1) is converted into the econometric model and by applying the natural logarithm on concerned variables gives: where \(\mathrm{LCE}\) represents low-carbon economy, \(\mathrm{GEC}\) is green energy consumption,\(\mathrm{GI}\) shows green innovation, \(\mathrm{UP}\) is urbanization, \(\mathrm{GDP}\) denotes GDP per capita, and \(\mathrm{LF}\) represents total labor force",7
Explanatory variables include green energy consumption (GEC) that is the percentage of total final energy consumption,7
"Figure 2 shows time trend of all concerned variables during 1990–2020; the GDP per capita, low-carbon economy, urbanization, and labor force show increasing trend over time while green innovation and green energy consumption show decreasing trend",7
"In the view of above advantages, we proposed following ARDL models for this study; where \({\mathrm{LCE}}_{t}\) represents low-carbon economy, \({\mathrm{GEC}}_{t}\) represents green energy consumption, \({\mathrm{GI}}_{t}\) shows the green innovation, \({\mathrm{UP}}_{t}\) is urban population, \({\mathrm{GDP}}_{t}\) represents GDP per capita, and \({\mathrm{LF}}_{t}\) shows the labor force",7
"According to Engle and Granger (1987), a vector error correction model (VECM) is employed to evaluate the Granger causality between low-carbon economy, green energy, green innovation, GDP per capita, and labor force",7
The correlation coefficient of green energy consumption and low-carbon economy is negative and high at 60% indicating that GEC significantly reduces carbon economy by reducing carbon intensity in the production process pushing the country towards low economy,7
"Thus, the findings confirmed the existence of conversion to the long-run stability between carbon emissions and other variables, i.e., green energy consumption, green innovation, GDP per capita, urbanization, and labor force",7
"As shown in Table 4.3, the connection between \((\mathrm{GEC})\) and carbon economy is negative and significant in the long run as well as in the short run which suggests that under the ceteris paribus, a 1% increase in green energy consumption has a negative impact on the carbon economy by 0.185% in the long run and 0.170% in the short run",7
"This finding further strengthens the argument that higher consumption of green energy resources in the production process reduces CO2 emissions and contributes to low-carbon economy in Pakistan, which in return stimulates environmental sustainability in the country",7
"2021b; Usman and Makhdum 2021) also have acknowledged the role of green energy as a measure to reduce reliance on importing fuels, reducing price fluctuations associated with imported fossil energy, and decreasing emissions",7
The indicator of economic growth (\(\mathrm{lnGDP}\)) is considerably positive,8
"It indicates that economic growth in Pakistan has a positive impact on the carbon economy, e.g., a 1% increase in GDP per capita will lead to the carbon economy by 0.813% in the short term and 0.612% in the long run",8
"(2021b), the higher value of economic growth in the short run than the long run validates EKC hypothesis",8
"Thus, the study findings validated the existence of EKC in the context of Pakistan economy, as the short-run coefficient value of economic growth (0.813) is greater than the long-run coefficient value (0.612)",8
"It indicates that 1% increase in green energy consumption negatively contributes to carbon economy by 0.285%, while a 1% reduction in the consumption of green energy leads to increase carbon economy by 0.67%",7
This finding suggests that any positive shock in the green energy consumption considerably promotes Pakistan’s low-carbon economy,7
"In contrast, any adverse shock in the green energy consumption promotes Pakistan’s carbon economy",7
"Pakistan, being a developing country, is in tremendous pressure due to adverse impacts of climate change in recent years (Komal and Abbas 2015; Usman et al",13
"2022); therefore, the government of Pakistan along with other stakeholders must expend green energy supplies, to ensure environmental excellence in the country",7
"The lower section of Table 5 demonstrates that in the long run, the impact of green energy consumption on the carbon economy is asymmetric while it has a symmetric impact in the short run",7
This is because Pakistan is heavily dependent on fossil fuel consumption in the production process as fossil fuels constitute 64% of total energy consumption in Pakistan and less than 35% of energy consumption comes from green energy (Aslam et al,7
"These multiplier graphs also shows that in the long term, negative green innovation, green energy, and urbanization impacts have a greater influence on the low-carbon economy than positive impacts in the stated framework",7
The coefficient green energy consumption is negative and significant in all the quintiles suggesting that it encourages a low-carbon economy in Pakistan,7
"Moreover, the strength of this coefficient increases as we move on higher quintiles indicating that Pakistan is substituting fossil fuels with green energy over the time which ultimately will push Pakistan economy towards a low-carbon economy in the longer run",7
"Besides, the empirical results also showed positive role of GDP per capita on environmental degradation in Pakistan via encouraging carbon economy",15
"(2020) for Turkish economy, have justified similar type of relationships between economic growth and carbon economy",8
"In addition, the Granger causality test estimates (Table 9) in the Appendix confirmed the existence of a bidirectional causal association among low-carbon economy and green energy consumption in Pakistan",7
"The country is currently facing unprecedented losses due to adverse impacts of climate change; therefore, it is pertinent to identify those macroeconomic factors that can address the aggravating environmental concerns in the country",13
"Second, economic growth initially leads towards carbon economy by increasing carbon intensity but later on pushes the country towards low-carbon economy by reducing carbon intensity",8
These outcomes of economic growth authenticated the EKC hypothesis in the context of Pakistan,8
"Finally, the causality test results indicated that policies regarding eco-innovation will positively contribute to the low-carbon economy while policies towards brown economic growth, rapid urbanization, and higher inclusion of people in to the labor force push the country towards carbon economy which in return deteriorates environmental quality in Pakistan",8
"Furthermore, the causality outcomes also showed that policies towards green energy consumption in the production process and low-carbon economy are inter-dependent",7
"Second, since urbanization in Pakistan is found to be associated with upscaling the carbon economy, and considered the main cause of energy deficiency, sustainable urbanization through effective urban planning by introducing planned cities in rural areas and through the promotion of greenhouse projects and green transportation in urban areas are highly recommended",11
"Secondly, this study focuses largely on the macro level data and analysis to evaluate the role of green energy, eco-innovation, and urbanization in explaining low-carbon economy for Pakistan",7
This declaration has motivated policymakers in this Arab nation to design policies that can green economic activities in Saudi Arabia so that environmentally sustainable growth can be ensured,8
"In this regard, green growth in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is proxied by the difference between the nation’s annual per capita growth rates of gross domestic product and carbon dioxide emission",8
"Utilizing data from 1972 to 2018 and controlling for structural break-induced problems found in the data, the findings from the regression and causality analyses confirm the green growth–inhibiting impacts of financial development and trade globalization",8
"In contrast, greater financial globalization is evidenced to drive green growth in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia",8
"Furthermore, more efficient uses of energy resources are found to not only directly boost green growth but also partially neutralize the long-run green growth–dampening impacts associated with the development of the financial sector",8
"In addition, financial development and trade globalization are observed to jointly inhibit green growth attainment both in the short and long run",8
"In line with these important findings, it is recommended that the government of Saudi Arabia conceptualizes new green growth policies so that the nation’s annual per capita economic growth rate outpaces its annual per capita growth rate of carbon dioxide emissions",8
Conventional growth policies have principally focused on catalyzing the rate of economic growth across the globe,8
"In this regard, apart from simply enhancing the level of economic growth, it is equally essential to persistently boost the rate of economic growth",8
"However, unfavorable environmental conditions are often assumed as one of the major hindrances to sustaining economic growth performances over an indefinite period of time (Baz et al",8
"2020); consequently, a favorable environmental condition make it conducive for retaining the economic growth momentum in the future",8
"Thus, promoting green growth should be the ultimate goal for all world economies so that green policies can enable an environmentally-sustainable recovery of the world economies in the post-Covid19 pandemic era (Abbasi et al",8
"In simple terms, green growth can be interpreted as growth that does not pin down the wellness of the environment (Bliznina 2021; Abad-Segura et al",8
"In this regard, since the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) is acknowledged as the major environmental degradation factor (Koçak et al",15
"2020), environmentally sustainable economic growth (or green growth) can also be interpreted as low-carbon economic growth",8
"Accordingly, achieving green growth technically requires the economic growth rate to outpace the corresponding CO2 emissions growth rate",8
"Consequently, advanced green growth–stimulating policies are needed to amplify the economic growth rates while limiting the CO2 emission rates in tandem",8
"Thus, recognizing the importance of promoting green growth globally, the United Nations conceptualized the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) which envisages establishing environmentally sustainable socioeconomic development worldwide by 2030 (Arora and Mishra 2019; Tóthová and Heglasová 2022)",8
Although SDG8 stresses the attainment of sustained economic growth (Rai et al,8
"2019; Kreinin and Aigner 2022), SDG13 emphasizes the initiation of actions for combating climate change problems by limiting CO2 emissions, in particular (Pandey and Asif 2022; Wang et al",13
"Hence, SDG8 and SDG13 can collectively be said to aim at establishing environmentally sustainable economic growth worldwide",8
"Similarly, achieving green growth is a major concern for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) as well which led to the nation’s declaration of attaining carbon neutrality by 2060",8
"On the other hand, the power plants in the KSA have traditionally been fired by primary fossil fuels; consequently, the share of renewable electricity in the nation’s cumulative electricity output has always remained significantly low (World Bank 2022)",7
"However, recently, several new projects concerning generation of electricity from renewables have been sanctioned by the Saudi government whereby it can be anticipated that successful implementation of these green energy projects can gradually enhance the renewable energy share in the energy portfolio of the KSA",7
"In this regard, positive values indicate that the rate of economic growth (proxied by per capita GDP growth rate) exceeds the corresponding rate of environmental pollution (proxied by the per capita CO2 emissions growth rate) and vice versa",8
"Hence, the positive differences can be interpreted as environmentally sustainable (i.e., green or low carbon) economic growth while the negative differences can be regarded as environmentally unsustainable (i.e., non-green or high carbon) economic growth in the KSA",8
"This is because, the economic growth rate ideally should always outpace the environmental pollution rate in order to establish environmentally sustainable growth in the KSA",8
1 suggest that policymakers should come up with action plans that can help Saudi Arabia to embark on environmentally sustainable growth pathways,8
" Against this backdrop of establishing environmentally sustainable economic growth in Saudi Arabia, this study models the short- and long-run impacts of financial development, globalization (financial- and trade-related), and energy efficiency improvement on the possibility of promoting green growth in the KSA",8
"First, from the perspective of a theoretical literature gap, this is a seminal study that quantifies green growth in terms of the annual per capita growth rate differentials concerning GDP and CO2 emissions",8
"Intuitively, the larger (smaller) the difference, the greater (lower) the degree of green growth under the theoretical assumption that if the economic growth rate outpaces the environmental pollution rate, then the economic growth achieved can be considered environmentally sustainable or green",8
"In contrast, the available studies have separately assessed the determinants of economic growth (Xu et al",8
"However, examining them together, in light of the issue of facilitating green growth, can be expected to help in proposing more concrete development policies that can simultaneously boost economic and environmental welfare",8
"Second, regarding the empirical literature gap, limited statistical evidence is available in the context of the determinants of green growth in the KSA; contrastingly, prior studies have mostly checked how the macroeconomic factors influence the nation’s economic growth level (Altaee et al",8
"2016; Belloumi and Alshehry 2018), without simultaneously emphasizing the pertinence of making the economic growth in the KSA environmentally sustainable",8
"Lastly, this study makes a final contribution to the related literature by checking whether or not globalization and EEG jointly with financial development influence green growth performances in the KSA",8
This is pertinent because long-term policies should not be one-dimensional and rather be interactive in order to be more efficient in facilitating the attainment of the green growth agenda of the Saudi government,8
"Hence, this section is structured into two sub-sections to chronologically summarize the findings reported in existing studies that have shed insights on the determinants of economic growth and CO2 emissions",8
"(2016) used annual data covering the period 1980 to 2014 and utilized the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) estimator to predict the impacts of financial development, international trade, and capital formation on the nation’s economic growth level",8
"In contrast, capital formation was evidenced to monotonically accelerate economic growth in the KSA",8
"Notably, while exports were found to boost the nation’s economic growth level, both in the short and long run, imports were seen to persistently exert growth-dampening impacts in the KSA",8
"Similarly, using the ARDL technique but considering the period from 1970 to 2015, Belloumi and Alshehry (2018) recorded evidence that foreign direct investments negatively while financial development and trade openness positively impact the non-oil GDP growth rate in the KSA",8
"Furthermore, Aziz (2022) recently concluded that the financial globalization–induced influx of foreign direct investments helps to spur economic growth in the KSA and other Arab states",8
"Similarly, in the context of the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Ozturk and Al-Mulali (2015) remarked that higher consumption of natural gas positively influences economic growth in the long run",8
"Besides, causality analysis verified the feedback hypothesis concerning natural gas use and economic growth in the GCC nations",8
"On the other hand, Grassa and Gazdar (2014) opined in favor of financial development being a crucial determinant of economic growth in the selected GCC countries of concern",8
"Meanwhile, considering data from 16 African and non-African nations, Bist (2018) recorded statistical evidence supporting the view that financial development–led higher access to private credit helps to foster economic growth in the long run",8
"Regarding the economic growth impacts related to EEG, Akram et al",8
"(2021) utilized data from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (collectively known as BRICS) and revealed that EEG is critically important in inflating the economic growth figures of these nations",8
"Likewise, Rajbhandari and Zhang (2018) also supported the idea that EEG is beneficial for securing higher economic growth in developing countries",8
"Another growth-determining factor that is commonly associated with economic growth is globalization, although the globalization–economic growth nexus is said to be uncertain (Acheampong et al",8
"In a study on developing countries from Asian, European, African, and American regions, Aslan and Altinoz (2021) asserted that higher economic globalization (synonymous with higher financial and trade globalization) is conducive to securing greater economic growth in the selected countries of concern",8
(2021) also corroborated the view that globalization is a key enabler of higher economic growth in developing countries across Asia,8
The results indicated that financial development and energy consumption boost CO2 emissions homogenously for countries belonging to both development categories,7
"The corresponding results revealed that in the long run, foreign direct investments inflicted CO2 emission–inhibiting impacts while higher energy consumption and urbanization amplified the emission figures",7
"Moreover, the authors also evidenced that the effects of economic growth on CO2 emissions displayed a U-shaped relationship which implied that the growth of the Turkish economy is initially environmentally sustainable but eventually this environmental sustainability does not sustain",8
"In this section, the conceptual frameworks linking economic growth and CO2 emissions with financial development, globalization, and EEG are discussed",8
These linkages would help us to connect how these macroeconomic aggregates can influence the issue of green growth,8
"First, concerning the economic and environmental effects of financial development, it is believed that the financial sector is the backbone of private investments that are essential in facilitating economic growth while affecting the environmental quality in the process",8
"Provided financial development makes clean energy adoption more affordable, it can be associated with lower emissions of CO2; contrarily, financial development causing higher consumption of unclean energy can be assumed to boost CO2 emissions",7
"Therefore, although the positive impact of financial development on economic growth is almost certain, the uncertainty regarding the financial sector’s effect on environmental quality implies that financial development can both facilitate and inhibit the attainment of green growth in the KSA",8
"Second, globalization is another key macroeconomic channel through which both the economic and environmental indicators can be influenced; thus, it can be linked with green growth attainment as well",8
"As a result, greater trade globalization can be assumed to stimulate higher economic growth across trading partners (Srichaikul et al",8
"Similarly, more financial globalization through the attraction of foreign direct investments, in particular, can also accelerate domestic investment levels to drive up economic growth levels in both the host and home nations (Aziz 2022)",8
2021) whereby it is implied that globalization has a key role to play in facilitating green growth in the KSA,8
"On the other hand, unlike the beneficial effects on economic growth, globalization is said to inflict mixed effects on the environment",8
"Besides, cross-border trade of clean energy can directly help to mitigate emissions of CO2 (White et al",7
"Meanwhile, regarding the nexus between financial globalization and CO2 emissions, the pollution haven hypothesis (PHH) argues that the influx of international finance from foreign investors can exert equivocal repercussions on CO2 emission levels in the host nation (Chen et al",17
"Alternatively, this hypothesis can be nullified given that foreign direct investments are utilized for technological innovation within the host nation so that their production processes are made comparatively greener (Apergis et al",8
"Hence, to limit these adverse environmental externalities (i.e., control the rate and volume of CO2 emissions), often policymakers stress making interventions within the energy system so that either cleaner sources are augmented in the energy mix (Afshan et al",7
The dependent variable GG abbreviates for green growth which is proxied by the difference between the annual per capita GDP growth rate and annual per capita CO2 emission growth rate in the KSA,8
"Hence, positive values and statistical significance of the elasticity parameters (i.e., \({\mathrm{\alpha }}_{i}>0\)) can be considered as a green growth–facilitating effect of increments in the independent variables; contrarily, negative values and statistical significance of the elasticity parameters (i.e., \({\mathrm{\alpha }}_{i}<0\)) would indicate green growth–inhibiting effects",8
"Lastly, the variable EE abbreviates for energy efficiency rate which is measured using the ratios of per capita levels of GDP and energy consumption",7
"In this regard, the corresponding literature has acknowledged that the higher (lower) the value of national output produced by consuming a solitary unit of energy, the greater (lower) the energy efficiency rate (Khan et al",7
"Furthermore, considering the assumption that globalization and EEG can jointly with financial development affect green growth in the KSA, we interact the financial development variable with the other explanatory variables (in separate functions) to verify this assumption",8
"Therefore, the augmented models with the interaction terms can be shown as follows: where the parameters \(\upbeta ,\updelta ,\mathrm{ and \vartheta }\) would provide the moderating/mediating green growth–influencing effects of financial development",8
"The repercussions of financial development, financial globalization, trade globalization, and EEG on green growth in the KSA are predicted using Pesaran et al.’s (2001) ARDL estimator",8
"Once the bounds test is performed, the ARDL model is run to predict the short- and long-run elasticities of green growth in the KSA",8
"Finally, once the regression analysis is completed, the directions of the causal associations among green growth and its determinants in the context of the KSA are predicted using a couple of causality tests",8
"The results first reveal that the financial development policies in the KSA are not ensuring green growth of its economy, neither in the short run nor in the long run",8
"Precisely, the results portray that if the private credit borrowings share in the GDP increases by 1%, the per capita economic growth and CO2 emission rate differentials reduce (synonymous with unclean growth) by 2.11–2.82% in the short run and 9.44–10% in the long run, respectively",8
"Therefore, it is also evident that with time, the green growth–inhibiting effects associated with financial development pile up with time",8
"Accordingly, a financial development–induced rise in emissions of CO2 for both production and consumption purposes can make sure that the annual per capita rate of CO2 emissions outpaces the corresponding economic growth rate; consequently, the prospects of fostering green growth in the KSA can be expected to decline",8
"Similar to our finding, Grassa and Gazdar (2014) documented evidence regarding financial development facilitating higher economic growth in GCC nations while Huang et al",8
"On the other hand, the findings reported in Table 6 reveal that financial globalization stimulates green growth in the KSA only in the long run",8
A rise in the financial globalization index by 1% is seen to increase the annual per capita economic growth and CO2 emission rate differentials by 11.93–12.38% in the long run,8
"The long-run findings can be explained from the general perspective that as economies globalize, a technological exchange takes place whereby advanced technologies are disseminated from technologically advanced countries to technologically backward countries; consequently, this spillover of technology can be assumed to help the technology-deficient nation to adopt clean means for boosting economic growth",8
"In the context of the KSA, it is quite evident that the nation’s technological stock favors the production of electricity from fossil fuels; however, regarding renewable electricity generation, the KSA may be assumed to not have the advanced technology required to utilize clean energy sources for electricity production purposes",7
"Under such circumstances, financial globalization can be anticipated to bridge the technological deficit to enable the KSA to gradually undergo a “renewable energy transition” within its power sector, in particular",7
"Therefore, through financial globalization–induced technological spillover, the production processes in the KSA can be made relatively cleaner so that the nation’s economic growth rate exceeds its CO2 emission rate in the future",8
(2022) for BRICS while Aziz (2022) remarked that it is important to globalize financially to spur higher economic growth rate,8
"As opposed to the impacts of financial globalization on green growth, the results reported in Table 6 reveal that trade globalization restricts the prospects of greening the growth achievements of the KSA",8
"Notably, the estimates show that a rise in the index of trade globalization by 1% reduces the annual per capita economic growth and CO2 emission rate differentials by 41.31–45.59% in the short run and by 50.56–68.82% in the long run",8
"Hence, once again, it is evident that the green growth–depressing impacts of trade globalization in the KSA mount with time",8
"Moreover, as the clean energy sector in the KSA is yet to take off, the growth of the trade-related industries in this Arab state is justifiably associated with greater extraction and combustion of fossil fuels",7
"On the other hand, Belloumi and Alshehry (2018) and Aziz (2022) highlighted the importance of enhancing the extent of trade globalization in respect of amplifying the economic growth figures of the Arab countries",8
"However, the short-run elasticities are found to be statistically insignificant, which implies that in the short run, the gain in the energy efficiency rate may not be large enough to substantially mitigate CO2 emissions while keeping the output growth rate put, at the least",7
"Nevertheless, in the long run, sufficient degrees of EEG can be expected to reverse this scenario by boosting output growth rate with a relatively lower volume of energy inputs which, in turn, can be anticipated to considerably curb the emission levels for facilitating green growth in the KSA",8
(2021) concluded that using energy efficiently can facilitate higher economic growth across selected African nations,8
"Now turning to the findings related to the interaction effects, Table 6 presents evidence of joint effects on green growth both in the short and long run",8
"First, in the context of model 2, it is revealed that financial development and financial globalization cannot jointly influence the green growth level, neither in the short nor in the long run",8
"Hence, in light of these findings, it can be said that greater financial globalization, especially in the long run, is not adequate in partially neutralizing the green growth–depressing effects associated with greater financial development in the KSA",8
"Besides, concerning the findings related to model 3, we find that financial development and trade globalization jointly inhibit the short- and long-run prospects of attaining green growth of the Saudi Arabian economy",8
This finding is in line with the earlier findings which showed that both financial development and trade globalization independently hampered the processes of greening the economic growth activities in the KSA,8
"Lastly, the results regarding model 4 show that only in the long run financial globalization and EEG jointly contribute to achieving green growth in the KSA",8
"Therefore, the finding of the joint green growth–promoting impact indicates that EEG can partially neutralize the adverse impacts of financial development on green growth attainment in the KSA",8
"Comparing the elasticity estimates presented in Tables 6 and 8 leads to the observation that the predicted effects (positive and negative) of financial development, financial globalization, trade globalization, and EEG on green growth are identical across both estimators",8
"It is evident that financial development, financial globalization, and trade globalization causally influence green growth in the KSA without feedback",8
"Consequently, the regression findings are supported by the causality findings to re-emphasize that financial development and trade globalization inhibit green growth while financial globalization promotes green growth in the KSA",8
"These findings are rational because much like a more productive use of energy helping to clean economic activities to promote green growth, achieving environmentally sustainable growth can help the KSA to sustain its economic growth performances in the long run",8
Saudi’s green growth commitments have led to its declaration of turning carbon neutral by 2060 whereby this Arab state is looking forward to adopting policies that can green its economic activities to establish environmentally sustainable growth of its economy,8
"Utilizing data from 1972 to 2018 and controlling for structural break–induced problems, the findings from the regression and causality analyses confirmed that financial development and trade globalization hinder the prospects of attaining green growth while financial globalization drives green growth in the KSA",8
"Besides, EEG was evidenced to not only directly facilitate green growth but also partially neutralize the green growth–inhibiting impacts of financial development in the long run",8
"Furthermore, the findings also led to the discovery that financial development and trade globalization jointly dampen the prospects of realizing green growth in the KSA while no joint effect of financial development and financial globalization on green growth could be established",8
"Therefore, considering these key findings, three fundamental green growth–stimulating policies can be recommended",8
"First, keeping into consideration the green growth–depressing impacts of financial development, the financial sector in the KSA needs to be restructured by making major amendments in the future financial development policies",8
"In this regard, the introduction of green financial schemes can be assumed to resolve the financial development–led hindrances concerning green growth attainment",8
"On the other hand is concessional loans for investment in green projects, especially for the development of the renewable energy sector in the KSA",7
"Precisely, it is imperative for this Arab nation to sanction investments for setting up new renewable energy–based power plants such as Sakaka Power Plant which was launched in 2021",7
"In order to facilitate green growth in the KSA, it is necessary to clean up its trade-oriented industries so that their environmental footprints are contained as much as possible",8
"Moreover, in the future, given that the KSA manages to substantially develop its renewable energy sector, it can also think of exporting renewable electricity",7
"On the other hand, from the point of view of greening the financial globalization policies in the future, it is advised that more foreign direct investments are channeled into the KSA that can further foster the expansion of production capacities of existing and new renewable power plants",7
Timely detection of such inefficiencies can be assumed to curb the transmission and distribution losses of the power sector in the KSA whereby the overall energy productivity rates can be significantly improved,7
"In addition, solar power–based private mini-gridding initiatives can also be considered so that energy can be more efficiently utilized through a “consumer-to-prosumer transformation.” For instance, often end-users of electricity are keen on only consuming power with a reluctance to identify the energy resources they waste",7
"Under such circumstances, the installation of mini-smart grids, especially those that can be run using solar power, can enable power consumers to turn into small-scale suppliers of clean electricity",7
"Moreover, it is also pertinent for conducting more comprehensive robustness analyses by using alternate green growth proxies.",8
groforestry has an indispensable role in food and livelihood security in addition to its capacity to combat the detrimental effects of climate change,13
"However, agroforestry has not been properly promoted and exploited due to lack of precise extent, geographical distribution, and carbon sequestration (CS) assessment",15
"The recent advent of geospatial technologies, as well as free availability of spatial data and software, can provide new insights into agroforestry resources assessment, decision-making, and policy development despite agroforestry’s small spatial extent, isolated nature, and higher structural and functional complexity of agroforestry",15
"In this review, the existing application of geospatial technologies together with its constraints and limitations as well as the potential future application for agroforestry has been discussed",15
"The review reveals that the application of optical remote sensing in agroforestry includes spatial extent mapping, production of tree species spectral signature, CS assessment, and suitability mapping",15
"Additionally, current (GEDI, ECOSTRESS) and future space agency missions (BIOMASS, FLEX, NISAR, TRISHNA) have enormous potential to shed fresh light on agroforestry systems",15
Food security is the foundation of a stable and healthy nation,2
"Nevertheless, in today’s scenario of natural resource degradation, countries are unable to provide food security to the burgeoning population that is expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 (UN 2015)",2
"Agroforestry system (AFS) is a prominent land use system that bridges the gap between agriculture and forestry by creating an integrated, diverse, productive, profitable, healthy, and sustainable land use system than the agriculture system (Sharma et al",15
"2020), livelihood security (Mishra and Mishra 2017), soil fertility decline (Dollinger and Jose 2018), water conservation (Lin 2010), nitrogen leaching (Rowe et al",15
"2001), climate change risk and variability (Feliciano et al",13
"2021), microclimate improvement (Cleugh 1998), biodiversity conservation (Sahoo et al",15
2017a) and is a potential method of increasing the global forest cover,15
"IPCC (2000) also classified AFS as having the highest potential for carbon sequestration (CS) by 2040 in its Land-use, Land use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) report (Negash and Kanninen 2015)",15
Overview of remote sensing & GIS application in Agroforestry mapping and monitoring,15
"a Agroforestry mapping (picture adopted from Rizvi et al., 2016b), b agroforestry suitability mapping (picture adopted from Ahmad et al., 2018a), c biomass and carbon sequestration estimation in agroforestry, d canopy layering in agroforestry, e tree spatial signature (picture adopted from Rizvi et al., 2019b), f agroforestry canopy height (picture adopted from Grimaldi et al",15
"Flowchart of methodologies for agroforestry extent, suitability and carbon sequestration potential (CSP) mapping",15
"2019), and maximizing the contribution of AFS to country’s climate change goals or intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) under the UNFCCC",13
"Prior to 2000, the majority of studies included the AFS extent under forestry land use, owing to (i) difficulty of detecting AFS in the landscape and (ii) the fact that most of the shadow AFS (plantations crops under shade trees) meets the national definition of the forest (Daniel et al",15
"Also, the eddy covariance (EC) technique can provide information on the seasonal dynamic and interannual variation of net ecosystem exchange (NEE) and gross primary productivity (GPP) and ecosystem respiration (Xiao et al",12
"Furthermore, the estimation of GPP which is a carbon fixation rate through vegetation photosynthetic process (Wu et al",12
Several models for estimating GPP such as MOD17 (MODIS GPP algorithm) (Running et al,12
"Numerous vegetation indices such as NDVI, EVI (enhanced vegetation index), and LSWI (land surface water index) are also often employed for estimation of the GPP (Madugundu et al",12
"AFS such as silvopastoral system are also appropriate for the areas with 18–50% slope category (Apan 1996), thus enabling the farmers to cultivate the poor soils or degraded land similar to the arable land",15
"2007; Rahmawaty and Rauf 2019), soil erosion, nitrogen leaching, landscape diversity (Reisner et al",15
"2006, 2007) such as water stress in plants (Zarco-Tejada et al",6
(2018) devised a methodology that is more likely to determine the TOF as forest cover is masked from the images,15
2009) like plant water stress (Zarco-Tejada et al,6
The water footprinting of AFS is a new dimension as trees can act to reduce the runoff and soil erosion (Sharma et al,15
(2013) for better estimation of canopy pigment content and water stress,6
NASA’s ECOSTRESS (ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space station) mission which measures the plant temperature can also be used in AFS to address the terrestrial biosphere response to changes in water availability and impact of diurnal vegetation water stress on global cycle and reduce the vulnerability through advanced monitoring of the water consumption and drought monitoring,6
"As policy implication, in industrialized countries especially China and India, there is a greater need to invest in green energy consumption at a larger scale to achieve future sustainable development goals",7
"Many countries, especially developing countries, are insufficient in policies and measures to ensure ecological balance due to concerns about economic growth",8
"For instance, China and India have doubled their carbon emissions as a result of their fast economic growth in recent years (Anwar et al",8
Financial inclusion (FI) has been regarded as a critical component of economic development because it nurtures an economy’s financial sector and institutions (Le et al,8
"However, allowing households and small businesses greater access to financial services can increase consumption and, consequently, more carbon emissions (Renzhi et al",1
"(2021), inclusive financial services attract research and development, and FDI inflows help boost ES",9
"In this context, accessibility to modern technologies may promote energy efficiency and other eco-friendly activities, thereby stimulating ecological quality (Abbasi and Riaz 2016)",7
"For instance, FI as an adaptation measure can help to reduce poverty which is the focus of SDG-1 (Renzhi and Baek 2020)",1
"Also, FI helps in attaining SDG-6 by stimulating the management of water and sanitation in various economies",6
"Additionally, FI facilitates the attainment of SDG-9 by encouraging sustainable industrialization and eco-friendly innovations",9
"Finally, inclusive financial systems help in attaining SDG-13 by backing investments in activities that minimize climate change and its adversities",13
Nguyen-Van (2010) proposed the energy consumption Kuznets curve with income per capita for the group of panel data,7
The study concluded that energy consumption also increased with the increase in income,7
"(2019) observed the impact of real interest rate, income, and energy consumption on Turkey’s CO2 emissions",7
(2020) proposed the quadratic energy consumption on the human development index during 1990 to 2017,7
The GLS method concluded that energy consumption shows the inverted U-shaped association with HDI,7
Isiksal (2021b) observed the effect of sustainable energy and military expenses on the environment for countries with the highest military expenses and found a positive impact on carbon emission,7
"Due to the increase in fossil fuels, carbon emissions increase, which causes different diseases such as tuberculosis, which increase mortality rates (Hanif et al",3
"To construct the hypothetical econometrics model, Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) recommended that economic growth (GDP) initially degrades the environment, but after maturity, it improves the environment quality and shows the U-shaped relationship",8
"Furthermore, Fig. 1 shows the visualization of foreign direct investments, carbon emission per capita, gross domestics product per capita, energy consumption per capita, and trade openness for all the selected countries for a sample period of 1991–2016",7
d Energy consumption per capita,7
"Based on the findings of the underline research, our policy recommendation is to encourage environmentally friendly investments in the selection of foreign direct investments by officials and policymakers in newly industrialized countries for economic development in their countries",8
There is a greater need to focus on environment and climate control at a faster speed and work on the renewable energy consumption in the country to achieve sustainable development goals,7
Newly industrialized countries such as China and India pay special attention to clean energy consumption instead of fossil energy consumption,7
"The authorities of these countries need to make sure the use of technology to improve clean energy resources such as wind energy, solar energy, and solar energy",7
Newly industrialized countries should construct more and more hydroelectric energy sources to fulfil the energy requirements,7
India needs to give subsidies the private investors to promote clean energy,7
"In addition, exports of goods and services play an important role in the country’s economy and hence can be improved once the nation shifts toward renewable energy.",7
The establishment of the millennium development goals (MDGs) in 2000 and the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in 2015 (several of which are relevant to food security) meant that countries may use these markers to evaluate their progress and development,2
"In order to achieve the targets identified in the SDGs which focus on food security, two scenarios have been identified",2
"The aim of this paper is to rank the scenarios which would better assist in achieving food security, the actors and the goals of food security, expecting that the results would serve to inform the motivation and information seeking habits of decision makers in three Caribbean countries",2
"It was found that overall for policymakers/stakeholders/experts, trade-based food security was ranked higher than self-sufficiency food security and that Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados ranked it more important than in Belize",2
"Regarding actors in obtaining food security, government was ranked most important in Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados but Belize felt that farmers were more significant",2
"The economic goals of food security were ranked higher than physical and political goals, with socio-cultural goals ranked least important",2
They illustrate the ‘bias’ in searching and selecting information and where balance would be needed to treat with all aspects of food security,2
"The popular definition of food security, “food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO 1996), was derived from the 1996 World Food Summit when global targets sought to “halve the 800 million of undernourished people by 2015” (FAO 1996)",2
"SDG 2: Zero Hunger “aims to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition” is the new target following on from the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) which aimed to reduce the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by half from 1990 to 2015 (Goal 1) and reduce the mortality rate among children under five by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015 (Goal 4) (IIED 2015)",2
"Perrett (2012) described food security as a “wicked problem”, which Kolko (2012) defines as a “social or cultural problem that is difficult or impossible to solve for as many as four reasons: incomplete or contradictory knowledge, the number of people and opinions involved, the large economic burden, and the interconnected nature of these problems with other problems”",2
"520)—especially for wicked problems, such as food security—is the “complex of interrelated decisions about allocation of available resources” where the knowledge needed to plan is not always known by the policymakers, but by others",2
The role of data to guide decision making has been recognised as critical from as early as 1945 with the First Work Survey conducted by the FAO on malnutrition and starvation numbers in the world,2
"It was highlighted that “vague knowledge that this situation exists is not enough: facts and figures are needed if the nations are to attempt to do away with famine and malnutrition” (FAO 1985, p",2
The high-level regional recognition of data gaps suggests that decisions made at the national/regional level are crucial in improving the level of national/regional food security,2
Making such decisions depends on an improved understanding of the knowledgebase and rational used in prioritisation of food security issues as applied by decision makers,2
"(2015) charge that, at the national level, relevant policy formulation and implementation in the area of food security have not been deemed to be urgent",2
(2014) reveal that the interpretations of food security vary and the basis for decision making is unclear,2
"Hence, aspects of food security believed to be more significant would affect the information seeking perspectives of decision makers and, thus, which goals guide decision making and planning",2
"End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture",2
Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages,3
"Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all",8
Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns,12
Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts,13
"Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification and halt and reverse land degradation, and halt biodiversity loss",15
"Political goals to reduce hunger and malnutrition will have to address issues detailed by Drèze and Sen (1989, pp",2
"3–4) who argue that hunger is not a “new affliction” but is intolerable in the modern world for a number of reasons and, especially now perhaps, because there is adequate globally available food for all for the first time",2
"But if food prices are high or there is an increase in unemployment, this group becomes increasingly vulnerable",8
"Ford (2007) states that “despite these successive efforts, implementation of national policies, priorities and action plans for enhanced food and nutrition security in CARICOM remains challenging and incomplete” (as quoted in Lowitt et al",2
"This paper investigates who and what is important to decision makers in terms of the scenarios, actors and goals of achieving an enhanced level of food security in three CARICOM countriesFootnote 1: Trinidad and Tobago, Belize and Barbados in order to determine the motivation for information seeking priorities",2
"Food production includes the contribution of fisheries and, though most times, food production is equated with food security, it is not",2
"Nowadays, not only does the concept of food security include that all people, at all times should have physical, social and economic access to adequate food, which is safe and nutritious, but must also meet their dietary requirements and cultural customs (FAO 2003; Pinstrup-Andersen 2009)",2
"In surveying the literature, it was determined that food security at the national level can be achieved essentially by one of two scenarios which provide for food to be available and accessible: trade-based food security and food self-sufficiency",2
Figure 1 illustrates the policy positions to support increasing levels of food security,2
Spectrum of scenarios for ensuring food security “Trade-based food security” involves a mixture of growing food and importing food to satisfy the needs of the population,2
"This circumstance is also called “food self-reliance”, defined as a situation where sufficient foreign exchange must be earned and managed so that all food needs are adequately served by purchase from external markets (Cashman 2014; Deep Ford and Rawlins 2007)",2
Food sovereignty promotes transparent trade that guarantees just incomes to all peoples as well as the rights of consumers to control their food and nutrition,17
"Although this scenario allows for persons in agriculture/food production to have higher levels of food security as government policy and funding provide adequate support, few countries are able to be fully food secure as described in this scenario",2
Figure 2 shows the two scenarios for achieving food security in the Caribbean,2
"Scenarios for achieving food security The major actors or players involved in ensuring food security are, for example, farmers, government, local business/trade, researchers, financial sector and external entities",2
"External entities/foreign sector here refers to all entities/factors outside of the country which may have an influence on food security, e.g",2
Figure 3 reflects the partners involved in achieving food security,2
Actors for achieving food security There are several characteristics of food security/agricultural information which make it different to information in other disciplines,2
"Food security/agricultural information is multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary at a number of levels—scientific, social and economic, “drawing, as it does, from biology, medicine, chemistry, soil science, various branches of engineering, climatology, food technology, the environmental sciences, economics, management, and a whole host of other fields” (Lancaster and Beecher in their 1981 article “Agricultural Librarianship and Documentation as a Profession” (quoted in Paskoff 1990)",2
"Food security/agricultural information is location-specific, i.e",2
"3) propose that (1) the role of collecting and analysing data is to design better policies and have more effective implementation; (2) there should be increased political commitment, for example, in alleviating malnutrition; (3) there should be more coordination of the actors in food security as they hold all the information about the food and nutrition security situation; (4) there should be evidence-based decision making",2
"Today, food security/agricultural information is stored and shared using a multitude of repositories and channels which require varying software and skillsets to utilise",2
The following model was developed based on the actors who utilise information to support food security,2
"Model of information flow and support for attaining an enhanced level of food security This model illustrates that among actors, information must be shared and used by all to influence all goals of food security simultaneously and through the most efficient scenario at a given time to attain an enhanced desired level of national food security",2
This is where an efficient Extension Service facilitates information to and from farmers and to the other entities that influence food security levels,2
The multi-coloured arrows portray the support every actor exerts to fulfil all the goals of food security,2
"Depending on a country’s economic and domestic food production at a given time, either scenario (since they exist on a continuum, see Fig. 1) could be supported to achieve an enhanced level of food security",2
To determine how decision makers rank the food security scenarios; actors in attaining food security; and food security goals; and compare these perspectives among three Caribbean territories,2
"How do decision makers rank the scenarios, actors and food security goals? Are there differences between how countries and categories of persons rank the scenarios, actors and food security goals? This study forms part of a larger mixed methods study investigating the information experience of food security decision makers in three countries in the Caribbean, which capitalised on the strengths of both qualitative and quantitative methods",2
"In order to develop a list of the goals and sub-goals of food security, a review of the literature was conducted and a number of goals and sub-goals were identified",2
"In order to verify that they were relevant to the Caribbean and feasible to accomplish the ranking exercise required for this study, consultations were held with experts whose area of research interest include food security: three lecturers in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension and one in the Department of Geography at the University of the West Indies (UWI), St",2
"Goals of achieving food security Out of the 15 territories in CARICOM, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize and Barbados were selected based on their diverse characteristics regarding food security which reflects the variation of the natural resource base, climate, agricultural production, trade patterns, economic circumstances, population characteristics as well as culture, language, literacy levels, history, etc., found in the region",2
The study population considered was the category of persons who make or influence decisions for national food security to bring a unique information-based perspective to planning for food security in CARICOM,2
"As such, the food security decision makers comprised: Policymakers: Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, Director of Planning/Senior Research Officer/Senior Economist in the Ministries of Agriculture/Food Production and, possibly, Environment, Health, Trade, Planning, Social Development Planners and Technocrats/Specialist and Statistical Advisors in the Ministry of Agriculture/Food Production (i.e",2
"Overall as well as across the categories of persons, self-sufficiency was ranked higher than a trade-based scenario for food security",2
"Trinidad and Tobago, however, ranked trade-based food security over self-sufficiency, which was the choice made by respondents of Barbados and Belize [see Appendix 2, Tables 6, 7, 8]",2
"The results of this study are novel, as while reviewing the literature on food security in general and, more specifically, the Caribbean, no similar studies in research design, methods or findings were discovered",2
"The use of the process, the AHP, for food security planning in the Caribbean has not been done nor has it not been documented and published to date",2
"Food security, through a self-sufficiency scenario, was ranked higher overall except for Trinidad and Tobago who, because of the oil-based economy, favoured trade-based food security",2
"Belize, which had more agricultural development and greater levels of self-sufficiency, believed that farmers were the most important actors as opposed to Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago where the Government has greater say in the levels of food security as trade-based food security depended on the availability of foreign exchange",2
This may explain why most studies on food security are undertaken from an economic point of view,2
"Though the definition of food security has been expanded to include socio-cultural aspects, this notion is probably more relevant to already food secure nations who are able to deal with food security at a higher level, not at a basic level",2
"Brathwaite (2009, 2011) concurs as he considers that food security is imperative for national security",2
Belize believed that farmers were most important to them as opposed to Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago where the Government has greater say in the levels of food security,2
This study fills a gap in the literature in terms of the information behaviour of policymakers and decision making in food security planning,2
"A more meaningful and greater appreciation of the ranking of food security goals in the context the Caribbean by examining three Caribbean countries, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize and Barbados with varying resource bases was determined",2
"Despite the standardised definition of food security, this study illustrated how decision makers in the Caribbean actually ranked the goals of food security",2
The implications of the rankings of the food security goals and sub-goals for searching and using information should be seen in the context that motivation and attitude would affect information seeking strategies and prioritising use of time and effort in some areas and not others,2
These findings illustrate the ‘bias’ in managing information and where balance would be needed if policy is to treat with all aspects of food security,2
"The model of information flow and support for an enhanced level of food security, a novel one, illustrates that all the communication takes place concurrently, so choices on what information to collect, organise and use are critical as there are always time and resource constraints in reality",2
"Using a similar framework to the one identified in this study would reveal how they conceptualise and prioritise food security in terms of the work they do, their use of information and perception of their level of competency in finding information and the extent to which information literacy training would be relevant to them",2
"Therefore, any country should use energy R&D expenditures, which are the primary source of energy innovation, most optimally",9
Estimation findings indicate that only the USA ensures the environmental efficiency in energy R&D expenditures among OECD countries,9
"Although Japan, Canada, France, Germany, and Italy cannot provide environmental efficiency in energy R&D, their scores are very close to the efficiency frontier",9
"Portugal, Hungary, and Slovak Republic are the countries with the lowest environmental efficiency in energy R&D expenditures",9
"At the end of the investigation, this paper also provides an empirical estimation of the extent to which inefficient countries should change their R&D spending to achieve efficiency",9
The growth in the energy demands of countries is marked as a meter of economic development by economists (Keong 2005; Rühl et al,8
Dependence on fossil resources is thought to be the most crucial cause of the problem of global warming and climate change (Chen and Geng 2017; Koçak and Kızılkaya 2020),13
"Because, fossil energy consumption is the primary source of emissions of CO2 gas, which increases at the most alarming rate for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (Lin and Raza 2019; Bilgili et al",7
"For this reason, there is a need for a more environmentally sustainable energy conversion process that reduces dependence on fossil energy resources at a global level (Munasinghe 2002; Saygin et al",7
"Undoubtedly, innovations and developments in energy technologies are critical to sustainable energy conversion (Wang and Zhu 2020; Wang et al",7
"Thanks to advances and innovations in energy technologies, (1) fossil energy intensity is reduced, and fossil resources are used more efficiently (Wurlod and Noailly 2018)",7
"(2) Production costs of cleaner and renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal energy are pulled down",7
"(3) Nuclear power generation and waste management are becoming more efficient, and accident risks are reduced",12
"Therefore, nuclear energy can contribute to sustainable development goals as an alternative to fossil energy sources, especially for electricity generation (Kim et al",7
Such technological processes play an essential role in combating poverty by facilitating both clean energy generation and access to electricity in less developed regions (Koçak et al,7
All of these arguments reveal that energy technologies and innovations will contribute to the goal of sustainable and green energy transformation by supporting the development of alternative and renewable resources,7
"Within the framework of expectations, this paper aims to evaluate the environmental efficiency of disaggregated energy R&D expenditures in OECD countries",9
"Therefore, energy R&D expenditures are an essential input and representative of energy innovation",9
"(2017), five research papers using DEA were published in the 1980s on electricity, oil, coal, gas, renewable energy, energy conservation, energy conservation, environmental pollution, and sustainability, while this number increased to 26 in the 1990s, 128 in the 2000s, and 524 in 2010",7
The findings of some papers for energy and environmental efficiency estimates in the literature are summarized below: Yuan and Huang (2002) assessed the efficiency of energy technology R&D projects in Taiwan by the DEA method,9
"(2015) examined the investment efficiency of wind energy, photovoltaic, and fuel cells in Korea by using the DEA method",7
Analysis results show that wind energy is the most efficient renewable energy in terms of government investments,7
(2016) evaluated the innovation efficiency of the R&D activities of 38 new energy enterprises in China for the period 2009–2013,9
"The findings of the study suggest that research and development investments are the driving force of efficiency increase, especially when they interact with increases in energy prices and low government intervention",9
"(2017) evaluated the CO2 reduction efficiency of fossil energy, renewable energy, and energy storage technologies in 12 European countries",7
"Also, the difference between CO2 and energy consumption efficiency scores is minimal, but the efficiency scores of crop disaster areas fluctuate considerably",7
"Also, the current literature has focused on the effect of aggregated R&D expenditure or total energy R&D expenditure on the environment (Fernández et al",9
"Unlike other researches, this paper targets to contribute to the literature by examining the environmental efficiency of disaggregated R&D expenditures for fossil, clean, and alternative energy technologies",9
"Secondly, according to the Paris Agreement at the end of 2015, OECD countries have a higher obligation to reduce CO2 emissions compared to other countries",13
The results of this research demonstrate (a) the environmental efficiency of OECD countries’ energy R&D expenditures,9
(b) This paper also provides an empirical estimation of the extent to which inefficient countries should change their R&D spending to achieve efficiency,9
This paper considers six different energy R&D expenditure indicators of 26 OECD countries in 2015 as inputs,9
The reason for this approach is that the effects of energy R&D expenditures appear after a certain period,9
"(2019), and we employ the 2-year lag values for R&D expenditures to affect environmental quality",9
Data on energy R&D expenditures are obtained from the International Energy Agency (IEA),9
"According to traditional DEA and bootstrap DEA estimation results, (1) only the USA ensures the environmental efficiency in energy R&D expenditures among OECD countries",9
"Although Japan and Canada cannot provide environmental efficiency in energy R&D expenditures, their scores are very close to efficiency",9
"(3) According to traditional DEA estimation results, in terms of environmental efficiency assessment of energy R&D expenditures, the three most inefficient countries are Portugal, Hungary, and the Slovak Republic",9
It is stated that Japan and the USA exceed 10 GW in the world solar energy production and that it is the two largest markets (Kabir et al,7
The EU has substantial funds for the development of renewable and clean energy technologies,7
Innovative renewable technologies in the EU have also contributed to an increasing share of renewable energy consumption in heating and cooling and transport markets,7
"In the second stage of empirical analysis, it is sought to answer how countries that fail to achieve environmental efficiency in energy R&D expenditures should change input indicators for optimization",9
"In this way, specific suggestions can be made about which areas OECD countries should invest in R&D to ensure efficiency in energy R&D expenditures",9
Table 3 shows the redundancy of inputs and scarcity of output for OECD countries that cannot provide efficiency in energy R&D expenditures,9
"Suppose the decision-makers in inefficient countries reduce their input by as much as their redundancy input or increase their output by as much as their scarcity output, the environmental efficiency of energy R&D investments increases",9
This station means that the relevant R&D expenditures should be increased too much,9
"According to Table 3, (a) if Japan, Canada, France, and Germany increase their R&D expenditures a little more, they will reach the event",9
"For example, if Japan increases its R&D expenditures for only other power and storage, it provides environmental efficiency in R&D expenditures",9
"(b) For example, Turkey may follow the following way to ensure environmental efficiency in energy R&D expenditure",9
"Besides, Turkey needs to make more R&D investment for nuclear energy",9
"It should also increase investments by 0.62%, 0.10%, and 1.22% for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and nuclear",7
The transition from a fossil-dependent energy structure to a clean and alternative energy structure to combat global warming and climate change is possible with developing energy technologies and energy innovations,13
"In this context, this paper explores the environmental efficiency of energy R&D expenditure, which is the primary resource of innovations and technologies, in 26 OECD countries by using traditional DEA and bootstrap DEA",9
"According to the research results, the USA provides environmental efficiency in energy R&D expenditures",9
"Portugal, Hungary, and the Slovak Republic are the countries with the lowest environmental efficiency in energy R&D expenditures",9
"Finally, empirical results also provide the extent to which the inefficient countries should change their R&D expenditures to achieve efficiency",9
"Consequently, this paper may imply that inefficient countries can follow the US energy and environmental policies, supports, and incentives to ensure environmental efficiency in energy R&D expenditures",9
"Besides, other developed OECD countries such as Japan, Canada, France, and Germany have the potential for environmental efficiency in R&D expenditures",9
"So, what can this paper say about less developed and developing countries? When the R&D capacities of the countries and their high technology export structures are evaluated, it is seen that developed countries are the leaders",9
The main reason for this is that initial R&D investments are costly and require capital-intensive production methods,9
"On the other hand, capital need for R&D investment is a problem for underdeveloped and developing countries",9
"In the long term, (1) less developed and developing countries should aim for sustainable growth",8
"In this way, more resources can be provided for R&D",9
These types of investments are an ideal way of technology transfer,17
"(4) In the short term, tax benefits and supports can be provided by the government to reduce R&D investment costs",9
Subsidies can support the production and export of R&D-based products,9
This paper aims to contribute to the literature by examining the environmental efficiency of energy R&D expenditures in OECD countries by DEA,9
This study intends to examine the factors responsible for biodiversity loss as well as the coping mechanisms to address this crisis in the context of 35 European economies covering the 2009–2018 period,15
Corruption and gender gap were found to increase the biodiversity crisis,16
"Finally, the study provides insightful implications for stakeholders and practitioners associated with energy and biodiversity conservation in Europe",15
"According to World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), environmental degradation is a long-term issue faced by all economies regardless of the degree of development and has affected human well-being (Almond et al",15
"More than one-fifth of forests in Europe are protected to prevent soil erosion, floods, and air pollution",15
Forests help to offset the effects of climate change and absorb one-tenth of Europe’s GHGs emissions (European Environmental Agency 2021),13
The loss in biodiversity is partially attributed to the production-linked subsidies to meet the food and bio-fuel demand that have resulted in the deterioration of agricultural and forestry land,15
"For instance, the demand for timber-based biomass exploded in Europe after the EU (European Union) directed its members in 2009 to meet a minimum of 20% of its power demand from renewable energy sources (Brack 2017)",7
"This meant that, in the name of sustainable forest management, businesses could directly harvest forests for pellets rather than producing pellets from by-products of timber cut for other purposes",15
"As the EU pushed in 2018 to double clean energy usage by 2030, scientists discussed this loophole with the EU policymakers",7
"As a result, more than half of the renewable energy demand in Europe is met by biomass based on wood",7
"It is more than the sum of solar and wind energy in the region, and a massive cross-country business has sprung up to satisfy the demand (Sheffield 2021)",7
"Biodiversity conservation has been a critical policy priority of Europe for several years, beginning with the Birds Directive in 1979, followed by the groundbreaking Habitats Directive in 1992, and by subsequent attempts to incorporate biodiversity into a variety of European policies (Rayment et al",15
"Independent metrics are critical for determining the state of nature, but they largely lack efforts to reduce biodiversity loss",15
"Therefore, it is critical to understand the drivers of biodiversity loss in Europe",15
"First of all, the most pressing concern in the environmental literature has been the climate change issue since the late twentieth century (Kirikkaleli and Sowah 2021)",13
"(2017), a reliable justification of biodiversity loss should not limit to agricultural practices",15
"Then, the literature related to the causes of biodiversity loss has focused on OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) or Asian region with a negligible investigation of the loss in Europe",15
"The sources of biodiversity loss, on the other hand, may differ between areas and across time",15
"As a result, the purpose of this study is to investigate the consequences of different harmful practices on biodiversity loss and analyse factors that can halt the biodiversity loss using the Europe sample",15
The study also considers gender gap and its relation with biodiversity loss,15
"In terms of gender, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD 2021) has brought to the fore the relevance of both genders in biodiversity conservation as natural environments have been reported to influence gender roles",15
This gender gap is perceived due to largely invisible nature of the roles of women and the inherent socio-cultural norms that deter gender equality in various spheres including natural resource access and decision-making,5
"More so, biodiversity loss has the tendency to disproportionately burden women by increasing the amount of time devoted to water, fuel, and food collection, thereby inhibiting educational access and fuelling gender inequalities (UN Women 2021)",15
(2017) conducted a simple synthesis of the renewable energy and Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) framework (i.e,7
"loss of habitat, eutrophication, and climate change)",13
"Using the mechanisms to achieve MA framework objectives, a renewable energy technology demonstration showed that while all examined renewable energy pathways are connected to MA framework, the overall effect differs significantly across the pathways",7
"They highlighted the well-documented positive aspects of renewable energy growth, including the fact that it is environmentally beneficial and provides both socioeconomic and community advantages",7
"Unfortunately, there are also some detrimental effects on biodiversity, and these must be included in renewable energy policy developments",7
"To gain an understanding of where ongoing and prospective renewable energy facilities may be located in relation to nature reserves, Rehbein et al",7
"(2020) investigated locations in which three different renewable energy generation methods — wind, hydropower, and solar photovoltaic — are situated",7
"Within the borders of these protected zones, there are 2206 completely operating renewable energy installations, as well as another 922 facilities now under construction",7
"When it comes to renewable energy facilities, there are concerns about land usage, and their combined effect may have a significant influence on world biodiversity",7
It was seen that the growth and energy consumption nexus is distributed over two sectors: fossil energy and renewable energy,7
"As in the case of fossil fuels, renewable energy has been shown to be a viable replacement for conventional energy",7
"Organic agriculture is often regarded as a reasonable answer to the ongoing biodiversity loss, and a considerable amount of assistance is provided via EU and national government subsidies (Emmerson et al",15
There is more literature but less consensus on the link of organic farming and biodiversity,2
"(2020) suggested that organic farming has been shown to increase biodiversity since it seldom uses pesticides or fertilisers, and most often relies on including a wider variety of crops",2
(2005) used meta-analysis to analyse the literature on organic farming and species diversity,2
"The findings revealed that organic farming is often associated with increases in individual species and abundance, but it is also likely to have different impacts on different organisms",2
"Based on the results, it was concluded that organic farming has a beneficial impact on the species richness and quantity of organisms, although this varies depending on the kind of creature and terrain",2
"When biodiversity on farms is measured, it is usually shown to be inversely correlated with crop production; this means organic farming by itself does not have an impact and instead causes lower yields and more biodiversity",2
"The results of an experiment done by Gardner and Brown (1998) showed that, on average, five different agricultural regimes, including organic farming, were all equal",2
"In contrast to traditional arable systems, organic farming methods seemed to be beneficial overall for biodiversity at the farm level",2
"Using data on the aggregate arable land growth of poor and middle-income tropical areas during the course of the 1960s to the year 1999, the authors generated many hypotheses that might be tested",15
"Using the dynamic generalised method of moments (GMM) econometric model, they claimed that big farmers in rural areas are often shown to have lower production and deforestation issues due to rural subsidies",15
"As a result, gender parity is essential found an indicator of sustainability (Alvarez 2013)",5
"Furthermore, UN Women (2014) precisely stated that attaining gender equality is critical to improving women’s responsibilities in performing their duties",5
"On the other side, if gender equality is not preserved, the country’s progress would be hampered",5
"In order for a nation to maintain sustainable growth, women must be engaged, and equal rights must be realised so that women may participate economically, socially, and politically for a better environment",8
"Also, Pillai and Suchintha (2006) extensively studied the role of females in environmental protection in the Periyar Tiger Reserve in India, using Self-Help Groups (SHGs)",15
Direct effects in areas such as energy consumption and waste disposal were reported to be significant,7
"It was discovered that effective use of R&D, new ICT systems, and the adoption of creative ICT regulations are necessary to reduce the adverse effects of ICT goods and activities on the ecosystem",9
"Control variables include the following: Gender Gap index (GGAP), Forest area (FOREST), E-governance index (EGOV), SP (Social Progress Index) and Environmental Protection Expenditure (EPE)",15
"IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List Index (RLI) is an index developed from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, which, after aggregated, produced a single value that represents all the information on the conservation status of a particular species",15
"It is specifically used as our proxy for biodiversity loss to measure the overall extinction risk of a set of species, as posited by Crosti et al",15
"It is important to note that changes in category emanated from the changes in taxonomical revisions, improvement in knowledge, and changes in the IUCN Red List criteria are excluded (Young et al",15
"However, organic farming (ORG) increases the diversity in the agricultural landscape",2
"On the other hand, renewable energy consumption (REN) measures the consumption of energy from sources that are naturally replenishing",7
"However, the high demand for renewable energy is killing Europe’s forests and therefore biodiversity is declining",7
"Hence, we expect a negative relationship between renewable energy consumption and biodiversity",7
"As pressure on the demand for renewable energy consumption in Europe increases, biodiversity also decreases",7
"Another core variable is Bayesian corruption index (BCI), a composite index that measures the perceived overall level of corruption",16
"Here, corruption is indicated as abusing public power for personal gains",16
It is an improvement over the conventional corruption perception index developed by World Governance Indicators of the World Bank because of the absence of manipulations in the estimation procedure (Standaet 2015),16
"Therefore, this measure provides a better estimate of corruption than the corruption perception index",16
"Recognising the importance of the forest as a proportion of total area in conserving diversity and the threat posed by deforestation in biodiversity loss, researchers focus on devising the means of conserving areas of high biodiversity",15
"Another variable used is the gender gap index (GGAP) measures gender equality based on the relative gaps between women and men across four areas: health, education, economy, and politics (World Economic Forum, 2018)",5
It is expected to negatively impact biodiversity because an increase in the index will increase the gender gap which in turn decreases biodiversity loss,15
"As a measure of digitalisation, this study also uses E-governance index which is a composite index that measures the development in online service, telecommunication infrastructure, and human development",9
"Finally, environmental protection expenditure (EPE) measures all expenditures on prevention, reduction, and elimination of pollution and all other forms of degradation of the environment (European Union 2014)",15
"It is therefore important to stress that the more government pays for environmental protection expenditure, the more it will conserve the diversity of the environment and a positive relationship between them can be observed",15
Table 1 provides the summary information of the variables used in this study and the expected signs of independent variables with Red List Index,15
"The Bayesian corruption index (BCI) has its standard deviation of 17.87 indicating that there is more variability from the sample mean, which implies that the data points are above the mean",16
"The environmental protection expenditure (EPE) has a minimum value of − 0.641 among other variables, while SPI has a maximum value of 93.08 among other variables, respectively",15
The correlation analysis in Table 4 explores the relationship between biodiversity loss proxied by the Red List Index and the independent variables of the model,15
Table 5 shows the result of the empirical analysis conducted to examine the effects of various unhealthy practices on biodiversity loss and analyse factors that can halt biodiversity loss in Europe,15
This is in line with a priori expectation as organic farming adopts environmentally friendly approaches such as diverse crop rotation and does not involve the use of harmful products like pesticides,2
"(2021), who found organic farming to be effective in improving biodiversity",2
The renewable energy consumption coefficient shows a negative influence on biodiversity at a very high significance level of 1%,7
"The higher demand for biomass comes with its attendant demerits, such as change and intensification of land use, which displaces and endangers varieties of species, thereby accelerating biodiversity loss",15
"(2020) found that even though it is crucial to transit from fossil fuels to renewable energy for sustainable development, its facilities are intense in land use with detrimental effects on conservation areas which enormously threaten global diversity",7
"(2017), who concluded that renewable energy consumption is of immense benefit both socio-economically and environmentally, even though some disadvantages exist",7
This underscores the importance of women empowerment and gender equality in promoting biodiversity in Europe,5
"For instance, enhanced social progress in terms of employment opportunities in the management of the environment will lead to more protected and conserved areas, thereby ameliorating biodiversity loss",15
"Similarly, environmental protection expenditure also exerts a positive although insignificant effect on biodiversity to the magnitude of 14% improvement",15
"As Europe devotes more resources to reduce or prevent environmental degradation and maintain environmental quality, biodiversity is conserved, especially under the Classification of Environmental Protection Activities (CEPA 2000)",15
"In contrast to PSCC, both the PSCE and DPD estimators show a significant impact on biodiversity loss, although the PSCE result shows a negative effect on biodiversity",15
"As before, renewable energy shows negative relation with the biodiversity indicator",7
(2019) also expressed concerns about the impact of facilities of clean energy on land use and biodiversity,7
"(2022) who said when there is abundance of corruption in a country, it harms the environmental efforts in the form of resource exploitation and deterioration of environmental quality",16
"Unlike other methods mentioned above, in FE and RE, EPE variable is not significant showing that national expenditure for environmental protection may not yield good outcome for biodiversity",15
The study further provides an empirical explanation for the failure of several attempts in Europe to reverse biodiversity loss,15
"Thus, the strategic and influential role of the coping mechanisms considered in the study, therefore, becomes vital to ensure renewable energy programs and benefits are optimised in Europe",7
Conservation practices and processes that are deployed online and ICT-driven need to be expanded with increased R&D (Research & Development) devoted to innovative practices,9
Relatedly reducing corruption to an insignificant minimum is vital as it is revealed to be detrimental to biodiversity in Europe,16
"This way, the exploitative and inefficient practices associated with corruption can be circumvented",16
"As unhealthy agricultural practices are a major contributor to biodiversity loss in Europe, it is important to not only intensify organic production but also enlarge the area for organic production and forest",15
"Conserving biodiversity through increased organic production will speed up the achievement of SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) 1 and 2 of no poverty and zero hunger as 35% of food from farm production are dependent on pollinators such as bees, birds, and bats (Sova and McGarry 2021)",2
"Therefore, significant progress in food security as well as the food production system, growth, and sustainability can be achieved through biodiversity",2
"Furthermore, conservation objectives need to be aligned with renewable energy needs to ensure policy consistency in the two important objectives without neglecting the pathways, methods, technologies, and other implementation modalities",7
"For instance, renewable energy pathways such as wind, hydro, solar, bioenergy, and geothermal that have been discovered to have smaller trade-offs with biodiversity (Gasparatos et al",7
This will also propel Europe towards achieving SDG 7 in terms of accessing reliable and sustainable clean energy,7
"It is, therefore, recommended for gender-differentiated biodiversity policies and practices be adopted to improve the success rate of biodiversity conservation in Europe",15
"Given that economic activities of production and consumption as well as habitation and urban planning and development are dependent upon natural resources, improving biodiversity is therefore crucial for ensuring healthy and sustainable activities and settlements",11
Expanding forest areas would also fast-track SDG 13 on climate action as restoring natural habitats is a natural method of reducing climate change which also serves as cushions against natural disasters,13
"Consequently, preventing biodiversity loss is an essential goal that should be accorded utmost priority as it is not only an end itself but also a means to the attainment of certain goals of the SDGs as well as the all-inclusive goal of life on the land, which involves integrating biodiversity values into national and international strategies to promote terrestrial ecosystems and ensure human development",15
"In a typical environmental pollution model, economic growth is one of the key important variables but this was beyond the scope of this study",8
"Moreover, future studies can explore how biodiversity loss is affected across the different continents and find out how the variables used in this study can affect this crisis.",15
"Globally, 795 million people are undernourished and 836 million suffer from extreme poverty (United Nations 2015)",1
"palm, soybean, cocoa butter, and shea) are crucial to food security with a high energy content and contribute largely to economic livelihoods",2
"(2012) attributed a decrease of tree density in the African Sahel to climate change forcing, specifically temperature increases and precipitation decreases (p < 0.05) through analysis of field measurements, aerial photos, and satellite imagery",13
"2011; Pouliot 2012; Pouliot and Elias 2013), without providing an overall context for how shea butter contributes more broadly to social development and food security",2
"In addition to shea’s obvious contribution to food security as an edible fat/oil, the sale of shea butter or dried nuts and the fruit surrounding the nut and kernel contribute to household food security",2
"Thus, shea can help to reduce household vulnerability to food insecurity (Pouliot 2012), and the promotion of shea markets is a useful strategy to prevent famine",2
"Several studies highlight shea butter’s potential for poverty reduction and livelihood improvement, particularly for women (Collins 2014; Hatskevich et al",1
"However, Pouliot (2012) concluded through extensive household income accounting that shea butter should not be considered a solution to poverty but rather a mechanism for household income diversification and food security",2
"In general, Africans rely on many different sources of income to decrease their vulnerability to poverty, climate variability, and food insecurity (Pouliot 2012)",2
"Women shea collectors at the research site also participated in agricultural activities, gardening, microfinance organizations, and other small enterprises (selling sauce ingredients, soap, or doughnuts fried with shea butter in the village or local markets) in addition to shea butter production",8
"However, women’s responses for the primary expenditures of their microfinance loans were distinctly different.Footnote 10 A large portion of microfinance loans was still used for purchasing sauce ingredients (15%) while the highest portion of responses was to buy seeds (20%) (See Fig",8
"Otherwise, women used microfinance loans to invest in commerce (10%), buy staple foods (10%), and purchase herbicide (10%) for their fields",8
Comparison of women’s primary expenditures from shea butter profits to major purchases with microfinance loans at the study site (N = 30) Sale and production of shea contribute to women’s equality and empowerment primarily by providing a social space for women (Chalfin 2004a) and an autonomous income,8
"Social capital is a social network consisting of family, friends, and their associated contacts that can help alleviate poverty and vulnerability (Natcher 2015)",1
"Overall, food security, women’s equality and empowerment, and income generation are inherent in the cultural and social capital aspects of shea butter in rural communities",2
"In fact, locals are also known to ingest this moth larvae as a source of protein and food security (Odebiyi et al",2
"Key recommendations include expansion of fair trade products, access to labor saving technologies, and shea nut storage",17
"For example, fair trade certified shea butter has primarily been used for cosmetic products that only make up 20% of the market and not confectionary products which make up over 80% of the market (Alander 2004; Lovett 2005)",17
"Thus, fair trade measures such as those for cocoa in chocolate should extend to products that utilize shea butter as a cocoa butter equivalent in chocolate industries",17
"Such measures could be promoted by governments, NGOs, and the Global Shea Alliance (GSA) (Fair Trade USA 2016; Global Shea Alliance 2015)",17
"However, fair trade policies need to be improved so that they not only favor urban producers but also benefit rural shea nut collectors like those at the study site and ensure fair prices in local markets (Elias and Saussey 2013; Pouliot and Elias 2013)",17
"Nevertheless, independent evaluations and studies that interview r ural women collectors should be contracted by the GSA to determine if warehouses are truly empowering rural women shea nut collectors without adverse cultural impacts, increased food insecurity, or erosion of social capital",2
"maintaining shea butter prices similar to another major export product, cocoa butter, in Ghana), global market tropical oil prices, and corruption (Chalfin 2004a)",16
"In general, governments, NGOs, and industry need to ensure that market expansion does not have negative impacts on economic empowerment, food security, and cultural aspects of women’s shea butter production",2
"However, potential impacts of climate change and globalization are major threats to the future expansion of shea butter production",13
"Thus, efforts are required to promote climate action (SDG 13) (e.g",13
"In conclusion, shea has long played an integral role in rural Malian society and household economies and remains a potential source of increased food security and market growth in Mali and throughout sub-Saharan Africa.",2
"This article examines the future role of energy efficiency as a resource in the Western US and Canada, as envisioned in the most recent resource plans issued by 16 utilities, representing about 60% of the region’s load",7
"Throughout North America, energy efficiency is generating unprecedented interest, and policymakers are exploring options for prioritizing efficiency in resource investment decisions",7
"Several factors are driving this trend, including: the perception that energy efficiency is a relatively low-cost, environmentally benign resource; rapidly escalating capital costs of new generation resources; difficulties in siting new power plants and major transmission facilities; significant increases in fuel costs for natural gas-fired generation plants; and the prospect of future greenhouse gas (GHG) emission regulations",7
"Electricity market structures vary by state and province in North America, with corresponding differences in the approaches to funding investments in energy efficiency",7
"Public benefit charges are a primary mechanism for supporting energy efficiency in these states, whereby a nonbypassable charge is levied on ratepayers to fund energy-efficiency programs administered by utilities or other entities",7
"Long-term resource planning can facilitate utility investments in energy efficiency by providing a relatively transparent framework within which utilities, state regulators, and other stakeholders can compare the relative cost-effectiveness and environmental impacts of supply- and demand-side resources",7
"In addition, Western states and provinces have adopted a wide range of additional policies that directly or indirectly promote energy efficiency, such as: efficiency standards for appliances, equipment, and new construction; tax credits; and policies to promote performance contracting in public institutional facilities",7
"This article examines the future role of energy efficiency as a resource in the Western US and Canada, as envisioned in the most recent resource plans issued by 16 of the region’s electric utilities",7
"We compare the projected savings from ratepayer-funded energy-efficiency programs included within the preferred resource portfolios proposed in utilities’ plans, and we attempt to link these results to state–provincial energy-efficiency and climate-change policies and other potential drivers of energy efficiency",7
"In many cases, utility resource plans represent the only publicly available source of information on projected levels of utility-sponsored energy efficiency over periods greater than 2–5 years.Footnote 2 We demonstrate how this information can be used for region-wide assessments, using the energy-efficiency resource acquisitions proposed in the 16 reviewed resource plans as a starting point to track progress toward the goal, adopted by the Western Governors’ Association (WGA), of reducing energy use throughout the Western US by 20% in 2020",7
We include BC Hydro in the Pacific Northwest group because it shares a similar climate and hydroelectric-based electric system with this region,7
"TER represents the amount of load that would have to be served with supply-side resources if no energy-efficiency strategies were implemented during the forecast period.Footnote 6
 The first metric in Table 2—energy savings as a percentage of forecast load—reveals the share of TER proposed to be met with energy efficiency and normalizes the energy-efficiency proposals for the size of the utility",7
"Puget Sound Electric (PSE) is also in this range, planning to meet over 11% of its load with energy efficiency after 10 years",7
"In aggregate, the 16 utilities are proposing to meet about 26% of their combined demand growth over the first 5 years of their plans with energy efficiency and 31% after 10 years",7
"Load growth is a significant issue for utilities in Western North America, and energy efficiency is often viewed through the lens of growth mitigation",7
"In California, energy efficiency is expected to reduce load growth by over 70% for PG&E and 40–50% for the other utilities",7
"Among the Inland West utilities, the impact on load growth rates is more modest, with reductions of up to one third.
 Impact of energy-efficiency programs on forecast energy load growth: 10-year time frame What explains the differences in proposed levels of energy efficiency among the utilities in this study? Clearly, there are regional trends: California leads with the most aggressive proposals, followed by the Pacific Northwest, and the lowest savings levels are observed among the Inland West utilities",7
"Despite the absence of a federal climate policy in the US, there is a growing activity at the state and regional level to establish policies to promote energy efficiency as a high priority resource and to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions",7
"In terms of simple numbers of policies and drivers, the California investor-owned utilities stand out—PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E’s proposed energy-efficiency activities are among the top four most aggressive, and these utilities are subject to the most factors in Table 3, reflecting an aggressive policy initiative in California to make energy efficiency the highest priority resource",7
"But this example aside, the number of policies and drivers in Table 3 does not have an obvious link to the amount of energy efficiency proposed in the resource plans",7
"For example, only one factor applies to Northwestern, yet it is ranked in the middle third of utilities, while several utilities in the bottom third have three or four factors.
 Obviously, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to disentangle the impact of all the policies and market drivers on utility preference for energy efficiency in their resource plans",7
"Instead, we discuss each in turn, providing where appropriate specific examples of how a given policy or driver impacted the level of energy efficiency considered or proposed in utility resource plans",7
"A number of jurisdictions in the West have implemented policies designed to directly encourage or mandate utility investment in energy efficiency, which are discussed below",7
"The states of California and Washington have adopted mandates requiring their investor-owned utilities to identify and pursue all achievable cost-effective energy efficiency before considering investment in new generation options.Footnote 8
 California’s mandate takes the form of a “loading-order” policy, codified by statute, requiring the state’s utilities’ procurement plans to “include a showing that the electrical corporation will first meet its unmet resource needs through all available energy-efficiency and demand reduction resources that are cost effective, reliable, and feasible” (Anonymous 2005a)",7
"The loading-order policy puts energy efficiency first because it is believed to be the lowest-cost, environmentally preferred resource",7
"This policy had a direct impact on the amount of energy efficiency proposed in PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E’s resource plans, and their proposals closely match the CPUC goals",7
"While several additional supporting policies and factors are in place to encourage and eliminate barriers to California’s investor-owned utilities pursuing energy efficiency, it was the annual energy savings goals set forth by the CPUC, and the underlying statutory mandate for utilities to acquire all achievable cost-effective energy efficiency, that drove the specific levels of energy efficiency proposed in these utilities’ resource plans",7
"Two states in the western US have enacted portfolio standards, either specifically for energy efficiency or for a broader class of resources that includes energy efficiency",7
Carbon emission reduction goals in Colorado (discussed below) appear to have played a more direct role in determining the level of energy efficiency proposed by PSCo,7
"Nevada has a renewable portfolio standard (RPS), which requires utilities to meet 20% of their energy requirements with renewable energy sources by 2015 but allows them to meet up to 25% of this target with energy efficiency (Anonymous 2005b, Sec",7
"Based on their assessment that this portion of their RPS target can be met more cost-effectively with energy-efficiency programs than with renewable energy projects, the Nevada utilities included energy-efficiency targets in their resource plans equal to the maximum amount of efficiency allowed for RPS compliance",7
"As neither Nevada Power nor Sierra Pacific attempted to evaluate whether additional energy efficiency would be cost-effective, the RPS appears to be effectively driving proposed investment levels in energy-efficiency programs in Nevada",7
"Thus, unlike PSCo, the Nevada utilities appear to treat their portfolio standard as a cap, rather than a floor, on the amount of energy efficiency they pursue",7
Utility spending on energy efficiency can affect the utility’s financial position: (1) through the impact on utility earnings of reduced sales and (2) through the effects on shareholder value of energy-efficiency spending versus investment in supply-side resources (Jensen 2007),7
"In the first case, energy efficiency directly reduces utility revenues by decreasing electric sales",7
Revenue decoupling is one method to address utility disincentives to pursue energy efficiency,7
"As a result, the utility’s revenues between rate cases are not affected by reduced sales resulting from energy-efficiency programs (or, depending on the design of the decoupling mechanism, other factors such as weather or economic growth)",8
"Although revenue decoupling can remove utilities’ short-term financial disincentives to pursuing energy efficiency, it does not provide a positive financial incentive to invest in efficiency",7
The policy goal is to align utility financial interests with the regulator’s established goals for successful delivery of energy efficiency,7
"Several states in the West (California, Washington, Montana, Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada) have adopted some form of shareholder incentives to encourage their electric utilities to pursue energy efficiency",7
Utility energy-efficiency program managers in Nevada also assert that performance incentives are an important driver for their management to make energy efficiency a high priority within the company (Sierra Pacific Power 2007),7
These jurisdictions prohibit their utilities from building new power plants or from signing new long-term contracts with plants that have carbon emission rates greater than a specified level,7
"By limiting generation options for meeting demand growth, such policies may provide additional impetus for utilities to consider energy efficiency",7
"As a condition for receiving approval to construct new power plants, these jurisdictions require that applicants for site permits physically offset a portion of the projected emissions",7
"By increasing the cost of GHG-emitting new generation, carbon emission mitigation requirements increase the competitiveness of energy efficiency relative to other options",7
Inclusion of GHG emission cost adders should increase the cost-effectiveness of energy efficiency (and renewable energy) relative to carbon-emitting generation resources in those jurisdictions where they are used,7
We identified two nonpolicy drivers that probably impact the level of energy efficiency proposed by utilities in the West: high forecast load growth and high retail electricity rates,7
"For such utilities, higher gross levels of energy savings will be required to offset their incremental load growth with energy efficiency",7
"forecast energy demand growth Nonetheless, high load growth creates significant additional opportunities for energy efficiency, particularly in new construction markets, which should offset the above phenomenon to some degree",7
"Load growth also places pressure on existing electric system infrastructure, potentially leading to incremental capital expenditures in new plant and transmission and distribution facilities, thereby increasing the avoided-capacity value of energy efficiency",7
"This is in part because the Inland West states have historically not been as active in promoting energy efficiency as the coastal regions, and current policies to promote energy efficiency are more limited (see Table 3 and above discussion)",7
"Thus, high retail electric rates may act as a driver for energy efficiency both directly (i.e., in utility resource plans) and indirectly (i.e., by driving the adoption of policies to support energy efficiency, such as were described above)",7
"While we have already discussed a number of policies driving this result, high prices in California have undoubtedly contributed to the consensus required to develop such strong support for energy efficiency.
 Efficiency program effects vs",7
"This demonstrates that energy efficiency can make economic sense in regions with relatively low retail rates, while suggesting that other factors may drive its support",7
"With its strong dependence on hydropower, its system planners have historically been more concerned about energy rather than capacity constraints",7
"This factor, in conjunction with the public’s desire to minimize the negative environmental consequences of electricity generation, provides important drivers for strong public policy support for energy efficiency in this region",7
"The bottom line is that, although retail rates can be a driver for energy efficiency, high electricity prices are not necessary to make the business case for efficiency and in isolation do not make a good predictor of energy-efficiency activity",7
"In 2004, the WGA, recognizing the need for a coordinated energy policy among its member states, formed the Clean and Diversified Energy Advisory Committee (CDEAC) to investigate clean energy options and develop consensus on a Clean and Diversified Energy initiative (CDEi) for the West",7
"This process resulted in a series of resolutions, including a voluntary goal of improving energy efficiency by 20% by 2020 (WGA 2004)",7
"However, the current resource plans provide only partial information to answer this question because they only specify savings from ratepayer-funded energy-efficiency programs and not from state or federal appliance-efficiency standards or energy-efficiency provisions in state building codes that could count toward the CDEi goal.Footnote 11
 Acknowledging these shortcomings, we report the energy-efficiency program data that were available in the resource plans as a proportion of TER in 2020, using 2006 as the starting point for counting efficiency measures (see Table 4).Footnote 12 This provides insight into the contribution of ratepayer-funded energy-efficiency programs, as currently envisioned by utilities, in meeting the CDEi goal of meeting 20% of energy requirements with energy efficiency by 2020.
 The California investor-owned utilities (PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E), along with PGE and PSE in the Pacific Northwest, are poised to achieve more than half of the WGA goal (i.e., at least 10% reduction in energy use) in their service territories if they implement the energy-efficiency programs proposed in their resource plans",7
"This survey of recent utility resource plans reveals a significant and growing commitment to energy efficiency as a resource in the West, even in states that have placed less emphasis on ratepayer-funded energy efficiency in recent years (e.g., Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, Montana)",7
"This study has demonstrated that, among utilities currently performing resource planning, commitments to energy efficiency vary considerably, with the most aggressive plans in California and parts of the Pacific Northwest and less aggressive proposals in the Inland West, where utilities and policymakers have had less experience implementing ratepayer-funded energy-efficiency programs in recent years",7
"Although it is difficult to disentangle the impacts of the numerous policy instruments and market drivers on the proposed levels of energy efficiency, a few trends do emerge",7
"Other policies, such as revenue decoupling and shareholder incentives, may be a necessary prerequisite for developing support for energy efficiency among utility managers and shareholders",7
And GHG emission reduction policies may also have an impact—albeit not easily measured—by enhancing the cost-effectiveness of energy efficiency relative to other resource options or more generally signaling the high priority attached to environmental impacts,7
"Going forward, we expect to see continued growth in the importance of energy efficiency in the West, as demand continues to grow, environmental concerns mount, and constraints on supply-side options continue to bind",7
 key factor in social development and sustainable urban expansion is the establishment of sustainable and affordable transport systems,11
"The results show that GDP has a significant positive effect, and GDP2 and GDP3 have significant adverse effects on environmental degradation, respectively",15
"Rail infrastructure investment has significant adverse effects, while road infrastructure investment and aviation infrastructure investment have significant positive effects on environmental degradation",15
They have an all-encompassing strategy to narrow the conflict between environmental sustainability and economic development and expand human well-being,8
"The ultimate goal of the SDGs is to build affordable, accessible, harmless, and sustainable transport systems for all segments of society and to build sustainable, inclusive, robust, and harmless cities and human settlements",11
"In this regard, a key issue in transforming cities and societies into viable progress is the upgrading of transport infrastructure (Komninos et al",9
"Source: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2022
 Road transport is one of the global transport GHG components in Fig. 2, producing nearly 74% of total transport GHG emissions and 20% of total GHG emissions",13
"In addition, building roads can scare wildlife by destroying farmland and depleting water resources, leading to deforestation, erosion, and animal deaths (Bashir et al",15
"IEA and IPCC (2014) Summary for Policymakers Second, 13% and 2% are the aviation industry’s total transport emissions and total greenhouse gas emissions, respectively (United States Environmental protection Agency 2022)",15
"Gössling and Humpe (2020) believe that aviation contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, but climate change is not to blame",13
"Conversely, nurturing transport systems can achieve sustainable transport systems and SDG 11, while achieving ecologically sustainable SDGs 13, 14, and 15 is critical",11
"The latest Glasgow 2021 UN Climate Change Conference target is to achieve a sustained, rapid, and deep decline in global carbon dioxide, more explicitly the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C to reduce emissions from the transport sector in Asia",13
"In global climate change, carbon emissions account for the largest proportion of greenhouse gas emissions from transportation",13
"Air transport infrastructure accounts for only 12% of carbon emissions, while road transport infrastructure, including personal pickups and four-wheelers, accounts for 76% of fuel emissions (Energypedia 2021)",9
"Therefore, the development of transport infrastructure becomes important; however, such development increases costs, such as it increases mortality (heart and lung cancer mortality) and incidence and environmental burden of PM 2.5 emissions (Donaldson 2018)",9
"Second, the interrelationship between investment in transport infrastructure and the SDGs has rarely been studied",9
"Since the influential work of Grossman and Krueger (1991), the relationship between economic growth and the environment within the framework of the EKC hypothesis has been recognized by environmentalists",8
"Grossman and Krueger (1991) used a cubic model of 42 countries to reveal the dynamic relationship between economic growth and the environment, and the results demonstrated that there is an N-type link between economic growth and the environment",8
"Furthermore, the researchers used economic growth and various environmental indicators to test the EKC hypothesis",8
"Through the use of renewable energy, the environmental burden of economic activities can be reduced, the natural regeneration capacity and the production and consumption of environmentally friendly technologies can be improved, and the emission level can be reduced (Nawaz et al",7
"Studies examine environmental degradation using sources of economic activity such as human capital accumulation, agriculture, foreign direct investment, and industrialization",15
Although environmental degradation is varied and cannot be reduced with the impact of human capital on each income level (Tiwari et al,15
"2022), consumption and production activities triggered by free trade regimes can contribute to environmental degradation (Isik et al",15
"The transmission of foreign direct investment (FDI) in polluting industries can lead to environmental degradation in the initial stage, but the aggravating effect of FDI can be offset by the transformation of environmental protection technology (Marques and Caetano 2020; Christoforidis and Katrakilidis 2021)",15
"(2020), while, few studies have found agricultural benefits with little or no impact on environmental degradation (Giller et al",15
"At present, the debate on the link between infrastructure and the environment still exists, and researchers are more inclined to explore the link between transportation infrastructure and environmental degradation",15
Erdogan (2020) selected 21 OECD countries to reveal the effect of investment in transport infrastructure on environmental pollution,9
Road infrastructure promoting green growth and reducing the intensity of China’s polluting emissions are the results of the analysis,8
"(2020a, b) obtained cross-country panel data for countries along the Belt and Road from 2007 to 2016, revealing the impact of road and rail infrastructure on economic growth",8
The results show that rail transit infrastructure and road infrastructure make a significant contribution to the economic growth of selected Belt and Road countries,8
(2021) investigated the impact of road infrastructure investment on economic growth in Uganda using an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach,8
"The results of the analysis identified an adverse effect of rail infrastructure on economic growth, but investment in aviation infrastructure and road infrastructure appeared to have a gradual effect on economic growth",8
A central part of SDG-11 is advocating for sustainable transport systems and ensuring ecological sustainability is at the heart of the SDGs,11
A necessary element of sustainable urban and economic development is that the drafting of transport investment policies based on empirical findings may be critical to modern transport systems,8
"Two major theories, Ecological Modernization Theory (EMT) and Compact City Theory (CCT), clearly explain the link between the environment and investment in transport infrastructure",9
The development of infrastructure through revolutionary technologically proficient and advanced transportation systems can improve environmental quality by reducing energy consumption in transportation and resource use (De Souza et al,7
"Based on the above arguments, the following logarithmic model is built to reveal the impact of transportation infrastructure investment on environmental damage and economic growth in Asian developing countries (China, India, Russia, and Japan) over the period 1995–2020",8
"GDP represents gross domestic product, used as a proxy for economic growth, and TOP stands for trade openness",8
"Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are used as an alternative for environmental degradation measured in millions of matric tones (Mmt), trade openness (TOP) in percent of GDP, and gross domestic product (GDP) in constant 2015 US dollars",15
Disaggregated transport infrastructure investment data in current euro values are highlighted on the OECD website,9
"The findings of the long-term estimated parameters related to Eq. (1) in Table 6 show that GDP contributes significantly to environmental degradation, while GDP2 and GDP3 significantly reduce environmental pollution",15
The significant positive coefficient of GDP (GDP > 0) indicates that GDP continues to influence environmental degradation to some extent due to scale effects,15
"The early stages of re-capacity for economic development can accelerate the use of natural resources and human activities, thereby stimulating greenhouse gas emissions",8
"The negative coefficients of GDP squared and GDP cubed (GDP2 < 0; GDP3 < 0) indicate that economic growth due to technological and structural effects reaches a certain threshold, after which selected economies begin to engage in clean activities and environmentally friendly technologies",8
"Investment in railway infrastructure (RA) has significantly reduced environmental degradation, while investment in road infrastructure (RO) has significantly increased environmental pollution",15
"Every 1% increase in railway infrastructure investment can reduce environmental degradation by 0.028%, while every 1% increase in road infrastructure investment can reduce environmental pollution by 0.06%",15
The negative link between rail infrastructure and the environment may be due to the clean technology of the rail transport system,11
"Third, shipping and passenger transport are huge potentials of the railway industry",9
"Moreover, the economies of scale of traditional air or road transport systems for both passenger and freight transport are lower than those of the rail industry",9
"First, the positive environmental impact of the air transport system is based on the fact that air transport facilities occupy a large amount of land",11
Higher demand for nature-based building materials could lead to increased deforestation (Seddon et al,15
"Long-term variable coefficient estimates based on economic growth models reflect that investments in classified transportation infrastructure (roads, railways, and aviation) significantly contributed to economic growth",8
"Every 1% increase in railway infrastructure, aviation infrastructure, and road infrastructure can significantly boost economic growth by 0.048%, 0.091%, and 0.036%, respectively",8
"Moreover, the impact of carbon emissions on economic growth is positive but not significant, while the impact of trade openness on economic growth is significantly positive",8
"However, the validity of the Japanese EKC hypothesis is N-type, as GDP2 significantly reduces carbon emissions, while GDP and GDP3 significantly contribute to Japan’s environmental degradation",15
"In China, India, Russia, and Japan, railway infrastructure investment (RA) has a significantly negative impact on environmental degradation, while road infrastructure investment (Ro) has a significantly positive impact on environmental degradation",15
This study also aims to understand which types of transport infrastructure investments are greener to ensure sustainability and low pollution targets for urban transport facilities,9
"The results show that GDP contributes significantly to environmental degradation, while GDP2 and GDP3 significantly reduce environmental pollution",15
"Investment in railway infrastructure (RA) has significantly reduced environmental degradation, while investment in road infrastructure (RO) has significantly increased environmental pollution",15
"Long-term variable coefficient estimates based on economic growth model reflect that investments in classified transportation infrastructure (roads, railways, and aviation) significantly contributed to economic growth",8
"Moreover, the impact of carbon emissions on economic growth is positive but not significant, while the impact of trade openness on economic growth is significantly positive",8
"However, the validity of the Japanese EKC hypothesis is N-type, as GDP2 significantly reduces carbon emissions, while GDP and GDP3 significantly contribute to Japan’s environmental degradation",15
"In China, India, Russia and Japan, railway infrastructure investment (RA) has a significantly negative impact on environmental degradation, while road infrastructure investment (Ro) has a significantly positive impact on environmental degradation",15
"Promoting the development of renewable resources such as wind, wave, and solar energy is essential to absorb the adverse externalities of resource use in production and consumption activities and to limit the use of non-renewable resources such as fossil fuels",7
"In addition, policymakers should move away from traditional polluting road and air infrastructure investments and encourage new facilities or retrofit old roads and airports with environmentally friendly building materials",9
"On the causal directions amidst the variables, there was no causality between green investments and environmental degradation was evidenced; however, a bidirectional causality between financial development and environmental pollution was also discovered",15
"According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), worldwide CO2 emissions raised by about 90% between 1970 and 2011, with 78% of the total CO2 emissions coming from fossil fuel combustion and industrial operations",15
"The surge in emissions reported by the IEA is not surprising, since global energy utilization in 2018 rose by 2.3%, representing almost double the mean growth rate, driven by robust world economic development and heating and cooling necessities of the world economies (IEA 2019)",8
"Thus, the alarming growth in the rate of global CO2 emissions calls for the implementation of emission-mitigation policies worldwide (Murshed and Tanha 2021; Musah et al., 2021a, b, c, d). More importantly, it has been duly hypothesized in the literature that greening of certain macroeconomic policies can assist in decoupling CO2 emissions from economic growth (Wang et al",8
"Though most of the global nations have undertaken GI by investing heavily in clean energies to help improve their environmental qualities, Ghana is far behind due to its low percentage of renewables in its overall energy mix (Murshed 2020)",7
"Moreover, technological innovations are also connected to research and development (Ma et al",9
"2021). Hence, investments in research and development has all the attributes of helping Ghana to become a low-carbon economy",9
It has further been hypothesized in literature that energy efficiency is environmentally beneficial since it reduces the volume of energy consumed to produce a certain amount of output (Fidanoski et al,7
"Therefore, investments in energy efficiency are a vital means through which Ghana could improve its EQ (IPCC 2018)",7
"According to Krushelnytska (2018) and Lindenberg (2014), GI are not limited to only investments in clean energies and technological innovations, but incorporates other investments that help to boost water and sanitation, among others",6
"Therefore, by sustainably stimulating the management of water and sanitation, GI help in attaining SDG 6",6
"Moreover, GI facilitate the attainment of SDG 9 by promoting green innovations and sustainable industrialization",9
"Finally, SDG 13 advocates for investments into activities that help to mitigate the adversities of climate change",13
A well-developed financial sector also promotes energy efficiency and sustainability by financing the production of energy-saving home appliances (Shobande and Ogbeifun 2021b),7
"Likewise, FD encourages investments in research and development that are linked to environmental sustainability (Li et al",9
"2021) and renewable energy consumption to measure GI (Ganda 2018), we adopted the principal components analysis (PCA) technique to compute GI and FD indexes for the study",7
"Employing the mediation regression analysis technique, it was uncovered that green investments could reduce GHG emanations, but through this reduction, the investment could not enhance competitiveness",13
"From the FMOLS, DOLS, and CCR estimates, investments in green energy reduced the rate of pollution in Australia, Austria, and Chile",7
The study concluded that green energy investments were the catalyst to abate the emanation of carbon and stimulate growth in the industrial sectors of the economies,7
This underscores the pivotal role played by biomass energy consumption towards the attainment of ecofriendly environment in the economies,7
The study suggested that China should speed its investments in green energy by constructing new technology systems to help boost its ecosystem,7
"To further enhance EQ, the study also advocated for improvements in energy efficiency and energy quality and the promotion of energy diversification in the country",7
"(2020) and Masoud (2020), investments in energy efficiency were decisive in enhancing EQ",7
"From the results, investments by energy service companies (ESCOs) that carried out energy-efficient retrofit projects helped to improve EQ via low emissions",9
The study advised the government to increase its investments in green energy to help mitigate environmental pollution in the nation,7
"(2020) studied energy efficiency of cotton growers in South Punjab, Pakistan",7
"From the discoveries, investments in energy efficiency helped to save 23% of the total energy consumed in the industry and significantly aided in emission mitigation",7
"(2020), countries in the ASEAN region should turn to green energy investments to help increase energy demands and boost EQ",7
(2021) investigated the contribution of green energy on emission mitigation in the globe,7
"From the results, investments in clean energy had an overall mitigation contribution of − 11.04% to total carbon emanation change globally",7
(2021) undertook an exploration on the USA and discovered biomass energy as the perfect catalyst to boost EQ and energy security in the country,7
(2019) investigated the metallurgical sector of Switzerland and confirmed that energy efficiency improvement helped to mitigate the emanation of carbon by 6%,7
"(2019), energy efficiency helped to improve EQ via emission reduction",7
"From the discoveries, investments in energy efficiency improved EQ in the nations",7
(2021d) researched on South Asia and confirmed that clean energy utilization was ideal for safeguarding environmental well-being in the region,7
(2021) studied 15 RE consuming economies from 1996 to 2018 and highly recommended that the nations should shift their energy utilization policies towards clean energy sources by investing in RE technologies to help attain sustainable development,7
"Via the two-sector (dirty energy and clean energy) model of directed technical change, Yao and Zhang (2021) explored the connection amidst FD and EQ in China",7
It was therefore suggested that FD should be prioritized alongside investments in energy efficiency to help advance EQ,7
Lahiani (2020) explored the FD-EQ linkage in China controlling for energy utilization and economic development,8
The study controlled for energy consumption (EC) because it has a material association with EQ (Adebayo et al,7
This makes our work distinct from prior explorations that measured GI by only investments in renewable energy or investments in energy efficiency,7
"The GII was computed as a linear combination of three variables encompassing renewable energy consumption, technological innovations, and energy efficiency",7
"Renewable energy consumption was factored into the GII computation, because renewables have proven to be ecologically beneficial in almost all economies (Ganda 2018)",7
"Also, energy efficiency was included in the GII construction, because it is environmentally beneficial",7
"According to the IPCC special report on global warming, energy efficiency reduces the rate of carbon emissions in various economies",7
"(2021), energy intensity was used as a proxy of efficient energy utilization",7
The ratio of energy used to GDP was used to compute data values for energy efficiency,7
"The smaller the ratio, the lesser the energy intensity of the nation (Daniel et al",7
"Contrarily, a larger energy intensity ratio symbolizes energy inefficiency (Fidanoski et al",7
"Technological innovations were factored into the GII computation, because technology improves energy resource efficiency and helps to reduce the cost of green energy generation",7
"(2021a), innovations are characterized by higher scientific research, new ideas in product processes, market extension, and stable financial growth that help to abate the effusions of carbon",9
"Thus, technological innovation plays a vital role in uplifting economic progress and is therefore a useful tool in advancing ecological quality (Ahmad et al",8
"(2017) who perceived technological innovation as a key solution to environmental problems and sustainable development, because it involves the development of new ideas, the development and application of new technologies, and the modification of existing production processes",8
"With the goal of minimizing OVB, the study controlled for energy consumption (EC)",7
"First, if developments in the financial sector increased the volume of industrial activities in the country, then we expected the marginal influence of FDI on environmental degradation to be positive \(\left({\beta }_{5}=\frac{\partial {lnCO}_{2t}}{{\partial lnFDI}_{t}}>0\right)\), collaborating those of Doğanlar et al",15
"Under the aforestated scenarios, FDI was anticipated to be harmless to EQ in Ghana  \(\left({\beta }_{5}=\frac{\partial {lnCO}_{2t}}{{\partial lnFDI}_{t}}<0\right).\) Finally, as countries increase the consumption of dirty energies to accelerate their pace of economic growth, so would EQ deteriorate due to increased emissions (Agbede et al",8
(2020c) who averred that FD can trigger investments in research and development that can help to improve EQ via technological innovations,9
(2021) further contrast the positive connection between FD and environmental degradation discovered by this study,15
"This means that during the early stages of growth, economic development raised the level of pollution in the country to a certain threshold level at which further growth led to EQ via decreased emissions",8
"The negative connection between the square of income and environmental pollution validates the EKC hypothesis, as the initial rise in environmental degradation with the rise in growth could be attributed to structural change in economic viability and technological improvements (Sarkodie 2018), while the ensuing mitigation of pollution with rising growth could be linked to individuals’ demand for EQ, which led to the implementation of environmentally friendly policies (Sarkodie and Strezov 2019)",15
"The positive association between the cube of income and environmental pollution implies Ghana’s clean energy initiatives were not implemented and enforced at the second threshold level, hence the rise in environmental pollution again",7
This demonstrates that Ghana is still lagging behind in terms of expertise that can promote the consumption of clean energy,7
"This is in tandem with Sarkodie and Adams (2018) who postulated that the use of energies from clean sources reduces the reliance on imported fossil fuels, resulting in increased energy security and economic viability",7
"The damaging influence of EC on EQ is also conflicting to that of Owusu and Asumadu-Sarkodie (2016) who viewed clean energy as beneficial because it is linked to sustainable development due to its easy access, social and economic advantages, and adverse effect on environmental pollution",7
"Moreover, the N-shaped connection amidst income and environmental degradation was validated",15
"Also, a + 10% shock in FDI promotes environmental degradation in the country; however, a − 10% shock in FDI improves the country’s ecological quality as illustrated in Fig. 3 and Fig. 4, correspondingly",15
"Also, a + 10% shock in Y2 curtails environmental degradation in the nation; however, a − 10% shock in the variable spurred the country’s level of pollution as portrayed in Fig. 7 and Fig. 8, correspondingly",15
"Finally, a + 10% shock in EC promotes environmental pollution in the nation; however, a − 10% shock in the variable abated environmental degradation in the nation as shown in Fig. 11 and Fig. 12, correspondingly",15
"Note: The dots denote average predicted values, while dark blue to light blue lines represent 75%, 90%, and 95% confidence intervals Positive 10% shock in energy consumption (EC)",7
"Note: The dots denote average predicted values, while dark blue to light blue lines represent 75%, 90%, and 95% confidence intervals Negative 10% shock in energy consumption (EC)",7
"Moreover, a bidirectional causality between FDI and environmental degradation was uncovered",15
"Additionally, a unidirectional causality from income to environmental degradation was discovered",15
Sustained and inclusive economic growth increases population’s income level and purchasing power (Sarkodie et al,8
"Hence, expanding economic growth could be at the cost of EQ in Ghana",8
This means that the rise and fall in income square did not have any noticeable influence on environmental degradation,15
This signifies that environmental degradation was reliant on the cube of income,15
"Finally, a causation from energy utilization to environmental degradation was discovered",15
"Because of the consequences of climate change, studying the connection amidst macroeconomic variables and environmental quality has been considered very essential",13
"On the causal directions amidst the variables, there was no causality between green investments and environmental degradation",15
"Also, a causality from income to environmental degradation was discovered; however, there was no causation between income square and environmental pollution",15
"Finally, one-directional causalities from income cube and energy utilization to environmental degradation were discovered",15
"As a recommendation, energy from renewable sources should be added to the respective energy mixes of the country to help improve its diminishing rate of clean energy consumption",7
Increasing clean energy usage will likely lessen the country’s dependency on polluting fossil fuels,7
"Furthermore, lessening tariffs and duties levied on inputs used for clean energy generation can also help to improve environmental sustainability in the country",7
"Also, intensifying investments in research and development related to emission mitigation could limit the level of pollution in the nation",9
"(2021), investments in energy efficiency are one of the strategies of reducing ecological pollution in the society",7
"Based on the above, Ghana should allocate more resources for energy efficiency investments",7
"Moreover, financial institutions in the nation should focus on financing investments in energy-efficient technologies and research and developments that embrace transition to clean energy",7
"(2021), well-developed financial systems can boost private sector investments in R&D of less carbon-intensive technologies, as well as identifying and addressing barriers that inhibit households and businesses from embracing clean energies, through the provision of financial and technical supports",9
"It is also advisable for the nation to finance the setup of renewable power plants, which would not only minimize the country’s reliance on dirty energies, but would also help to mitigate environmental pollution in the country",7
"Moreover, Ghana should try and attract foreign aid into its clean energy sector",7
"This could be in the form of financial support, technical expertise, or green energy technologies, all aimed at boosting environmental quality in the nation",7
"Additionally, the country should liberalized its trade policies to enhance the importation of inputs that can boost clean energy production",7
"Finally, since Ghana is still a developing economy, institutional tools needed to improve both environmental quality and economic growth must be strengthened",8
The negative externalities of freight transport have caught the attention of scholars and practitioners to study sustainable freight transportation,9
"Based on the results, the SRFT knowledge was categorized into six thematic branches (31 sub-branches), namely intermodal transportation for decarbonization; green policies, risk, and energy assessment research; savings in externalities for a sustainable future; decision-making with environmental and economic considerations; case studies and applications in SRFT research; and technological advancements towards sustainability",13
"The principal goal of freight transport is to deliver goods efficiently and reliably, from source to destination, with the help of different transport modes such as road, rail, air, and water",9
Yang (2021) highlighted a strong correlation between freight volume and a nation’s economic growth,8
"(2018) reported that world statistics of freight transport activity for road and rail modes stood at 60% and 40%, respectively",9
Many review articles on sustainable freight transport have been published in the past,9
Meyer (2020) presented an extensive literature review of 715 articles on the decarbonization of road freight transportation,13
(2018) identified sustainability intervention mechanisms to manage road freight transport externalities,9
(2019) reviewed the application status of operational research-based planning techniques in road and maritime modes of green freight transport,9
"First, the sustainability and freight transport-related keywords were identified by Meyer (2020), Ren et al",9
"The second and third level encompasses keywords defining freight transport and railway, respectively, and is the outcome of the second session",9
"(2013) attained the second-highest citations, in which authors explored the impact of pooling of the supply chain on the greenhouse emissions from freight transport",9
"2015), environmental performance assessment of freight transport (Horvath 2006), operations research (e.g., trade-offs between energy, environmental and economic aspects (Winebrake et al",9
"The source file was manually modified to merge keywords with semantic meanings, such as carbon emission versus carbon emissions, sustainable transport versus sustainable transportation",11
"The top 5 most frequent keywords are rail transport (occ. = 38, TLS = 37), freight transport (occ. = 35, TLS = 43), intermodal transport (occ. = 30, TLS = 43), sustainability (occ. = 27, TLS = 34), and modal shift (occ. = 27, TLS = 38)",9
"The second cluster concentrates on multimodal freight movement and sustainable transportation (e.g., multimodal, freight transport, sustainability, and externalities)",9
"Next, the third and fourth clusters consist of six keywords each, emphasizing the “simulation, emissions and intermodal transportation” and “assessment of energy efficiency and risks for sustainable future of rail freight transportation”, respectively",7
"However, the partial modal shift from road to rail is a practically possible strategy to mitigate climate change",13
(2021) evaluated the LCA of unimodal and multimodal freight transport scenarios in the context of environmental sustainability and concluded that road-only mode performed poor than the multimodal truck and train mode,9
Only five studies focused on the performance assessment of rail freight transport,9
"Moreover, twenty-seven articles discussed energy consumption in the SRFT research domain",7
"Vanek (2019) proposed the growing use of rail mode to transport food products, farm products, and non-metallic minerals to achieve lower energy consumption levels in the USA",7
"(2015) highlighted the externalities of rail freight transport, such as air pollution, noise, congestion, and accidents",9
"Also, Heinold (2020) compared five emission models of rail freight transport to analyze the effect of parameters such as the number of wagons, payload per wagon, the average speed, and trip distance",9
"(2021) applied the MCDM technique, i.e., fuzzy analytic hierarchy process, to examine the linkages between National Determined Contributions and freight transport activities",9
"2018), energy consumption associated with cold chains of perishable products (Gallo et al",7
Few studies received traction for the implementation of smart technologies to bring environmental sustainability to rail freight transport (13 articles),9
"However, this research domain gained momentum after 2017 (Fig. 2) as customer awareness towards sustainable freight transport prevails largely",9
Sustainability is the most recent emerging keyword in rail freight transport research (Fig. 9 and Table 7),9
"Although sustainable transport research has attracted researchers’ interest in recent years, limited frameworks discussed performance assessment by considering all three sustainability pillars (Fig. 9 and Table 7)",11
The freight transport stakeholders still face difficulties lowering the freight traffic burden from road mode,9
"This is because case studies are based on real-life problems, and freight transport players have started to blend sustainability concepts into their freight operations",9
"The existing articles on HSR for freight transport analyze the impact on carbon emissions, noise, and vibrations",9
There is limited research on a performance evaluation exclusively focused on rail freight transport with simultaneous consideration of three dimensions of sustainability,9
There is a need to develop a performance evaluation framework using sustainability indicators crafted exclusively for rail freight transport,9
"What challenges may be a successful modal transition from road to rail freight transportation? What are the enablers, barriers, and solutions of modal shift from road to rail freight transport and their order of preference from major stakeholders’ perspectives? What is the cause-and-effect relationship among the enablers, barriers, and solutions from major stakeholders’ perspectives? The mode selection is crucial to achieving environment-friendly, economically efficient, and socially viable inland freight transportation",9
"However, there is a limited focus on the modal choice selection studies that are exclusively dedicated to the inland freight transport modes",9
"However, it is also hugely responsible for excessive energy consumption, immoderate carbon emissions, and severe fatal accidents",7
"Sustainable freight transport has attracted attention from the research community, practitioners, and governments",9
This study comprehensively reviews sustainable freight transport focused on rail mode,9
"Moreover, this study categorized the existing SRFT literature into six thematic branches and discussed the state-of-the-knowledge from major focal points, namely: intermodal transportation for decarbonization; green policies, risk, and energy assessment research; savings in externalities for a sustainable future; decision-making with environmental and economic considerations; case studies and applications in SRFT research; and technological advancements towards sustainability",13
"Moreover, the government policies and support for increased use of multimodal transportation may enable freight transport modal shift from unimodal road to multimodal railroad mode",9
"New pan-Pacific movements make a case for this third view, while resisting the two others, as well as the direct and indirect impacts of climate change (Teaiwa 2018)",13
"This claim and respective enactments of rights over, responsibilities towards, and stewardship of the Pacific Ocean, are critical to meet global conservation goals (ibid.), such as the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14, ‘Life below water’, which aims to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources, while being related to all other SDGs (Singh et al",14
"The notions of justice (Kopnina 2014) and particularly environmental justice (Schlosberg 2004; Svarstad and Benjaminsen 2020), as well as SDG 10 (‘Reduced inequalities’), are clearly concerned with equalizing relations between those who have power and those who do not, including children",10
"In 2019, our interdisciplinary team (anthropology, ethnoecology, geography, marine science) organized drawing workshops in schools located in three different areas in Fiji and New Caledonia: (1) an urban site; (2) a rural site; and (3) a second rural site, adjacent to a formal marine protected area (MPA) (hereafter, ‘rural-MPA site’)",14
"Fiji’s and New Caledonia’s coral reef ecosystems host substantial marine and coastal biodiversity, are essential to local livelihoods, but are increasingly threatened by rapid social-ecological changes, as on Cicia Island and in Yaté",14
"Whether or not their drawings explicitly referred to the land, the children depicted some elements that inherently reflected different types and aspects of land-sea interactions such as boats, sea turtles, or land-originated marine pollution",14
"The first campaign, 4FJ (pronounce “for Fiji”), was initiated in 2014 to promote a seasonal fishing ban on grouper (kawakawa) and coral trout (donu) species, which was then formalized by the Ministry of Fisheries through the amendment of the Offshore Fisheries Management Regulations 2014 with effect from 1 June 2019",14
"Beyond the influence of such campaigns, the interviews revealed that the children got information about the unsustainable fishing and marine pollution issues they highlighted from various sources, including their relatives, teachers (as part of the school curriculum, e.g., in biology and geography), books, television, and the internet",14
"The experts, economists, policymakers, and the governments expressed their pledges and determinations to adapt and mitigate climate change",13
Policymakers and governments have started adopting green growth and development strategies,8
One of the major challenges has been promulgating and strictly implementing environmental regulations and policies vis-à-vis green growth and development,8
"In the wake of the Paris agreement and the global consensus on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, the global economies have been focusing on the formulation and implementation of adaption and mitigation strategies (Ahmed et al",13
"(2020) traced out the causal relationships among environmental regulation, green technological innovation (GTI), and their interaction term on eco-efficiency in China",8
The study explores the impact of GDI on eco-efficiency under multiple environmental regulations to adjust and obtain the more marginal benefit of green technology,9
Global efforts were underway to combat the menace of climate change,13
There is a dire need to be persistent in the efforts of mitigation and adaptation of climate change,13
"Though the pandemic has affected the growth and development trajectories of the economy, yet an economic recovery tilted toward green stimulus and reduction in traditional fuel investment would add the positive outcomes in avoiding future global warming (Forster et al",8
"The Chinese economy, being first hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, is focusing on economic recovery",8
"The focus is on the stimulation of investment in infrastructure to facilitate renewable energy, intercity transport, and electric vehicle charging stations",7
"Moreover, the Chinese government, in post-COVID-19 recovery, is focusing on five work streams—food, water and energy, urban climate adoption, circular economy, energy storage (Thorpe 2020)",12
These criteria and sub-criteria are distilled through extensive literature review in environmental regulation and policy formulations for green economic development and green economic efficiency achievement in the Chinese economy,8
The recent study provides a profound understanding by arguing that moderate environmental regulation can help reduce the damaging influence of green technological innovation (Liu et al,8
"Since globally, many countries have traditional environmental regulations and economic efficiency system, which negatively impacts the environment, such as global warming, climate change, air pollution, and human health (such as COVID-19)",13
It can be seen that the Socio-Economic Development Policies (A1) is the most relevant GEE criteria with a weight of 0.161 (16.10%) to achieve sustainable environmental regulation and economic efficiency goals,8
The Green Growth Agenda (B2) received third importance with a weight of 0.120 (12%) from the overall 10 GEE criteria,8
"The Blue-Green Infrastructure Development (H8), Pollution Control and Waste Management (I9), and Labor Policies (J10) are considered to be the least significant GEE criteria",12
Figure 2 shows the final prioritizing order of GEE sub-criteria with respect to Socio-Economic Development Policies (A1),8
"Furthermore, the Gender Mainstreaming (A14) and Sectoral and Regional Development Initiatives (A15) are recognized as the third important GEE sub-criterion with the same weight of 0.171 (17.10%)",5
Ensuring Stakeholder Participation (A13) and Social Inclusion in Green Economy (A16) has obtained the lowest weight of 0.168 (16.80%) and 0.120 (12%),10
Weight and ranking of Socio-Economic Development Policies (A1) Figure 3 shows the weight and ranking of GEE sub-criteria with respect to the Green Growth Agenda (B2),8
"The Inclusive and Collaborative Planning (B21) and Promote Green Growth Patterns (B22) are the third significant GEE sub-criteria with an equal weight of 0.211 (21.10%), respectively",8
Weight and ranking of Green Growth Agenda (B2) Figure 4 shows the weight and ranking of GEE sub-criteria under Green Industrial Development (C3),8
Research and Development (R&D) (F63) is considered to be the third important GEE sub-criteria with a weight of 0.210 (21%),9
The Green Technology Innovation (F64) and Marketization Innovation (F65) were reported to be the least vital GEE sub-criterion with a weight of 0.201 (20.10%) and 0.144 (14.40%),9
Weight and ranking of Technological Initiatives and Innovation (F6) Figure 8 displays the weight and ranking of GEE sub-criteria with respect to Green Energy Production and Consumption Practices (G7),7
"The analysis reveals that the Green Energy Initiative (G71) received the highest weight of 0.449 (44.90%), followed by Energy-Saving Technology Adoption (G72) and Green Energy Transmission and Distribution System (G73) with a weight of 0.321 (32.10%) and 0.230 (23%)",7
Weight and ranking of Green Energy Production and Consumption Practices (G7) Figure 9 depicts the weight and ranking of GEE sub-criteria under Blue-Green Infrastructure Development (H8),7
The findings show that the Blue Infrastructure Development (H81) and Recycling Infrastructure (H83) attained the priority order with an equal weight of 0.219 (21.90%),12
The Transport Infrastructure (H84) is considered the second vital GEE sub-criteria with a weight of 0.214 (21.40%),9
Weight and ranking of Blue-Green Infrastructure Development (H8) Figure 10 presents the weight and ranking of GEE sub-criteria with respect to the Pollution Control and Waste Management (I9),12
Wastewater Management (I92) appeared as the second vital sub-criteria with a weight of 0.264 (26.40%),6
The Shared and Circular Economy Promotion (I94) and Solid Waste Management (I93) recognized as third and fourth vital GEE cub-criterion with a weight of 0.247 (24.70%) and 0.188 (18.80%),12
Weight and ranking of Pollution Control and Waste Management (I9) Figure 11 shows the weight and ranking of GEE sub-criteria under Labor Policies (J10),12
The findings reveal that Green Energy Initiative (G71) and Energy-Saving Technology Adoption (G72) are the most significant sub-criteria among all 48 GEE sub-criteria,7
These GEE sub-criteria belong to the Green Energy Production and Consumption Practices (G7),7
"The Sustainable Development Initiative (A11) followed by Green Civil Society Initiative(s) (A12), Gender Mainstreaming (A14), and Sectoral and Regional Development Initiatives (A15) are the next vital GEE sub-criterion",5
"These sub-criteria A11, A12, A14, and A15 belong to the Socio-Economic Development Policies (A1) category",8
The green economic development strategy (S1) is considered as a third vital alternative of the study,8
"Among 10 GEE criteria, Socio-Economic Development Policies (A1), Green Industrial Development (C3), and Green Growth Agenda (B2) are the most important criteria for the adoption and boosting up of the sustainable environmental regulation and GEE in China",8
"Furthermore, the final ranking of sub-criteria shows that Green Energy (G71), Energy-Saving Technology Adoption (G72), and Sustainable Development Initiative (A11) are the most significant criteria",7
The local production and utilization (S3) and green economic development (S1) are the second and third vital GEE alternative strategies,8
"Such as transition to green industrial growth (Feng and Chen 2018), environmental regulation can decrease the harmful influence of green technological innovation (Liu et al",8
"2020), and environmental regulation, industrial innovation, and green development in the context Chinese manufacturing (Yuan and Xiang 2018)",9
"Like other economies, the Chinese economy has started focusing on green economic development and GEE to achieve SDGs",8
The empirical results of Fuzzy AHP show that Socio-Economic Development Policies (A1) are the most vital criteria to initiate green economic development and GEE for the achievement of SDGs in China,8
The final ranking of sub-criteria shows that Green Energy (G71) is the most significant in overall sub-criteria,7
The effect of ecological distortions and climate change issues have been at the forefront of the minds of policymakers and energy practitioners in recent decades,13
The empirical results show that a 1% increase in economic activity increases the level of renewable energy consumption by 0.128% in the short run,7
The reason for this peculiar result for the Sub-Saharan African economies could be attributed to the prevalent demand for conventional energy sources and the cost-related factor associated with clean energy technologies even when the economy (herein measured by Gross Domestic Product) is improving,7
"Furthermore, the effect of energy (electricity from fossil fuel) also shows a statistically significant impact when trying to reduce the clean energy consumption",7
"Based on these findings, several policy decisions were prescribed for Sub-Saharan African economies such as the diversification of Sub-Saharan African economies energy to more renewable energy sources and the adoption of clean energy technologies that are reputed to be cleaner and environmentally friendly",7
"Notably, renewable energy has continued to retain the spotlight in every climate change debate because solar, wind, hydroelectric, biomass, and thermal power are reputable when it comes to energy production without the global warming effect associated with hydrocarbon fuels (National Geographic 2019)",7
"In light of the attribution of the climate change concern with the growing environmental damage globally, policy frameworks that are designed for energy portfolio diversification are being adopted by intergovernmental agencies, governments, and other stakeholders",13
"However, the potential of the continent’s renewable energy power has been substantially less harnessed compared to the current and projected power consumption of the continent (International Renewable Energy Agency 2019)",7
"However, with the increasing fall in the renewable technology cost across the continent amidst the abundance renewable sources, Africa’s solar development is expected to reach about 320 Gigawatts (GWs) in 2040, thus making solar the largest source of electricity in the continent after surpassing hydropower and natural gas (International Energy Agency 2019; Africa Renewable Energy Initiative 2019)",7
"The report of the International Energy Agency (2019) has further implied that other sources of renewable energy such as wind in Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal and South Africa, and geothermal in Kenya are increasingly being developed",7
"The importance of further harnessing renewable energy sources in Africa as indicated by the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI) is hinged on the fact that it improves access to electricity for households and for driving the productive sectors such as the agricultural sector, industrial, transportation, and the micro-, small and medium-scale enterprises",7
There exist only a few studies that have examined the factors that are responsible for the development of renewable energy in Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa (Emodi and Boo 2015; Giovannetti and Ticci 2016; Aliyu et al,7
"Specifically, da Silva et al (2018) examined the determinants of renewable energy in Sub-Saharan Africa over the experimental period of 1990–2014",7
"However, Aguirre and Ibikunle (2014) and Pfeiffer and Mulder (2013), respectively, found that energy use and electricity consumption is negatively linked with renewable energy consumption",7
"While examining the potential of renewable energy electricity through policy applicability, Carley (2009) opined the important of the population growth rate in the assessment of the electric power capacity in the case of the United States of America",7
"In the investigation, Carley (2009) employed the renewable portfolio standard (RPS) and examined the linkage of RPS policy implementation and the percentage of renewable energy generation across all the states",7
"The study revealed that the sources of biogas in the region include the organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW), domestic sewage, crop residues, livestock manure, and household feedstocks among others",12
"Furthermore, Salim and Shafiei (2014) revealed that population and urbanization are both linked with renewable energy consumption and non-renewable energy consumption in the case of the Organization for Economic Corporation and Development (OECD) countries",7
The study found that the total population exerts a long-run positive and significant impact on both non-renewable and renewable energy consumption in the panel of the OECD countries,7
"Although the result of the investigation further posited that the impact of the total population on renewable energy consumption is lower than that of the non-renewable energy consumption, the study found there to be a non-significant impact due to population density on renewable energy consumption",7
"On the other hand, population density is observed to have resulted in a decline in non-renewable energy consumption in the panel countries",7
(2012) and Salim and Shafiei (2014) found that the increased urbanization from road usage and transportation is responsible for a higher consumption of non-renewable energy especially in high income economies,7
"In light of the above motivation, the current study is designed to explore the potential determinants of renewable energy development in Africa",7
This is while considering the challenges that arise when meeting the low-carbon energy gap in the continent through the adoption of climate actions (SDG-13) and responsible energy consumption (SDG-12) targets,7
"To this end, the current study attempts to examine the effects of real Gross Domestic Product (RGDP), agricultural value-added (AG), urbanization (URB), and electricity consumption (ELE) on renewable energy consumption (REC) for selected Sub-Saharan African economies (including Benin, Botswana, Cameroon, Congo Republic, Cote d’ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, South Africa, and Zimbabwe)",7
"Importantly, renewable energy consumption is employed as the dependent variable against the independent variables, specifically the real Gross Domestic Product, agricultural value added, urbanization, and electricity consumption",7
"Giving the high standard deviation of the RGDP, the statistics of the variables implies that there is high heterogeneity in the economic development across the Sub-Saharan Africa region",8
A similar observation was found in the volume of electricity energy consumption in the region,7
"Additionally, except for renewable energy consumption and urbanization, the series is observed to be positively skewed because of the positive tails exhibited by the series",7
"(2018) among related others, the current study further presents a modified model that underpins the relationships between electricity energy consumption (ele) urbanization (urb), renewable energy consumption (rec), gross domestic product per capita (rgdp), and agriculture added value (ag) for the 12 selected African countries",7
"The current study set out to underpin the determinants of renewable energy consumption in Sub-Saharan African economies, a continent with rich energy dynamics",7
"This is statistically significant at (p < 0.01) on an annual basis due to the contributions of electricity consumption, urbanization, economic growth and agricultural value added",8
This implies that there is still room for more improvement in renewable energy in Africa,7
There is a 1% increase in agricultural activities alongside the long-run increase renewable energy by 0.252%,7
This is quite negligible given how the region is on the trajectory of disentangling its economic growth from pollutant emissions,8
The results also show that an increase in electricity consumption (from fossil sources) dampens the share of renewable energy utilization in the region,7
"(2019) found that oil rents and coal energy sources hamper renewable energy use according to a panel of five most populous and biggest economies in Africa, the study by Akintande et al",7
(2020) revealed that energy utilization and electricity power demand an increase in renewable energy consumption in the African region,7
The moderating role of urbanization was also explored as the long-run analysis shows that a high urban population increases the SSA energy consumption by a precise 1% increase in urbanization,7
This increases the renewable energy consumption by 0.881%,7
(2018) offers evidence that such a population impedes renewable energy development,7
This is seen in the two-way causality between agriculture and economic growth,8
This refers to agriculture driven by economic growth and vice versa,8
This indicates that agriculture is a good predictor of economic growth,8
This implies that high urban growth compels a higher level of electricity consumption,11
Urbanization and renewable energy consumption have a bi-directional causality flow,7
"However, the increase in the region’s electricity consumption is from non-renewable energy",7
"The need for a green economy is being pursued by all continents and Africa is not left out of this, leading to several action plans such as the National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP) and the Renewable Energy Policy (EREP)",7
The ECOWAS Energy Efficiency Policy (EEEP) was also inaugurated in ECOWAS,7
"However, this fit requires more action on the part of both government administrators and private partnership in terms of the commitment to local and international environmental treaties that foster energy efficiency, security, and sustainability at large",7
"(i) First, the SSA region needs to sustain its momentum to further increase the share of renewable energy consumption from the total fossil energy sources",7
"(ii) Second, for the region to achieve fit when it comes to attaining energy efficiency, there is a need for more pragmatic actions to reinforce the commitments",7
"Considering that the sustainable development goals (SDGs) incorporate 17 distinct objectives such as tourism, health, and other sector-related concepts, the SSA could further implement energy efficiency policies in every sector of the region’s economy",7
This has led most government administrators to disentangle their economic growth trajectory from pollutant emissions,8
"The recent study incorporates agriculture, urbanization, and the energy from fossil fuel sources as the determinant of renewable energy in Sub-Saharan African economies",7
These outcomes imply that an increased share of non-renewable energy consumption (dirty energy consumption) dampens the share of renewable energy consumption,7
This position is supported by Schwerhoff and Sy (2017) who asserted that the higher consumption of renewable energy will facilitate the attainment of the seven SDG of clean and efficient energy access by 2030,7
This means that the urban population in Sub-Saharan African economies is conscious of clean energy.,7
"However, the state of the natural and environmental capital was found to be gradually degrading",15
"Alongside the social environment, social vulnerability is reported due to the overutilization of land, intrusion from external cultures, and pollution in air and water due to traffic congestion, accumulation of solid waste, sewage, and carbon emissions",12
"Moreover, environmental sustainability is the future-based conscious effort aimed at conserving socio-cultural heritage and preserving natural resources to protect environmental ecosystems through supporting people’s health and economic well-being",11
"In this context, tourism growth and environmental sustainability are considered interdependent constructs; therefore, the increase in tourism development and tourists’ arrivals directly affects the quality of sustained and green tourism (Azam et al",8
"The local pollution at tourist destinations may include air emissions, noise, solid waste, littering, sewage, oil and chemicals, architectural/visual pollution, heating, car use, and many more",12
"Furthermore, tourism arrivals beyond capacity bring problems rather than a blessing, such as leaving behind soil erosion, attrition of natural resources, accumulation of waste and air pollution, and endangering biodiversity, decomposition of socio-cultural habitats, and virginity of land and sea (Kostić et al",15
"The ASEAN countries referred to as heaven for air pollution, climate change, and global warming are experiencing economic tourism and pollution (Azam et al",13
Tourism expansion has been established as a very deleterious ecological cost vis-à-vis the socio-economic benefits it passes to the host communities (Pulido-Fernández et al,10
"(2019) and Simo-Kengne (2022), it is feared that Pakistan’s ongoing determination to tourism development is likely to cause environmental degradation in two ways",15
"Firstly, the tourism infrastructure developmental process would consume natural resources in the form of air and water pollution, loss of nature, and biodiversity",6
"The adverse environmental outcomes include overcrowding, traffic congestion, air and noise pollution, environmental degradation, and encroachment of landscaping for the local community and the tourists",15
"Conservation of nature, biodiversity, and endangered species with control over animal poaching",15
"Every activity contributes toward economic stimulation, job creation, revenue generation, and tourism development encompassing infrastructure for all activities involved in the tourism process",8
"Historical, cultural, and religious factors include historical and cultural heritage, religious sites, and cultural values and experiences",11
Sustainable tourism involves sustainable practices to maintain viable support for the ecology of the tourism environment in and around the destination,12
"Sustainable tourism is natural resource-based tourism that resembles ecotourism and focuses on creating travel openings with marginal impact and encouraging learning about nature having a low impact, conservation, and valuable consideration for the local community’s well-being (Fennell 2001 & 2020; Butowski 2021)",12
"Therefore, ecotourism is inclusive of sustainable tourism, whereas the focus of sustainable tourism includes the following responsibilities: Caring, protecting, and conserving the environment, natural capital, biodiversity, and wildlife",12
"The environment can be sustained through conservation, preservation, and appropriate management to provide clean air, water, and food safe from toxic contamination, waste, and sewage disposal, saving endangered species and land conservation",15
"The globalization process, known for building socio-economic partnerships across countries, is also charged with encouraging environmental degradation through the over-consumption of natural resources and energy consumption, deforestation, land erosion, and weakening (Adebayo and Kirikkaleli 2021; Sun et al",15
(2021a) suggested using solar energy as a source of economic intervention to control CO2 emissions and improve environmental quality in China,7
The UNEP stated that 58% of diarrhea cases in developing economies is due to the non-provision of clean water and inadequate sanitation facilities resulting in 3.5 million deaths globally (Desai 2016; Ekins and Gupta 2019),6
"Furthermore, the Ecosystem is affected by pollution, over-exploitation of natural resources, climate change, invasive and displacing species, etc",13
"Hence, providing clean air and water, hygienic places, and green spaces enriches the quality of life: condensed mortality, healthier value-added productivity, and is vital to maintaining mental health",3
"Tourism development denotes all activities linked with creating and processing facilities providing services for the tourists on and around a destination. Infrastructure development is vital for developing a tourism destination to advance tourists’ living conditions and preserve natural and cultural heritage by constructing new tourist facilities, the destinations administrative and supporting echelons, including community living, etc",11
"Development for tourism infrastructure and land use often burdens natural capital through over-consumption, leading to soil erosion, augmented pollution, loss of natural habitats, and endangered species",15
"Sustainable infrastructure signifies that structures’ planning, construction, and functioning do not weaken the social, economic, and ecological systems (UNEP 2021; Krampe 2021)",9
"Sustainable infrastructure is the only solution that ensures societies, nature, and the environment flourish together",9
"Therefore, Sustainable Ecotourism supports adapting pro-environment and nature-based climate change strategies that help resilient biodiversity and ecosystem to impact climate change",13
"The proposed strategy is to focus on the conservation and restoration of ecosystems to combat climate hazards, fluctuating rainfalls, soil erosion, temperature variations, floods, and extreme wind storms (Niedziółka 2014; Setini 2021) Pakistan’s tourism infrastructure suffered a colossal amount of damage during the earthquake of October 8, 2005, which left widespread demolition and destruction to its human, economic assets, and infrastructure networks, especially in Kashmir and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's tourism areas",15
Development and reconstruction of the livelihood and hospitality infrastructure through entrepreneurship were undertaken intensively through a public-private partnership from national and international findings (Qamar and Baloch 2017; Sadiq 2021; Dogar et al,8
"The revival and reinvigoration of infrastructure in tourism areas were backed up by extensive deforestation, use of local green land, rebuilding of the road network, displacement of biodiversity, and overtaxing the consumption of water and other natural resources",15
"The deforestation, extensive use of green land, and over-consumption of water and other natural resources have depleted the tourism value of the area on the one hand and degraded the environment on the other",15
"The afforestation and loss of green tops are being reclaimed through these efforts, and the tourism environment is soon expected to regenerate (Qamar and Baloch 2017; Rauf et al",15
"Tourism contributes to the economy through revenue generation and shares responsibility with the Government to alleviate poverty alleviation, create opportunities for job placements, protect environments, and conserve natural ecosystems and biodiversity",1
"Promoting and undertaking afforestation alongside land conservation and discouraging deforestation, soil erosion, accumulation of solid waste, littering, and any direct or indirect loss or threat to biodiversity",15
"The crisis impacts people whose mental health, worldviews, behavioral patterns, and social networks may all be impacted (Çalişkan and Özer 2021)",3
"Place change can result from fundamental community restructuring due to economic development, new class divides, and migration of both long-term and temporary people (Nelson 2001)",8
"Studies also supported our findings and suggested that revival and reinvigoration of infrastructure in tourism areas were backed up by extensive deforestation, use of local green land, rebuilding of the road network, displacement of biodiversity, and overtaxing the consumption of water and other natural resources (Qamar and Baloch 2017; Sadiq 2021; Dogar et al",15
"Furthermore, recent national statistics depict that major human activities at local tourism destinations such as Kalam, Sawat, Muree, and Northern Areas have accumulated solid waste and sewage, resulting in polluted air and water",12
"Consequently, colossal deforestation and other detrimental human activities have negatively affected ecosystem",15
"Through its detailed review of existing literature, prevailing tourism policies, and empirical inputs from the stakeholders’ perspectives, the study has identified a wide range of obstacles limiting the development and growth of ecotourism in Pakistan",12
"However, selected points can also be extended to the quality management parameters set for the National Parks, Conservation and Protracted Areas, Museums, National or International event sites, etc",15
"However, the development plan shall consider the integral benefits of other developmental schemes such as the Billion Trees Plantation drive, Road-Infrastructure Network Development under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor initiative, International Union for Conservation of Nature (ICUN) programs in the area",15
"Provision of clean drinking water through public infiltration plants, public toilets, solid waste carriers, and recycling of sewage and used water is recommended in the most visited areas of the destination",12
"Develop and place on the ground an all-inclusive program of capacity building for sustainable ecotourism, regenerative and green tourism services",8
"Set measures for the preservation of the local biodiversity and preservation of endangered species, including seeking support from internationally active environment conservation agencies, declaring local hunting illegal, introducing licensing programs for hunting of certain selected animals/ birds on the payment of a handsome amount to be used for the welfare of the local community",15
"Create awareness programs against deforestation, land conservation, and biodiversity, and maintain cleanliness, inculcating a culture of respecting and enjoying nature instead of spoiling it",15
"The study suggests that unbalancing this “resource paradox” results in the harshness and tenacity of adversarial climate change, natural calamities, environmental pollution, and endangered biodiversity",13
"Therefore, ecotourism is a recipe for preventing environmental degradation and guarantees sustainability of ecosystems nature and its biodiversity",15
"Hence, ecotourism shall stand central priority focus for strategic management to nurture quality experiences from sustainable tourism",12
"The laid criterion would facilitate management in nurturing “responsible behavior” to plan, protect, conserve, preserve, and sustain natural and cultural resources and responsible socio-economic development without compromising the sustainability of the environment and long-term well-being of the hoist community",8
"The strategic planning aligned with the sustainability-focused objectives dictates the need for artistic, innovative, and talented people and quality intuitions in harnessing quality tourism services and responsible tourism behavior",8
"Furthermore, the study encourages community involvement in the developmental process, enactment of structural policies, preservation of socio-cultural heritage, and conservation of natural biodiversity as it would foster emotional bondage between the people of the host community and the tourism undertakings",11
"Therefore, community and value chain managers shall collaborate to maximize the perceived benefits of responsible tourism while developing cultural exchanges and planning opportunities for leisure and tourism",8
"Regulatory measures help offset negative impacts; for instance, controls on the number of tourist activities and movement of visitors within protected areas can limit impacts on the ecosystem and help maintain the integrity and vitality of the site",15
"  The paper explores the short-run and long-run asymmetric impact of fiscal decentralization, green energy, and economic policy uncertainty on environmental sustainability proxied by ecological footprint",7
The result also suggests that green energy is a major factor in reducing the ecological footprint in all countries except Canada,7
"This puts strain on the ecosystem, resulting in emissions, biodiversity loss, and environmental imbalance (Ahmed and Wang 2019; Lin et al",15
"2018), green energy (Adams et al",7
Fiscal decentralization is a major determinant of environmental degradation (X,15
Green energy is an essential factor in evaluating environmental sustainability,7
The gradual shift from non-renewable to green energy solutions leads to continuous improvement in environmental sustainability,7
"In order to achieve economic and environmental goals and objectives, to enhance the use of renewable energy is a need of hour (Charfeddine and Kahia 2019; de Souza et al",7
"Apart from the role of fiscal decentralization and green energy, economic policy uncertainty has gained the central position in economic-cum-environmental objectives (Baker et al",7
Literature shows the positive association between environmental degradation and monetary policy uncertainty and determines that economic policy uncertainty is a significant and positive determinant of ecological degradation (Adams et al,15
"The core objective of this study is to empirically investigate the impact of green energy, economic policy uncertainty, and asymmetric effects of fiscal decentralization on the ecological footprint in the USA, UK, Germany, Australia, and Canada, the OECD counties, as explained in Fig. 1",7
"These reasons create room to investigate the association between fiscal decentralization, green energy, economic policy uncertainty, and environmental sustainability in these five selected OECD countries",7
"Similarly, many studies have attempted to assess the effectiveness of renewable and non-renewable energy sources in terms of environmental sustainability",7
Some studies on green energy revealed eco-friendly behavior (Shao et al,7
"Keeping this contradiction in view in the literature about the role of fiscal decentralization, renewable energy and economic policy uncertainty on environmental sustainability, this study explores the impact of fiscal decentralization, renewable energy and economic policy uncertainty on ecological footprint in selected OECD countries",7
"Secondly, most previous research studies employed CO2 emissions as a proxy for environmental degradation; this study approximates the ecological footprint to measure environmental sustainability",15
"The literature on fiscal decentralization, green energy, and economic policy uncertainty concerning their impact on the environment is briefly examined in the “Literature review” section",7
(2018) positively associate fiscal decentralization with environmental degradation and determine fiscal decentralization decline environmental sustainability,15
Chen and Chang (2020) have opinioned that the “Race to the Bottom” hypothesis is responsible for a positive association between environmental degradation and fiscal decentralization,15
(2021) believe that the “Race to the Top” hypothesis is responsible for the negative association between fiscal decentralization and environmental degradation,15
Countries around the world are keen to increase the capacity production of renewable energy as their sources are environmentally friendly and maintain environmental sustainability,7
"Keeping the one of important SDGs in view that is to achieve the zero-carbon level by 2030, renewable energy production is given importance (Shen et al",7
Many empirical studies show how an increase in renewable energy production and consumption enhances environmental sustainability,7
The gradual shift to green energy solutions leads to continuous improvement in ecological sustainability,7
Chen and Lin (2008) empirically investigated a positive relationship between non-renewable energy consumption and ecological footprint as it is the major determinant responsible for increasing environmental footprint,7
(2016) for selected 144 countries in 1988 until 2008 determine that primary energy or non-renewable energy consumption is the major determinant of ecological footprint,7
"Considering the importance of green energy in the arena of ecological footprint, certain studies also investigate the importance of green energy consumption to control the burden on ecological footprint",7
(2018) empirically investigated that green energy is a significant determinant to reduce the ecological footprint and thus promote environmental sustainability,7
"Similarly, Destek and Sinha (2020) for twenty-four OECD countries empirically investigated that increasing green energy reduces pressure on ecological footprint and vice versa",7
"Similarly, Pata (2021) for BRICS countries between time period of 1971 and 2016 determines that green energy consumption reduces ecological footprint",7
(2020) by using ARDL model for quarterly data from 1985:Q1 to 2014:Q4 determines for USA that green energy exerts negative pressure on increase in ecological footprint,7
(2020) for MENA countries in time span of 1990 to 2016 empirically investigated that green energy does not contribute to the environmental sustainability,7
"Prior explains how a high level of economic policy uncertainty divers the attention of policymakers, thus reducing the conducive circumstances for environmental sustainability, the later one, on contrary, effects energy consumption patterns through economic conditions and decision-making, thus influencing environmental sustainability",7
(2021b) show the positive association between environmental degradation and economic policy uncertainty and determine that economic policy uncertainty is major and positive determinant environmental degradation,15
"We exhibit the ecological footprint as a function of fiscal decentralization, green energy, and economic policy uncertainty as given below: where EFP is ecological footprint, FED is fiscal expenditure decentralization, GE is green or renewable energy, and EPU is economic policy uncertainty",7
"Green energy collected from renewable energy resources such as wind, waves, geothermal, solar, heat, and rain is also called green energy",7
Green energy consumption as a percentage of total final energy consumption is another exogenous variable of this study to determine the impact on the ecological footprint in selected OECD countries,7
"(2016) developed news-based economic policy uncertainty by calculating the proportion of news articles showing policy uncertainty about fiscal and monetary policies, health care facilities, laws and order situation, trade policy, debt, and currency uncertainty (Azqueta-Gavaldón, 2017)",17
"At the same time, green energy is the negative determinant of an ecological footprint both in the long and short run",7
"Unlike Australia, in this country, green energy is neither a significant factor of ecological footprint in the long run nor in the short run",7
"On the other hand, green energy is only a long-run negative determinant that suggests replacing green energy with non-renewable energy in the long run to increase environmental sustainability in the country",7
"Contrary, green energy is neither a significant variable of ecological footprint in the long run nor the short run",7
"Moreover, green energy is the negative determinant of ecological footprint in the short run and the long run",7
"Therefore, in the USA increase in green energy for production and consumption purpose is suggested to reduce the ecological pressure",7
"On the other hand, Du and Sun (2021) regarded capital competition and biased and partial technological development as a major cause of a nonlinear but positive association between fiscal decentralization and environmental degradation",15
(2021) investigated the positive but insignificant relationship between fiscal expenditure decentralization and environmental degradation in the long run,15
(2021) as these studies show a positive relationship between fiscal decentralization and environmental degradation in the long run,15
(2021) confirm the typical inverted U-shaped relationship between environmental degradation and fiscal decentralization for seven selected OECD countries,15
"The potential reason is local or decentralized governments while keeping GDP growth in mind, attract relatively cheaper and easily accessible resources for production function to stimulate higher profit industries but on the expenses of environment sustainability",8
Therefore this “Race to Bottom Hypothesis” is the major cause of positive relationship between environmental degradation and fiscal expenditure decentralization,15
"(2020), who determines the nonlinear relationship between fiscal expenditure decentralization and environmental degradation in China",15
(2021) depict both positive and negative short-run relationships between environmental degradation proxy that is \({CO}_{2}\) emission and fiscal decentralization in different provinces of China,15
Therefore fiscal decentralization coupled with technological progress can reduce carbon emission (Shan et al,8
"Local governments are interested in free rides to maximize regional economic growth, resulting in a steady increase in carbon emissions",8
(2020) also investigated the same positive correlation between fiscal expenditure decentralization and environmental degradation for China,15
"They investigated the positive relationship between fiscal decentralization and environmental footprint or environmental degradation at the first stage, empirically proving an inverted U-shape relationship between them",15
"(2020), who did not find any significant relationship between fiscal expenditure decentralization and environmental degradation in China between 1995 and 2010",15
Table 4 shows green energy consumption is a major determinant of ecological footprint in Australia and the USA both in the short run and long run,7
The result also determines the long-run and short-run negative relationship between green energy consumption and ecological footprint in both countries,7
"On the other hand, in the UK and Canada, green energy consumption is not a major determinant of an ecological footprint both in the short-run and long-run and draws no significant influence on ecological footprint",7
"On the contrary, green energy is a negative determinant of ecological footprint in Germany in the short run but not a significant variable in the long run",7
"However, non-renewable energy resources deteriorate environmental sustainability (Baloch, 2018; Baloch and Suad, 2018; Baz et al",7
"(2021), and Majeed and Tauqir (2020) also investigated the positive relationship between of non-renewable energy consumption and environmental degradation, on the contrary, the use of green energy resources or green energy has thus decreased \(CO_{2}\) emission to a certain extend (Majeed and Luni 2019; Ozturk et al",7
"(2021), and Charfeddine and Mrabet (2017) have explored non-renewable that an increase in non-renewable energy resource exploitation increases the extent of ecological footprint",7
"(2020a, b), Adams and Acheampong (2019), and Chu and Le (2021) found the solution for this problem and empirically investigated that the use of green energy helps to not only control and alleviates \(CO_{2}\) emission but also reduce ecological footprint",7
"These results also align with those of Chu and Le (2021) and Adedoyin and Zakari (2020), who empirically investigated the negative relationship between economic policy uncertainty and environmental degradation",15
This negative relationship is if EPU draws an effect on volume and pattern of consumption that will surely reduce \(CO_{2}\) emission and ultimately environmental degradation and ecological footprint,15
"In the long run, if policymakers want to limit EPU and CO2 emissions simultaneously, they should look for alternative strategies to offset CO2 emissions (for example, green energy consumption)",7
(2021) empirically investigated that economic policy uncertainty adversely influences the environmental sustainability and enhance environmental degradation by escalating \(CO_{2}\) emission,15
"The graphical presentation is given in Fig. 2, Fig. 3, Fig. 4, Fig. 5, and Fig. 6 showing the cumulative effect of fiscal decentralization, green energy, and economic policy uncertainty on the ecological footprint for Australia, Canada, Germany, UK, and the USA, respectively, by determining the positive changes, negative changes, and asymmetry in the data",7
"This study also explains the empirical symmetric relationship between green energy, economic policy uncertainty, and ecological footprint for these five OECD countries",7
"Empirical evidence also shows that in the case of Australia and the USA, green energy is a major determinant of an ecological footprint both in the long run and short run",7
"In Germany, green energy is a major determinant of ecological footprint in the short run only, but not in the long run",7
"Similarly, the “Free Riding” behavior of local governments and the industrial sector, fiscal decentralization, should be curtailed by bounding carbon shares in environmental degradation both in the short run and long run",15
The subsequent policy implication for these countries is to focus on a paradigm shift related to energy portfolio by accumulating the share of green energy in the total sphere of energy consumption,7
"Similarly, proper planning for technological advancements and enhancements in the power sector to enhance carbon capture and storage is the need of the hour to subdue environmental degradation",15
Another suggestion is to devise different credit or green credit mechanisms or systems to allow varying interest rates for industries depending on their parts into environmental degradation and carbon emission,15
"The more polluting industries may offer credit at higher interest rates and vice versa, which will compel industries to innovate green or renewable energy production at their potential level",7
"In parallel, importers should be given subsidies to import green energy products",7
The role of renewable energy in environmental sustainability cannot be denied,7
"Therefore, it is suggested to increase green investment to migrate from traditional methods of energy production to enhance and modernize green energy production techniques",7
"More focus should be given to increase geothermal, nuclear, and wind energy production",7
The scope and volume of green finances to promote renewable energy production should be enlarged in selected OECD countries,7
"They should concentrate on controlling Economic Policy Uncertainty while also stimulating the deployment of renewable energy, energy-efficient technology, and knowledge production and transfer",7
"Firstly, future studies may focus on finding the threshold level of fiscal decentralization to optimize economic growth with sustainable environmental goals, which is the very soul of SDGs",8
"Thirdly, this research study assumes the impact of green energy on ecological footprint; however, energy segregation paves the way for future researchers to dissect the energy consumption role in enhancing ecological footprint with particular reference to fiscal decentralization and economic policy uncertainty",7
"The life cycle impact assessment results covering multiple impacts in quantitative terms facilitate the identification of hotspots (i.e., the main life cycle stage and activities causing significant impacts) to derive strategies for life cycle management to improve the environmental performance of product and promote the shift towards sustainable agriculture and food production systems including more sustainable food consumption patterns via environmental certification and labelling schemes.LCAs of studies on agriculture and food have come a long way with over 3000 articles being published until April 2020",2
"The life cycle impact assessment results covering multiple impacts in quantitative terms facilitate the identification of hotspots (i.e., the main life cycle stage and activities causing significant impacts) to derive strategies for life cycle management to improve the environmental performance of product and promote the shift towards sustainable agriculture and food production systems including more sustainable food consumption patterns via environmental certification and labelling schemes",2
"This is also an important consideration when studying sustainable diets, which is directly linked to SDG 2 (zero hunger), although nutrition is essential to the success of all SDGs (Blesh et al",2
A link is also drawn to the assessment of food loss and waste under SDG 12 (responsible consumption and production) (UN 2019),12
These were also responsible for a significant water scarcity footprint in both countries in addition to the increased imports of wheat and rice in Kenya from water-stressed regions,6
"The data limitations of the food balance sheets from FAO, for example, the omission of food waste, which is an important aspect, must be recognized",12
"The study also referred to the traditional trade-offs between human development and socio-economic standards with environmental protection goals, which are important to recognize in policy-making",15
One of the limitations of the above study was the non-inclusion of food loss and waste in the evaluation of diets,12
"This aspect, covered under SDG 12.3 which aims at halving food waste by 2030, is a very important area of research",12
"Although the waste management hierarchy recommended to be followed would give priority to preventing food waste and reusing it, commercial interests may often prefer recycling via anaerobic digestion over redistribution (Vázquez-Rowe et al",12
"To account for this, it is important to also integrate the nutritional and economic value of the food in decision-making towards food waste management in addition to mass",12
(2019) thus looked at the nutritional and economic costs of food loss and waste across the supply chain using the case of Spain,12
"By looking at the entire supply chain and recommending strategies based both on food categories and supply stages, using an indicator including both nutritional and economic aspects, category-specific recommendations could be provided to reduce food loss and waste that would be useful for policy-makers as well as waste managers and other related stakeholders",12
"Within the agriculture phase, land use and land use change (LULUC) is a large contributor to the GHG balance and within it, soil organic carbon (SOC) is a major contributor",15
Methodological developments in LCA over the last two decades have resulted in a conceptual framework for the impact of land use on soil quality (Milà i Canals et al,2
The Müller-Wenk and Brandão (2010) method is chosen as currently the only method that connects the climate change impact with the conceptual land use framework mentioned before,13
(2012) is chosen to account for the variation in climate change impact based on the timing of GHG emission or sequestration,13
(2019) looks at the long-term SOC changes in the LCA of agricultural products,2
after harvest/future) on the carbon sequestration in forestry for bioenergy vis-à-vis the greenhouse gas balance using a dynamic LCA approach,15
A historic perspective would be applied in practice for managed forestry because the forest has been grown for the purpose of bioenergy,15
Many impact assessment methods have been developed over the years to characterize the effects of land use and land use change on biodiversity,15
"As the crop production systems and pesticide application regimes in tropical climates are quite different from those in temperate climates, the modeling of the impact of pesticides on human and environmental health developed mainly based on temperate conditions needs to be adjusted accordingly",3
"To avoid the damage of pesticides to human and ecosystem health described above, organic farming, which prohibits the use of synthetic pesticides (and chemical fertilizers) is promoted as a sustainable agricultural practice",2
"However, for various crops, a lower yield has been observed for organic farming as compared with conventional farming (Seufert et al",2
"(2019) identified the main pathways for environmental improvements in organic viticulture by increasing energy efficiency of the farm machinery, reducing the impacts of harmful chemicals by appropriate choice of substitutes and dose management",7
"Under the Kyoto Protocol and the more recent Paris Agreement, GHG emissions are accounted for based on the country where they are released (national inventory accounting); this is the production-based approach",13
"Additional data requirements are anticipated with the inclusion of new impact categories such as biotic depletion, degradation of the marine environment due to nano-, micro-, and macro-plastics accumulation in the ocean or damage to seafloor",14
"Apart from the methodological considerations in addressing the challenges of LCA in sustainable consumption and production of food, the applications of LCA are also very important to consider",12
"The life cycle environmental impacts of coffee have been widely studied, and as with most agricultural products, the agriculture stage is identified as the most impactful due to the application of agrochemicals and also the use of water for irrigation",2
"The information generated by the study could be useful for the environmentally aware consumer as well as for the public policy related to environmental education, recycling, and circular economy",12
This Special Issue covers some of the very topical issues associated with the sustainable consumption and production of food,12
"The issues of appropriate functional units for assessment of food supply chains, sustainable diets, and food loss and waste are also covered",12
"Nepal, a least-developed, mountainous, and land-locked country is consistently ranked as one of the most vulnerable countries to the climate change",13
"Poor socioeconomic development, rough and highly unstable geography, inadequate institutional capacity to deal with research, development and policy and mostly underdeveloped infrastructures, all have contributed to increasing vulnerability of communities and ecosystems, and have limited their adaptive capacity",16
"As the global climate politics is getting more complicated, international financing patterns—both climate and development finance—are shifting their ways, forcing the countries like Nepal to diversify the funding base for climate change actions and integrate them within national development plans and strategies",13
"Using the data and information currently available, we analyze the existing financing situations, discuss the future scenarios and suggest policy recommendations to develop a set of long-term adaptation and impact mitigation strategies in specific and environmental change at large",13
"“Climate finance (CF)”, or “finance for climate change-related activities,” is a diverse concept and does not have a clear definition or well-elucidated scope",13
"CF, in recent decades, has become a dominant instrument in shaping the way the international community interacts with each other, explores the means of development cooperation, and defines common approaches to solve the global climate crisis individually or collectively at a local, national, regional and global scale",13
"CF is a highly political and hotly contested issue during climate change (CC) negotiations [1] such as in United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement, something neither the Parties can ignore, nor they can come up with any easy and practical solutions",13
"Nepal is a party to the UNFCCC, Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement, and is active in various UN and other regional organizations linked to the CC issue [12], and has already prepared several adaptation programs and policies (Table 1)",13
"Nepal’s most efforts in the past three decades have focused on forest conservation, disaster risk management and in creating an enabling environment to take effective actions for CC impacts, particularly in developing required policies, setting up appropriate institutions in place, and developing more scientific knowledge about different aspects of CC impacts",11
"The future course of actions in the country is likely to be guided by its commitment to implement the Paris Agreement 2015, and in the core of it, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)",13
"This paper has threefold objectives (I) understanding the composition and trends of CF at global level; (II) reviewing the current status of CF in Nepal; and (III) proposing future pathways for the country considering Nepal’s commitment to the Paris Agreement through NDCs, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the sustainable development goals (SDGs)",13
"Here we analyze a range of interventions that are on their way both at the world level and in Nepal, discuss their future implications, and make suggestions to develop long-term adaptation and mitigation strategies in specific and environmental change at large",13
"If we are to maintain the global average temperature below 2 °C above the pre-industrial levels (green growth scenario), we need significant growth in green infrastructures investment as recommended by the Green Growth Action Alliance presentations at the World Economic Forum 2013 in Davos",8
"This was triggered by private investment in renewable electricity generation exceeding new investment for fossil fuel power generation by over 100% for 2015 and 2016 [19, 20]",7
"Energy efficiency (39%), renewable energy generation (34%), and sustainable transport (22%) are top three spenders in the mitigation sector, whereas agriculture, forestry, land-use, and natural resource management activities spend only 3% of the total resource [19]",7
"CF update 2017 estimates some 25% of the financing approved since 2003 might have gone for adaptation activities with Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF), PPCR, The Green Climate Fund (GCF), adaptation fund (AF), Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Program and Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF) accounting for 553 projects worth US$3.91 billion",13
"Launched in 2007, the Global Climate Change Alliance Plus (GCCA+) is an EU flagship initiative with a strong focus on highly vulnerable LDCs and Small Island Developing States",13
"GCCA+ has already invested close to US$531 million (€450 million) in more than 60 country-based and regional actions, including the US$19.47 million (€16.5 million) contribution to Nepal Climate Change Support Programme (NCCSP) from 2013 to 2015 (GCCA+: €8.6 million incl",13
"The Paris Agreement extended this level of contribution through 2025, prior to which a new collective goal is expected to be agreed [30]",13
"GCF, established under the UNFCCC in 2010 to support developing countries to reduce GHGs emission and adapt to CC, has received pledges worth US$10.3 billion since 2014, of which, almost half of it is pledged by the EU member states, who stands at US$4.8 billion",17
"According to the economic impact assessment in 2013 focusing on three key sectors—agriculture, hydroelectricity, and water-induced disasters, the climate-induced extreme events, such as floods, droughts, soil erosion, and agricultural production loss, have led to a major economic loss in Nepal",15
"The impact of water-induced disasters, such as flood and droughts, is not limited to basic human activities for living, but includes effect on hydrodynamic and morphodynamic processes in the water, with severe consequences to flora and fauna, water quality, water and sediment structures, soil moisture, irrigation requirements, soil contamination and fertility, geomorphology, and overall ecosystem at large [32, 33]",6
"Therefore, Nepal needs an additional investment of at least US$2.4 billion from now to 2050 to build a sufficient climate resilience [32, 35]",13
"Interestingly, US$223 million (83%) of this funding has come from non-UNFCCC multilateral financial institutions and MDBs (mostly from Climate Investment Funds—CIF, WB, ADB) and bilateral donors (USAID, UK-Aid, and DANIDA), and not necessarily from UNFCCC financial institutions such as the LDC Fund, SCCF, GCF, AF, and the GEF",13
"When Nepal was allocated US$24.29 million under three headings (CC, biodiversity and land degradation), it hardly utilized 79% of the available resource (US$19.28 million) [43]",15
"Thus far, Nepal has been able to commission scientific assessments of CC, improve and document CC knowledge base; set up institutional response mechanisms and strengthen institutional capacity; develop policy instruments and frameworks; implement selected pilots; and advocate the issue internationally [11, 12, 14, 15]",16
"Introduced in 2012, the Climate Change Budget Code (CCBC) uses 11 criteria to define climate-relevant programs in Nepal (Additional file 5: Table S4) and helps track climate-relevant budget at the national level, according to which at least 11 of the then 27 ministries had CC relevant programs [44, 45]",13
"As the energy policy issues at national to global scales are increasingly determined to assess different aspects of sustainability, such as socioeconomic sustainability and need to reduce GHGs emission [52], it is evident that Nepal has to best utilize mainly renewable energy sources",7
"Firstly, Nepal has a huge potential for renewable energy with various estimates showing it could: harness technically and economically viable 42,000 MW hydropower of 83,000 MW maximum potential [54] (of which only less than 1000 MW is generated so far), where the ambition to install 12,000 MW of hydropower capacity alone has the investment opportunity of US$22.5 billion, and another US$100 million from small hydropower plants [55]; tap commercially viable 448 MW wind power with the total potential exceeding 3000 MW [56]; benefit from average 4.66 kWh/m2 day of solar across its 147,181 km2 landmass [57] with the investment opportunity of US$1.3 billion [53]; produce 9 to 12 TWh of biogas energy with the investment potential estimated to be US$707 million to the US$2.1 billion from biomass and conversion of waste to energy [53]",7
"Likewise, other national policies such as the Urban Development Strategy 2017 may further increase the investment opportunity by up to US$12.6 billion as it aims to increase the urban centers and improve infrastructures of the old ones [53]",11
"As the post-Paris Agreement (2015) global climate actions are likely to build on the same, at least for the foreseeable future, it has opened investment opportunity of US$23 trillion with majority of investment required for buildings (US$16.3 trillion), transport (US$3.7 trillion) and renewables (US$1.8 trillion) [60]",13
"In this context, Nepal’s commitment to meet its targets under the Paris Agreement, or the NDC, which effectively captures the essence of green economy and transition to low-carbon economy, will be key to attract national and international CF to address climate challenges, secure climate-proof development and to achieve sustainable development goals [15]",13
"Similarly, WB estimates show that Nepal needs US$13–18 billion per year for transport, electricity, information and telecommunications, water and sanitation, and irrigation [61]",6
"Globally, as the countries strive to implement national development strategies, huge climate investment will be required every year over the next decades",13
"Considering Nepal’s economy largely relies on income from the agriculture and remittance with energy, tourism, and hospitality sector having significant share [46, 58, 59], aligning with the philosophy of the low-carbon economic development, we propose to develop green economy action plans centered around six key components—water, energy, food, forests, human settlements, and tourism",8
"Climate change is only one of several changes that are part of a wider process of social transformation, particularly in rural livelihoods of Nepal",13
"[70] in the Kaski and Chitwan districts of Nepal realized that respondents rarely referred to weather or climate as significant issues affecting livelihoods, and, although many aspects of social and livelihood change were discussed, no respondents attributed these to climate change (interviewed in December 2015) [70]",13
"Thus, while extreme weather events and climate change are causing changes in farming practices, these practices are even more influenced by out-migration, changing income opportunities, and desires to shift away from land dependency",13
"In this context, it is evident that investing adaptation resources exclusively into addressing the production constraints anticipated under climate change would be to misunderstand the multidimensional nature of the challenges faced by rural households and overlook entirely the needs of those who have essentially left, or in the future will exit agriculture",13
"Nepal is now well prepared to start the journey of green economy development because have already: (I) developed the institutional mechanisms; (II) formulated the CC policy and other supporting sector policies; (III) designed the various adaptation frameworks (NAPA, LAPA, and NAP in progress); (IV) tested several CC adaptation and mitigation pilots (SPCR, NCCSP, Hariyo Ban and REDD+ activities); and (V) submitted the NDC to the UNFCCC secretariat",13
Anticipating the climate change being the only or major challenge faced by recent households can be a misunderstanding of the multidimensional nature of the biophysical and socioeconomical transformation especially of Nepal’s rural society,13
The gender mainstreaming approach in energy policy can increase women's participation in energy technology to get a clean environment and reduce the nation's financial burden of importing fuel,5
"Most studies acknowledge that women's participation in the energy sector contributes significantly to achieving global energy efficiency goals for sustainable development [1,2,3]",7
"Household energy consumption in the world accounts for a 35% share of total energy, and household is the most gendered sphere of society in most cultures [4, 5]",7
"Numerous studies [1, 2, 10] have proved that modern energy services have improved women's socio-economic status with less time and effort involved in households' chores and reducing the health risks associated with current energy practices",7
Women can play as key drivers of the innovative and inclusive energy sector for a successful clean energy transition,7
"Recognizing the importance of the gender dimension in energy policies, the seventh SDG has prioritized proper access to clean and affordable energy as a universal right [8]",7
"It emphasizes innovation, sustainable consumption, and justice [2]",12
It encourages more women's participation in the clean energy sector,7
"Access to electricity has been improving in Nepal, particularly in urban areas, by 94%",7
The electricity generated in Nepal comes from clean energy—hydropower,7
"Nepal is one of the least energy-consuming countries globally; however, it has the highest energy intensity in South Asia—4.5 times higher than the world average, Nepal’s energy intensity is 1.8 times higher than India or China [12, 13]",7
"In Nepal, the residential sector accounts for the largest energy consumption by 80%, and cooking holds the maximum energy use for 60% of the total energy share [14]",7
"In those scenarios, women have been working in three different productive sectors: household, child-rearing, and earning outside, and modern energy and technology usage can make it comfortable to manage all sectors",7
"The present energy transition towards the efficient world through technologies and globalization has increased a concern of energy and environment that has focused on their role of energy consumption, social, and economic factors [16]",7
"Numerous studies [14, 15] show that women can change towards sustainable energy",7
Then gender mainstreaming rises as a paramount process to consider gender as a holistic way to view women in technology,5
"The incorporation of women in technology and innovative processes is expected to positively shift the mainstream towards meeting the poor and equity needs, the South, and women",5
"Gender has been aligned concern for sustainability; mainly, social sustainability demands gender equality in every activity [16, 17]",5
Gender participation in energy consumption plays an essential role in the sustainability path,7
"The gender lens is vital to achieving sustainability goals in terms of energy consumption behavior understanding the economic, environmental, and social contexts of Kathmandu",7
"Third, it identifies gender mainstreaming energy policy measures to elevate participation in three sustainability aspects that may help the energy policymakers set long-term policy regulations as shown in Fig",5
The first stage: identifying energy use in the households and obtain informed consent from them; the second stage: detailed questionnaire surveys were done and identified different households for interviews and test of household kitchens in three different stratum location; the third stage: comparative and evaluation of sustainability level were done in terms of energy consumption and environmental aspects in a gender perspective,7
Respondents views on the electric cooking system The knowledge of clean energy use and efficiency practice has a significant role in achieving social sustainability,7
The study showed that higher energy consumption occurred in the household for cooking activities,7
Respondent of inner-city—D12 household had less frequency of social activities in the home and low household energy consumption,7
"In contrast, the D13 household's respondent was single, so cooked fewer items on the main course and ate day snacks outside, resulting in less energy consumption",7
"The result showed that health issues influenced cooking culture, food habits, availability of cooking time, religious and cultural aspects that ultimately influenced energy consumption to a certain extent and influence on IAQ of the kitchen",7
"The middle-and outer-city started using efficient appliances use, clean energy, and assisted in achieving the economic sustainability value of 45 (Additional file 1: Annex 1.1)",7
"In contrast, joint participation in EAP and clean cooking were higher in the middle-city layer than in the rest areas",7
"While comfort feeling during cooking and clean energy use were expressed in higher among outer-city dwellers, however, the presence of windowless kitchen at the same time",7
The criteria were identified from the literature and refined based on study observation and interviews for the context-based sustainability of energy consumption,7
"Women acted as agents to enrich the economic, social, and environmental capital, as shown in Fig. 13",15
"Women had a crucial role in increasing energy productivity and enhancing economic, social, and environmental sustainability, influencing sustainability indicators",7
"Recommended sustainable energy policy for maximizing gender participation (Own compile) As asserted by Gatersleben [28], Masera et al",7
The natural ventilation and wearing clothes in layers were practiced as an adaptation model in Kathmandu for extreme weather,13
"[1], Habtezion [2], Oberhauser [6], and Gatersleben [28] claim that modern energy services with electric appliances have improved women's socio-economic status by reducing the time and effort involved in households' chore, and this is also the case in Kathmandu",7
"[41] identified that electric cooking has high energy efficiency (80%) than LPG and CO2 concentration was less in the kitchen using an induction stove because appliances emit lower levels of contaminants, and it is recommended to improve IAQ",7
"It is suggested that urban housing, particularly kitchens, need to be improved in the context of the COVID-19 to reduce infectious diseases and improve indoor air quality",3
"However, it reveals that energy accessibility and gender equality are still challenging for both the city and national context in combined results",5
It implies improving overall comfort to women so that they can participate in economic development,8
"Moreover, ethnicity and gender have influenced household decision-making; thus, it suggests mainstreaming gender with considerations of different ethnicities and income groups",5
"The study suggested that gender mainstreaming (GM) intervention should account for gender concerns both at the micro and macro levels in terms of increasing participation of women in the decision-making process, planning to the implementation stages [49]",5
"All three contexts are interlinked in terms of the methodological, financial, legal, political, and institutional framework of gender mainstreaming",5
The result of sustainability conditions about energy usage concludes that there is a moderate positive correlation between energy consumption and income (r = 0.48),7
"The knowledge of social, economic, and environmental scenarios on household energy consumption has supported recognizing contextual sustainability in energy and gender on the same footing",7
"This research investigates the impact of stock market indices, economic strength, and research and development expenditures on environmental deterioration in the EU-27 countries for the period 2000–2020",9
Symmetric evidence for research and development increases environmental deterioration,9
Climate change and environmental deterioration have been called some of the biggest challenges humanity has faced in recent years,13
"Researchers, economists, and politicians are devoting more time and effort than ever before to finding ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while simultaneously fostering economic growth and the expansion of financial markets",8
This is in response to the fact that climate change is having a negative impact on the course of economic strengthening of financial markets,13
A significant portion of the scientific investigation into climate change is underpinned by scientific and technical principles,13
"Stock market developments provide investors accessibility to more funding options, such as equity financing, which might result in increased investment in sustainable energy projects (Minier 2009; Paramati et al",7
A central tenet of the endogenous growth school of thought is that increased spending on R&D can boost production and resource utilization efficiency,9
"The ability to invest in research and development and, by extension, to adopt effective technologies improves as national incomes rise",9
"Spending more on R&D, for example, can improve ecological integrity if effective environmental management systems are in place to control waste output",9
"Due to the scale effects of increased production that accompany higher growth and trade openness, research and development (R&D) might have major influence on environmental condition (Castellani and Pieri 2013; Freimane and Bāliņa 2016; Minniti and Venturini 2017)",9
The fact that there are potentially dwindling benefits to investing in R&D over time only adds weight to this idea,9
It creates openings for businesses to adopt more sustainable practices and renewable energy sources,7
"This study’s contribution to the literature and objectives are overlapping: (1) the empirical exploration of stock market indices, economic strength, and research and development’s impact on the environmental deterioration, (2) measuring above-mentioned variables on the environmental deterioration, (3) extending the previous literature (Azeem et al",9
Investors often interpret an increase in stock price as a sign of economic growth,8
"The most important gain from the stock market is the funding of research and development into cutting-edge, low-carbon emission technologies that help to slow the rate of environmental damage",9
"As a result, stock market growth provides both developed and developing countries with cutting-edge and eco-friendly technologies that can boost energy efficiency and aid in the transition to more sustainable and environmentally friendly production methods, thereby lowering their carbon footprints (Claessens and Feijen 2006; Tamazian et al",7
Sadorsky (2011) utilizes the panel generalized method of moments (GMM) regression methodology to investigate the effect of stock market growth on energy consumption in nine emerging markets in Eastern and Central Europe,7
This research adds to the growing body of evidence that robust capital markets are crucial to both short- and long-term growth of companies by mitigating their exposure to liquidity risk and fueling technological innovation,8
"(2020) examined the importance of technical innovation and renewable energy in low-carbon economies across EU member nations from 1980 to 2016, as well as their dynamic relationship with stock market growth and carbon emissions",7
Maximum sustainable consumption equals income,12
There is no question that economies need to make economic growth in order to reduce the level of poverty and improve their infrastructure over the long term,8
"When compared to the usage of renewable energy sources, a greater reliance on non-renewable energy sources, such as coal, crude oil, and natural gas, in commercial development may lead to the damage of the surrounding environment as a consequence of an increase in carbon emissions",7
"To put this into perspective, the issue that has to be asked is: at what expense to ecological or environmental health is more economic expansion desirable? Many studies exploring the impact of economic indicators on the environmental quality are rooted with the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis (AlKhars et al",3
These contradictory findings may be due to variances in the degree of development as well as in the energy mix (renewable versus non-renewable) in each nation,7
"In a research that looked at 27 developed economies, Al-Mulali and Ozturk (2016) came to the conclusion that high levels of economic growth only lead to an improvement in environmental quality over the long run, not over the short term",8
"Due to the fact that the EKC hypothesis was not validated, these findings lead the researchers to propose that increased economic development on its own probably is not enough to improve environmental quality",8
"As a result, this research differentiates itself from other studies that examine economic growth by analyzing the symmetric and asymmetric evidence of the link between economic strength and environmental deterioration",8
"For the innovation process to bear fruit, financial resources must be allocated to research and development (R&D)",9
"As an endogenous variable, technological progress penetrates the manufacturing process during expansion, allowing the market to operate more efficiently",8
(2018) for addressing climate change global warming and fostering long-term sustainable development,13
"For instance, businesses may expand operations with less impact on the environment by switching to renewable energy sources (Hall and Bain 2008; Luo et al",7
Yeh and Rubin (2011) examined the connection between climate change and the development of new technologies,13
"According to Jones (1998), cutting down on carbon emissions is possible if more money is put into research and development for new forms of energy",9
"Furthermore, if energy-saving technology is implemented in economic operations, the climate change problem may be addressed at reduced prices (Newell and Pizer 2008)",13
(2015) found that new technologies have a positive impact on the environment by decreasing carbon emissions and increasing energy efficiency,7
"Other R&D variables, such as the number of researchers and the prevalence of triadic patent families, also positively influenced this outcome",9
"The researchers found evidence in favor of the natural resource-based view’s central claim, namely, that a company may improve its energy efficiency and decrease its carbon intensity by allocating resources and capabilities to activities that have a positive impact on the environment",7
"Recent work, while exploring the effect of R&D on carbon emissions in UK, found that the R&D expenditure can reduce the carbon emissions (Shahbaz et al",9
"Based on the results of these studies, it is essential to explore how do the research and development expenditures affect the environmental deterioration",9
Research and development is used as the percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) of the specific country,9
Economic growth is measured as the gross domestic product at market prices,8
"Environmental degradation is measured through total of 9 variables: (1) greenhouse gas emissions, measured as tonnes per capita; (2) Particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) refers to particles with a diameter of less than 2.5 μm, annual data based on daily averages; (3) particulate matter 10 (PM10) refers to particles with a diameter of less than 10 μm, annual data based on daily averages; (4) carbon monoxide (CO), annual data based on daily averages; (5) sulfur dioxide (SO2), annual data based on daily averages; (6) ozone (O3), based on daily max 8-h averages; (7) nitrogen dioxide (NO2), annual data based on daily averages; (8) observed annual-mean temperature (TEMP); and (9) relative humidity (HUM)",15
"Therefore, the symmetric form of the panel ARDL of the model is shown as: Here, \({g}_{\mathrm{nit}}\) is the log of the nth environmental variable; \({p}_{\mathrm{it}}\) denotes log of stock price index; \({e}_{\mathrm{it}}\) is the log of gross domestic product at market price; \({r}_{\mathrm{it}}\) is the log of research and development expenditure; \({\mu }_{\mathrm{i}}\) is the group-specific effect; i is the country; and t is time period",9
Positive and negative shocks are not predicted to have the same effect on environmental degradation under this scenario,15
"Thus, the asymmetric form of Eq. (1) is represented as follows: where \({p}_{\mathrm{t}}^{+}\), \({p}_{\mathrm{t}}^{-}\), \({e}_{\mathrm{t}}^{+}\), \({e}_{\mathrm{t}}^{-}\), \({r}_{\mathrm{t}}^{+},\) and \({r}_{\mathrm{t}}^{-}\) denote the positive and negative shocks of stock indices, GDP, and R&D, respectively",9
"As outlined below, these shocks are calculated as positive and negative partial sum decompositions of stock market indices, gross domestic product (GDP), and research and development (R&D)",9
"GDP at market price is on average 243,571.31 Euros and the average expenditure on research and development in EU-27 is 1.47% of the GDP",9
"All the variables are positively skewed, apart from R&D expenses and Humidity",9
"Denmark spends a larger chunk of GDP to R&D (Fig. 1c) in the sample alongside Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, and Germany",9
"In the short run, apart from model with temperature and SO2 as the dependent variable, all other models show that the economic strength increases the environmental degradation",15
"The existence of only long-run impact is due to the fact that the research and development is a prolonged process, and the effects are visible over a longer period of time",9
"Either positive or negative economic strength both prompt the environmental degradation in the long run; however, the magnitude of effect is larger for the positive economic strength",15
"Positive research and development expenses in the long run increase GHG, PM2.5, and NO2 while decrease temperature",9
"The negative research and development expenses in the long run decrease GHG, PM2.5, and NO2 and increase PM10 and TEMP",9
"Short-run effect of positive and negative research and development expenses is negative, as positive R&D decreases PM 2.5 and NO2 and negative R&D decreases temperature and humidity",9
"Economic growth tends to have asymmetric behavior in the context of PM2.5, PM10, TEMP, and HUM in the long run; however, in the short run, the asymmetry is evident expect for SO2",8
Research and development is mostly symmetric in the short run as it only shows asymmetric behavior when tested impact on PM2.5,9
"The stock market indices (Fig. 2) contribute the most towards environmental degradation in Poland, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Spain",15
"Considering Fig. 5, the temporal aspect of the predicted values shows that as the contribution of stock market indices towards the environmental degradation increases over time",15
"Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, and Portugal have a converging trend towards the lower effect, whereas in Germany, Poland, Hungary, Estonia, Finland, the Netherlands, Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden, the effect of stock market indices increases the environmental degradation",15
Source: own elaboration Spatial plot of predicted values of environmental degradation based on influence of stock market indices,15
 Source: own elaboration Spatial plot of predicted values of environmental degradation based on influence of economic strength,15
"(Countries are plotted on y-axis of all the individual contour plots in reverse alphabetical order, i.e., 1 = AT, 2 = BE, …,27 = ES), Source: own elaboration Economic strength (Fig. 3) has the most contribution in increasing environmental degradation in Finland, Slovenia, the Netherlands, and Ireland, and least in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Lithuania",15
"Figure 5 shows that the effect is converging from lower levels of environmental degradation towards higher levels in Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, and Slovakia",15
"The effect of research and development expenses is higher in Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia Latvia, and Luxembourg, whereas the lowest effect is measured in Germany, Finland, France, Austria, and Belgium",9
(2020a) as their work also finds that the financial development over a longer period of time contributes towards the environmental degradation,15
"From the context of SDGs, stock markets’ growth should reduce the environmental degradation",15
"Economic strength in terms of long run contributes towards the environmental degradation; however, in the short run, only the diminishing aspect can increase the environmental degradation",15
"This might be explained as the economic strength lowers, countries are found with scarce resources to support the SDGs and contribute towards the environmental degradation",15
Research and development expenditures’ symmetric evidences is in line with work of Alam et al,9
"Even if the newer technology is environmentally friendly, the production of it might not be, as it is evident from this research’s results that firms in longer run prompt the environmental degradation",15
This shows that the environmental degradation shifts from one form to another,15
"Firstly, the shift of environmental degradation from one form to another form is critical for the policy making",15
"The financial markets are an essential part of an economy, it would be optimum if the financial markets can lower the environmental degradation",15
"Recent and upcoming events, such as COVID-19 and the Ukraine-Russia war, as well as their implications on economic growth and the likely policy reaction, pose a number of challenges for the economy and the environment",8
"As a consequence, more expenditures for R&D may support environment",9
"Finally, the increase of capital market and R&D expenditures could have positive impact on environment.",9
"Ultimately, research and development is a tool that can be used to curb CC, along with the proper use of land and fertilizers",9
There is thus a need to foster novel agricultural practices that help reduce emissions while ensuring the efficiency of the sector,13
The nearly three decades of climate negotiations have made clear the need to achieve sustainable development through a shared global commitment aimed at halting the ongoing environmental degradation,15
"The Paris Agreement, signed in 2015 and in force since January 2021, prioritizes the goal of keeping the rise in temperature below 2 °C (UNFCCC 2015)",13
"Recently, under the guidelines of the Paris Agreement and backed by European climate law, the EU has raised this target to 55% by 2030, calling for climate neutrality by 2050 (Council of the EU 2021)",13
"At the same time, agriculture and deforestation are responsible for almost 24% of global GHG emissions (IPCC 2014)",15
"While they confirm that the resulting legal clarity has had a positive influence in terms of food safety and consumer protection, they find evidence that the legislation has had adverse effects on innovation",2
"Specifically, this paper makes the following contributions to the literature: (1) it identifies which European countries have more effectively channelled their research and development (R&D) resources, establishing a pattern to guide future policies that ensure the success of the investments in AFF; (2) it assesses the importance of R&D as a way to curb CC; (3) it estimates the influence that certain agricultural practices may have on global warming; and (4) it analyzes a long period thus yielding robust evidence that can be directly applied by decision-makers in order to tackle the environmentally-damaging effects of AFF",9
It is an activity aimed at meeting humanity’s basic needs and is closely tied to the rest of the system of production,1
"Specifically, AFF will have to deal with increasingly extreme weather and seasonal changes, with regular floods and frosts followed by droughts and heat waves (Kristiansen et al",13
"According to information from the FAO, the current situation is as followsFootnote 2: a third of all agricultural land is degraded, about 75% of crop genetic diversity has been lost, 22% of livestock breeds are at risk of extinction, a substantial part of the marine fish stocks have been overexploited, and about 13 million hectares a year are converted to other land uses",15
The primary sector requires an innovation policy centred not only on economic growth but also aimed at generating change that benefits society (Hekkert et al,8
"In their recent analysis of the efficiency of technological innovation in agricultural production in the US and Europe, Aldieri et al",8
"(2021) conclude that decision-makers should encourage companies to expand their innovation activities, with an increase in R&D investments",9
This will help improve productivity and encourage knowledge spillovers,8
"In addition, the Paris Agreement highlights the role played by land use in climate action (Andrea 2022)",13
"According to the EEA, the climate crisis requires sustainable land and soil management, which would facilitate the production of food in sufficient quantities, as well as adaptation to CC",13
"Under the new EU regulation on land use, land use change and forestry, over the next decade EU member states will have to offset GHG emissions generated by land use",15
All this reveals a growing concern about how to maintain optimal levels of environmental health while achieving optimal land use,3
"(2021), using statistical information from China for the period 1990–2012, analyze the effects of agriculture, forestry, and other land uses on GHG emissions, demonstrating a causal relationship",15
"i = 1,….0.22 European countries, t = 2012,……2019, and j = nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium i = 1,….0.22 European countries, t = 2012,……2019, and j = agricultural land or forest land or cropland divided by land area i = 1,….0.22 European countries, t = 2012,……2019, and j = agricultural area under organic agriculture or cropland divided by agricultural land where GHG and EFF are emissions and efficiency levels, respectively; Fertilizers represents the use of fertilizer by surface area j in country i in year t; Share in land area represents agricultural, cropland, and forest land (j) as a share of the total area of country i in year t; Share in agricultural land represents cropland and the agricultural area under organic farming (j) as a proportion of the total agricultural area of country i in year t",2
Private and public spending on R&D reveals countries’ commitment to agricultural innovation,9
"Germany, Spain, and France hold the top positions in public and private spending on R&D in AFF",9
"The EFF score determines the position of each country with respect to the frontier, and the amount over an EFF level of 1 represents how much each country could increase its output (GVA) with the available inputs (R&D expenditure and labor)",9
(2021) affirm that R&D must provide solutions to improve not only the productivity but also the efficiency of the agricultural sector,9
"Furthermore, the European Innovation Partnership for Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability has been developed in an effort to support innovation in the European primary sector, by means of the synergies between the actors involved, as well as alliances between research and practice (Cronin et al",2
The relative importance of AFF in the world economy need not determine private and public resources for R&D in this sector,9
"The resulting estimates confirm that agricultural land and cropland increase GHG emissions, while practices such as forest land and organic farming help mitigate emissions",2
"(2019) confirms that organic farming reduces GHG in the agricultural sector, as is the case with increasing forest land",2
"Land use in AFF plays an important role in slowing CC, although the measures adopted can adversely affect food security",2
"In the short term, minimum tillage techniques, land use planning and organic farming should be encouraged",2
"Specifically, Farm to Fork, the central axis of the European Green Deal, sets the goal of achieving fair, healthy, and environmentally friendly food systems, which requires the appropriate combination of innovation and citizen awareness (European Commission 2020)",2
"Universal access to safe drinking water is essential to population health and well-being, as recognized in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)",6
"GAMA has been a laboratory for studying urban growth, economic security, and other concomitant socio-environmental and demographic issues in the recent past",11
The lessons from this study can be used to inform the planning of appropriate localized solutions targeted at providing piped water sources in neighborhoods lacking these services and to monitor progress in achieving universal access to improved drinking water as recognized in the SDG 6 and improving population health and well-being,6
"The past decade has witnessed significant progress in access to drinking water sources globally (Mosello, 2017)",6
"Since access to improved drinking water is a central concern for population health and well-being, several international organizations including the United Nations, the World Health Organization (WHO), and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have been very proactive in setting targets and providing support for universal access to safe drinking water",6
"Equitable access to quality and affordable housing, clean household energy, efficient transportation, and improved drinking water could improve health, well-being, and productivity in cities (WHO, 2016)",11
"Despite recent attention to household access to improved water and sanitation in resource poor settings, particularly in SSA cities, wide geographical inequities in access to safe, reliable, and affordable water persist within cities (Armah et al., 2018; Deshpande et al., 2020; Hopewell & Graham, 2014; Pullan et al., 2014)",6
"Ghana has achieved broad economic progress in recent decades which is reflected in improvements in the household environment, including access to improved water and sanitation and cleaner cooking fuels (Arku et al., 2016)",6
"As a result, it faces numerous urban development challenges, including inadequate urban drainage system, inadequate housing, poor connecting roads, and high traffic congestion (Cobbinah et al., 2020)",11
"In this regard, the provision of improved water sources as one of the priorities of SDG 6 is relevant as it seeks to achieve universal and equitable access to improved drinking water for all by 2030 (Deshpande et al., 2020; United Nations, 2015; UNICEF & WHO, 2019)",6
"It has become a laboratory for studying urban growth, resource securities, and other concomitant socio-environmental and demographic issues within the recent past (see Aliu et al., 2021; Bixby et al., 2022; Dapaah & Harris, 2017; Gaisie et al., 2019) and the current study adds to this burgeoning literature by telling a different story about the heterogeneity of GAMA’s water landscape at the enumeration area level",11
We specifically address two main research questions: (1) How much heterogeneity in drinking water sources exists within neighborhoods in GAMA?; and (2) does heterogeneity in drinking water source type differ by neighborhood wealth status? The findings of the study can be used to inform the planning of appropriate localized solutions and monitor progress in achieving universal access to safe water as recognized in the Sustainable Development Goal 6 and improving population health and well-being,6
"To begin with, there are three broad perspectives on how best to deliver safe drinking water in urban areas in the developing world",6
These broad categories can further be divided into a multiplicity of water sources as provided by the Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) of the WHO and the UNICEF in the JMP ladder for drinking water services,6
"These motives go beyond profit-making, political legitimacy, patronage, and petty corruption to include solidarity, religious beliefs, and pragmatic choices (Alba et al., 2020)",16
"In some instances, the lack of, or limited access to, water in informal low-income and slum neighborhoods is largely due to deliberate policy of city authorities",11
"Whereas in Cape Town water quality and satisfaction are linked to trust in government, this is not the case in parts of Accra",6
Private sector participation in urban water provision and management in many parts of Africa has increased significantly to address the deficit in piped water access,11
"The increasing patronage of sachet water in particular despite some of the issues raised about its quality (see Dzodzomenyo et al., 2018; Mosi et al., 2019) reflects both the failures of municipal water management as well as a lack of funding to extend water services to deprived areas (Stoler, 2017; Stoler et al., 2012b, 2013; Yeboah, 2006)",6
"Most of this growth occurred in Sub‐Saharan Africa and Asia where water insecurity, or the lack of access to adequate and safe water for a healthy and productive life, was already shaping lives and inhibiting development (Adams, 2018)",6
"Many of the worst affected areas are slums and informal settlements and areas of intensified growth (Adams, 2018; Angoua et al., 2018; Dos Santos et al., 2017)",11
"Moreover, having access to a pipe in the home or compound does not guarantee water delivery or adequate piped water quality",6
"In 2004, these local government areas increased from three to four and later doubled in 2008 in response to mainly the phenomenon of urban growth and sprawl (Owusu, 2015)",11
"Population of GAMA from 1960 to 2010 (source: Derived from Ghana Statistical Service, Population Census Reports for 1960, 1970, 1984, 2000, 2010 censuses) (see Census Office, 1960, 1975; GSS, 1987, 2005, 2012; Yankson & Bertrand, 2012) Urbanization and urban expansion are central to our understanding of variation in water demand and use in GAMA",17
"As the seat of government, the high cost of land and limited residential spaces have push migrants and low-income residents into the creation of slums and squatter settlements which often lack essential services such as water and sanitation (Yankson & Bertrand, 2012)",6
This index is a continuous measure of the degree of variation that reveal the different dimensions in water insecurity and the multiple strategies households use to obtain drinking water,6
We also considered how spatial income inequality varies across and within the 12 districts and is associated with community water source variability,10
It is also important to note that the abovementioned districts which are more urbanized also exhibited low–high clusters meaning that there are also high-income residential areas with low diversity in access to drinking water sources (Fig. 5),6
"For the rich, many of whom may have access to pipe borne water inside dwelling; the use of multiple sources such as sachet water and bottled water may reflect the perception of water quality and irregular flow of pipe borne water as well as water rationing",6
"Unfortunately, census data does not provide questions on water quality",6
"Population growth and urban expansion driven largely by migration has also pushed migrants who come into the city into slums or informal settlements (such as Nima, Maamobi and Sabon Zongo) and peri urban areas such as Abokobi, Amasaman, and Kpone with limited supply of pipe-borne water services",11
"With respect to water quality, some studies such as one by Sunkari and Danladi (2016) in the Accra Metropolis on bottled drinking water indicate that the trace elements pose no risks as they are below the WHO and the Ghana Standard Authority’s guidelines",6
"Another study in the Ga West Municipality on borehole water also showed that the physico-chemical properties for drinking water are within the required limits of the WHO except for total dissolved solids (TDS), total hardness, sodium (Na+), and chlorine (Cl−) which could be as a result of solid waste leachate and marine water intrusion (Sunkari et al., 2019)",12
"This article looks at how population movements are addressed by the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (SFDRR), and highlights some of the potential implications of the SFDRR on disaster risk reduction (DRR) and mobility management work",11
"The article looks at the operational implications of the SFDRR text and covers issues of including migrants in DRR work; informing urban development about current and future mobility trends; managing relocations, evacuations, and displacement to prevent future risks and reduce existing ones; and preparing for and managing disaster-induced population movements to reduce the direct and indirect impacts of natural hazards",11
"While some implications of the DRR-mobility nexus might still be missing from DRR policy, population movements are now recognized as a key global risk dynamic",11
"In December 2015, negotiations aiming to establish global mechanisms for climate change mitigation and adaptation reached a major milestone with the Adoption of the Paris Agreement (UN 2015b) at the 21st Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)",13
"Some attempts have been made to acknowledge efforts in parallel tracks, and to try to promote consistency among them—see, for example, references to the SFDRR in the SDG outcome document (UN 2015a, target 11.b) and in the preamble of the Paris Agreement (UN 2015b)",13
"To different extents, all these processes have highlighted and captured the complex implications of such movements for global well-being and risk—the access to opportunities and resources they open up, the circulation of ideas and wealth they underpin, and the exposure to new and increased hazards they can result in for those moving, as well as their home and their host communities (for an overview of disaster risk implications of population movements see IOM 2015a)",10
This might have been particularly apparent in the progress of the DRR dialogue leading to the Sendai conference,11
"However, the text does not explicitly address a number of mobility-related issues that are fundamental to risk creation and reduction processes, such as the role internal and international migration policies play in shaping people’s exposure and vulnerability, the centrality of remittance transfers and household-level translocal networks to individual and collective resilience-building, and the need to address displacement situations to reduce direct and indirect consequences of disasters",10
This article aims to contribute to upcoming DRR efforts by analyzing how human mobility is mentioned in the SFDRR text and what the implications are of the various references to the design and implementation of concrete policies and programs,11
"The categorization of human mobility issues into the five areas proposed below has emerged as part of advocacy efforts by the IOM and its partners in the lead-up to the Sendai conference, and has been used repeatedly to articulate the organization’s policy discourse on DRR",11
This is central to analytical efforts that look at population movements as a dynamic of risk reduction and creation—a perspective that is particularly productive for DRR work (IOM 2015a),11
"Paragraph 27(h): empower local authorities, as appropriate, through regulatory and financial means to work and coordinate with […] migrants in disaster risk management at local level (UNISDR 2015a, p",11
"At the same time, migrants do play a role in the circulation of material and immaterial resources that underpin economic well-being, cultural vitality, and resilience of households, communities, and societies (IOM 2015a), and therefore need to be considered as a specific group of DRR stakeholders",11
"In increasingly diverse societies, including migrants in DRR and disaster risk management (DRM) efforts is essential both to reducing the overall impacts of hazards and to harnessing all available resources to prevent, cope with, and recover from disasters",11
"Integrating attention to migrants and their social, economic, and cultural specificities in disaster risk management can help address some of the most immediate drivers of their vulnerability to disasters",11
"Migrants, their organizations and representatives actively participate in disaster management work (Shepherd and Van Vuuren 2014)",11
"Disaster risk management institutions have a variety of options to address the specific barriers migrants face before, during, and after disasters",11
"Migrants’ access to disaster mitigation and assistance can be facilitated by removing migration status-based barriers to resources and services, including by softening the enforcement of migration regulations and simplifying procedures for issuing documentation, visa, and permits in disaster situations (post-Sandy immigration regulations, for example; USCIS 2012)",11
"While these interventions are relatively well established in disaster risk management systems around the world, a number of key areas remain critical for their effectiveness",11
"This is especially the case for migrants who have reasons not to trust host communities and authorities (marginalized groups and undocumented migrants, for example)",10
"Efforts to improve migrants’ access to resources, information, and assistance need to be supported by longer-term awareness raising and trust-building work with their host communities and key authorities (for example, the police and basic service providers) (Farrow et al",10
"This is not limited to financial resources; members of the diaspora can be engaged to contribute their skills to risk reduction and resilience-building work, including through schemes to support their return (IOM Netherlands 2015)",10
Factoring present and expected population movements into urban development and service delivery should therefore be a key component of creating more inclusive and resilient settlements,11
Mainstreaming migration into urban planning requires looking into both the mobility effects of planning decisions and the planning implications of accommodating demographic changes linked to migration,11
"This can be done, for instance, through quantitative assessments and scenarios that estimate incoming and outgoing population flows as a consequence of urban development and investments, and inform planning choices for local authorities and markets (IOM 2015c; Lee and Holme 2015)",11
"Supporting people to resettle out of at-risk areas can drastically reduce their exposure and vulnerability, and might be regarded as the only option available to reduce risk in areas highly exposed to hazards or undergoing irreversible environmental degradation",15
"Such efforts are best supported by participatory mechanisms for planning and decision making that include those being relocated, as well as host communities and individuals in locations of origin that are not participating in the relocation (Mitchell 2015)",10
"A number of SFDRR paragraphs point to disaster-induced evacuations and displacement as a key issue for DRR: Paragraph 33(h): Promote regular disaster preparedness, response and recovery exercises, including evacuation drills, training and the establishment of area-based support systems, with a view to ensuring rapid and effective response to disasters and related displacement, including access to safe shelter, essential food and non-food relief supplies, as appropriate to local needs (UNISDR 2015a, p",11
"9), the SFDRR is weaker on this point than its zero [Paragraph 31(a)] and pre-zero draft [Paragraph 16(d)] texts, both of which included more targeted provisions on preparing for and addressing displacement as a core element of disaster risk management (and more specifically recovery) efforts",11
Making sure that mobility in disaster and displacement after disasters are seen as core components of such documents and frameworks is a precondition for effective disaster preparedness and response (CCCM Cluster 2014),11
"Understanding people’s movements in disasters, by setting up systems to track disaster-induced population movements, into and out of formal and informal displacement sites, as well as profiling affected persons and their host communities, is key to effective delivery of services and assistance (Yonetani and Yuen 2014)",10
"In addition, promoting joint contingency planning and emergency response among disaster management institutions, civil protection agencies, service providers, and communities, in particular in border areas characterized by intense population circulation, can help effectively provide assistance to those displaced across borders (INGC et al",11
"The SFDRR includes a broader reference to the need to address all disaster-induced movements with the aim to build resilience: Paragraph 30(l): Encourage the adoption of policies and programmes addressing disaster-induced human mobility to strengthen the resilience of affected people and that of host communities as per national laws and circumstances (UNISDR 2015a, p",10
"The SFDRR acknowledges that all these movements can result in increased vulnerability for those moving, as well as in increased pressures on host communities and ecosystems",10
"In the light of the narrower scope of the relevant provision of the Paris Agreement (UN 2015b, Paragraph 50), which refers to climate-induced displacement only, the SFDRR provision could represent the basis for more comprehensive, and ultimately just and inclusive, efforts to address this issue",13
Such resilience building efforts require particular attention to addressing host communities’ preexisting vulnerabilities as part of the process of ensuring adequate living conditions for those on the move (Sherwood et al,10
"2014), reducing environmental impacts of population inflows (Berry 2008), and promoting community cohesion among newcomers and host communities (Esnard and Sapat 2014)",10
"Despite the political sensitivity of topics such as migration and displacement and the reticence of a part of the Member States to discuss them at all in a DRR policy forum, the SFDRR adopted a much more nuanced view on population movements and their effects on risk creation and reduction than the HFA did",11
"As a consequence, the SFDRR gives consideration to a variety of human mobility issues that are extremely relevant for DRR work—leaving, however, unaddressed a few crucial issues",11
The idea that migrants do contribute to building the resilience of home and host communities was increasingly accepted throughout the consultations,10
"This might be an indication of a lack of capacity or willingness to address underlying, structural drivers of risk as part of DRR policy and operational efforts",11
"Despite these shortcomings, the SFDRR gives consideration to a number of human mobility issues that are extremely relevant for DRR, and provides a platform for a variety of actions that might be key to reducing the impacts of hazards over the next decades, a period in which population flows are expected to remain intense (UNDESA 2013)",11
"Moreover, the SFDRR explicitly highlights several operational priorities that could also be at the heart of sustainable development and climate change adaptation efforts, and that have not been unpacked in such detail in higher-level documents such as the resolution on the SDGs or the UNFCCC Paris Agreement",13
"With disaster-induced displacement involving more people around the world, measures to anticipate, manage, and address this displacement are likely to become even more important to disaster preparedness, response, and recovery",11
"The learning module comprised two sections: One about botany, plant characteristics, and plant families; the other about the advantages and disadvantages of traditional as well as sustainable farming methods",2
The customized cognitive test and semantic differentials for sustainability and environmental protection produced three major findings: (1) A digital learning environment successfully and significantly increased sustainability knowledge (2) Learners clearly distinguished the concepts Sustainability and Environmental Protection (3) There is no direct correlation between semantic differential scores and learning outcome,15
"The United Nations’ Agenda 2030 includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to address global issues such as climate change, poverty, and inequality",13
"The UK Department for Environment, Transport and Regions (DETR) defines four key elements of sustainable development: (1) social progress which recognizes the needs of everyone, (2) effective protection of the environment, (3) prudent use of natural resources and (4) maintenance of high and stable levels of economic growth and employment [7]",8
"They also highlight the interconnectedness of topics such as global citizenship, climate change, and loss of biodiversity",13
5 th graders cannot differentiate between the abstract term sustainability and the more tangible concept of environmental protection,15
"Consequently, establishing in-depth sustainability knowledge will motivate learners to live a more sustainable lifestyle",12
"For example, people may have basic knowledge about biodiversity loss, yet do not care about it unless a viable threat to their lifestyle is revealed, such as shortages in their food supply",15
Sustainable agriculture is considered environmentally friendly,2
"These learning objectives go hand in hand with both the UN’s Global EverGreening Alliance, the EU’s Green Deal and the From Farm To Fork initiative [17, 18]",2
Two different methods were used to teach curriculum-related content in botany and sustainable agriculture,2
"Among other sources, three expert videos (traditional farmer, sustainable farmer, local politician) with information about traditional and sustainable agriculture were provided",2
A concluding DIY task was to create a poster of the pros and cons for more sustainable farming in their area,2
"Each X represents 2 learners The second part of this analysis focuses on two semantic differentials, one for Sustainability (SU) and the other one for Environmental Protection (PR)",15
Our results point to a distinct differentiation between the abstract concept of Sustainability (SU) and the more tangible concept of Environmental Protection (PR),15
Environmental protection is a part of the ecological and economic pillars of sustainability,15
"Acting sustainability-conscious, therefore, automatically includes actions toward environmental protection",15
One possible explanation for this increased deviation could be that the term environmental protection is used more commonly and is more self-explanatory,15
"Since sustainable agriculture touches many everyday issues even for learners, such as choice of food or production method, it is a suitable starting point for ESD",2
"In the contemporary world, environmental degradation has become a concern for human beings",15
"Accordingly, the impact of social welfare, economic policy uncertainty, natural resource rents, life expectancy, and trade openness are examined on ecological footprint (the most comprehensive proxy of environmental degradation) in 19 energy-intensive countries from 1997 to 2018",15
"Consequently, for several decades, income inequality and environmental quality have been among human beings’ main concerns and the most challenging obstacles to sustainable development in international public opinion",10
"However, CO2 emission is not a powerful indicator of environmental degradation and does not consider resource stocks such as soil, forests, mining, and oil",15
"Conversely, the unfavorable economic situation may lead firms and companies to ignore the requirements of environmental governance and enhance the use of cheaper traditional energy, which leads to increased environmental degradation (Jiang et al",15
"Moreover, the EPU can affect energy consumption through price fluctuations caused by supply and demand shocks, which in turn interferes with the quality of the environment (Hailemariam et al",7
It is worth noting that various social welfare and income inequality indicators have been proposed in the relevant literature,10
1997) social welfare index is one of these indicators that provide social welfare based on GDP per capita and income inequality,10
"Thus, reducing income inequality and enhancing GDP per capita will increase social welfare",10
"Also, new environmental literature considers the discussion of uncertainties, in recent decades, as a factor influencing environmental degradation",15
Empirical evidence suggests that considering EPU in energy consumption and environmental quality studies is critical,7
"Moreover, some studies have an exceptional sensitivity because they believe energy conservation policies could hurt countries' economic growth",8
"As such, many scholars are investigating the economic policies, laws, and regulations that can balance the improvement of environmental quality while, at the same time, maintaining the economic growth rate (Charfeddine and Mrabet 2017)",8
This study investigates the influence of EPU and social welfare on the environmental quality of 19 countries with high energy consumption and natural resource extraction,7
"According to BP (2021) reports, their economies consume about 63.9% of primary energy, of which fossil fuels are the main sources of energy consumption",7
"Interestingly, less than half of the total energy consumption of these countries is provided by clean energy and traditional energy",7
"Therefore, according to the aims of the present study, we review five nexuses of environmental literature: the health status-environment nexus, natural resource-environment nexus, trade openness-environment nexus, income inequality-environment nexus, and EPU-environment nexus",10
"For instance, a wide range of researchers believes that nations rich in natural resources can experience high production and export rates and, as a result, achieve significant economic growth in the long run",8
"Meanwhile, some studies have focused on analyzing the effects of income inequality on a regional basis, and some studies have focused on specific countries",10
"The second category’s results are the opposite of the first category, and these studies conclude that income inequality improves the quality of the environment (Demir et al",10
"With this in mind, unlike the extensive studies that have used CO2 emissions for environmental degradation, this study considers ecological footprint as a more comprehensive measure of environmental degradation",15
This is because indicators that consider only air contamination cannot describe the state of environmental degradation adequately,15
Different indicators of social welfare and income inequality have been used in previous studies,10
"To this end, the impact of the mentioned variables on EF is examined using the annual data from 1997 to 2018 in 19 countries that play a prominent role in environmental degradation",15
"In other words, EPU has a deteriorating role toward EF in the short run, and an increase in EPU is responsible for environmental degradation in the short run",15
"One of the most important proceedings of these countries to reduce income inequalities is to increase the minimum wage for workers and low-income groups; as low-income groups earn higher incomes, their demand for food and natural resources increases, which can harm the environment and cause pollution",8
Investing in education and improving schools’ quality is another effective way to reduce inequalities,10
"Meanwhile, the study countries are industrialized countries that rely heavily on increasing their GDP and achieving high economic growth rates to increase their welfare programs",8
"Increased production can significantly increase the consumption of natural resources and energy and impose species extinction, soil and climate pollution, excessive waste production, deforestation, and other forms of environmental degradation on human society",15
"Hence, global trade leads to environmental degradation in the short run",15
"Causality results Environmental degradation has been one of the most challenging human concerns for several decades, where the absence of adequate regulations and policies can cause catastrophic damage to the earth's economy, human life, and survival",15
"To mitigate environmental problems and propose effective policies, this study, using the 19 energy-intensive countries as a case study, examines the impact of two challenging twenty-first-century factors, social welfare, and economic policy uncertainty, on widely used environmental degradation proxies (ecological footprint) in the short-run and long-run",15
"The study’s policy implications for governments and policymakers are as follows: The consumption of clean energy sources, often a vital solution to reduce pollution, is recommended",7
"Thus, enterprises and economic institutions must be required to use clean energy and comply with environmental standards in all circumstances",7
"Similarly, the “Free Riding” behavior of local governments and the industrial sector, fiscal decentralization, should be curtailed by bounding carbon shares in environmental degradation both in the short run and long run",15
The subsequent policy implication for these countries is to focus on a paradigm shift related to energy portfolio by accumulating the share of green energy in the total sphere of energy consumption,7
"Similarly, proper planning for technological advancements and enhancements in the power sector to enhance carbon capture and storage is the need of the hour to subdue environmental degradation",15
Another suggestion is to devise additional credit or green credit mechanisms or systems to allow varying interest rates for industries depending on their parts in environmental degradation and carbon emission,15
"The more polluting industries may offer credit at higher interest rates and vice versa, which will compel industries to innovate green or renewable energy production at their potential level",7
"In parallel, importers should be given subsidies to import green energy products",7
The role of renewable energy in environmental sustainability cannot be denied,7
"Therefore, it is suggested to increase green investment to migrate from traditional methods of energy production to enhance and modernize green energy production techniques",7
"More focus should be given to increasing geothermal, nuclear, and wind energy production",7
The scope and volume of green finances to promote renewable energy production should be enlarged in selected OECD countries,7
"Governments should assess how Economic Policy Uncertainty and other emission-causing factors could affect environmental sustainability, and they should concentrate on controlling Economic Policy Uncertainty while stimulating renewable energy, energy-efficient technology, and knowledge production and transfer deployment",7
"By adopting all these policies, both the quality of the environment and the economic growth rate will improve",8
"Finally, we consider that future studies may focus on finding the threshold level of fiscal decentralization to optimize economic growth with sustainable environmental goals, which is the soul of SDGs",8
"Thirdly, this research study assumes the impact of green energy on ecological footprint; however, energy segregation paves the way for future researchers to dissect the energy consumption role in enhancing ecological footprint with particular reference to fiscal decentralization and economic policy uncertainty",7
"We suggest that when implementing MER, governments should enhance regional and global cooperation, promote green technology, and use comprehensive policy tools to stimulate firms’ green innovation",9
"Secondly, the change of scale efficiency (SE) is the main reason that results in the decrease of GDE; thirdly, the higher the target of reducing air pollution in cities with greater economic volume, the larger the negative effects of APCAP on GDE",11
"2017), others point out that environmental regulation can stimulate firms’ technological innovation, which will lead to the increase of GDE (Porter and Van 1995; Peng et al",8
"Existing studies find that environmental regulation may affect environmental quality by changing the emission of industrial pollution and energy efficiency, which also have a close relationship with GDE (Xiong and Wang 2020; Shahzad et al",7
"Environmental regulation may also affect environmental quality through foreign direct investment, technological innovation, green investment, and industrial structure upgrading (Fahad et al",8
"Furthermore, because polluting firms may increase investment related to environmental protection such as updating equipment, hiring high-skilled workers, and purchasing green technologies (Wang and Yuan 2018), the overall cost may increase while output will decrease in the short term (Simpson and Bradford 1996)",15
"From the perspective of technology effects, because firms affected by MER may increase their investment in green technologies and spending on R&D, in the long term, the GDE may increase",9
"First, the estimation may be biased by time-varying omitted variables related to regional economic development and air pollution",8
The value of energy for each city is measured based on the provincial energy consumption weighted by the ratio of city-level GDP to provincial GDP,7
"Because China underwent intensive administrative redistricting from 2000 to 2008, and the global financial crisis in 2008 brought a big impact on China’s economic growth, in this study, we take 2008 as the starting year",8
"(2020), and Ren and Ji (2021), which find the negative relationship between environmental regulation and economic growth",8
"The Minamata Convention (MC), a multilateral environmental agreement (MEA), aims to protect human health and the environment from anthropogenic emissions and releases of mercury and its compounds",3
"The Minamata Convention (MC) on mercury, which entered into force on August 16, 2017, is a global treaty that aims to protect human health and the environment from anthropogenic emissions of mercury and its compounds [1]",3
"The success of the MC in controlling mercury pollution largely depends on several factors (usually complementing each other) such as support from the scientific research and information, efficiency of the adopted and existing legislations at national level (in particular to reduce mercury import, export and uses), development and implementation of strategies and programs identifying and protecting the populations at serious risk of mercury exposure, scientific and political coherence between developing and developed countries, etc",9
"Owing to the rapid economic development in recent decades, India is among the world’s top emitters of anthropogenic mercury to the atmosphere, with projections of its continuous significant contributions to the global mercury emissions even in the future [11]",8
"Recent research has demostrated the release of mercury (and other chemical pollutants) to the environment in the vicinity of waste treatment and disposal sites at several locations in India [16,17,18,19,20,21,22]",12
"Similarly, people (including children and women in child-bearing age) living in an Indian city with active coal-fired power plants had higher hair-mercury levels than those in cities with no major mercury point-source [26]",7
"In such a regulatory set-up, implementation of action plans to manage a specific chemical pollutant or a group of pollutants [such as Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs)] becomes challenging due to absence of dedicated management strategies and their adequate surveillance",12
"To do so, some of the suggested measures are to control emissions from point sources such as coal-fired power plants, coal-fired industrial boilers, smelting and roasting processes used in the production of non-ferrous metals, waste incineration facilities, and cement clinker production facilities",7
This regulation aims to prevent and control water pollution in any form and to maintain/restore wholesomeness of water in India by establishing Pollution Control Boards at the National and State levels which monitor and enforce policies and water quality standards in this regard,6
"Mercury release from wastes (industrial, municipal, electronics and electrical equipment, and biomedical) is a prominent issue in rapidly transiting economies like India which requires a well-structured and modern waste management capacity as well as regulations",12
"In addition, this regulation also lists mercury-containing waste in the list of hazardous wastes which require registration for recycling/reprocessing",12
The regulation also describes the responsibilities of the waste generator for the handling of hazardous waste and procedures for the management of waste generated,12
"Another regulation which is related to mercury waste management in India and seems aligned to Article 11 of the MC is the Municipal Solid Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2016, which shall apply to every municipal authority responsible for collection, segregation, storage, transportation, processing, and disposal of municipal solid wastes (MSWs)",12
"A regulation important from the point of mercury waste management is the Bio-Medical Waste (Management and Handling) Rules 2016, which include 17 rules related to duties of a person having administrative control over the institution and the premises generating bio-medical waste; they also include rules that specify the responsibilities of concerned authorities and guidelines for various stages of bio-medical waste management",12
"The E-waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2016, another regulation related to mercury waste management in India, describes the responsibilities of e-waste producers, dealers, collection centers, refurbishers, dismantlers, recyclers, auctioneers and bulk consumers involved in the manufacturing, sales, purchasing and processing of electrical and electronic equipment or components as described in one of its Schedules [39]",12
"Concerning the trade of mercury and its compounds, which is under the obligations of Articles 3 and 4 of the MC, India’s Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act, 1992, and the Export Import policy (or Foreign Trade Policy; EXIM Policy 2015–2020) provide relevant guidance and procedures",17
The primary objective of the MC is to protect human health from mercury pollution,3
"In addition, the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, consolidates the laws relating to establishing food safety standards to regulate manufacturing, storage, distribution, sale, and import of food items",2
"The description of occupational safety has been also advocated in regulations which are related to waste management, such as the Municipal Solid Wastes (Management and Handling) Rules, 2016, which specifies the safety provisions including periodic health inspections of workers at the landfill sites",12
"Since 2015, however, a slowdown in the growth of coal-fired power plants has been observed that is accompanied by falling renewable energy cost and steady demand for energy",7
"The transition from coal-fired energy generation to renewable energy generation is expected to face several constraints as historically there has been a strong economic interest in coal and its downstream industries [45, 46]",7
"Along with coal-fired power plants, cement production, primary production of ferrous and non-ferrous metals, and smelting industries are the relevant sectors responsible for atmospheric mercury emissions",7
The issue of mercury-containing waste management is as important and challenging as the mercury emissions from large industries,12
"The collection and recycling of e-waste is mostly done by the informal sector, which is largely unorganized and often bypasses the waste management policies and guidelines",12
"In particular, these guidelines and regulations for waste management in India appeared rather ineffective in handling accidents such as the Kodaikanal mercury poisoning",12
"In addition, a scheme for proper channelization of funds especially for better infrastructure, development and adoption of appropriate technology to remediate the contaminated sites, training facilities for waste-handlers at each level, and developing and implementing strategies to transform the unorganized and informal waste management sector into an organized and formal sector should be well established [51]",12
"This calls for cooperation with developed nations and international agencies in terms of transfer of expertise, technology and policy advisory, providing financial aid, and eliminating double-standards for waste management practices including waste offloading in developing countries",12
"Considering the seriousness of the matter, the MoEFCC of the Government of India amended the bio-medical waste management rules in 2016",12
"However, the amendment is not specially focused on the mercury pollution from bio-medical wastes, but more on the structure and capacity of the existing bio-medical waste management system in India",12
"In the context of mercury management, the rules do not provide specific strategies for handling mercury-containing bio-medical wastes, for example specification about the standards for mercury emissions at Common Bio-Medical Waste Treatment Facility (CBMWTF) are missing",12
"Should this integration fail, the complex and interlinked range of hazards and risks of mercury contamination will continue to cause adverse impacts on the environment, human health, and economic development in India",8
"The IDNDR Secretariat introduced document IDNDR/STC/1992/3, which summarized the implementation status of national disaster mitigation programs on the basis of information submitted by National Committees and Focal Points",11
"Presentations on IDNDR country programs and progress in disaster mitigation activities at the national level were made by representatives of IDNDR committees from Australia, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, Tunisia, and the United States; a STC member reported on IDNDR developments in Africa",11
The information provided demonstrated the increasing number and significance of disaster mitigation activities initiated or accelerated as a result of the IDNDR,11
"Some issues and challenges that were identified at the meeting in 1993 were: the importance of obtaining the highest political commitment to disaster reduction, in order to raise the relative priority of disaster mitigation in government investment policies, and help reorient expenditure in a way that would take into account disaster vulnerability; the need for more information material on the potential and benefits of disaster prevention and support for public education and awareness campaigns in vulnerable countries; the importance of training and exchange of staff between countries in need of such expertise and those countries more advanced in disaster reduction practices; the need to complete risk-mapping for the major hazards in each country or community in a way accessible to policymakers and administrators; that in vulnerable small or island countries, even micro-assistance projects that require limited resources could have large benefits; the importance of increasing the priority level of disaster reduction projects in country requests for bilateral or multilateral development assistance, as indicated by the General Assembly when proclaiming the IDNDR; the need to assign IDNDR responsibility to deal with already existing disaster management or public entities in different countries (UN 1993)",11
"DHA—Department of Humanitarian Affairs; OCHA—Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs While the initial years of the UNISDR were spent to formulate new strategies, national focal points, national disaster risk management plans, and so on, the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami again highlighted the importance of early warning and bringing technology to people",11
"The Hyogo Framework explicitly mentioned the need to “Strengthen the technical and scientific capacity to develop and apply methodologies, studies and models to assess vulnerabilities to and the impact of geological, weather, water and climate-related hazards, including the improvement of regional monitoring capacities and assessments” (UNISDR 2005, p",13
There are a number of references to science and technology in the Sendai Framework,11
"The Secretary-General of the United Nations, in his report to the General Assembly in 2018 emphasized that: “To support the implementation of the Sendai Framework Science and Technology Roadmap, the UNISDR Global Science and Technology Advisory Group has been enhanced in terms of its scope and resources",11
"Over the last 30 years, the DRR concept has evolved significantly",11
"In the early 1990s, the focus of the IDNDR was to enhance awareness of pre-disaster preparedness measures compared to post-disaster response",11
"It shows that from 2011 onward, trends of environmental risks like disasters, climate change, and extreme weather have increased, both in terms of likelihood and impacts",13
There has been a parallel evolution of the climate change field with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) focus on the science-policy nexus,13
"Adaptation technology in different sectors like health, agriculture, and water brings new innovation in the DRR technologies as well",11
"In terms of engineering, while the field started mainly from civil engineering contributing significantly to the solutions for DRR, currently broader aspects of environmental or infrastructure and society-based engineering are playing critical roles in DRR",11
"Possibly within a few years, these technologies will play crucial roles in different aspects of DRR",11
"Since then, drones have been used extensively in post-disaster damage estimation in different countries, and their proliferation was particularly noticeable after the 2011 East Japan earthquake, tsunami, and the nuclear accident",11
"3D printing has been used extensively for specific order-made, low-cost equipment for DRR related activities",11
"Gradually, these technologies are becoming stronger pillars in innovation in DRR",11
Source Adopted from PWC (2019) The public is using digital technologies to support disaster management,11
"Mobile applications are becoming quite popular in different fields, and the DRR field is no exception",11
The key point is how technology can overcome these digital / technological divides and create a more inclusive society when it comes to science and technology and its application to DRR,11
Increasing collaboration between science and the private sectors is developing innovative products and systems related to DRR,11
"The IRDR along with its extensive network of science committees, international center of excellence (ICOE), national committees, and young scientists has contributed significantly to the development of an integrated approach in DRR",11
"Another major development is the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), which was proposed by the government of India, and supported by UNDRR and several country governments as a knowledge exchange and capacity development partnership",9
"Four specific thematic areas include: (1) development of risk assessment methodologies, risk metrics, and indicators of sustainability for different infrastructure classes; (2) issues of standards, design, and regulation for infrastructure development, operations, and maintenance; (3) financing for disaster-resilient infrastructure, including risk transfer mechanisms; and (4) reconstruction and recovery planning for key infrastructure sectors after disasters (CDRI 2020)",9
There is always a debate whether DRR should be a stand-alone course in higher education or whether it should be incorporated into different existing disciplines,11
"Possibly the latter is easier, and there has been progress in creating DRR course modules in science (like geology), the humanities (like geography), urban planning, engineering, economics, and so on",11
"However, in some countries, there has been strong demand for DRR professionals, and masters courses in higher education have been developed and conducted",11
Higher education in DRR is a multidisciplinary issue,11
It has not been long that some formal academic degrees have been offered in the field of DRR from a few academic institutions worldwide,11
"They also stressed the importance of inclusive curriculums, theoretical focus, field orientation, a multidisciplinary approach, and skill enhancement as some of the essentials for higher education in DRR",11
"The nature of disasters is becoming complex, and the Sendai Framework gives additional responsibilities to better understanding different hazards, including technological and so-called NATECH (natural hazard induced technological disasters) ones",11
"The Resilience Innovation Knowledge Academy (RIKA), a Delhi-based DRR social entrepreneur start-up has initiated innovative incubation programs with Indian universities to develop social entrepreneurs in the DRR field",11
"There is a strong need to develop an international professional society on DRR, which would help to: (1) develop DRR as an academic discipline; (2) promote cutting-edge research; and (3) develop capacities of young professionals",11
"To develop an inclusive society, the Japanese government Cabinet Office created the Society 5.0 concept as a super smart and inclusive society that deals with DRR among other social needs like health care, education, agriculture, and so on",11
"This concept has been received positively by the Japan Chamber of Commerce, and several major industries are proactive in research and development related to Society 5.0 and the SDGs",9
"Mavrodieva and Shaw (2020) reviewed disaster and climate change perspectives in Society 5.0 and emphasized that policy integration is key to developing an ecosystem of innovation, which leads to a sustainable and human-centric futuristic society and is disaster resilient and adaptive to climate change impacts",13
"However, from the community perspective, that should be the first mile—“the last mile” needs to become “the first mile.” The essence of this is that communities and stakeholders need to be involved from the design period of the research, often called “co-design,” and that needs to be linked to implementation, which also needs to be “co-delivery.” Possibly that should be the future “new normal” of disaster research and the application of science and technology in DRR",11
"Within such interdisciplinary energy research, the novel domain of energy informatics plays an important role, as it involves different disciplines addressing the socio-techno-economic challenges of sustainable energy and power systems in a holistic manner",7
The objective of this paper is to draw an overview of the novel domain of energy informatics by addressing the educational opportunities as well as related challenges in light of current trends and the future direction of research and industrial innovation,9
In this study we discuss the energy informatics domain in a way that goes beyond a purely scientific research perspective,9
This paper widens the analyses by including reflections on current and future didactic approaches with industrial innovation and research as a background,9
"The continuing electrification of the world, which is driven by increasing world energy consumption, is adding pressure to the overall system",7
The EU has set long-term goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80–95% when compared to 1990 levels by the year 2050 [4],13
"With the so-called “European Green Deal,” the EU aims to be climate-neutral by 2050",13
"Climate neutral means an economy with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, which will create the need for decarbonisation of the energy system while at the same time ensuring the security and safety of energy supply",13
It is evident that sustainable production and consumption together with renewable electrical energy systems are major concerns around the world,12
The two main goals of energy informatics can be identified as “energy efficiency” and “renewable energy supply” [28],7
The objective of this paper is to draw an overview of the novel domain of energy informatics by addressing the educational opportunities as well as related challenges in light of current trends and the future direction of research and industrial innovation,9
The key contribution of this study is to look at the novel energy informatics domain in a way that goes beyond the purely scientific research perspective (which usually happens in the literature),9
"Compared to the available literature in energy informatics, this paper widens the analyses by including reflections on current and future didactic approaches, with industrial innovation and research as a background",9
"Similarly, proposed teaching approaches should not be disconnected from industrial innovation trends, as universities should teach not only for those who will continue their path in the academic research, but also for those who will work in the real industrial world",9
"Afterwards, three main sections are proposed to reflect on the three main drivers of research, industrial innovation, and education",9
5 will outline the main concepts linked to industrial innovation in the field such that the reader will be given hints on current industrial trends,9
Renewable energy resources are also increasing their share of the total energy portfolio,7
"In [47] the authors discuss the role of nudging, or guidance, for energy efficiency aware decision making for consumers",7
Renewable energy integration and sustainability are the main motivations for the need to link the different disciplines outlined in the previous section under the umbrella of energy informatics,7
"Renewable energy supply has been identified among the main scope of energy informatics research, together with smart grids, energy efficiency, and smart energy saving systems [28]",7
"Environmental, economic, and societal sustainability can be achieved thanks to the interdisciplinary approach provided by energy informatics [54] because ICT allows environmental and energy efficiency issues to be handled effectively [55]",7
"Indeed, energy informatics offers promising opportunities for energy and utilities companies to experiment with new business models for addressing energy efficiency and climate-protection goals, and thus encourages their customers to save energy [56]",7
"Authors in [57] highlight that the eco-city needs to embrace and leverage the advanced ICT opportunities, particularly with regard to sustainable energy systems, so as to improve its contribution to the goals of environmental sustainability",7
"At the same time, the links between education, research and industry in the field of sustainable energy and power systems should be strengthened",7
"2 where, for example, R&D that was discussed in the previous section appears in the beginning of the technology trigger phase",9
"For instance, ICT would play a major role in initiating and enabling the EU to reach its energy efficiency targets, for example on building performance, smart meters, and demand response, thanks to the ability for advanced measuring, monitoring, and control [66]",7
Buildings will play a critical role not only in energy efficiency but also in a wider changing energy grid system [66],7
and their trends in the home for the years ahead in both energy generation and energy consumption,7
"Energy service companies (ESCOs) find themselves in a paradoxical situation in which their traditional business models are losing profitability when they have to consider energy efficiency and climate-protection goals, and thus encourage their customers to save energy [56]",7
"Relevant topics within the energy area can be identified by inspecting journals that address energy technologies, sustainable energy related issues, energy storage technologies, as well as power systems and electrical energy related topics",7
"Good quality journals that address such topics are (but are not limited to): Journal of Energy (ISSN: 0360-5442), Journal of Cleaner Production (ISSN: 0959-6526), International Journal of Electrical Power and Energy Systems (ISSN: 0142-0615), Journal of Energy Storage (ISSN: 2352-152X), Journal of Electric Power Systems Research (ISSN: 0378-7796), Journal of Renewable Energy (ISSN: 0960-1481), IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (ISSN: 1949-3053), IEEE Transactions on Industrial informatics (ISSN: 1941-0050)",7
"The subjects involved in such journals can be summarised as follows: heat transfer; energy conversion and efficiency; district heating and cooling; energy in buildings; solar thermal; geothermal and organic rankine cycle; thermodynamics; fossil fuels; biofuels; hydrogen; energy carrier; electricity demand; smart grids; smart energy and power systems; wind power; renewable energy; energy and transportation; integrated heating; cooling and electricity; national energy systems; energy and environment; energy planning; energy policy; energy economics; carbon capture; nuclear; energy storage technologies modelling, sizing, management, and analysis; storage integration within electric grids; business models for operation of storage systems and energy storage developments worldwide; generation, transmission, distribution and utilization of electrical energy; cleaner production and technical processes; sustainable development and consumption; policy for sustainability; renewable energy systems and components; alternative renewable energy solutions; and renewable and sustainable power generation",7
"This means that a broad high level introduction of the two areas of energy and informatics should be given within the course with particular regard to: energy and power systems fundamental concepts such as energy network, smart grids, microgrids, climate change, energy policy, energy economics, market mechanisms, smart buildings, future energy systems and low carbon systems transition, demand side management, storage technologies, electrical mobility; computer science fundamental concepts such as big data, data analytics, parallel and distributed computing basic concepts, platforms for data analyses, cyber physical systems, Internet of Things, cyber security and privacy protection, basic programming and modelling skills",13
"Other big data sources are weather data, mobile data, thermal sensing data, energy database, clean energy data, electric vehicle data, transmission line sensor, real estate data, dynamic pricing, and energy consumption control through behavioral analysis",7
"In addition, guest lectures from industry outlining the most recent research and development that has led to successful real world applications will keep the course modern, fresh, and up to date",9
"The goal of the course is to lay the foundation for understanding how state-of-the-art ICT models, tools and techniques can be leveraged to create more sustainable energy systems, focusing on energy use in particular",7
"The students also learn how cloud computing, cyber-security, big data, machine learning, game theory and optimization can be applied in smart grids with integrated solar and wind power, energy storage and electric vehicles",7
"Topics addressed include machine learning for renewable energy forecasting, game theory for energy markets, blockchain technology in energy systems, demand response, energy neighbourhoods, EV charging, and green computing",7
"For instance, renewable energy covers departments such as material science, electrical power engineering, computer science, mechanical engineering, social sciences, etc",7
"For instance, the Paris agreement to combat climate change is not achievable unless the whole world unites to take serious measures",13
"The solar energy field, for instance, benefits from experts from material science, electronics, and power system disciplines",7
"Therefore, inter-disciplinary research and industrial innovation are becoming the “new normal”",9
In this paper we have surveyed education opportunities and challenges of the novel energy informatics domain in light of the current trends and future directions of research and industrial innovation,9
"This will enable energy research and development to address problems at social, economic, technical, and legislative levels together",9
"Energy informatics is key for achieving this as the field educates a new generation of experts that can take on the new interdisciplinary challenges of future integrated, sustainable energy systems",7
"This paper presents a historical overview, from the end of the Second World War (WWII) and onwards, of events that could, or should, have had an impact on water management frameworks",6
It explores how an updated knowledge base could serve a quest for sustainable water governance strategies,6
"As a result, water management is still based on century-old, technocratic, and instrumental methodologies that fail to take advantage of important scientific advancements since WWII and remain unable to properly deal with real-world complexities and uncertainties",6
"The paper concludes that when it is linked to a transformation of the institutional superstructure, adaptive water management (AWM), a framework rooted in systems thinking, emerges as a prominent way to embark on a needed, radical transformation of the water governance systems",6
Many countries around the world are currently exposed to extremely high water stress (Shu et al,6
2021) as a result of unsustainable use of freshwater resources and draining of non-renewable groundwater reserves (Rodell et al,6
"Energy is also highly dependent on water, making electricity production one of the major drivers of global water stress (Hadian and Madani 2013; Jin et al",6
"A forceful messenger has now come into play: the anthropogenic climate change is causing increasingly frequent, and progressively violent, water related problems in virtually any corner of the world (Levin et al",13
Climate change is not a new problem in science,13
"This is how we have built many water infrastructure and management systems that have enabled us to develop more, continue to grow, and improve global public health",3
The first one is the required understanding that water management is an intrinsically political undertaking and that the prevailing political systems have an impact on the effectiveness of water governance,6
The second one is related to uncertainty and the required understanding that undecidability is a normal state in water management,6
"Among those are summons for betterment or change, from the UN, political events, scientific breakthroughs, and the tangible impacts of climate change",13
The discussion concludes that many of the increasing water management challenges around the world are largely the outcomes of decades of bad governance,6
The report stated that the next barrier would be the limited capacity of the environment to assimilate all the waste that was created by our civilization (climate change is a manifestation of the workings of the second barrier),13
The conference also stressed the urgent need to establish properly integrated and coordinated approaches to water management,6
The UN declared the 1980s to be the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (IDWSSD),6
Several countries did also make significant efforts to extend or rehabilitate the water and sanitation services in their respective countries,6
"Thereby, the sector was provided with an excellent guide to water and sanitation provision in developing countries",6
"But many development aid organizations seem to have turned a deaf ear to its messages, Therefore, we still see many failing water and sanitation projects",6
"For example, sustainable development strives to provide healthy environments able to provide food and resources, including safe drinking water and clean air for all citizens",6
"In this acronym, W stands for water and sanitation, which got the highest priority",6
"In 2003, the UN established UN-Water as an interagency mechanism to coordinate the efforts of United Nation entities and some other international organizations working on water and sanitation issues",6
"New land has mainly been developed by deforestation, which has serious impacts on climate and biodiversity",15
"Until now, he continued, the rationality of reductionist natural-scientific research has been taken as a model for the rationality of applied science and intellectual and social activity in general",9
"Thus, to improve on water governance, we need to put strong, emphasis on processes of transformation and change, from the ground up, which she saw as a key aspect of moving towards more sustainable water governance and management",6
"Thus, there is now a tendency to speak about the water management task as water governance",6
"The water management community must learn to learn, both from its experience, and from external events",6
Blue growth supports the sustainable growth of the maritime and marine sectors as the oceans and seas are engines of the global economy and have great potential for growth and innovation,8
Its growing expansion and the emerging needs of a circular economy (CE) herald challenges in both new and established treatments and materials [30],12
"CE is understood as an economic model oriented towards the elimination of waste generated, efficient use of resources, recycling and recovery [79, 117]",12
"In that same year, the International Symposium on Blue Economy Initiative for Green Growth in Korea took place, where “the concept of using ocean resources in a way that respects the environment can evaluate how both business activity models and new technologies satisfy economic and environmental conditions, contributing to the sustainability of these resources” [62]",8
"Subsequently, Pauli [94], a leading proponent of the BE’s economic model, published a book entitled, “The Blue Economy” [7, 16, 45, 110] which proposed it as a model based on technological innovation to supply products at low cost, promote local job creation and a model that is respectful of the environment and competitive in the markets",8
"Undoubtedly, ocean resources generate numerous benefits to the world economy and offer essential opportunities for transportation, food production, energy, mineral extraction, biotechnology, human settlement in coastal areas, tourism and recreation, and scientific research [64]",9
"On the one hand, those linked to economic growth and development, and on the other, those linked with safeguarding and protecting the ocean’s resources",8
"The BG Strategy breaks down the BE into five main sectors: Biotechnology, Renewable Energy, Coastal and Maritime Tourism, Aquaculture and Mineral Resources, and integrates other sectors such as fishing, transportation, offshore oil and gas extraction, and ship construction and repair",7
"Renewable wind energy from marine sources and the conversion of thermal energy from the ocean is increasingly present at the global ocean level [126, 129]",7
"Novel hybrid robust/stochastic approaches are used to participate in the electricity market, including renewable energy procurement through large consumer purchases that respond to the energy demands of wind turbines voyer (WT), photovoltaic systems (PV), bilateral contracts (BCs), and micro-turbines (MTs), and energy storage systems (ESS) [1]",7
Other strategies focus on the optimal programming of electrical energy consumption in multiple cooling systems [108] or models based on heat and energy centers [70],7
"Similarly, aquaculture and fisheries have contributed to the economic development of certain regions without jeopardizing access to essential resources such as small-scale fisheries [15, 39, 109]",8
"Globally, shipping is the primary means of supplying raw materials, consumer goods, and energy, becoming a facilitator of world trade and contributing to economic growth and employment, both at sea and on land [81]",8
Analysis of relationships between BE and CE An important aspect relates to the conflict between the interest groups of BD versus the economic development proposed by both the BE and the BG,8
"Thus, the CE presents itself as a mediator between growth, economic development and employment while extending resource availability and reducing environmental and social pressures",8
It also pointed to tourism development along the coastal regions that required environmental protection [75],15
"The third-ranked article, “BG: savior or ocean grabbing?”, critically addresses the political proposals, which fail to envision the problems of the environment and climate change",13
"The ten most relevant terms are linked to maritime spatial planning, China, ME, OE, economic development, efficiency, and coastal areas",8
This industry has become a significant growth engine for China’s economic development [77],8
"In addition, BE favors environmental sustainability since it uses renewable energy",7
"It is therefore necessary to make visible the risks of strategies based on economic development by suggesting a rethinking of the BE [52, 65]",8
The research of Kaşdoğan [66] examines algae-based biofuel production systems designed on the high seas and integrated with wastewater treatment and carbon dioxide absorption processes to revitalize faith in biofuels in the BE,6
"For some, BG revolves around maximizing economic growth derived from marine and aquatic resources [14, 57]",8
"However, for others, it means maximizing “inclusive” economic growth derived from marine and aquatic resources [37, 54, 101, 120]",8
"A real example of inclusion is in the Pacific Small Island Developing States (SIDS), which, like many developing countries, the issues of oceans, climate change, and energy are essential to poverty eradication",13
"It is impossible to suppress poverty unless the health of ocean ecosystems is guaranteed and preserved as they are essential for food security, livelihoods, and economic [6]",2
"Therefore, it is important to generate synergies between the different sectors that make up the BE in order to contribute to the economic development of the area and achieve the SDGs together, this being a local challenge (bottom-up strategy)",8
Decisions could influence the sustainable growth of the BE in highly contested regions because both companies and political authorities are influenced by economic interests and by stakeholders that have power in decision-making,8
"While the protection of marine areas is considered a fundamental part of mitigating climate change, on a practical level, its success is overshadowed by the current expansion of offshore drilling for oil and gas [15]",13
Another aspect to consider is climate change,13
"It is a topic of great interest for both scientific research and public policy as sea level rise is influenced by regional and local factors, with coastal areas suffering the consequences of sea-level rise [3, 49, 50, 91, 115, 123]",9
"In this context, the SDGs imply that economic development is both inclusive and respectful of the environment, and it is necessary to find a balance between economic, social and environmental spaces",8
"There are sustainability problems related to the marine tourism sector, especially in protected areas, which could be reduced if the BG strategy is further promoted",15
The population in 74 sub-basins may drop by over 25% in our economic scenario with poor wastewater treatment,6
Advanced wastewater treatment could minimize trade-offs between economy and pollution: our Sustainability scenario projects a 68–98% decline in point-source pollution by 2100,6
Surface water quality depends on human activities in drainage basins,6
"In many world regions, population growth and urbanization are drivers of water pollution in the future (Jiang and O’Neill 2017; van Puijenbroek et al",6
The implications of this for water quality in the Black Sea are unknown,6
A comprehensive analysis of water pollution from a multi-pollutant perspective is not available for the Black Sea,6
"Our focus on nutrients, microplastics, Cryptosporidium and triclosan is motivated by their impacts on nature and society and that these pollutants can be considered indicators of pressing and emerging water pollution problems (Strokal et al",6
"We apply three scenarios that reflect different trends in urbanization, socio-economic developments and the approaches toward wastewater treatment",6
"As a result, our model has been extended with more water quality variables",6
"2021b) incorporated five water quality variables: N, P, Cryptosporidium, triclosan and microplastics",6
The model considers the following point sources of pollutants in rivers: sewage systems and open defecation,6
"The model quantifies inputs of these pollutants to rivers as a function of population (urban and rural), their connection rates to sewage systems, excretion or consumption rates of pollutants per capita, and the removal fractions of pollutants during wastewater treatment",6
"Open defecation is a direct discharge of N, P, Cryptosporidium to rivers through human feces and urine (e.g., hanging toilets)",6
"The model quantifies inputs of these pollutants to rivers from open defecation as a function of the population (urban, rural) practicing open defecation and excretion rates of the pollutants per capita",6
where \({\mathrm{RS}}_{\mathrm{i}.\mathrm{sb}}\) is the annual input of pollutant i to rivers of sub-basins sb from all sources (sewage systems and open defecation),6
\({\mathrm{RS}}_{\mathrm{dir}.\mathrm{i}.\mathrm{sb}}\) is the annual input of pollutant i to rivers of sub-basin sb from open defecation resulting from all population,6
\({\mathrm{fr}}_{\mathrm{pop}.\mathrm{dir}.\mathrm{sb}}\) is the fraction of the total population practicing open defecation as point source in sub-basin sb (0–1),6
"In our model, every pollutant has two pathways to enter rivers via sewage systems (see Eq. 2) and open defecation (see Eq. 2)",6
This is different for open defecation where human waste can enter rivers directly without treatment,6
Fractions of urban and rural people connected to sewage systems and practicing open defecation are country-specific and were available from the Joint Monitoring Program ( ),6
"The Economy and Sustainability scenarios assume high economic development and rapid urbanization, but differ in their approaches towards sustainability",8
The difference between the two can be used to analyze the effects of environmental policies under economic growth,8
"The BAU scenario is selected to show the situation in the future following the historical trends, with a lower economic growth than the Economy scenario",8
Values for the Human Development Index (HDI) and wastewater treatment efficiencies reflect the ranges for the sub-basins,6
The same holds for open defecation,6
Wastewater treatment efficiencies are in Figs,6
"S5 and S6 In our scenarios, the socio-economic development includes population (urban and rural), gross domestic products (GDP), and human development index (HDI)",8
Urbanization includes connection rates of the population to sewage systems and wastewater treatment,6
Open defecation reflects sanitation,6
"(2021b) interpreted quantitatively SSP storylines for connection rates of people to sewage systems, fractions of people practicing open defecation, wastewater treatment, and HDI for the countries",6
Open defecation will stop and the use of P detergents will be forbidden (Fig,6
Wastewater treatment will slightly improve in the future compared to 2010 (Fig. 2; Figs,6
"Wastewater treatment will improve, but not largely compared to BAU and 2010 (Figs",6
Open defecation and the use of P detergents will stop (Fig,6
"However, the wastewater treatment will improve largely, which is not in the other two scenarios (Figs",6
Almost all pollutants were from sewage systems and the remainder was from open defecation,6
"S5, S6, “MARINA-Global model for the Black Sea” and “Socio-economic drivers of water pollution” sections)",6
"For European sub-basins such as the Danube, important reasons were faster economic developments (HDI > 0.785, highest GDP) and higher population densities despite better wastewater treatment",6
"S3, S5, “Socio-economic drivers of water pollution” section)",6
Point sources include sewage systems and open defecation (direct discharges of untreated human waste to rivers),6
River pollution is from point sources including sewage systems and open defecation (direct discharges of untreated human waste to rivers),6
Important reasons are growing economies (more nutrient excretion per capita) and hardly improved wastewater treatment (Figs,6
"S3, S5, “Socio-economic drivers of water pollution” section)",6
"Important reasons for higher pollution levels are growing economies and hardly improved wastewater treatment, which is similar to the southern rivers (Figs",6
"By 2100, wastewater treatment may improve especially in the Russian sub-basins (Figs",6
Population densities are projected to decrease in most sub-basins in the future like in the other two scenarios (see “MARINA-Global model for the Black Sea” and “Socio-economic drivers of water pollution” sections),6
"However, in this scenario, the priority is given to sustainable practices to support SDGs for cities (SDG11), clean water (SDG6), and a healthy economy (SDG8)",6
This is the net effect of faster economic development (for microplastics) and higher population density (for microplastics and triclosan),8
This approach was developed for large-scale water quality models for which validation is challenging (Strokal et al,6
"In addition, the model considers open defecation, which is ignored in Global NEWS-2 (Mayorga et al",6
Larger sensitivities for these sub-basins illustrate the importance of wastewater treatment in pollution control Results show relatively small sensitivity of the model outputs to changes in those inputs (Fig. 8),6
This illustrates the importance of wastewater treatment in pollution control,6
"Our study focuses on annual, long-term trends (2010–2100) in emissions of pollutants to rivers from sewage and open defecation",6
This scenario analysis is widely used in water quality assessments (van Puijenbroek et al,6
"For example, we assumed that advanced technologies for wastewater treatment will be implemented in all sub-basins of the Black Sea region in the Sustainability scenario",6
Our model has been extended with more water quality variables compared to the original version (MARINA-Global Strokal et al,6
"However, our chosen variables allow us to simultaneously assess multiple impacts of water pollution",6
"We show that the population is expected to decline, but income levels are projected to increase considerably in the future (“Socio-economic drivers of water pollution” section)",6
"Thus, the main driver for increasing water pollution in Africa is the fast-growing population",6
This helps to better understand the causes of water pollution in the near and far future,6
"For example, in the short-term (2010–2050), water pollution is expected to be higher in many rivers and for most of the studied pollutants in the BAU and Economy scenarios (Fig. 5)",6
Water pollution levels can be explained by the socio-economic drivers in the drainage basin of the Black Sea,6
"When studying point-source pollution in rivers, there are a few important drivers: demography, urbanization, sewage connection, and wastewater treatment (Strokal et al",6
These in turn depend on economic growth and human developments,8
"Today, urbanization is moderate, and economic development is relatively low especially in the northern, eastern, and southern sub-basins when compared to the western European sub-basins",8
"Our study shows that river pollution from urban activities may increase in the future, despite a declining population in the Black Sea region (“Results” and “Socio-economic drivers of water pollution” sections)",6
"Economic growth implies that people may have more income, which is projected in our scenarios for the period of up to 2100",8
"In this scenario, income levels are projected to be higher than in 2010 (see “Socio-economic drivers of water pollution” section)",6
"To minimize these trade-offs, improving wastewater treatment is important",6
The BAU projections are not so optimistic about the effectiveness of wastewater treatment in the Black Sea region,6
Our study of the Black Sea rivers can be relevant for other regions with urbanization and economic growth,8
Our modeling approach shows how high economic growth may increase point-source inputs of multiple pollutants to rivers (as in our Economy scenario),8
Implementing sustainable solutions for clean water requires international efforts in all 23 countries draining into the Black Sea,6
"For example, in our Sustainable scenario, the SDGs are met, and wastewater treatment is improved",6
Integrating those targets by non-European countries may facilitate coordinated efforts to reduce water pollution,6
"The use of products depends on various factors such as access to water, privacy, social, cultural and econmic. Gender equality and women’s empowerment are integral parts of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)",5
Menstrual hygiene is a global social and public health concern and must be addressed [8],3
Studies suggest a need to create awareness and sensitise people about sustainable consumption’s social and economic impact and environmental implications [8],12
Gender equality and women’s empowerment are an integral part of each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals,5
"Similarly, when we look at sanitation facilities and water it is girls and women who are involved in the collection of water, and they are impacted the most if there is a lack of water and sanitation facilities",6
"The inclusion criteria were as follows: Title screening stage: any words related to menstruation, sanitation, reproductive health, menstrual products, and menstruation management",3
"Abstract screening stage: the paper’s objective relates to sustainable MHM practices, the role of education in promoting MHM, menstrual products, sanitation, and reproductive health",3
"Detailed full-text reading stage: the findings of the paper relate to MHM including access to facilities during menstruation, menstrual waste management, the role of education in promoting MHM, and menstrual products",12
"The most recommended facilities by girls in the study were: separate toilet and washroom, provision of toilet paper, sanitary pad and disposal bin in the toilet, and stored water and soap for handwashing",6
"The paper also suggests strategies to tackle menstrual waste management concerns such as incinerators, use of cloth pads and other biodegradable products, Latrines with chutes, etc",12
"The findings of the study will help in developing strategic interventions to enhance the participants’ knowledge about sustainable menstrual products, and decision-making for informed choices on their usage and disposal, contributing to overall education in the menstrual hygiene management, growth and development of a country, gender equality and women’s empowerment",5
"Studies have found that government and private enterprises should help increase and improve sanitation, education and sanitary facilities",6
"There are MHM guidelines specifying the need for infrastructural facilities regarding adequate and functioning toilet facilities with availability of water and soap, privacy for changing pads and proper disposal facilities",6
It is widely recognised in the literature that the used menstrual products/waste cause a lot of waste management issues as they are not biodegradable,12
Our rapid review provided interesting findings like the current practices in MHM and the awareness; use and factors affecting sustainable menstrual products (see Tables 1 and 2); the role of education in the MHM; gender equality and women’s empowerment in relation to the SDGs,5
The sustainable development goal #2 aims at ending hunger and malnutrition by 2030,2
"This paper provides a comprehensive microsimulation approach to evaluate economic policies on food access, sufficiency (energy) and adequacy (protein, fat, carbohydrate) at household level",2
"The developed method and its Kenya's application contribute to the discussion on how to evaluate nutrition-sensitive policies, and how to cover most households suffering food insecurity and nutrition deficiencies in any given country",2
The sustainable development goal #2 (SDG#2) or “zero hunger” aims at ending hunger and malnutrition by 2030,2
"The challenge of ensuring access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food for all people all year round and eradicating all forms of malnutrition is increasingly complicated by the surge of the COVID-19 pandemic",2
"Global estimates on food security and nutrition (FS&N) show that the global community is falling far short in this goal, with numbers of food insecure and malnourished people on the rise",2
"Between 720 and 811 million people in the world faced hunger in 2020, and the global burden of malnutrition remained a challenge with 149 million of children stunted and 45 million wasted (FAO et al., 2021)",2
"The five targets within the SDG#2 refer to food security, nutrition, and different dimensions of agriculture, assuming the enormous potential of agriculture for contributing to the end of hunger and malnutrition",2
"For nutrition, it is relevant to characterize households according to its members nutritional statuses (e.g., stunt children under 5 years old), and for food security, according to their food access (food purchasing power but also household diet diversity), food sufficiency (daily calories consumed compared to the average individual requirement), and food adequacy (nutrients intakes per capita per day compared to suggested requirements) dimensions",2
"The nutrition situation in Kenya has been improving in the last decade, but the progress is uneven, and the arid and semi-arid land (ASAL) regions still show very high stunting (above 30%) and wasting (15%) rates (Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, 2015)",2
"The food security situation is also critical in the ASAL regions where 2.6 million people were estimated to be acutely food insecure in 2018 (Food Security Information Network, 2019)",2
"The current food insecurity is attributed to the frequent droughts, but also to the high costs of domestic food production, in part triggered by the high costs of inputs",2
"Thus, the FS&N literature of Kenya highlights two dimensions of the problem, i.e., the quality of food consumption and the quantity of food access",2
"Against this situation, the Kenya Ministry of Devolution and Planning designed a working agenda to ensure progress in the attainment of SDG#2, planning programs to enhance the quality and quantity of food production, access and availability through increased agricultural productivity",2
"This paper performs a microsimulation analysis of a market access improvement scenario (higher public investment on infrastructure, i.e., roads) in Kenya on food access, sufficiency, and adequacy at the household level, as a FS&N case study",2
Food insecurity and malnutrition are characterized by the multi-dimensionality (economic and non-economic) of its causes,2
"Even when nutritional information could help households’ heads to become aware of nutrients deficits (Byrd et al., 2017), the economic dimension of the food insecurity and malnutrition problem prevails",2
"The resource constraints, the high costs of domestic food production, the volatility and the change in relative prices of food, determine both, the daily average caloric intakes and the dietary diversity of the households (Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, 2012)",2
"Nonetheless, economic papers based on this combined approach are still oriented to welfare and food access dimension (Beyene et al., 2018; Boulanger et al., 2020; Pauw et al., 2018), lacking the biological-nutritional dimension (i.e., macro and micro-nutrients; nutritional and health statuses of household members)",2
"An appropriate approach to evaluate agricultural policy on food access (food purchasing power), food sufficiency (daily calories intakes and requirements) and food adequacy (diet diversity and nutrients intakes and requirements), needs a combination of policy simulation models and a microeconomic approach",2
"Even when assessments of agricultural interventions on nutrition outcomes highlight a scarce evidence to advise on the prioritisation among competing nutrition-sensitive agricultural policies (Masset et al., 2012), literature results point out that improving commercialisation channels (e.g., transport infrastructureAtack et al., 2009; Donaldson & Hornbeck, 2016; Zeller et al., 1998) could lead to positive impact on farmers’ income and food access (Chege et al., 2015), on nutrition (Carletto et al., 2017) and on diet diversity (Koppmair et al., 2017), enhancing access to higher-value nutritious foods, such as fruits, vegetables, and animal-source products, which are more perishable than staple foods (Muthini et al., 2020)",2
"Improving food access with region-specific public policies could tackle nutritional deficits locally avoiding intensifying elsewhere (Desiere et al., 2018; Ecker et al., 2010)",2
"Among them, the most popular indicators are metrics of child wasting and child stunting, reflecting various dimensions of nutritional problems",2
"Wasting (low weight for height) is a proxy of acute malnutrition particularly relevant to monitor acute food shortages and relief operations, while stunting (low height for age) is an indicator of chronic undernutrition result of long-standing adverse conditions, and thus, more appropriate to evaluate long-term effects of development interventions (De Haen et al., 2011)",2
"Food security metrics can be collected at distinct levels: at both national and regional levels with the FAO food balance sheets (FBS) measuring undernourishment, and at the household level (and occasionally at the individual level) with food consumption modules of specialized household surveys",2
"Finally, since FS empirical literature (Abdulai & Aubert, 2004; Salois et al., 2012) supports a non-linear and non-monotonic relationship between energy/nutrients per capita intakes and households’ characteristics such as income per capita, we run non-parametric smoothing regressionsFootnote 1 of previous food access and food consumption (sufficiency and adequacy) microsimulation results across economic and FS&N households’ characteristics",2
"The FS&N indicators characterize households in terms of food access, food consumption (sufficiency and adequacy) and nutrition status, which represent the benchmark for microsimulations of a policy scenario",2
"To evaluate the quantity of food consumed, we calculate the calories consumed using the Dietary Energy Consumption (DEC) per day per capita",7
This indicator is a measure of the purchasing power of food and thus a good indicator of food access,2
"When the z-score for height for age (HAZ) is below − 2 the child is identified as being stunted (suffering stunting), and below − 3 severely stunted",2
"The calculation of these indicators employs the Anthro Software, using the WHO Child Growth Standards as the reference population (WHO, 2019)",2
It stands for a proxy of the presence of stunting in the household,2
"The FS&N microsimulation evaluates the impact, at the household level, of wide (national, regional) economic policies to improve food access and food consumption (sufficiency and adequacy)",2
"Any implemented policy reform causes changes in food prices and households’ food consumed quantities, modifying the initial households’ food access and food consumption patterns– in quantity and quality",2
"The policy impact evaluation of FS&N dimensions measures, first, the change in the accessibility of food in the base of its affordability: food access",2
"Once set up the FS&N benchmark, the non-parametric regressions of microsimulation results are performed across economic (the per capita expenditure -in log- distribution), food security (the per capita DEC -in log- distribution; HCE-DDS), and nutrition (the distribution of height for age in the household, HAZ) statuses of households in the benchmark situation",2
Food access indicators show the food expenditure at the household level and the household diet diversity score based on that food expenditure,2
"Average daily DEC per capita is similar across areas; however, the rural areas display more dispersion in energy consumption per capita per day.Footnote 3 With reference to the average macronutrients intakes per capita at national level, the shares of caloric intakes provided by fats, proteins and carbohydrates are 24%, 11% and 65% respectively",7
"The analysis of the FS&N benchmark in Kenya also reveals that, although poor households spend more of their income on food than rich ones, on average the household diet diversity (HCE DDS) increases with the livelihood in all the areas of the country",1
"Moreover, 10% of the households display up to half stunted children and 19% more than half children with growth retardation or stunting",2
These differences are also reflected in the food access and food consumption (calories and nutrients) consequences due to this policy at the household level,2
These differences are also reflected in the food access and food consumption (calories and nutrients) consequences due to this policy at the household level,2
"Non-parametric regressions have been estimated between the change in food security indicators (microsimulations) and households’ characteristics, such as expenditure per capita, DEC per capita, HCE-DDS, and nutritional status for children under 5 years old—stunting",2
The change in households’ food access and affordability is computed as the traditional food consumption effect,2
Food access impact of improving market access (% change in purchasing power of food) The Market Access scenario generates a positive food access effect for all the Kenyan households,2
"However, the improvement in food access is greater for the rural households compared to both Metropolis and the other urban areas",2
Differences in the benchmark food access situation and the households’ preferences explain these disparities across households/areas,2
This ranking across areas prevails under all food security characteristics and anthropometric measures of households,2
"Moreover, this positive change in food access declines with the livelihood leading to a pro-poor improvement of food consumption in all areas (Fig. 2a)",2
This is a desirable food security outcome from a policy reform in terms of the food access dimension,2
"Although this result seems in contradiction with the previous one (panel (a)), one should consider that poor households do not necessarily display an appropriate diet, sometimes extremely high in calories and not correctly balanced in terms of nutrients",1
"The food access effect remains greater in the rural areas but the gap effect between households with and without at least one stunted child is greater in the urban areas, both Metropolis and Other urban areas",2
"a By expenditure per capita, b By HCE DDS, c By min HAZ (stunting)",2
" As for food access, the change in the DEC per capita is positive for all households",2
"In contrast to the food access and affordability dimensions, the changes in the DEC per capita are not systematically greater for the rural households",2
"Summarising the food sufficiency outcomes from a market access scenario, the DEC per capita increases the most in poor households of other urban areas, with an average diet diversity and with at least one stunted child under 5 years old",1
"However, this increase in macronutrient consumption differs across households according to their per capita expenditure, daily energy consumption per capita, diet diversity at the household level and children’s nutritional characteristics",7
"In the metropolitan area, the increase in protein intakes per capita is higher in households without stunting",2
"Other urban and rural households are those who benefit the most from this increase in macronutrients intakes and, also those who display more than half of their children with stunting",2
"Selected FS&N indicators shed light on the differences across households in terms of their food access, food consumption and nutrition statuses",2
"FS&N microsimulation results suggest that better market access conditions improve food access effect for all households in Kenya, benefiting more rural households and most vulnerable households (i.e., poor and households with chronic malnourished children), showing a pro-poor improvement of food consumption in all areas",2
"Market access improvement raises the consumption of all macronutrients (fats, carbohydrate, and protein) on average with significant differences across households according to their per capita expenditure, daily energy consumption per capita, diet diversity at the household level and children’s nutritional characteristics Furthermore, original data on households with children under five years highlight that those households require targeted policy support, mostly in metropolitan areas",7
"Overall, most of the outcomes of the simulated policy are positive, confirming that strengthening market access is a promising strategy to tackle food insecurity",2
"Empirical evidence about food security and nutrition in Kenya accounts for deficiencies in food access, sufficiency, and an inadequate diet in terms of daily per capita calories and nutrients intakes",2
"With an application to a market access improvement scenario on Kenya, this methodology focuses on the economic factors that affect Kenyan households’ food access and affordability, food sufficiency and macronutrient consumption, as a first consideration of food adequacy",2
"This approach appears useful for the identification of agricultural/food policies that could help improving FS&N conditions in critical zones of the country (e.g., rural) or most vulnerable population groups (e.g., households with stunted children)",1
"In terms of food access, policy effects are greater in rural areas, and households with at least one stunted child (HAS < − 2) benefit the most",2
"To sum-up, it shows that nutrition-sensitive agricultural policies, such as improving market access via infrastructure development, improve food security and nutritional indicators",2
Successful sustainable forest management is made possible through the environmental responsibility of the stakeholders and the support of the local inhabitants of the region,15
Study results offer significant implications for policymakers and ecotourism planners for decreasing pressure on forest ecosystems through participatory forest management approaches to sustainable development in rural areas associated with forest ecosystems,15
Ecotourism is one of the important services provided by forest resources (Chiu et al,15
The “Paris Agreement” and the “Green Deal” are crucial developments for ecotourism because they are the latest important documents to determine and apply the means to reach a sustainable future,13
Forest villagers have relatively low levels of income and education and the communities struggle with unemployment in Turkey,8
Their main livelihood is based on agricultural and forestry activities (Durkaya et al,15
"2020) that include agro-tourism, village tourism, sustainable tourism, and tourism activities in rural areas (Nair et al",12
The results of this study showed that active participation of forest villagers should be at the center of ecosystem-based functional planning approaches to be carried out within the scope of multiple-use forest management (Keleş et al,15
"The findings of this study indicate that ecotourism activities that will ensure the development of forest villagers living in rural areas can be combined with the adaptation of agrotourism, hostel management, organic agricultural products and local food culture, and marketing of local handicraft products (Ciftcioglu 2021)",2
"In this regard, basic entrepreneurship training related to environmental education, training courses for income-generating activities, and especially rural education studies can enable forest villagers to act more consciously toward ecotourism",8
"In recent years, the concept of eco-entrepreneurship has come to the fore in facilitating the sustainability of ecotourism activities (Gültekin 2019)",8
Developing ecotourism activities and putting them into operation with eco-entrepreneurship practices can be used as a tool to achieve more successful results and to reach the UNWTO poverty eradication target (Lee 2007),8
"In rural areas, there are barriers to economic growth, employment, and sustainable development, rural tourism, ecotourism, agricultural tourism, farm tourism, and so on",8
"Overall, this study concurs with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal that the wastewater industry should seek more energy-efficient measures for wastewater treatment",6
The conventional activated sludge (CAS) technology for wastewater treatment presents important economic and technical limitations related to its high-energy requirements,6
"Furthermore, conventional energy-intensive wastewater treatment processes often have the issue of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Lu et al",6
"Nevertheless, with the advancement in the understanding of nitrogen (N) removal mechanisms, it is becoming clear that energy consumption can be reduced for WWTPs through strategic control of the nitrification and denitrification processes",7
"On the global scale, prevailing wastewater treatment technologies are steadily evolving from conventional energy-intensive processes to more energy-efficient or even energy-neutral processes (Hao et al",6
"As for implementing these new N-removal theories, WWTP retrofit projects often lack a “standardized” process configuration in comparison to greenfield designs",9
"Therefore, model-based investigations are useful for fast and rigorous assessment of retrofit plans, especially in analyzing the interrelations among process units (Jia et al",9
"In this study, a model-based approach is applied to evaluate the feasibility of a WWTP retrofit project brought to the authors recently",9
The ultimate purpose of this study is to concur with the UN SDG that the wastewater industry should and can seek more energy-efficient measures for wastewater treatment,6
"Nevertheless, this claim is inconclusive and only applicable to this particular study since WWTP retrofit/upgrade projects often face various technical options and limitations",9
"Therefore, this study together with some other recent literature indicates a strong need for implementing advanced process controls to achieve higher wastewater treatment purposes, e.g., cultivating AMX, enhancing the system’s resilience to influent fluctuations, etc",6
"2020), retrofit existing WWTPs will face restrictions that may prevent substantial structural modifications to suit the A-B configuration",9
"Therefore, from the engineering perspective, it will be wise to seek a middle ground between conventional CAS and cutting-edge technologies when it comes to WWTP retrofit",9
"Therefore, the result of this study can be interpreted as a reference for wastewater engineers amidst the current enormous market of WWTP retrofit/upgrade",9
Design/process engineers should be proactive on this matter to prevent the wrong match between influent characteristics and wastewater treatment processes,6
"It is indicated that pushing anammox is not the only option for this particular WWTP retrofit task, and a reasonably controlled aeration can also satisfy the N-removal requirement",9
"Overall, this study demonstrates the benefits of process modeling for wastewater process engineers and concurs with the UN SDG that the wastewater industry should and can seek more energy-efficient measures for wastewater treatment.",6
"To support sustainable development and biodiversity conservation, scholars have been calling for expanding sustainability science (Messerli et al",15
"It involves goal conflicts, conflicts between actors, and uncertainties regarding pesticides’ effects on human and environmental health and the economic implications of plant protection alternatives",3
2021) and contributes to biodiversity loss (Sánchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys 2019),15
"While rising public attention and initiatives like the EU’s Farm-to-Fork Strategy create opportunities for sustainable transformation (Schebesta and Candel 2020), recent policy responses to growing food insecurity might result in increased pesticide use (Strange et al",2
"Sustainability outcomes, comprising socio-economic well-being (e.g., viable farms) and food security and safety without posing excessive risks for environmental and human health",2
"For instance, French farmers were willing to change their farming practices to reduce the risk of adverse effects on human and environmental health if they perceived pesticides to have an important impact on the environment (Chèze et al",3
"For example, among the extension services offering research- and knowledge-based farming advice, farmers advised by public extension services are more likely to use non-chemical preventive measures (e.g., nets) to avoid invasive species infestations, while those advised by private extension services are more likely to use synthetic insecticides (Wuepper et al",15
"Additionally, evidence materializing in technological innovation can be transformative: digitization facilitates novel policy designs (Ehlers et al",8
"In the practice arena [3b], more scientific evidence on alternative agricultural models (e.g., agroecology) could support the development of innovative plant protection solutions",2
2021); the knowledge of sustainable farming practices (Dessart et al,2
"Integrated pest management strategies in European maize-based cropping systems, for example, can significantly reduce pesticides’ adverse effects on human and environmental health, but lack of consumer awareness and acceptance may inhibit their adoption (Vasileiadis et al",3
"Additionally, organic farming organizations disseminated evidence-based guidance on biological and biotechnical methods (e.g., pheromones)",2
"For instance, from a long-term Swiss pilot project that sought to improve water quality through the voluntary adoption of good pesticide practices, its key actors drew different intermediate conclusions",6
"While the farmers and authorities involved in the implementation interpreted the results as successful, scientists could not establish a clear causal link between the adopted measures and monitored water quality (Daouk et al",6
"Furthermore, the registration and guidelines for water quality assessment consider only single compounds or products, neglecting well-established mixture toxicity and the co-occurrence of numerous pesticides in the environment",6
"The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP, 2000) defined energy poverty as “the lack of sufficient option in accessing adequate, accessible, reliable, high-quality, clean, and environmentally benign energy services to sustain economic development.” In early research, energy poverty usually referred to a household’s inability to obtain enough energy to meet their living and heating needs",8
"This term stressed citizens’ rights to obtain energy to meet their basic needs, which should not be denied due to poverty",1
"It also emphasized the importance of satisfying demand for “energy service.” Although it might seem self-evident, it is important to note that the object of energy consumption was to provide energy services from various sources of energy (González-Eguino, 2015)",7
"According to a World Bank study from 2016, 980 million people lacked access to clean energy (World Bank, 2017)",7
"Even among those who had access to renewable energy, a significant number still relied on conventional energy sources including coal, charcoal, and animal dung",7
"In 2018, about 790 million people, or 10.4% of the world’s population, lacked access to electricity (WDI, 2020)",7
"In sub-Saharan Africa, approximately 580 million people lacked access to electricity in 2019, and this number is projected to rise by 2020 (IEA, 2020)",7
"One of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations is to “Ensure access to affordable, secure, sustainable, and modern energy for all” by 2030 (Sachs, 2012)",7
"However, hundreds of millions of people around the world still lacked this basic service, and development in clean cooking fuels and technology had slowed, putting billions of women’s and children’s health at risk (United Nations Statistics Division, 2020)",7
"In India, for example, research had linked health problems like asthma and tuberculosis to energy poverty (Sadath & Acharya, 2017)",3
"Besides, energy poverty hearted socioeconomic (Scarpellini et al., 2019) and gender equality (Robinson, 2019), problems that were particularly severe in developing countries",5
"According to Ürge-Vorsatz & Tirado Herrero (2012), ambitious climate change action would increase energy poverty levels",13
"According to Chakravarty & Tavoni (2013), only a 7% rise in energy consumption would be needed to provide essential energy to the entire world’s energy-poor population",7
"Nearly 600 million people in these countries did not have access to electricity, and only 56.7% of the population in the bottom 20% of GDP per capita had access to electricity (World Bank, 2020)",7
Many countries had high mortality rates attributed to household and ambient air pollution due to the lack of access to clean energy,7
"have an important role in energy poverty reduction (Teschner, Sinea, Vornicu, Abu-Hamed, & Negev, 2020), so country-level indicators are also used in order to provide a clearer and more comprehensive picture of a country’s energy poverty level",1
"Energy poverty has been identified as a vulnerability by some researchers (Chester & Morris, 2011; Gouveia et al., 2019; Okushima, 2016), indicating that poor households will be more affected by energy price fluctuations",1
"(2012) introduced the Multidimensional Energy Poverty Index (MEPI), a new composite index for measuring energy poverty that focuses on the lack of access to modern energy",7
"Okushima (2017) measured the energy poverty of Japanese households in terms of three dimensions: energy costs, income, and the energy efficiency of the house",7
"Results showed that traditional biomass energy consumption accounted for about one-third of the total household energy consumption on average; in contrast, LPG consumption remained very limited at less than 3% of total household energy consumption",7
"In addition to the basic lighting and heating needs of rural households, Kaygusuz (2011) focused on energy demand for production and social services, such as agricultural production and services in communication, commerce, and health",1
"The EDI consists of three indicators: per capita commercial energy consumption, the proportion of commercial energy consumption in terminal energy consumption, and the number of people with access to electricity",7
"SDG7 includes five components: affordable modern energy, renewable energy, energy efficiency, clean energy technologies, and energy technologies for developing countries, and this indicator system is used to evaluate the energy poverty of countries (United Nations Statistics Division, 2020)",7
"At the household level, concerning energy poverty in BRI countries was evaluated using three categories: electricity use, cooking and heating, and modern energy needs (Nussbaumer et al., 2012)",7
"Of these, electricity use comprised two indicators: the proportion of the population with access to electricity and electricity consumption per capita",7
The indicator access to electricity was chosen because the lack of access to clean energy is a widespread energy problem in countries along the BRI,7
The indicator access to electricity reflects the difficulties of access to modern energy for the inhabitants of these regions,7
"Also, cooking and heating comprised two indicators: the proportion of the population with access to clean fuel, and the mortality rate attributed to household and ambient air pollution; the former represents the accessibility of clean energy to households, while the latter represents the health damage suffered by households due to energy poverty (Sadath & Acharya, 2017)",7
Modern energy needs represent further energy requirements of households and comprised two indicators: mobile cellular subscriptions and the proportion of individuals using the internet,7
"Electricity cost consisted of two indicators: the price of electricity, which represents the cost of energy used by most enterprises daily, and the cost of electricity, which is the median of the total cost of electricity access for a country’s enterprises calculated as a percentage of per capita income",7
"At the national level, energy poverty was measured in three categories: energy supply, energy facilities, and energy efficiency",7
The parameters for energy supply were energy consumption (kg of oil equivalent per capita) and net energy imports (percentage of energy use),7
"The evaluation of energy facilities and energy intensity was concerning SDG7, which measures the energy situation of various countries to ensure that everyone has access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable modern energy",7
The total net installed capacity of electric power plants per capita and the renewable energy share of total final energy consumption were used as indicators for energy facilities,7
"To demonstrate energy efficiency, energy intensity refers to the amount of energy given to the economy per unit of economic output (United Nations Statistics Division, 2017)",7
"In some South and Southeast Asian countries, the proportion of clean modern energy use is low (Khanna et al., 2019)",7
"Additionally, the net installed power plant capacity per capita in this country is about 0.39 kW compared to an average of 1.09 kW for this indicator across all 82 countries, and the share of renewable energy in Uzbekistan is 2.34%, well below the average of 28.1%",7
"The installed capacity of power plants per capita in Jordan is about 0.47 kW, while the proportion of renewable energy is about 4.55%; these values are considerably lower than the average values of 1.09 kW and 28.1%, respectively",7
"For example, only 3.51% of the population of Ethiopia in East Africa use clean energy for cooking and heating",7
"Morocco relies on imports for 90% of its energy consumption, while Tunisia has an installed power plant capacity of 0.5 kW per capita, both below-average levels",7
"In addition to poor energy services, which are common in countries with severe energy poverty, Bangladesh performed poorly in terms of modern energy needs, cooking, and heating",7
"The main problem is energy supply as the country is a net energy importer, with net energy imports accounting for 49.6% of energy consumption",7
"However, the country has good energy efficiency, ranking 33rd of the 82 countries, and the coal, oil, and gas rents are only 0.01% of GDP, better than the average of 6.4%",7
"However, the country is less energy poor in cooking and heating, with a clean energy use rate of 90.5%, above the average of 74.1%",7
"Energy poverty is severe at the household level in Zambia and Nigeria, where the use of clean energy is 16.43% and 4.91%, respectively; both values are well below the average (74.1%)",7
"In addition to assessing energy poverty across countries, this study observes the relationship between energy poverty and economic growth as well",8
"Individuals who use the internet, total net installed capacity of electric power plants, and electric power consumption all related to the three levels of households, enterprises, and nation, which exhibit the most variations between group A and the other groups",7
"Energy efficiency in West Asia was generally low, with most countries in this region performing poorly in this area",7
"Twenty-three European countries also had low energy efficiency, but the situation was as serious as in West Asia",7
"Investment in BRI countries should focus more on energy infrastructure development, resulting in a favorable impact on promoting sustainable energy use in these countries",7
"To conclude, given COVID-19’s current global impact, which will undoubtedly influence energy poverty in all nations, future research must integrate this worldwide crisis and examine its implications for sustainable energy use",7
This implies that there may be a way to address energy poverty and climate change simultaneously,13
This study uses the output volatility–augmented environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) model to determine the dynamic short- and long-term impacts of the volatility of economic growth (VOL) on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in Turkey from 1980 to 2015,8
"The coefficients obtained from the ARDL estimation indicate that economic growth and energy use increase CO2 emissions, while VOL decreases CO2 emissions in the long run",8
This implies for the Turkish case that achieving macro-stability under a “just transition” is key for achieving both economic and environmental benefits from ratifying international agreements such as Paris Agreement and EU Green Deal,13
"This Declaration identified the 26 common principles, such as poverty alleviation for protecting the environment, suggested by the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis",1
"In the same year, the Club of Rome published a report titled “Limits to Growth,” and based on its early computer simulations, it suggested that economic growth would not continue indefinitely because of resource depletion (Meadows et al",8
"After the SDGs, the UNs Conference of the Parties (COP) gained more importance and most significantly, the 21st COP help in Paris (COP21-Paris Agreement) in 2015 marked a major milestone on climate change, especially carbon emission",13
The 21st COP steered the international community towards a strict climate agreement to keep global warming at 1.5–2°C and reduce GHG emissions by 2025–2030,13
Many developed countries implement environmentally friendly economic growth policies in the later stage,8
"High-income level increases environmental degradation to its peak, and then it starts to decline after a threshold level of income has been reached",15
"Aside from economic growth, a large part of the literature focuses on the relationship between carbon emission and other factors, such as agriculture (Dogan 2016), foreign direct investment (Balibey 2015; Seker et al",8
"2017; Pata 2019), export product diversification (Gozgor and Can 2016), fiscal policy (Katircioglu and Katircioglu 2018), financial development (Ozturk and Acaravci 2013; Katircioglu and Taspinar 2017), urbanization and industrialization (Pata 2018a, 2018b, 2018c), income inequality (Uzar and Eyuboglu 2019), shadow economy (Koksal et al",10
"2020), hydropower energy (Pata and Aydin 2020), renewable energy (Sharif et al",7
"Moreover, the nexus between ecological or carbon footprint and economic growth especially from an industrialization perspective is thoroughly discussed for selected developing countries by Farhani  and Ozturk (2015), Solarin et al",8
"As seen from the literature, the relationship of CO2 emissions with economic growth and other factors is well-examined",8
"Looking at this period, especially the last 30 years, there is an evident issue of macroeconomic instability for developing economies",17
"This study seeks to augment the existing literature by introducing an additional axis of investigation in the form of output volatility, the single most important variable in assessing macroeconomic stability",17
"Turkey, as an upper-middle-income country that is yet to ratify the Paris Agreement, is an ideal economy for investigating the EKC hypothesis",13
"However, while the first hypothesis claims that the availability of the energy source (coal) drives the economic growth, the latter hypothesis drives the causality in reverse order, claiming that the economic growth (i.e., demand for energy) pushes coal production (supply)",8
"The first three views, (1) a comprehensive transformation of the capitalist system, (2) a green Industrial Revolution, which is linked to the sixth Kondratieff cycle, and (3) green growth, show a positive impact of output volatility on environmental pollution",8
"According to the first view, the relationship between economic growth, business cycles, and environmental pollution has deeper cultural and structural roots that emphasize high growth that brings modern societies into a “triple crisis.” Addison et al",8
"(2011) defined the triple crisis as when global finance, climate change, and food crises coincide; in a broader sense, it is a financial, socio-economic, and environmental crisis",13
"The second crisis, climate change, is when there is exceeding growth in the previous estimates of Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the concomitant rise in temperatures and sea level (see Sokolov et al",13
"Lastly, malnutrition and hunger are the third crisis",2
"The pursuit of higher growth rates, which only addresses growth in the real GDP, creates its internal conceptual crisis and eventually raises concerns about the type, nature, or definition of economic growth",8
"Schumpeter (1939) named the long cycles as “Kondratieff waves” and explained these 40 to 60 years’ waves with his notion of “creative destruction.” He stated that technological innovations, such as railroads, steel, and electricity, leads to the Kondratieff waves of economic development (see Schumpeter, 1967)",8
"2016), nano-revolution (Wonglimpiyarat 2005), smart cities (Batty 2016), and green revolution, such as renewable energy, resource efficiency, green nanotechnology, and green chemistry (Moody and Nogrady 2010; Gore 2010)",7
"In addition to a sharp decrease in economic growth expectations, compared with the 2008 global financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic has had deeper negative effects on economies, especially on trade volume and the service sector (IMF 2020)",8
"The third view explains the positive relationship between green growth and the environment (see Porter and Van der Linde, 1995; Pollin et al",8
"Green growth, which is a result of sustainable development (see Jacobs 2012), claims that protecting the environment can yield better economic growth",8
"Therefore, economic growth should be environmentally sustainable, be biodiverse, be climate-resilient, and have low carbon emissions",8
"Initially, advocates of green growth highlighted the cost side of “ungreen” growth",8
"Compared to the substantial effect on long-term growth, the cost of providing green growth is minimal (see Stern 2007; Kuik et al",8
"By contrast, some researchers claim that only economic growth can provide advanced technology to adapt to or prevent global warming and environmental pollution (see Nordhaus 1974, 2007; Smulders, 1999; Brock and Taylor, 2005)",8
"Economic crisis and macroeconomic instability, such as an increase in output volatility, weakens the attention of economic agents on negative externalities of environmental problems (see Geels 2013)",17
"A credit crunch has many negative effects on the environment since it reduces investment in energy sectors and low-carbon projects, makes investors switch from conventional technologies to low-carbon and renewable energy technologies, weakens the global carbon markets, and cuts funds to environmental institutions (see Huang 2012)",7
"Menyah and Wolde-Rufael (2010) found a positive short and long-run relationship between emissions and economic growth in South Africa from 1965 to 2006, using the bound test approach to cointegration",8
(2021) utilize novel dynamic ARDL simulations for estimating the effects of economic growth and urbanization on ecological footprint,8
"The empirical results suggest that the elasticity of emissions is not constant with the GDP; emissions fall more sharply when GDP declines, but when they rise, GDP partly increases due to a decrease in industrial energy intensity",7
Jalles and Ge (2020) studied the emissions and economic development of 46 commodity-exporting countries from 1990 to 2014 using time series and panel data techniques,8
"In the first step, Equation (1) is used to estimate the optimal frequency by providing the minimum SSR",16
"The results of the unit root test are presented in the fourth and sixth columns of Table 1.
 The second, third, fourth, fifth, and last columns of Table 1 present the minimum SSR, optimal frequency, Fourier ADF test statistics, F statistics, and ADF test statistics, respectively",16
"This negative relationship between output volatility and CO2 emissions supports the first three theoretical views mentioned in the previous section.
 The first view is about the transformation of the capitalist system, the second view focuses on the sixth Kondratieff wave, and the third view is related to green growth",8
"Following the literature on Turkey that used various factors, such as financial development (Ozturk and Acaravci 2013; Katircioğlu and Taşpinar 2017), urbanization and industrialization (Pata 2018a, 2018b, 2018c), income inequality (Uzar and Eyuboglu 2019), shadow economy (Koksal et al",10
"2020), hydropower energy (Pata and Aydin 2020), renewable energy (Sharif et al",7
"In addition, there is a unidirectional causal relationship from real GDP to output volatility at the 1% level for Fourier TY causality test and 5% level for TY causality test.
 There is an increasing interest in the relationship between economic growth and SDGs",8
"Meantime since 2015, the accelerated efforts for controlling climate change introduce new challenges for developing economies",13
"Hence, for many developing economies, researchers and policymakers are increasingly interested in the nexus between growth and environmental degradation",15
This study incorporates output volatility to analyze the validity of transformational power of prolonged reduced uncertainty over volatility as an indicator of macroeconomic instability,17
This implies that macroeconomic stability still pushes conventional energy demand and use further and still far away from providing an adequate investment horizon for green transformation in Turkey,17
"Also, this transformation is likely to be realized with sustained macroeconomic stability and increased investor confidence",17
Our result suggests that Turkey is still at a stage of development where a lasting period of macroeconomic stability is essential to achieve positive environmental gains,17
Ratifying agreements such as Paris Agreement and EU Green Deal offer several opportunities to countries such as Turkey,13
"In Tanzania, diets are dominated by starchy staple crops such as maize, levels of malnutrition are high and largely attributed to lack of dietary diversity",2
"Member states of the United Nations pledged their joint support in 2015 for 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with the second goal (SDG2) aiming to ‘end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture’ by the year 2030 (UN, 2015)",2
"The alarming incidence of food insecurity and undernutrition due to micronutrient deficiency in SSA is associated with limited dietary diversity among households (Rajendran et al., 2017)",2
"Tanzania is a typical example of a country facing challenges where limited dietary diversity is common among disadvantaged urban and rural poor households (Alphonce, 2017; Chegere & Stage, 2020; Wenban-Smith et al., 2016)",1
"The incidence of stunting among the under-five children in these regions is above 38% against the national prevalence of 35% (Ministry of Health et al., 2016)",2
"These nutrients are particularly important in reducing malnutrition, helping to improve growth and cognitive development of children (Leroy & Frongillo, 2007)",2
"With increasing urbanization, economic growth and increasing affluence, the demand for chicken is projected to increase by 148%, while that of beef, goat and mutton, pork and milk will increase by 87%, 71%, 88%, 42% and 108%, respectively, by 2030 (FAO, 2011)",8
"Between 2014 and 2018, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in collaboration with Wageningen University (through the N2Africa Project) and Catholic Relief Services (CRS) (through the Soya ni Pesa Project), promoted soybean production in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania (SH) aiming to improve household nutrition and cash income, and to enhance soil fertility",15
"Location of study regions and three clusters of farmers interviewed in Ruvuma (A), Njombe (B) and Iringa urban (C) and rural (D) regions in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania To understand the production and value chain development in the current soybean, maize and chicken value chains, we collected secondary and primary data in three steps: Aggregating and analysing secondary data on soybean and maize production and utilization",2
"Furthermore, to understand the current maize production and productivity in different regions, we computed means and percentages based on the secondary data from the annual agricultural sample survey 2016/17 (National Bureau of Standards 2017)",2
The average maize production was 1070 kg per household (range from 54–7000 kg),2
"Despite the significant importance of maize production and supply to neighbouring countries, the maize value chain was poorly coordinated, mainly dominated by middlemen/traders operating in the informal value chain leading to low profitability for producers",2
Other challenges highlighted by stakeholders included the effects of climate change (i.e,13
"changes in annual rainfall patterns and prolonged dry seasons), declining soil fertility and soil organic matter due to continuous maize monocropping with few inputs",15
"In 2017/18 the Tanzanian government banned the export of maize to ensure food security for the citizens, which led to a medium strength to the household food (+ 0.5) and increased availability of chicken feed (+ 1)",2
climate-smart agriculture—CSA),2
"The main drivers in the individual and integrated value chain included the existence of supportive government policies, research and development organisations contributing to finding solutions to the existing challenges and promoting best-bet agricultural practices, organising farmer into groups, providing agricultural training to smallholder farmers and value chain actors",9
"Diversification through legume-cereal intercrop and/or rotations have significant advantages in improving resource-use efficiency, weed, pest and disease control (Ojiem et al., 2014), and increased yield of subsequent maize in soybean-maize rotations (Rurangwa et al., 2018; Van Vugt et al., 2018)",9
The efficient utilization and dissemination of maize flour fortified with soybean could have a significant potential for reducing malnutrition through provision of essential nutrients and vitamins,2
"Diversification in the farming systems is an important indicator of household dietary diversity particularly for poor rural households (Pellegrini & Tasciotti, 2014; Timler et al., 2020) and have been considered as a coping strategy on the effects of global climate change (McCord et al., 2015)",13
Relying on maize monocropping could have a risk on the household income and food security due to market uncertainties,2
"Despite the benefits of the export ban in ensuring food security in developing countries, research shows that the rural and urban poor communities are benefited from the decrease in the maize price while at the same time this hurts farmers who rely on growing maize as a cash crop (Diao & Kennedy, 2016)",2
"Increasing the resource use efficiency in the current farming systems through sustainable intensification may contribute to reducing the yield gap through increased crop productivity per unit of resource invested (Tittonell & Giller, 2013) and help to reduce such food-feed competition",12
"The integration of smallholder farmers with other value chain actors is an important pathway to improving the functioning of the soybean, maize and chicken value chains that might contribute to achieving food security and welfare of the farmers (Kissoly et al., 2017)",2
"Whereas, most studies to date have explored the integration of smallholder farmers in value chains of export-oriented and high-value cash crops (Barrett et al., 2012; Challies & Murray, 2011), our study focused on domestic agricultural value chains to reduce the need for imports of soybean meal",2
The emerging chicken feed industry is an important market outlet for smallholders producing maize and soybean in the country providing them with an income to buy nutritious food items,2
"Urban contributions to climate change, and the need for transformative mitigation and adaptation, are similarly well documented (Seto et al",13
"As much urban growth is still to come, there is an opportunity to significantly influence sustainable urbanisation through decision making at local, metropolitan, regional/sub-national and national levels",11
"This article describes the first stages of a collaborative research, policy and practice co-design process (the second section “The co-design and co-production process”), and summarises the outcomes to date of applying this process (the third and fourth sections “A knowledge framework for sustainable urban development”, “Insights on Australian urban issues from the co-design process”)",11
"The original contributions of the initiative to date have been to extend the scale and scope of the urban co-design process to encompass multi-scale, cross-sector, and multi-agent connectivity and decision making, in support of more integrated, evolutionary and transformational change; develop a shared knowledge framework through the co-design process supplemented by insights from the international literature; and identify through co-design some high leverage focal areas that are essential for urban sustainability, and related trade-offs and synergies at various scales, drawing initially on the experience of multiple Australian cities",11
"A one-day interdisciplinary workshop identified sustainable urban development as a core theme for Australia, and this was reinforced by a two-day Cities in Future Earth Conference sponsored by the Australian Academy of Sciences (Norman et al",11
"The national- and state-level representatives were identified by direct approaches to the relevant organisations with urban development responsibility, and the local council representatives with the assistance of national associations for local government",11
"The interviews explored their experience and views on current Australian urban contexts, goals and strategies; the practical barriers to and enablers of more sustainable urban development; and real examples of the issues (e.g",11
"The outcomes also helped focus a second stage international literature review during 2016, which related the Australian findings more overtly to current urban development and related research internationally",11
"Overall knowledge co-production process for sustainable urban development: developed through, and used in, the co-design process with stakeholders",11
"(2015), Polk (2015) and Frantzeskaki and Kabisch (2016) in the context of sustainable urban development, though each of these uses slightly different terminology to label each phase",11
2013 on use of urban transition labs to explore innovative approaches; Gorissen et al,11
"The outcomes in the “Insights on Australian urban issues from the co-design process” section were derived directly from the collaborative work with stakeholders; those of “A knowledge framework for sustainable urban development” and the “Discussion and conclusions” sections partially so, but supplemented by insights from the international literature",11
We have developed such a framework for sustainable urban development (Fig,11
"Knowledge framework for sustainable urban development: developed through the co-design process, supplemented with insights from the international literature (Component D is elaborated on at Fig",11
"It views sustainable urban development through several interdependent components which also operate and interconnect at multiple (local, metropolitan, regional, national, global) scales (Grimm et al",11
"The key focal areas for urban action (Component D) are the decision areas identified where policy and decision makers can most influence sustainable urban development, and may well vary depending on the local context and scope of investigation",11
"national policies, climate change, migration)",13
The complex system interdependencies can generate many possible urban transition pathways,11
Alternative urban development trajectories can have very different sustainability outcomes (Bai 2003; Newton and Bai 2008; Pickett et al,11
"2, sustainable urban development can be guided through agreed overarching goals, potentially translated from the UN SDGs",11
This is not surprising as the plans reflect urban planning theories and movements that have evolved internationally over more than twenty years,11
"Understanding these drivers is a first step towards developing policy and practice, from national through to local levels, which better support sustainable urban development",11
The co-design process also identified six strategic decision-making areas that could contribute to more sustainable urban development in Australia (the ‘key focal areas for action’ referred to in Fig,11
Knowledge framework for sustainable urban development (see Fig,11
It was also recognised that the value of such initiatives can be enhanced by complementary strategies encouraging more sustainable consumption and production choices and behaviours by individuals and communities (Ryan 2013; Newton and Meyer 2015) and businesses (e.g,12
Ellen Macarthur Foundation 2013 on the circular economy and industrial symbiosis),12
"the urban food–energy–water nexus (GIZ and ICLEI 2014), and the urban planning/infrastructure–transport–health nexus (Bai et al",11
2012)); and reinforcing links from these to local and city-wide decarbonisation and climate adaptation strategies,13
"
Urban renewal and intensification decisions: These range from renewal of urban corridors, CBDs, suburbs and suburban centres down to individual precincts",11
"Core strategies are increasing density (Newman 2014), and reducing automobile dependence in ways that recognise the distinctive urban planning needs of a city’s three different ‘urban fabrics’ (Newman and Kenworthy 2015: Chapter 4) i.e",11
"Moreover, spatial practices such as urban planning and urban design should take into account that sustainability is about urban processes as well as urban form (Neuman 2005)",11
"The article has described the initial outcomes of a co-design process for sustainable urban development, drawing on a combination of Australian and international experience and research",11
The findings highlight the dilemma for formal urban planning and design functions,11
"Sustainable urban development will require significant redesign of many social, political, financial and other institutional structures over time (Young 2010), increasingly generated on a foundation of democracy, decentralisation and strong social movements and engagement (Satterthwaite 2013)",11
"2005 on complex systems science, spatial patterns and land use; Wilkinson 2012 on SES, resilience and urban planning; and Weinstein and Turner 2012 on sustainability science in the urban context)",11
2010) and urban planning (Rickwood 2011),11
Such learning is especially critical to support guided and evolutionary transitions in a polycentric governance and substantially self-organising urban environment,11
"
Whilst this has been a promising start, the aim is to continue to develop a collaborative research agenda in Australia, preferably through a sustainable urban development initiative within the Future Earth Australia program",11
"(2015) confirm that the complexity of co-production for sustainable urban development is different in degree from that encountered in earlier participatory research, with more, and more varied disciplines, actors and connections, operating across multiple spatial and time scales, and targeting multiple sustainability goals (Nevens et al",11
"(2016) also indicate that urban sustainability initiatives need to be more broadly framed both spatially and socially, addressing equity and other objectives across multiple scales",11
"In Australia, there has recently been a renewed focus at the national level on a cities agenda, to address such issues as long-term and integrated planning for infrastructure; more diverse and affordable housing closer to sources of employment; encouragement of urban renewal; and alternative strategic and financing options such as value capture (Australian Government 2016)",11
"This agenda, contributing to a more integrated science of cities and sustainable urban development decision making, needs to be progressed with a sense of urgency",11
"NotesHuman and material losses in the first four targets of the Sendai Framework include the number of persons dead and missing, the number of persons affected, economic losses, damage and destruction of infrastructure, and disruption of basic services.The mechanisms for reducing disaster risk include national and local disaster risk reduction strategies in line with the Sendai Framework, international cooperation, and multi-hazard early warning systems.DesInventar is a database and tool for recording disaster loss and damage data by event and locality",11
"Launched in the same year as the Agenda 2030, and the first of the landmark series of global agreements that were adopted during that year, the Sendai Framework marked a clear shift from managing the impact of disasters to managing and reducing risks that lead to disasters",11
"The Sendai Framework clearly states that in order to reduce the frequency and impact of disasters, what is required is to better understand disaster risk and to improve risk governance so that existing risks are reduced, and the creation of new risks is minimized",11
"Five years on, the purpose of this article is to take stock of where we are in meeting the initial procedural and data requirements for the Sendai Framework, and to reflect on the lessons learned in the process",11
The Sendai Framework recommends comparing disaster losses sustained between 2005 and 2015 with 2015 and 2030,11
"Given this time frame, and the fact that it includes the end point of the Sendai Framework—2030—ongoing monitoring is essential",11
"The Sendai Framework identifies four priorities for action, and its focus on prevention is concretized in seven targets for member states to achieve",11
"Four of the seven targets (a–d) are outcome-focused—seeking reduction in human and material losses from disasters.Footnote 1 The remaining three targets (e–g) are input-focused—pursuing nationally-led and owned mechanisms to reduce disaster risk.Footnote 2 The priorities for action include understanding risk in all its dimensions, guiding and incentivizing both public and private sectors to address disaster risk through strengthened risk governance, putting in place multi-hazard early warning systems, protecting productive assets, improving the safety and functionality of critical infrastructure, and strengthening disaster preparedness",11
"At the end of an intense consultation process, OIEWG identified 38 indicators to monitor progress in achieving the Sendai Framework’s seven targets (United Nations General Assembly 2016)",11
"To enable and guide global reporting on the seven targets against the 38 indicators, on 1 March 2018, UNDRR launched the online Sendai Framework Monitor (SFM) system in all six United Nations official languages along with a set of technical guidance notes for member states",11
"Between July 2018 and July 2019, UNDRR trained designated national Sendai Framework focal points, national statistics offices, government personnel, and civil society representatives from more than 100 countries on the use of the SFM and the collection and interpretation of disaster loss data",11
"Furthermore, 1480 national and local government officials and other stakeholders from 107 countries were trained in person or online through UNDRR’s Global Education and Training Institute (GETI) (United Nations General Assembly 2019)",4
"These efforts were complemented by key partner UN agencies and institutions of UNDRR including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre, the CIMA Foundation,Footnote 4 and OSSO Cooperation.Footnote 5 Understanding disaster risk—the first of the Sendai Framework’s four priorities—has been particularly challenging",11
"And while the importance of investing in disaster risk reduction (DRR) for resilience—the third priority for action in the Sendai Framework—is universally acknowledged, financing such investments has so far proved to be difficult",11
Significant progress has been made in the Sendai Framework implementation monitoring,11
Foundational to reducing human and material losses from disasters is Sendai Framework Target (e)—to substantially increase the number of countries with national and local DRR strategies by 2020,11
"Using the SFM system, member states are required to assess the alignment of their national DRR strategies against 10 parameters to arrive at an aggregated score on a scale of zero to one",11
Among them 81 countries reported some degree of alignment of their respective national DRR strategies with the Sendai Framework,11
Six countries assessed their national DRR strategies at full compliance with the Sendai Framework principles and 29 countries assessed their strategies as having a high degree of alignment,11
"Through enhanced support to member states, UNDRR has set an ambitious target to assist 150 countries in developing their national DRR strategies, and to raise the average alignment score of all reporting countries to 0.75 by 2021",11
Both the number of member states with national DRR strategies and their quality need to be improved,11
"First, as the Sendai Framework states, the era of hazard-by-hazard risk reduction is over",11
Recognizing that risk reduction cannot occur without climate action has become more than clear; disaster risk reduction will not be successful without coherence with climate change adaptation,13
"Absence of such information and formal channels of communication between the reporting entity, the Sendai focal point, and national and local data custodians hinders timely and accurate Sendai Framework reporting",11
"To tackle this challenge, UNDRR has conducted training and peer exchange workshops generating opportunities for sharing experiences and enabling improved inter-ministerial coordination for DRR",11
"Political will to overcome intra-governmental silos has emerged as a key driver of success not just in reporting data, but also in implementing risk-informed DRR plans",11
"Such political will manifests in some cases in the creation of legal mandates to support DRR, and in other cases in establishing strong formal institutional arrangements",11
"Many successful national initiatives integrate disaster data collection, reporting, and analysis with DRR interventions",11
"For instance, Qatar has sought to foster inter-ministerial cooperation by linking line ministries to the Sendai Framework through national focal points",11
"In Colombia, a National System for Disaster Risk Management is established by law, and a focal point in each Ministry is responsible for SFM processes",11
"In Slovenia, DRR is informed by analysis of existing databases and national registers, and strong state level reporting",11
"Barbados has developed a Comprehensive Disaster Management Country Work Programme (CWP) 2019–2023, aligned to both regional and global frameworks",11
The outcome-focused text of the Sendai Framework demonstrates that member states have always been conscious of the need to protect their development trajectories,11
The biggest challenge we face in entering the Decade of Action is the lack of greater and more direct funding to achieve the Sendai Framework and to reduce risk,11
"The SFM data showed that at end-September 2019, 15 recipient countries had reported receiving a mere USD 1.5 billion in bilateral and multilateral aid for DRR",11
"Acknowledging that more comprehensive tracking of international aid for DRR is essential for generating a complete picture and identifying funding gaps, it is already clear that DRR needs a better financing strategy",11
Domestic sources of finance will also need to be mobilized at an equal scale to meet the targets of the Sendai Framework,11
"In summary, it will require greater collective human and material resources, and political will than are currently in play, to achieve the targets of the Sendai Framework, reduce risk and build resilience, and to protect any progress in the achievement of the SDGs",11
"The Sendai Framework, as the Hyogo Framework before it, presents a long list of actions to be carried out by governments, who in situations of shortage of resources have great difficulty implementing these actions",11
"Rather than address the many valuable recommendations the Sendai Framework contains, I wish to focus in this brief commentary on the framework’s shortcomings and, in particular, on the most urgent tasks that need to be undertaken",11
"The Sendai Framework, as the Hyogo Framework before it, presents a long list of actions to be carried out by governments, who in situations of shortage of resources have great difficulty implementing these actions",11
"A sense of what is most urgent and an indication of gradual steps toward full implementation would be, in my view, a necessary complement to the Sendai Framework",11
"This would greatly facilitate government action, not only in attempting to reduce risk of disasters but also, and most importantly, in achieving orderly and effective implementation of the sustainable development goals (SDG), as well as the new goals expected to be adopted at the upcoming climate change (CC) agreement",13
The Sendai Framework provides good recommendations for follow-up actions and as a whole represents a major step in the right direction,11
"This common strategic perspective is especially critical for the Financing for Development, SDG, and climate change negotiations later in 2015",13
"The Sendai Framework extensively addresses the need for financial resources, an issue we can easily agree on but this agreement fails to identify the lack of appropriate understanding of risk management as a top priority",11
"The Sendai Framework adds an unnecessary focus on emergency management, a different task that requires in-depth, but separate, attention from risk management",11
It was listed as a World Cultural Heritage site together with its culture landscape in July 2007,11
"The 2030 Agenda, adopted in 2015 by the United Nations, represents a significant step forward in terms of recognizing science, technology and innovation (STI) as a driving force for sustainable development in its three pillars, environmental, social and economic",9
"UNESCO operates at the interface between natural and social sciences, education, culture and communication playing a vital role in constructing a global culture of resilient communities",11
UNESCO plays a vital role among the UN systems to support Member States to implement the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction (DRR) 2015–2030,11
"For an example of policy recommendation, UNESCO works on the EU funded project OPERANDUM to develop the efficiency and effectiveness of ecosystem DRR solution to multi-stakeholders including decision makers",11
Estimating forest carbon storage is crucial for understanding sink capacities to facilitate carbon crediting and mitigate climate change,13
"Thus, a rapid, accurate, and non-destructive measurement of forest carbon stock and change is crucial for planning forest management and carbon emission reductions",15
Images captured with RGB or Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors on drones generate dense point clouds for monitoring forest cover and therefore provide a low-cost alternative to inventory methods and satellite-based sensing,15
Integrating drone imagery and Machine learning (ML) models could provide a useful tool in carbon estimation over an extensive area with improved precision; thereby facilitating forest management and long-term carbon capture and storage,15
"Drones are increasingly being used for on-demand, rapid, cost-effective, and near real-time characterization, monitoring, and mapping of forest cover at much finer scales",15
"Indeed, potential exists to integrate drone-based forestry features with data-driven approaches like ML, Deep Learning, and time-series forecasting models in estimating and modeling forest carbon storage",15
"Overall, we see the potential to utilize drone images to estimate important forestry features and indices like basal area, canopy cover, height, volume, and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) (Zhang et al",15
"But deeper issues about our consumption of energy, materials, food and forests began to surface and serious questions were asked about global limits and the pursuit of single-minded economic development",8
"So, in 2016 the nations of the world signed up to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [1] and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change",13
We now have global agreements to work toward the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change simultaneously,13
Even the simplest reading of this task will show that we are not equipped to integrate these vastly different goals and completely reshape the global economy around new clean energy sources at the same time,7
"Whatever it is that causes health to vary there is little doubt – according to this paper – that integrating nature into our cities has many health benefits, especially for mental health",3
"Some of these article collections are already inviting submissions, including: Accelerating Climate Change Mitigation",13
"Within this context, the current study examined the environmental sustainability effects arising from the economic freedom prowess in the panel of the G-20 economies over the period 2000–2016",8
"Although a few of the G-20 and G-7 member countries have consistently experienced economic growth in the last decade, the serious threat to environmental quality arising from the global warming has remained one of the greatest challenge to the sustainable development",8
"For instance, the report of World Energy Outlook (WEO) in 2017 linked the premature deaths of about 3 million to energy pollution especially from non-renewable energy sources",7
"In addition, the drive toward achieving the rapid economic growth amidst sustainable environment has further deepened the global need to preserve the world ecological footprint (EF), thus reducing the humans’ endangering activities",8
"Considering the aforementioned motivation and that the G-20 economies contribute about 75% to the global greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions (Climate Transparency 2016), the economic organization has further encouraged the members’ commitment to climate actions such as to put their carbon footprint under control, thus mitigating climate change and global warming globally",13
"In view of the above motivation, and as an objective, the current study is designed to examine the role of economic freedom on environmental sustainability amidst the drive for economic prosperity of the G-20-member countries",8
"In order to achieve the desired objective, the study implements clean energy-driven growth (growth induced by renewable energy consumption) in addition to the economic freedom indicators that include legal systems and property rights, sound money, freedom to international trade, and regulation",7
"Therefore, by exploring the sustainable development and environmental quality drive of the G-20 countries from the perspective of economic freedom, the contributions of the current study to the exising body of knowledge are considered a novel point of observation",8
"In the extant studies, the justification for economic advancement, technological innovation, population, and several aspects of human activities and evironmental-related nexus have been widely covered (Ardito et al",8
This study is designed to examine the environmental effects of some selected indicators of economic freedom on the ecological footprint of the panle of G-20 economies,8
This implies that increasing the individual income level of the people in the G-20 economies will worsen the environmental degradation because it will cause more demand on the country’s ecological footprint in G-20 countries,15
"Concerning renewable energy consumption, the results obtained from both the difference and systems GMM verify a positive impact of renewable energy consumption on the ecological footprint of the panel of G-20 economies",7
"More precisely, a 1% rise in renewable energy consumption increases the ecological footprint insignificantly by 0.13% for the difference GMM while the system GMM model shows that a 1% increase in the renewable energy consumption increases the ecological footprint of G-20 economies significantly by 0.88%",7
This implies that renewable energy utilization is yet to improve the environmental quality of the G-20 economies,7
"Similar to the recent findings of Alola and Joshua (2020), the reason for this undesirable result could be associated with the fact that the components of renewable energy in most of the examined countries might not be totally from clean energy sources",7
"Alola and Joshua (2020) found a positive relationship between CO2 emissions and renewable energy consumption, first for the lower middle-income economies and secondly for the panel of upper middle, lower middle, low-income, and high-income economies",7
"Moreover, the renewable energy sources are mostly from geothermal, solid biofuels, biogasoline, biodiesels, other liquid biofuels, biogases, and others (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD 2020)",7
2020) that posited that renewable energy consumption improves the environmental quality in 16 EU economies,7
"Moreover, there are other related studies that have also supported the negative nexus of renewable energy consumption and environmental sustainability (Bhattacharya et al",7
"Furthermore, the results also confirm that legal systems and property rights have a significant and positive impact on the ecological footprint of the G-20 economies",1
"Specifically, the difference and system GM show that an increase in the legal systems and property rights increases the ecological footprint of G-20 economies significantly",1
"This implies that improving the effectiveness of the judicial, increasing the accountability and independence of the G-20’s legal systems in addition to improving the property rights poses threat to the environmental quality of examined economies",1
"In both circumstances (when international trade is unhindered and high regulatory efficiency is encouraged), environmental degradation will worsen in G-20 economies especially because trade in environmentally hazardous goods and service is either unhindered or with limited restriction across borders",15
"For the first time in the literature, this study explored the economic freedom attributes associated with the G-20 economies from the perspectives of sustainable development vis-à-vis sustainable income and environmental sustainability",8
"In addition, the implementation of more stringent environmental policy such as the emissions trading system (ETS) and carbon tax across could offer more efficient approach in preventing threat of carbon-outsourcing or carbon leakages",12
"This Perspective positions urban challenges in informal settlements in the Global South as a question of how to coproduce actionable knowledge for sustainability transitions, and how this relates to power issues",11
"This Perspective is based on fieldwork in three informal settlements in Kampala and focusses specifically on sustainability issues related to gaining access to, maintenance and control of water services",11
Water has been identified as the main driver of vulnerability in informal settlements in Kampala,11
"As both the state and the market fail to meet demands, especially poor communities in informal settlements have limited access to clean and safe (drinking) water",11
The unsustainability of urban challenges related to water is thus embedded in existing governance structures and social inequalities,10
"Therefore, a very important aspect of transitions in the Global South is the reconfiguration of power balances and social inequalities (Swilling & Annecke, 2012; Wieczorek, 2018)",10
"By reflecting on the diverse manifestations of power that we encountered during our action-oriented research in informal settlements in Kampala, we arrive at recommendations on how to handle power with care when addressing urban challenges",11
"While for some, especially those sensitive to issues of justice, social exclusion and inequality, much of what we discuss will sound familiar, we hope to reach those who are in the process of ‘muddling through’",1
"Including engineers, policymakers, trained scientists and development workers who are addressing urban sustainability challenges in the ‘real world’",11
"Based on theoretical work discussing power in sustainability transitions (Avelino 2016, 2017, Ahlborg 2017) and our experience in informal settlements in Kampala, we suggest the following entry points for unravelling power empirically that might increase the potential for coproducing actionable knowledge",11
"In our case, this dimension of power became apparent in the negative associations people attached to informal settlements and its inhabitants",11
In a like manner we observed how the local power language related to local water issues in informal settlements was shaped by the political situation and power dynamics within the political system,11
"From these entry points, we formulated three empirical questions that guide the analysis of this Perspective: 1) what are the dominant frames about informal settlements and their inhabitants? 2) How do actors relate and how do they depend on each other? 3) What are the power dynamics within the political system? This Perspective stems from work as part of the T-GroUP project (2015–2020)",11
"The project revolves around better understanding the relationship between above-ground and below-ground water systems, and exploring the applicability of transition management in the context of informal settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa",11
"With this Perspective we endeavour to structure our reflections on the issues of power we encountered when applying transition management and understanding the unsustainability related to the access to, control and maintenance of water sources and services in three informal settlements in the North-West of Kampala",11
"The same mechanism is at work when describing informal settlements as ‘informal’, ‘disorganized’ and ‘transient’, and thereby labelling these spaces as dysfunctional, and its inhabitants as deviant and inferior (Varley, 2013)",11
"For example, as a legitimization of not delivering services to informal settlements or evicting residents from their homes to open up urban areas for gentrification.Footnote 3 To arrive at actionable knowledge about the collective management of water services and sources we need to question existing frames and understand the diverse ways in which informal settlement are organized beyond the informal",11
"Indeed, in the areas we worked with in Kampala, social life and access to basic services was organized around many (in)formal institutions such as community meetings, water committees, church groups and neighbourhood security teams",1
"Moreover, while informal settlements might be illegal from an urban planning perspective, in fact 70% of Kampala is said to be ‘illegally’ built, these areas do have officially elected political representatives",11
"In Kampala, the power of framing and the stigmatization of spaces and people also plays into the social divides within the informal settlements",11
Constructing and repeating the characteristics of informal settlements is a symbolic act of power and needs to be met with critical questions,11
We encourage those who are addressing urban sustainability challenges in the ‘real world’ to defamiliarize themselves with existing framings and dominant characteristics of places and people,11
"Within informal settlements in Kampala, we recognized power dynamics in gaining access to water as being related to at least three social relations: the relations between tenants and landowners, local council members and community members, and men and women",11
These notebooks were a resource very specific for the local context of these informal settlements and the power dynamics within the community,11
"While many local councils in Kampala’s informal settlements seemed to lack the (financial) capacity or the support (from the KCCA) to enforce or implement policies or services, they still occupied a powerful position locally",11
The third entry point to navigate power in the context of informal settlements is to develop a contextualised power language with regard to the political system and service delivery such as water,11
When we informally asked local residents in informal settlements about their associations with ‘power’ most people would immediately respond that ‘power’ is the main cause of the persistent problems in the city,11
The movement and its leader tapped into the dissatisfaction of the young and urban poor in the informal settlements,11
"Also at the level of informal settlements pressure groups, such as Kawempe Republic who informally declared their community independent from KCCA, expressed their dissatisfaction with the local government and targeted the uneven distribution of power",11
Also on the local level of informal settlements political power seemed to be concentrated and personalized,11
"However, this did not mean that people living in informal settlements were deprived of their agency or mere recipients of services",11
"To alleviate some of the unintended and undesirable consequences of both research and/or policy programs and interventions aiming to further urban sustainability transitions, it is important to be reflexive regarding one’s doings and to build power sensitive actionable knowledge",11
"Three questions that stemmed from empirical and theoretical works on power served as entry points to our analysis: 1) what are the dominant frames about informal settlements and their inhabitants? 2) How do actors relate and how do they depend on each other? 3) What are the power dynamics within the political system? Based on our analysis, we formulated a number of recommendations",11
"To start with, those who address urban sustainability challenges in the ‘real world’ should first defamiliarise themselves with existing framings and dominant characteristics of places and people",11
"In doing so, they can start challenging hegemonic frames in practice and thereby generate the possibility to develop alternative solutions that correspond better with the urban realities of people living in informal settlements",11
"Obviously, working on urban challenges such as water in informal settlements in the Global South prompts different power questions, and begs for different types of knowledge and interventions then ‘uptown’ or in the Global North",11
"These studies acknowledge that an evaluation of impacts along the chain should not only include environmental aspects but also key social and economic issues such as child labour, unemployment and poverty",8
Norris (2006) proposed a methodology connecting economic development to an endpoint indicator on human health which is used as a proxy for social well-being,8
"The social determinants of health are the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age, including the health system (WHO 2013)",3
"Defined as being in control of oneself and one’s resources, autonomy is negatively impacted by for example, forced labour or slavery",8
"possibility of misuse, risk perception, child labour, forced labour, income inequalities and regional inequalities, an increase would have a negative effect on social well-being and the objective would be to minimize the impact",8
"2014; 2015) with additional data on changes in consumption habits, shifts in decarbonizing inputs, growth in productivity, and technological change from dynamic models of climate mitigation pathways (Wood et al",13
"This indicator uses information on direct and indirect high-skilled labour requirements for the studied technology, which can be modelled for instance by economic input-output models",4
Data on requirements of high-skilled labour is available in THEMIS and is used to represent knowledge-intensive employment (Simas et al,4
This indicator regards the relative increase or decrease in high-skilled employment caused by the introduction of the novel technology in comparison to the high-skilled employment caused by the introduction of the reference technology,8
The indicator is used as a proxy for the effect on the knowledge-intensive economy which contributes to productivity and economic growth (OECD 2013),8
"
Child labour",8
"This indicator requires information on whether there is child labour involved for the studied technology across its life chain, including the number of children involved per economic sector per country",8
This information was not directly available in THEMIS so data on child labour from the U.S,8
DOL 2012) as well as data on the amount of persons involved in child labour per sector per region from the ILO (2010; 2012) was linked to information on total employment which could be extracted from THEMIS (Simas et al,8
The data on the number of persons working in child labour per sector is multiplied by an assumed average of 2020 working hours per year,8
This gives the total number of child labour working hours per region per sector,8
The share of child labour hours for aggregate sectors can then be calculated by dividing the total number of child labour hours per sector per country by the total number of working hours (total employment) per sector per country,8
The total number of child labour hours caused by the introduction of the novel technology can be calculated by multiplying the total employment caused by the introduction of the novel technology with the share of child labour hours per country per sector,8
"
Forced labour",8
Data is required on whether there is forced labour involved for the studied technology in the specific country and the number of persons involved per sector per country,8
"Following a similar procedure to the one use for child labour, data of forced labour can be extracted from the U.S",8
"DOL 2012) in combination with the amount of persons involved in forced labour per sector per region from the ILO (2012, 2010)",8
The data on the number of persons working in forced labour per sector is multiplied by an assumed average of 2020 working hours per year,8
This gives the total number of forced labour working hours per region per sector,8
The share of forced labour hours for aggregate sectors can then be calculated by dividing the total number of forced labour hours per sector per country with the total number of working hours (total employment due to the implementation of the technology as modelled in THEMIS) per sector per country,8
The total number of forced labour hours caused by the introduction of the technology can then be calculated by multiplying the total employment caused by the introduction of the novel technology by the share of forced labour hours per country per sector,8
"The Gini coefficient is a standard measure of income inequality (OECD 2011) defined as the relationship of cumulative shares of the employees (in %) arranged according to income levels, to the cumulative share of the total income (in %) received by that share (Eurostat 2013)",10
where everyone has an exactly equal income),10
"Here, it is considered that a net increase in total employment and knowledge-intensive Jobs is positive for social well-being while an increase in child labour, forced labour and inequalities is negative",8
The case explores potential social impacts that could be generated from large-scale deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) in coal-fired power plants in OECD Europe,7
"CCS includes the capture of CO2 emissions from electricity generation plants and/or industrial processes, transport (by pipeline or ships) and sequestration in storage sites such as deep aquifers or depleted oil and gas fields",7
The penetration of CCS will largely be regulated and is modelled against the backdrop of a carbon tax,12
"With the carbon tax applied, the cost of a unit of electricity is higher for the non-CCS case than the CCS case",12
The total working hours per functional unit increase by 73 % (71 % in the EU and 81 % in non-EU) which indicates that the impact of CCS in coal power plants in Europe have a slighter larger (positive) impact outside Europe,7
"
Child labour",8
Results of the model also allow examining the contribution of different sectors to child labour hazardous activities per functional unit,8
"They show that fossil fuel exploration (coal mining, oil and gas exploration) has the largest contribution to the number of child labour per f.u",8
"
Forced labour",8
"The results show similar trends to those shown by the indicator on child labour, that is, an insignificant effect of CCS in the forced labour of the total economy",8
"In terms of forced labour per functional unit, there is an increase of about 65 % as a consequence of CCS implementation",8
"Forced labour within the EU accounts for about 50 % of the forced labour per f.u., in the reference scenario and a slightly lower share (47 %) in the prospective scenario",8
"
Income inequality",10
The model results indicate that implementation of CCS leads to a very small decrease in the GINI index,10
"Results of the model allow exploring the GINI by region which indicates large differences in income inequality across regions, with the EU showing the lowest index and India the highest",10
"a perceived unsustainable character of CCS by the public (CCS as an end-of-pipe solution; CCS competing with renewable energy technologies; rebound effect), and concerns about leakage and the perception of pressurization in the geological reservoir",7
"Their research also indicated that knowledge about CO2, storage mechanisms and the awareness of climate change decreases risk perception",13
"However, as it is not the intention at this stage to perform a full risk analysis, the focus is on identifying whether the implementation of CCS would increase the (infrastructure) vulnerability of the power plants (including up- and downstream)",7
"In the case of coal power plants with and without CCS, the time frames at which storage occurs have been pointed as a main point of concern",7
"However, when applying weight set 2 this increase almost halves due to the large weight factor allocated to the indicator child labour, which increases in the prospective scenario",8
"However, increases in child and forced labour are also observed",8
"As a dimension of sustainable urban development, governments have been concerned about this indicator",11
"As a result, air, water and soil quality, species extinctions, worsening health of populations, poverty, among others, all impact SD, specifically urban sustainable development",2
It is included in the SDGs and may become the main environmental cause of premature mortality (Cruz et al,3
This study also identified that cities with higher concentrations of particulate matter and the lowest air quality improvement rates over the last decade tend to be countries with lower levels of economic development,8
Methodological framework to understand the relationship between air quality and sustainable development for forecasting Sustainable urban development encompasses the integration of three fundamental pillars and their interactions,11
"To illustrate, for the environmental dimension, the concentration of atmospheric pollutants, water consumption, volume of wastewater per unit of GDP, the biochemical oxygen demand, noise level, the rate of treated industrial water, solid waste use and reforested areas are taken into consideration (Li et al",12
"With respect to the social dimension, the student rate, population density, unemployment rate, distance to hospitals and transportation stations are used (Zhang and Huan 2006; Gounaridis et al",8
"To analyze the economic dimension, the GDP, the ratio of industry to GDP, foreign investment, energy consumption per unit of GDP, among others, are taken into account (Zhang and Huan 2006; Wang and Xiao 2017)",7
"Some cities in the region are characterized by high population densities, disjointed urban development and interesting geographic conditions for the study of air quality and sustainable urban development",11
The relationship between the atmospheric component and SD has been demonstrated through the development of sustainable energy plans based on dimensional impact analyses and energy consumption (Ifaei et al,7
"Nevertheless, different approaches and distinct machine learning tools have been applied, which enable further research to make progress in determining the influence of air quality on sustainable urban development, as well as in its forecasting",11
"Peaks of mass losses were attributed to ferric iron reduction to magnetite between 662 and 670 °C, siderite decarbonization between 485 and 513 °C, aragonite decarbonization between 753 and 767 °C, and calcite decarbonization between 798 and 943 °C",13
It has been estimated that almost 7% of the total global CO2 emission resulted from the large amount of fossil fuels that are highly consumed by the steel industry and is considered as one of the main sources of greenhouse gases causing global climate change (Wilson et al,13
Climate change has been a global concern across the globe,13
"If poorly managed, mining can also lead to environmental degradation and ecological damages (UNDP 2016)",15
"The use of mining waste for CO2 sequestration may offer environmental benefits for long-term sustainability (SDG 12 Responsible Consumption and Production and SGD 13 Climate Action), while its utilization will bring economic benefits and in-line with the concept of circular economy (SDG 9 Infrastructure, Innovation and Industrialization)",12
Reutilization of soils as potential sink for atmospheric CO2 has become a new perspective for land reclamation in mitigating global climate change particularly in mining sector (Renforth et al,13
"Instead of having to purposely mine for a targeted mineral, utilization of mine waste offers an equal opportunity for the material to undergo mineral carbonation due to presence of these minerals",10
"If carbonates (e.g., FeCO3, CaCO3, MgCO3) are detected, decarbonization (decomposition) could be seen as a decrease (mass loss) on the TGA curves",13
"Others found the mass loss that were detected between 465 and 550 °C (peak at 525 °C) (Alkac and Atalay 2008) and 478–580 °C (peak at 539 °C) (Luo et al. 2016), which can be assigned to siderite decarbonization",13
"Although it is generally known that calcite decarbonization is thermodynamically stable at temperature 650–900 °C (El-Hassan and Shao 2015; Shi 2016), it has been reported that between 780 and 990 °C, CaCO3 decomposition would be due to well-crystallized CaCO3 (calcite), while between 680 and 780 °C, decomposition is related to metastable CaCO3 (aragonite and vaterite) which is thermally less stable (Thiery et al",13
"Therefore, the earlier peaks detected at 761 °C (raw sample) and 753–780 °C (carbonated) can be assigned to aragonite decomposition (which is confirmed by the XRD analysis in Fig. 12), while at higher temperature of 798–943 °C, the mass losses are due to calcite decarbonization",13
"Beyond this temperature, mass loss due to calcite decarbonization was insignificant",13
"Reduction of Fe2O3 (ferric iron) to Fe3O4 (magnetite) was observed between peaks at 662 and 670 °C, siderite decarbonization between 485 and 513 °C, aragonite decarbonization between 753 and 767 °C,and calcite decarbonization between 798 and 943 °C as supported by the SEM and XRD analysis",13
This study quantifies the impact of financial inclusion and export diversification in attaining the target of green growth for SAARC economies during the period 2000 to 2019,8
The outcomes show that financial inclusion and institutional quality are eco-friendly variables and play a vital role in attaining green growth,8
"In contrast, export diversification and FDI are inversely related with green growth in SAARC economies",8
"Furthermore, a unidirectional causality running from financial inclusion to green growth and financial inclusion to export diversification is observed",8
"On the basis of investigated outcomes, this research suggests essential policy recommendations to attain green growth",8
Every economy thrives to fulfil needs of people by creating a certain rate of economic growth,8
"Additionally, the countries are endeavoring to embrace globalization through widened domestic production for catalyzing their economic growth (Sinha et al",8
"Moreover, adoption of viable financial services by governments is aimed to create an advantageous platform for potential investors to enhance economic growth (Ahmed et al",8
"So far, economic growth remained an enlightened issue among researchers and practitioners since many decades",8
"Existing body of literature is enriched with several aspects like causes, effects, and determinants of economic growth",8
Economic growth can be defined as rise in per capita level of production of commodities over a specific period (Azam & Ahmed 2015),8
Researchers have explored a variety of dimensions that assist in achieving the desired level of economic growth because this very concept directly signals the living standards of the residents of an economy,8
An upsurge economic growth reveals the capacity of an economy to catch-up with the demand of people (Mankiw 2012),8
The nexus between diversified production base to target export diversification and financial deepening to encourage investment is directly targeted to raise economic growth (Shahzad et al,8
Export diversification is predominantly a vital contributor in economic growth,8
Literature provides theoretical and empirical underpinnings for a positive association between economic growth and export diversification (Aditya & Acharyya 2013; Amurgo-Pacheco & Pierola 2008),8
"Keeping all the above in mind, financial inclusion is considerably another important contributor of economic growth",8
"The term “financial inclusion” has been acknowledged since 1990s, as a policy problem for socially excluded residents and empirical researches regarding financial exclusion emerged (Leyshon & Thrift 1996)",8
The well-established positive relationship between financial inclusion and economic growth is portrayed in the literature (Kim et al,8
"World bank defines “financial inclusion implies that all individuals and businesses have access to a range of financial products and services, such as transactions, payments, savings, credit and insurance, to meet their needs in an affordable, convenient, responsible and sustainable manner” (WorldBank 2018)",8
Financial inclusion enhances growth of an economy through financial development as financial development plays a vital role in determining growth rate (Le et al,8
"Specifically, financial inclusion makes the resources available to financial mediators in order to maneuver investment to businesses with higher expected return and deliver loans with lower interest rate to poorer section of the society impalpably making economic activities smother and steadier",8
"Henceforth, financial inclusion plays a crucial role in building a fortified base of an economy’s financial infrastructure, which subsequently facilitates economic growth",8
"Similarly, financial inclusion facilitates steady availability of funds and supports saving, borrowing, investment, and production in the economy, but it is important to consider its environmental consequences",8
"In theory, the financial inclusion could affect CO2 emissions in two ways",8
"In this respect, promoting financial inclusion brings advantageous effects on the environment through the availability and affordability, of cleaner environmental practices that curb CO2 emissions (Le et al",8
"Despite production, side financial inclusion also empowers consumers to pay for energy-intensive goods like vehicles, air-conditioners, refrigerators, and intensified usage of such goods promote discharge of greenhouse gases which ultimately threatens the environment (Jensen 1996)",8
"Certainly, the discussion of economic growth remains enlighten among researchers for many decades, and the government of every country keeps focusing its various aspects to boost it (Alper & Oguz 2016; Nasir & Rehman 2011)",8
"To fulfil the purpose, raw material such as coal, metal, water, wood, and minerals are taken out from the environment which may lead to environmental degradation setting a food for thought for every nation",15
Economic growth does not incorporate these negative externalities while valuating advantages brought by expansion in production,8
"Therefore, many economists believed that economic growth was not an accurate measure of sustainable development especially when the serious environmental problems had become inevitable (Long & Ji 2019)",8
Two important contributors of economic growth are highlighted in the present scenario,8
"First, export diversification and second financial inclusion",8
"These variables positively contribute in economic growth of developing nations but, it has been claimed in the literature that these variables accelerate per capita CO2 emission in developing countries (Elodie 2020)",8
It is meaningful to say that enhancement of economic growth through export diversification and financial inclusion harms the environment,8
"In response to immense pressure on the environmental quality due to rapid economic progress, UNDPFootnote 1 introduced a new concept of “Green Development” in 2002, which activated a way towards “global green development.” Later, in 2005, UNESCAPFootnote 2 initiated a new approach towards economic growth that is “green growth.” The main agenda of this meeting was to revitalize the idea of “grow now and clean up later” and to promote the idea of sustainable growth, i.e., green growth",8
Commission further elaborated the environmental considerations to attain the sustainable economic growth,8
"Hence, a new mode of growth, known as “green economic growth” has been introduced",8
The World Bank describes the green economic growth as a path towards economic growth along with efficient utilization of available natural resources and raw material in a way that does not harm environment,8
"More formally, “mode that could support the efficient use of natural resources while minimizing pollution and environmental impacts and ensuring resilience in natural hazards” is defined as green growth (WorldBank 2012)",8
"Green growth basically covers three aspects which are GDP growth, environmental, and resource protection along with social sustainability",8
"First, the region holds a high rate of deforestation, which has a negative impact on the climate",15
"Climate change is among one of the serious threats, not only to the lives of millions of people but also triggers the pollution gales in the region",13
Rapid increase in the GHG emissions increases the temperature of the Earth and leads to climate change and natural disasters,13
These negative environmental aspects are the costs of economic growth in the South Asian region,8
"Therefore, South Asia is a vulnerable region due to environmental and climate change effects",13
"Unluckily, several barriers hinder the developing countries to achieve the path of green growth",8
"Thus, lack of financial access hampers capital accumulation and taboos sustainable economic growth",8
"Despite financial exclusion, the developing economies are also dependent on primary sectors’ exports with least diversified base and technological assistance spawning further environmental degradation",15
"Henceforth, examining the role of export diversification and financial inclusion in fortifying green economic growth can appraise benefactors of clean and green environment",8
"The circumstantial settings suggest to achieve sustainable economic growth, i.e., SDG 8 via the route of resilient industrialization (SDG 9) made possible through expansion in production base and vibrant financial services",8
"Triangulating the above discussion, the present study aims to reveal the relationship between a better measure of sustainable growth, i.e., green growth through two prominent indicators of growth: financial inclusion and export diversification in SAARC countries",8
"After considering export diversification and financial inclusion as main drivers of green growth, the present research is departing from previous research studies in a novel manner as many of the previous research studies took GDP growth as proxy of economic growth (Ahmed et al",8
"To the authors’ best knowledge, the impact of export diversification and financial inclusion on green growth in SAARC countries is not studied before, so the contribution of study to existing body of literature will be meaningful and pertinent",8
"Firstly, the long-run association among green growth and its determinants is tested through second-generation panel cointegration tests for a panel of SAARC economies",8
"By taking into account the cointegration and its driving factors, the long-run estimates for green growth are provided for the panel by employing continuously updated fully modified (CUP-FM) and continuously updated bias-corrected (CUP-BC) estimators (Bai et al",8
"To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first research study employing novel econometric techniques for estimating green growth",8
"All the above will give rise integral endeavors to sustain economic growth, i.e., green growth",8
"The study is actually weaving the threads of economic, financial, and environmental aspects to keep the pace of economic growth steady",8
"Firstly, the literature review for relationship between financial inclusion and growth/green growth is examined and subsequent section explored the nexus between export diversification and growth/green growth",8
A positive relationship between economic growth and financial inclusion is an overt fact which plays crucial role in the development of an economy through capital provision and supporting innovations (Kim et al,8
"Furthermore, financial inclusion improves financial access by bringing resources to financial institutions in order to strengthen the investment structure with higher predictable returns and to deliver loans to poorer section of the society at lower costs",8
"Putting differently, financial inclusion pervasively promotes empowering conditions and discourages dependency in a country via “supply-leading” or a “demand following” channels (Mohan 2006)",8
Many studies have been conducted to examine the effect of financial inclusion on economic growth for different panel of countries,8
"Furthermore, several empirical evidences in literature documented one-way relationship between financial inclusion and growth while many showed a two-way causality",8
It is argued that financial inclusion is an important way towards inclusive economic growth and evidently revealed that developing economies are lagging behind in achieving an optimal level of financial inclusion to foster inclusive economic growth (Zulfiqar et al,8
The prime obstacles may be the shortage of money and obligatory formalities which tighten the country in achieving a certain level of financial inclusion necessary to achieve an inclusive growth in the economy,8
"In the similar context, a study concluded that the positive impact of financial inclusion on economic growth of Pakistan is achievable if the authorities ought to emphasize financial literacy among residents and reemphasize it for female rural population of the country (Ali et al",8
"Likewise, positive relationship between economic growth and financial inclusion is reported in the economy of Tanzania by using the data from IMF’s Financial Access Survey (FAS) (Mwaitete & George 2018)",8
A direct correlation is found between human development index (Proxy of economic development) and financial inclusion index (Sarma & Pais 2011),8
"In Nigeria, an attempt was made to find the effect of financial inclusion on economic growth with a conclusion that 100% financial inclusion would lead to 374% potential growth by keeping political and socioeconomic factor constant (Babajide et al",8
"Contrarily, another claim for weak relationship between financial inclustion and economic growth is made due to inavailability of proper data and the initiatives towards financial access that have recently arose in the economic policies of several countries (Demirguc-Kunt et al",8
A study was conducted in OIC countries to find the affect of financial inclusion on growth of the economies (Kim et al,8
"The study utilized five variables as proxy of financial inclusion: “ATM machines per 100,000 adults, bank branches per 100,000 adults, commercial banks per 1000 adults (DEPO) as a proxy for savings, borrowers from commercial banks per 1000 adults, life insurance premium volume.” Data for these variables was extracted from IMF’s FAS database, and the close positive relation between economic growth and financial inclusion for OIC countries was portrayed",8
"Contextualizing the environment degradation, a sample of 31 Asian economies was examined to find the impact of financial inclusion on CO2 emissions spanning 2004–2014",8
"Similarly, another study was conducted to manifest the association between financial inclusion and CO2 emissions in 26 Asian economies, and a positive significant relationship was found between financial inclusion and CO2 emissions (Hussain et al",8
The primary reason documented for the higher GHG emission with higher level of financial inclusion is poor population,8
"Bearing in mind the reviewed literature, the present study assumes the positive effect of financial inclusion on economic growth but conflicts with environmental quality",8
"Therefore, the present study aims to explore the impact of financial inclusion on a more accurate sustainable measure of growth, i.e., green growth in the context of SAARC countries",8
The path towards economic development passes through the routes of structural change which encompasses the movement from primary goods to manufacturing and industrial goods,8
"Certainly, classical economists Adam Smith and Ricardo advocated highly concentrated and highly specialized export base in their theories of absolute and comparative advantage which could foster economic development",8
"Many researchers have analyzed the role of export diversification towards economic growth, and numerous studies depicted positive contribution of export diversification in economic growth",8
"Similarly, export diversification affects the economic growth in South Asian, South American, and North African developing countries over the period 2000–2009",8
"Another study explored various export measures into traditional cross-sectional country growth regression and found that diversity promoted economic growth, and the evidence was made for diversity-led economic growth in a dynamic cross-country panel model (Al-Marhubi 2000; Lederman & Maloney 2012)",8
"In the economy of Malaysia, export diversification also proved to be a base for boosting economic growth (Arip et al",8
Authors utilized diversification data as a proxy of structural change in Pakistan with a 2-digit level of SITC export statistics and confirmed with a proximity over a period from 1972 to 2012 that diversification affected economic growth in an advantageous manner,8
"Interestingly, export composition is also an important determinant of economic growth but it involves many externalities",8
"Consequently, reduction in export concentration has positive and significant association with improvement in terms of trade and economic growth (Petersson 2006)",8
"Likewise, export diversification and trade variables have positive association with economic growth in south Africa (Mudenda et al",8
"Despite the relationship between export diversification and economic growth, several studies started examining the question how export diversification affects CO2 emissions and environment quality",8
"Summing up the above literature, the present study presumes that there is consensus in the existing literature about positive impact of export diversification on economic growth, but in developing economies, it harms the environmental quality",8
"Therefore, the present study aims to analyze the impact of export diversification on sustainable economic growth, i.e., green growth in the context of SAARC countries",8
The general idea of the study is to explore the impact of financial inclusion and export diversification on green growth in a multivariate framework,8
"Therefore, the variables are selected on the bases of prior literature, and further detail is provided below: Green growth (Gg) is the dependent variable and represents efficient use of natural capital in a way that does not harm environment (Bábosik 2020)",8
The process of becoming economic growth greener is formally called green growth (Tawiah et al,8
"Financial inclusion (Finc) is the first explanatory variable and defined as the availability and accessibility of loans, credit, insurance, deposits, payments, savings, and remittances to everyone (Nanda & Kaur 2016)",8
"Thus, for developing economies, the basic objective to boost economic growth through export diversification must need a concentration to achieve lower value of HHI",8
"Therefore, we have used six governance indicators, namely, political stability and absence of violence (PSV), government effectiveness (GE), regulatory quality (RQ), rule of law (RL), control of corruption (CC), and voice and accountability (VA), a proxy for Inst",16
The process of industrialization needs more energy and environmental degradation occurs in the economy,15
"Based on this intuition, we would like to observe the effect of FDI on green growth",8
Data on green growth is collected from the International Energy Agency whereas the data for rest of the variables is taken from World Development Indicators by World Bank,8
We apply CUP-FM CUP-BC methods to quantify the long-run impact of our independent variables on green growth (see Table 6),8
The outcomes show the significant negative impact of financial inclusion on green growth which implies that financial inclusion is conducive for green growth,8
"Due to credit constraint to high-polluting industries, these industries are more willing to improve their “polluting” image through reduction in energy usage and introduction of green technology",9
"Moreover, strict environmental regulations are necessary to enhance green growth because it will force business community to implement green innovations (Gong et al",8
The coefficient of export diversification is negative and insignificant which indicate that export diversification has no role in promoting green growth in SAARC economies,8
"In terms of control variables, the findings indicate that quality institutions are necessary to promote green growth",8
It implies that specific regulation on the sustainable use of natural resources may encourage green growth (Salman et al,8
Foreign direct investment shows a significant and inverse relation with green growth,8
The outcome explains that countries that encourage the flow of foreign capital in host country are more likely to experience decline in green growth,8
The findings of causality are reported in Table 7 and show that financial inclusion Granger cause green growth by providing access to financial support to business sector that enables them to use energy efficient technology and green innovation in production process on the one hand and providing credit constraint to dirty industries on the other hand to control pollution in the environment (Wang et al,8
Institution Granger cause green growth through strict regulations and proper monitoring of pollution intensive industries,8
Bi-directional causality is observed between green growth and FDI that is FDI promote green growth and green growth promote FDI,8
"Furthermore, a one-way causality flowing from financial inclusive to FDI and no causality between green growth and export diversification is observed in the case of SAARC economies",8
This research discovers the impact of financial inclusion and export diversification on green growth by controlling the effect of institutional quality and FDI,8
The key outcomes can be summarized as follows: financial inclusion and institutional quality are significant determinants of green growth,8
FDI is detrimental to green growth for SAARC economies,8
Export diversification has no role in promoting green growth in sample countries,8
Financial inclusion Granger cause green growth and export diversification,8
"Results of this research can help in a policy process under the theme of SDGs, and this pattern can set an example for the SAARC economies, which are facing problems to achieve the green growth",8
These results suggest that financial inclusion and institutional quality are crucial elements to promote green growth,8
The outcomes provide a vital policy framework which highlight that merely promoting investment base through financial embark can safeguard green growth as its various dimensions are proved to be major drivers of sustainable growth of selected economies,8
"Consequently, the government and policy makers ought to look and address policy issues to foster green economic growth via financial inclusion strategies",8
Policymakers need to uplift the export base through production and investment diversification so that the role of export diversification become imperative to achieve green growth,8
"In this respect, think-tanks can chalk out policies which provide subsidies to export base so the export diversification and environmental conservation, gauged through green growth can be attained",8
"Conclusively, policy makers should look forward in maintaining sustainable growth by enhancing the financial inclusion and institutional quality",8
"The results of this study also create a new dimension in the finance, green growth nexus, which assumes the vital role of financial inclusion in sustainable growth.",8
"Taking this into account, this study presents the effect of hazardous and non-hazardous waste, plastic waste, and electronic waste on soil health for 24 European Union (EU) countries during 2004–2018 period",12
The results demonstrate that electronic waste has a negative effect on soil health while the effect of total hazardous and non-hazardous waste and plastic waste on soil health remains insignificant,12
"A significant hazardous impact of waste is on soil and water quality, which has an overbearing effect on the general well-being of humans (Mekonnen et al",6
"Specifically, solid waste also has a higher level of nitrogen discharge",12
"An average discharge level of approximate 0.06 to 0.60 of nitrogen in the soil and water is caused by solid waste, detrimental to crop production (Bruun et al",12
Figure 1 lists some of the EU countries with the highest amount of waste (hazardous and non-hazardous waste combined) among the respective sample of this study,12
Source: EUROSTAT (2021) Hazardous and non-hazardous waste in selected EU countries in 2018,12
"As of 2021, only two countries in the EU were on track to achieving the recycling targets for electronic waste (Taylor 2021)",12
"Furthermore, existing literature fails to consider other potential determinants of soil health (in turn, agricultural production) such as technological innovation, information and communication technology, quality of institutions, and natural capital",8
"In this study, we consider all these factors to see if they affect the soil quality of this regional union",2
We examine the effects of the waste product on soil fertility or soil health for 24 EU countries from 2004 to 2018 using panel data,15
The study also emphasizes the role of technological innovation and ICT to improve soil productivity,8
Effective control of hazardous and non-hazardous waste will not materialize unless investments are made in technology,12
"However, with technological innovation, which lies at the heart of SDGs, waste flows can be recycled and treated well to become less harmful for the environment and agriculture sector",8
"To capture these effects, the study incorporates the interaction of technology and ICT with wastes and analyzes whether they can moderate the effect of waste on soil quality",2
"2004), whose focus either ignores the heteroscedasticity, spatial correlation, cross-sectional dependence, we argued that the presence of heteroscedasticity in the model would not allow sustainable consumption and production to explain in the residuals",12
"Although there are several literatures on the relationship between soil quality and hazardous and non-hazardous wastes, only few papers econometrically examine the relationship of soil quality with other factors such as human capital, natural capital, quality of institutions, and technology",2
Most of the studies tend to focus on their relationship with agricultural productivity,2
"The demand for agricultural products has risen in recent time, making possible ways for farmers to meet the rising demand, resulting in increased fertile through the use of waste",2
Eneje Roseta and Innocent (2012) further affirm that the waste product is positively related to soil quality,2
"Similarly, waste products contain the compost amendment, which has the best component that boosts soil fertility and enhances onion production (Erana et al",15
"They found that industrial waste from enzyme production is associated with increasing soil quality, particularly in the grassland with low fertility, thus improving agricultural proceeds",2
(2014) also affirm the positive nexus between waste product and soil fertility,15
The authors found that the compost contains in the waste product is strongly connected with restoring soil fertility and plant nutrient in a post-fire Mediterranean ecosystem,15
"Similarly, Binder and Patzel (2001) report a positive relationship between waste product which received treatment and the soil quality; an average of 30% can be achieved using treated waste product",2
(2003) found that the extent to which this waste product affects soil fertility in South Africa is not static; it depends on the type of organic waste,15
"Al-Busaidi and Ahmed (2016) also found that the treated waste product positively affect soil quality; however, the level of the influence depends on the management of the soil germination",2
"(2020) found that olive mill in waste product negatively impacts soil fertility, particularly it reduces the shoot nutrient",15
(2021) investigate the relationship between the co-application of olive waste-based compost and biochar on soil fertility and Zea mays agrophysiological traits,15
The authors found that waste product has a negative relationship with soil quality,2
(2021) investigate the role of natural resources extraction on agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa,2
The author found that natural resource exploitation has a negative impact on the overall agricultural productivity in the region,2
Aragón and Rud (2013) also find that mining activity in Ghana has contributed to negative agricultural productivity,2
(2017) used the survey approach and found that gold mining and agricultural concession negatively affect access to forest resources in northern Myanmar,15
(2018) investigate the effect of coal mining on the agricultural soil quality in China,2
The authors find that coal mining reduces agricultural soil quality,2
"For example, Lio and Liu (2008) and Amuakwa-Mensah (2019) find that good governance positively influences agricultural product",16
Bayyurt and Yılmaz (2012) report that  regulating the agricultural system in terms of permission and promotion of the private sector  help increase agricultural products,2
(2020) find a positive association between institutional factors and food security,2
"Specifically, institutional factors ensure the availability of food and access to nutritious food for all",2
Divanbeigi and Saliola (2017) study the impact of the regulatory impact on agricultural productivity and find that institutional quality such as regulatory quality is important in achieving agricultural productivity by lowering transaction cost,2
(2004) find that political unrest negatively affects agricultural productivity in Africa,2
"The author argues that due to farmers’ and stakeholders’ inability to engage with farming activities, there will be a significant drop in agricultural productivity",2
"Also, Premarathne (2012) finds that accepting institutions in terms of organization, market, rules, and regulations without considering informal institutions in agricultural development may not improve agricultural productivity",2
"On the other hand, Khatun and Haider (2016) find that the level of agricultural productivity depends on the type of technologies used",2
(2015) report that technology application can promote agricultural productivity,2
"However, Gebeyehu (2016) also confirmed the negative relationship in Ethiopia, whereas technologies targeting parcel size and chemical input could not impact crop yield and overall agricultural productivity",2
"Beyond the circle, the technologies’ impact on agricultural products is beyond imagination",2
"However, the effect may be subdued with the increased environmental degradation resulting from the use of technologies (Waggoner, 2004)",15
The author argues that technologies threaten the moral and ethics of scientific methodology known in agricultural productivity,2
"On the other hand, Olaganathan and Quigley (2017) finds that technological innovation in the agriculture sector has threatened the environment without being mindful of human survival, causing deforestation, soil erosion, soil salinization, soil degradation, destruction of fisheries, depletion of natural resources, etc",15
"According to OECD (2021), a nutrient deficit is an indicator of decline in soil fertility and hence nutrient balance variable can be used as a proxy for soil health",15
"On the other hand, institutional quality is an indicator of political stability and efficiency through regulatory quality, effectiveness, success in fighting criminality, corruption and terrorism, and safeguard of citizens’ freedom of expression and association",16
"Technological innovation is represented by patents application to EPO per million inhabitants, which come from EUROSTAT",8
"Finally, the data for fossil fuel energy consumption comes from the World Development Indicators (WDI) database",7
"However, fertilizer contains soil contamination properties that may hinder soil fertilization and also cause negative impact on the cultivation of agricultural products and soil nutrients and, in turn on agricultural production",2
"Therefore, the impacts of different types of waste on soil quality can be either positive or negative",2
"Similarly, extraction and exploitation of natural resources cause a reduction in agriculture productivity and soil quality (Papworth et al",2
"Moreover, better governance and strong institutions improve the efficiency of productivity (Bayyurt and Yılmaz 2012; Subramaniam et al",16
"2009, Khatun and Haider 2016; Gebeyehu 2016), so we are assuming a positive impact of technology on soil quality",2
"After describing the variables and checking for multicollinearity, we move on to the analysis where using the Driscoll-Kraay standard error model, the impact of waste (hazardous and non-hazardous, plastic, electronic), ICT, technology, fossil fuel energy consumption, and institutional quality on nutrient balance is studied",7
"In contrast, technological innovation, ICT, institutional quality, and fossil fuel consumption have a positive and significant impact on nutrient balance",8
The positive impact of technology on soil is in line with Shabbir and Yaqoob (2019) who have attributed technological innovation to the growth of agriculture,8
We see that hazardous and non-hazardous waste has an insignificant but negative effect on soil health in model 1,12
"However, when it interacts with institutional quality and technological innovation, it is found to have a positive and significant effect on nutrient balance",8
"In model 3, the restraining effect of ICT, natural capital, and technological innovation performs well in containing the adverse influence of plastic waste",8
"However, the interaction results shed light on the understanding that when coupled with ICT, natural capital, or technological innovation, the effect can be turned positive",8
"In other words, the growth in ICT, natural capital, or technological innovation will impede soil infertility given that the plastic waste quantity remains the same",8
The focus then remains on the agriculture which results in higher agricultural productivity,2
"Model 4 demonstrates how the moderating effects of ICT, natural capital institutional quality, and technological innovation work with electronic waste",8
The interaction coefficients of electronic waste with institutional quality (0.030) and technological innovation (0.258) turn positive and significant while it remains negative and significant with the natural capital (− 0.074),8
"Taken together, these results suggest that institutional quality and technological innovation can facilitate neutralizing the detrimental effect of electronic waste on soil health",8
"Sala-i-Martin and Subramanian (2013) provide confirmation that natural capital depletion exerts negative pressure on soil nutrition, thereby agricultural productivity",2
Existing studies have witnessed a mixed relationship between waste and agricultural productivity,2
The nature of the waste can impact not only the agricultural productivity but also soil health,2
"Similarly, production leading to low soil nutrient balance will jeopardize the food security in the countries selected for the study",2
"Since the institutional quality and use of technology is enhancing the soil nutrient balance, the policymakers of these countries should focus on strengthening the institutions and increase the technology penetration so that soil degradation can be prevented",15
"Finally, the future studies can focus on countries other than the European Union to draw more conclusions and use other measures of soil quality to check for sensitivity of the results.",2
"In this milieu, this study is a novel attempt to explore the association between agricultural ecosystem and environmental degradation in Bangladesh using a long time spanning from 1972 to 2018",15
"Lastly, this study established a causal relationship between the agroecosystem and environmental degradation using frequency domain causality",15
"Indeed, our study will aid in reshaping agricultural practices in an eco-friendly manner to mitigate environmental degradation and help formulate pragmatic policy actions so that agro-lead nations can thrive in the race of achieving SDGs 1, 2, and 13",15
"The global average temperature is rising unprecedentedly in the twenty-first century as a result of climate change and global warming (Tollefson, 2021)",13
"Climate change, induced by increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions from different sources, would negatively impact the environment and the Earth’s geology (Singh and Singh, 2012)",13
"Carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels is the largest source of emission from human activities, while deforestation comes next (Matthew et al., 2018)",15
"The current sustainable agriculture idea entails harnessing local microorganisms to cultivate in an environmentally benign and low-cost manner (Singh et al., 2016)",2
"Several Asian countries, including Bangladesh, are battling to meet the SDGs 1 and 2, which aim to reduce poverty and hunger",1
"Over 700 million people, or 11% of the global population, continue to live in extreme poverty",1
"Furthermore, extreme hunger and malnutrition continue to impede long-term growth, trapping people into an inescapable cycle (United Nations, 2020)",2
"As a result, self-sufficiency in rice production has become synonymous with food security",2
"However, agricultural practices, poultry rearing, deforestation, and fossil fuel consumption are among Bangladesh’s significant sources of GHG emissions",15
"Agricultural practice consumes a considerable amount of non-renewable energy in the form of oil to operate agricultural machinery, which exacerbates GHG emissions like N2O (Sinha and Sengupta, 2019)",7
"Despite the fact that agriculture is the primary source of human food and industrial raw materials, the link between agriculture’s ecosystem and environmental degradation must not be overlooked",15
"Thus, it is the high time to focus on adopting adaptation and mitigation strategies in order to ensure the agriculture sector’s long-term sustainability",13
"Furthermore, numerous studies have been undertaken to examine the relationship of macroeconomic variables, energy consumption, and technology with carbon dioxide emissions",7
This method also uses a counterfactual shock of a certain percentage change in the explanatory variables over 30 years from 2018 to 2048 to explore the changes in environmental degradation,15
"Second, the study can be used by the Bangladeshi government as a reference tool for incorporating climate change measures into national policies, strategies, and planning",13
"Last but not least, despite the fact that Bangladesh is considered as a case study, the findings can be generalized to other agricultural-led economies in South Asia and other parts of the globe that are particularly vulnerable to climate change",13
"Appended to that, the Granger causality result illustrated an interrelationship between climate change vulnerability and the agroecosystem",13
"(2016), there is a negative short-run association between carbon dioxide emission and agricultural productivity in Nigeria",2
"Additionally, there is a unidirectional causal relationship between them, with causality flowing from carbon dioxide emission to agricultural productivity",2
"(2022) used the ARDL model to unveil that climatic parameters like CO2 emissions and temperature have a negative impact on agricultural output, whereas rainfall has a beneficial impact",2
"With a unit increase in total cereal production, environmental degradation gets intensified throughout the long- and short-run periods by 0.596% and 0.517%, respectively",15
Additional food and fodder production requirement for the increasing number of livestock might influence the adoption of some agricultural practices responsible for environmental degradation,15
"In addition, dropping animal waste could also be responsible for the emission of environmental degradation",15
"Although the short-run impact is not valid, total pesticide use is intimately linked with environmental degradation in the long run",15
The long-term reaction of pesticides might be responsible for environmental degradation,15
A significant part of pesticides leach into the soil degenerate the soil properties and ultimately impact agricultural productivity,2
All these transformations of pesticides and their consequences have a serious connection to environmental degradation,15
Increased global temperature enhances the activities of many unwanted factors which ultimately related to environmental degradation,15
The enteric release of methane has also been linked to environmental degradation in the long and short terms,15
"The short- and long-run coefficients of LNEN2O were both positive and significant, implying that N2O emissions from manure application promote environmental degradation",15
"The LNCO2EqN2O coefficients were both positive and significant in the short and long run, suggesting that emission of CO2 equivalent of N2O from synthetic fertilizers induces a rise in environmental degradation in Bangladesh",15
"Burning also kills all the beneficial organisms living with the crop residues, soil surface, and topsoil layers, which degenerate the soil quality",2
"Long-term degradation of soil quality and, thus, reduction of agricultural productivity due to burned biomass crop residue may lessen biomass production, which in turn contributes to decreasing the CO2 absorption",2
"In the short-run period, these degradations of soil productivity are trying to cover up by the use of additional manure, chemical fertilizer, pesticides, etc., which further contribute to environmental degradation",15
All the activities have a strong connection with environmental degradation,15
Contribution of agriculture to GDP and environmental degradation,15
Total cereal production and environmental degradation,15
Total livestock head and environmental degradation,15
Agricultural technology and environmental degradation,15
"However, in the long run, environmental quality exacerbates in response to any further increase in pesticide use in agriculture, whereas a decline in pesticide use, in the long run, helps mitigate environmental degradation",15
Total pesticide use in agriculture and environmental degradation,15
Enteric emission of methene and environmental degradation,15
N2O emission from manure application and environmental degradation,15
Use of synthetic fertilizer and environmental degradation,15
Biomass cropped residues burned and environmental degradation,15
Areas of paddy harvested and environmental degradation,15
(2014) also found a similar causality and reported that burned biomass crop residues brought up harmful effects to the environment as well as a repercussion on agricultural productivity and human health,2
"So, it is evident that soil deforming due to BCR, CO2 emissions from manure, synthetic fertilizer, pesticides used in agriculture, and energy used in agricultural machinery are the major contributors to environmental degradation (Hongdou et al., 2018)",15
"In this context, an attempt was made to investigate the relationship between Bangladesh’s agricultural ecosystem and environmental degradation",15
"The results of the ARDL bound tests indicated that CO2 emissions and the agricultural ecosystem are intertwined, and it is evident that the agricultural ecosystem has a long-term impact on carbon dioxide emissions, which leads to environmental degradation",15
"Results of causality findings revealed that livestock head, N2O emission from manure application, CO2 equivalent N2O emissions from synthetic fertilizers, and total burned biomass crop residue Granger cause environmental degradation in the short run, mid run, and long run",15
"The livestock manure and residues should be properly processed so that power can be generated from the residues of livestock, which has twofold benefits: it meets the renewable energy demand while also enhancing Bangladesh’s environmental quality",7
Several sustainable development goals cannot be achieved without implementing a new generation of environmental measures to better preserve or restore biodiversity and ecosystem services,15
"However, understanding and addressing biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation is a challenging problem that is not solvable without integrating the best and latest science",15
"This process description is then illustrated through the example of a CSA recently commissioned by three French Ministries (for Ecology, for Research, and for Agriculture) regarding (i) contamination of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems by plant protection products (PPPs); (ii) the resulting effects on biodiversity and ecosystem services; and (iii) possible prevention and mitigation strategies",13
"We also provide a short overview of some key expectations from the current CSA, with a focus on the recent development of the ecosystem service approach in ecological risk assessments of PPPs in the European Union",15
"The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted in September 2015 sets out an ambitious action plan to end poverty, protect the planet, and improve the well-being of people around the world through the implementation of 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs)",1
The EU framework programme for Research and Innovation 2021–2027 (European Commission 2018) demonstrates a clear political ambition to establish the EU as a leader in the effort to achieve the SDGs,9
"This objective requires the implementation of an appropriate framework programme, supported by sustainability oriented thematic agendas (Kastrinosa and Weber 2020), to move towards a next generation of environmental measures purposed with supporting efforts to better preserve or restore biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services",15
"However, understanding and addressing biodiversity loss and ecosystem functioning degradation is a challenging problem that is not solvable with current established methods (Sharman and Mlambo 2012; Sarkki et al",15
"The oversight committee is composed of representatives of the three backer ministries, the two mandated RIs, the funders, and representatives of the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety (ANSES) which is the national authority for marketing authorizations on PPPs",8
"However, the ecosystem service approach still leaves a number of issues unresolved for this kind of risk assessment",15
This study examined the drivers of environmental degradation and pollution in 17 countries in Africa from 1971 to 2013,15
The investigation of the nexus between environmental pollution economic growth in Africa confirms the validity of the EKC hypothesis in Africa at a turning point of US$ 5702 GDP per capita,8
Advancement in sustainable development has become critical in economic development at the global level,8
"However, due to lack of progressive research in the scope of the study, least developing and developing countries seem to be left behind in readiness and adaptation to climate change and its impact",13
"Even though Africa contributes less to environment pollution compared to other continents like Asia, North and South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia, however, Africa is the most vulnerable continent to climate change and its related impacts",13
"According to the 2015 Climate Change Vulnerability Index, seven out of the ten countries (Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Nigeria, Chad, Ethiopia, Central African Republic, and Eritrea) at the highest risk of climate change impact are from Africa (Maplecroft 2015)",13
"Due to low adaptive capacity, high financial and technological constraints, changes in weather patterns such as rainfall variability and higher temperatures affect food production leading to extreme poverty, hunger, rural-urban migration, and social instability (i.e., conflicts, destabilization of regional security, and political violence), which are already happening (Maplecroft 2015)",1
"However, as the country attains a threshold in economic development, the population becomes aware of the essence of environmental quality and is willing to pay more to improve their quality of life, cleaner energy, and a cleaner environment",8
"(2017) argue that economic growth improves environmental quality and globalization; thus, foreign direct investment in Africa hampers environmental sustainability and its quality",8
"However, the study proposes the participation in globalization in terms of technological advancement in clean and renewable energy technologies employed in Africa",7
"On the contrary, Effiong and Iriabije (2018) argue that economic growth has no significant impact on environmental quality in SSA",8
"Why is it plausible to investigate the EKC hypothesis and employ ecological footprint as an indicator of environmental degradation in Africa? Ecological footprint is defined as, “a measure of how much area of biologically productive land and water an individual, population, or activity requires to produce all the resources it consumes and to absorb the waste it generates, using prevailing technology and resource management practices”(Global Footprint Network 2017a)",15
"Nonetheless, in recent years, Africa’s ecological footprint has exceeded its ability to regenerate what the population demands because of climate change vulnerability and poor management of the natural resources, thus liquidating the ecological assets thereby leading to ecological deficit (see Fig",13
"[Source: Author’s construction with data from Global Footprint Network] Against the backdrop, the study examines the current state of environmental degradation and pollution in 17 countries in Africa by testing the validity of the EKC hypothesis",15
We present a comparative study by employing ecological footprint as a benchmark for environmental degradation while carbon dioxide emission is used as an indicator for environmental pollution,15
There are a lot of studies that assess the factors that affect environmental degradation or environmental pollution,15
"For example, Behera and Dash (2017) examine the nexus between CO2 emissions, GDP, foreign direct investment, energy consumption, and urbanization in 17 South and Southeast Asian countries from 1980 to 2012 using panel cointegration analysis",7
"Zaman and Abd-el Moemen (2017) investigated the nexus between CO2 emissions from transport, permanent cropland, energy production from renewable energy source, high-technology exports, and government expenditure on health in Latin America and the Caribbean Countries from 1980 to 2013",7
"Evidence from the study shows that increasing levels of electricity production from renewable energy increase CO2 emissions, while high levels of health expenditure, high-technology exports, and permanent crop decrease CO2 emissions",7
"Wolde-Rufael and Idowu (2017) investigated the effect of real GDP per capita, energy consumption, and trade openness on environmental pollution in China and India from 1974 to 2010 using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL), fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS), and dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) regression analysis",7
Their study showed that economic growth has no impact on environmental pollution,8
Redistribution of wealth has no impact on pollution in India in contrast to China where income inequality affects environmental pollution,10
"Dogan and Aslan (2017) examined the relationship between CO2 emissions, real GDP per capita, tourism, and energy consumption in 25 EU countries from 1995 to 2011 using the OLS-FE, FMOLS, DOLS, and GM estimator",7
There was a positive relationship between the ecological intensity of well-being and economic development,8
"Thus, there is a continual stress on the environment due to economic development through the overexploitation of natural resources",8
The study found a bidirectional causality between environmental pollution and economic growth,8
Economic growth was revealed as the main driver of coal-related carbon dioxide emissions,8
"Amri (2016) examined the dynamic effect of real GDP per capita, foreign direct investments, labor, and capital input on renewable and nonrenewable energy consumption from 1990 to 2010 in 75 countries using the dynamic panel estimation",7
The study found a bidirectional causality between renewable energy consumption and foreign direct investment,7
"The second strand of studies (thus, the EKC hypothesis) has received much attention in the literature, due to its effectiveness in understanding the environmental pollution and economic growth interactions",8
They found an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution,8
"Zoundi (2017) examined the relationship between CO2 emissions per capita, real GDP per capita, renewable energy per capita, energy consumption per capita, and population in 25 African countries from 1980 to 2012",7
"Zaman and Moemen (2017) examined the relationship between CO2 emissions, GDP, foreign direct investment, trade openness, agricultural, services and industrial value added, energy consumption, and government expenditure on health and education from 1975 to 2015 in 90 countries using the FE and GMM estimation",7
High levels of energy consumption in the countries tend to impact CO2 emissions positively,7
They found an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution in low- and middle-income countries in contrast to high-income countries,8
"Sencer Atasoy (2017) examined the relationship between CO2 emissions, real GDP per capita, energy consumption, and population in 50 states of the USA from 1960 to 2010 using the augmented mean group (AMG) and the common correlated effects mean group (CCEMG)",7
"Rahman (2017) analyzed the effect of real GDP per capita, energy consumption, exports, and population on CO2 emissions in 11 densely populated Asian countries from 1960 to 2014 using the FMOLS and DOLS",7
The study confirms the validity of the U-shaped EKC hypothesis between economic growth and environmental pollution,8
"Population density, exports of goods and services, and energy consumption hamper environmental quality in the long term",7
The study finds a bidirectional causality between population and economic growth,8
Özokcu and Özdemir (2017) examined the effect of real GDP per capita and energy consumption on CO2 emissions in 26 OECD and 52 emerging countries from 1980 to 2010 using the polynomial regression,7
"Charfeddine and Mrabet (2017) examined the relationship between ecological footprint, real GDP, energy consumption, urbanization, fertility rate, life expectancy, and political institution index in 15 Middle East and North African (MENA) countries from 1972 to 2007 using the Pedroni panel cointegration, DOLS, and FMOLS",7
"The study confirms the U-shaped EKC hypothesis and there exists a long-run equilibrium relationship between ecological footprint, real GDP, energy consumption, and urbanization",7
"In addition, there was evidence of a negative impact of urbanization and energy consumption on environmental pollution in oil-exporting countries",7
"(2016) examined the relationship between CO2 emissions, real GDP per capita, natural resources depletion, PFC gas emissions, SF6 gas emissions, PM2.5 pollution, number of infant deaths, health expenditure, purchasing power parity (PPP), fossil fuel energy consumption, and energy consumption from 2000 to 2013 in 6 developed countries using the GMM method",7
"A U-shaped EKC hypothesis was further confirmed between the individual effect of PFC gas emissions, SF6 gas emissions, PM2.5 pollution, and economic growth",8
"Kais and Sami (2016) examined the validity of the EKC hypothesis between CO2 emissions, real GDP per capita, energy consumption, urbanization, and trade openness from 1990 to 2012 in 58 countries using the GMM method",7
The study reveals a positive impact of energy consumption on environmental pollution,7
"(2016) examined the causal effect between CO2 emissions, real GDP per capita, and renewable energy consumption from 1977 to 2010 in 17 OECD countries using the FMOLS and DOLS cointegration method",7
The study found a negative impact of renewable energy consumption on environmental pollution,7
"In other words, increasing the role of urbanization decreases CO2 emissions contrary to energy intensity and growth in GDP",7
Azam (2016) examined the impact of environmental pollution on economic growth in 11 Asian countries from 1990 to 2011 using the fixed and random effect estimators,8
The study found a negative impact of environmental pollution on economic growth though they did not test the validity of the EKC hypothesis,8
Majority of these studies employ carbon dioxide emission as the dependent variable to examine environmental degradation or environmental pollution,15
"However, using ecological footprint as an indicator for environmental degradation provides more discussions on sustainability",15
Studies that employ ecological footprint as an indicator for environmental degradation are limited,15
We analyze the Vulnerability and Readiness to Climate Change using the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index (ND-GAIN),13
ND-GAIN is a free and open source measurement tool that covers over 20 years of data and 45 indicators useful to analyze the vulnerability and readiness of countries to climate change,13
"Thus, it provides first-hand information of the risk, trend, and scenarios of climate change and its impacts",13
"Vulnerability, thus, “measures a country’s exposure, sensitivity and ability to adapt to the negative impact of climate change”(ND-GAIN 2014)",13
This means that the aforementioned countries require huge investment and innovations to improve their readiness for climate change mitigation and great urgency for action toward reducing climate change and its impact (ND-GAIN 2014),13
"A critical examination of the Human Development Index (HDI) report reveals that Democratic Republic of Congo ranks 176th with 0.435 HDI, 0.0 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita, 67.3% of total land area as forest area, − 4.9% change in the total forest area, natural resource depletion of 31.8% of GNI, a renewable energy consumption of 96% of total final energy consumption, and a population of 77.3 million (UNDP 2016)",7
"Congo ranks 135th with 0.592 HDI, 0.6 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita, 65.4% of total land area as forest area, − 1.7% change in the total forest area, natural resource depletion of 39.2% of GNI, a renewable energy consumption of 48.2% of total final energy consumption, and a population of 4.6 million (UNDP 2016)",7
"Zimbabwe ranks 154th with 0.516 HDI, 0.9 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita, 36.4% of total land area as forest area, − 36.6% change in the total forest area, natural resource depletion of 3.8% of GNI, a renewable energy consumption of 75.6% of total final energy consumption, and a population of 15.6 million (UNDP 2016)",7
"Togo ranks 166th with 0.487 HDI, 0.3 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita, 3.5% of total land area as forest area, − 72.6% change in the total forest area, natural resource depletion of 7.8% of GNI, a renewable energy consumption of 72.7% of total final energy consumption, and a population of 7.3 million (UNDP 2016)",7
"Kenya ranks 146th with 0.555 HDI, 0.3 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita, 7.8% of total land area as forest area, − 6.6% change in the total forest area, natural resource depletion of 2.8% of GNI, a renewable energy consumption of 78.5% of total final energy consumption, and a population of 46 million (UNDP 2016)",7
"Benin ranks 167th with 0.485 HDI, 0.6 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita, 38.2% of total land area as forest area, − 25.2% change in the total forest area, natural resource depletion of 1.4% of GNI, a renewable energy consumption of 50.6% of total final energy consumption, and a population of 10.9 million (UNDP 2016)",7
"Nigeria ranks 152nd with 0.527 HDI, 0.6 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita, 7.7% of total land area as forest area, − 59.4% change in the total forest area, natural resource depletion of 6.6% of GNI, a renewable energy consumption of 86.5% of total final energy consumption, and a population of 182.2 million (UNDP 2016)",7
"Côte d’Ivoire ranks 171st with 0.472 HDI, 0.4 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita, 32.7% of total land area as forest area, 1.8% change in the total forest area, natural resource depletion of 4% of GNI, a renewable energy consumption of 74.4% of total final energy consumption, and a population of 22.7 million (UNDP 2016)",7
"Cameroon ranks 153rd with 0.518 HDI, 0.3 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita, 39.8% of total land area as forest area, − 22.6% change in the total forest area, natural resource depletion of 5.6% of GNI, a renewable energy consumption of 78.1% of total final energy consumption, and a population of 23.3 million (UNDP 2016)",7
"Zambia ranks 139th with 0.579 HDI, 0.3 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita, 65.4% of total land area as forest area, − 7.9% change in the total forest area, natural resource depletion of 8.9% of GNI, a renewable energy consumption of 88.2% of total final energy consumption, and a population of 16.2 million (UNDP 2016)",7
"Senegal ranks 162nd with 0.494 HDI, 0.6 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita, 43% of total land area as forest area, − 11.5% change in the total forest area, natural resource depletion of 1.1% of GNI, a renewable energy consumption of 51.4% of total final energy consumption, and a population of 15.1 million (UNDP 2016)",7
"Ghana is the only country among the 17 in the blue zone/upper-right quadrant countries based on the ND-GAIN matrix, meaning that Ghana is in the process of responding effectively toward climate change mitigation but requires great adaptation strategies and urgency for action (ND-GAIN 2014)",13
"Ghana ranks 139th with 0.579 HDI, 0.6 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita, 41% of total land area as forest area, 8.2% change in the total forest area, natural resource depletion of 17.5% of GNI, a renewable energy consumption of 49.5% of total final energy consumption, and a population of 27.4 million (UNDP 2016)",7
"This means that Algeria is managing climate change vulnerabilities; however, improving their readiness to climate change mitigation will boost their future adaptation to climate stress and challenges (ND-GAIN 2014)",13
"Algeria ranks 83rd with 0.745 HDI, 3.5 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita, 0.8% of total land area as forest area, 17.3% change in the total forest area, natural resource depletion of 14.7% of GNI, a renewable energy consumption of 0.2% of total final energy consumption, and a population of 39.7 million (UNDP 2016)",7
This means these countries are well invested and innovative to readily adapt to climate change challenges even though adaptation challenges still exist (ND-GAIN 2014),13
"Egypt ranks 111st with 0.691 HDI, 2.4 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita, 0.1% of total land area as forest area, 65.9% change in the total forest area, natural resource depletion of 6.4% of GNI, a renewable energy consumption of 5.5% of total final energy consumption, and a population of 91.5 million (UNDP 2016)",7
"Morocco ranks 123rd with 0.647 HDI, 1.8 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita, 12.6% of total land area as forest area, 13.7% change in the total forest area, natural resource depletion of 1% of GNI, a renewable energy consumption of 11.3% of total final energy consumption, and a population of 34.4 million (UNDP 2016)",7
"South Africa ranks 119th with 0.666 HDI, 8.9 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita, 7.6% of total land area as forest area, 0.0% change in the total forest area, natural resource depletion of 3.1% of GNI, a renewable energy consumption of 16.9% of total final energy consumption, and a population of 54.5 million (UNDP 2016)",7
"Tunisia ranks 97th with 0.725 HDI, 2.5 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per capita, 6.7% of total land area as forest area, 61.9% change in the total forest area, natural resource depletion of 3.8% of GNI, a renewable energy consumption of 13% of total final energy consumption, and a population of 11.3 million (UNDP 2016)",7
"The ecological footprint is employed as an indicator of environmental degradation, while carbon dioxide emission is used as an indicator for environmental pollution",15
"In this way, the global debate will not be limited to climate change but sustainable development",13
"However, economic growth is reliant on other factors, namely, the scale and technique effects that engineer its impact on environmental quality and deterioration",8
ESM Appendix B shows that South Africa has the highest economic growth compared to the other countries,8
"Energy consumption thus, electricity and heat production, contributes 25% (12.25 Gt CO2-eq) of the direct global greenhouse gas emissions by economic sectors (IPCC 2016)",7
"As a result, the sustainable development goal (SDG) 7 seeks to increase the penetration of clean, renewable, and sustainable energy technologies to the global energy mix while increasing universal access to affordable energy (United Nations 2015)",7
ESM Appendix B shows that South Africa has the highest energy consumption levels compared to the other countries,7
Carbon dioxide emissions have received global attention due to its effect on climate change,13
Sub-Saharan Africa produces less emissions compared to other developing and developed countries but more susceptible to the impact of climate change,13
Recent studies reveal the negative effect of carbon dioxide emissions on food production and economic growth in Africa (Asumadu and Owusu 2017b; Samuel and Owusu 2017),8
"The inclusion of this variable is to examine the role of Africa in climate change while satisfying SDG 13, which seeks to incorporate climate change measures into national policy planning and improve education and early warning signs of climate change and adaptation options to reduce its impact in Africa (United Nations 2015)",13
"As a result, the inclusion of food production, permanent crops, and agricultural lands is essential in examining the role of AFOLU in environmental degradation and pollution in Africa since Africa is an agrarian continent from which its major economic output depends on",15
in environmental degradation in Africa,15
"While agricultural sector contributes to climate change, it is the most vulnerable economic sector to climate change stress due to the intermittency of rainfall patterns, climate change-induced temperatures, crop failure, land and water resources depletion, and the outbreak of pest and diseases (UNDP 2014)",13
"Therefore, the inclusion of fertility rate is essential to understanding the role of gender in climate change",13
"Against the background, the determinants of environmental degradation and pollution cannot omit the sociodemographic role played by fertility and birth rates especially in Africa",15
"A lot of studies on the EKC hypothesis employ the nonlinear term mostly a quadratic term of economic growth, the negative sign and the significance of the quadratic term to arrive at a conclusion of a U-shape curve using the standard regression method",8
"However, Africa exhibits both negative skewness and negative kurtosis, meaning that there are frequent small gains in births per woman throughout the reproductive age and few extreme birth complications leading to child mortality",3
"The average agricultural land in Africa constitutes about 42% of the land area; however, the negative skewness shows a frequently small conversion of the land area into agricultural lands for agricultural purposes to boost the growing demand and economic productivity",8
The mean energy consumption in Africa is about 606 kg of oil equivalent per capita coupled with a positive skewness and leptokurtic distribution,7
This means that Africa has a high susceptibility to intermittent energy consumption patterns,7
"The average carbon dioxide emissions in Africa is about 39,642 kt, while ecological footprint is 1.4 gha per person; however, the excess kurtosis and positive skewness show the vulnerability of Africa to environmental degradation and pollution",15
The average economic growth is almost US$ 1045 per capita with a positive skewness and positive excess kurtosis,8
"An increase in food production, agricultural land, carbon dioxide emissions, and fertility rate increases environmental degradation by 0.07, 0.21, 0.06, and 0.36%, while permanent crop reduces environmental degradation by 0.16%, respectively",15
"On environmental pollution (lnCO2), an increase in ecological footprint, energy consumption, permanent crop, and agricultural land increases environmental pollution by 0.32, 0.35, 0.25, and 0.89%, respectively",7
"Economic growth increases environmental pollution by 7.6% (−β2/2β3) and decreases thereafter, thus validating the EKC hypothesis in 17 African countries contrary to the study of Zoundi (2017) that found no evidence of EKC in Africa",8
"Table 8 reveals that the error correction (_ec = − 0.58 for ECF and − 0.55 for CO2) is negative and significant at 1% level, meaning the speed of adjustment in correcting the previous disturbances in environmental degradation and environmental pollution is 58 and 55%, respectively",15
"Apart from Namibia and South Africa, bioenergy dominates the total energy mix of each country in Africa (International Energy Agency 2014)",7
"This means that the speed of adjusting the disturbance in environmental degradation and pollution in Algeria is 81 and 72%; however, both long-run and short-run relationships are not significant in both models",15
"On Benin (BEN), the error correction (ec = − 0.74, − 0.64) is negative and significant, meaning the speed of correcting the disturbances in environmental degradation and pollution to equilibrium in Benin is 74 and 64%; however, the short-run relationship is not significant",15
"Moreover, economic growth decreases environmental pollution in Benin and increases thereafter",8
This means that it takes 72 and 52% speed to adjust the disturbances in previous environmental degradation and pollution in Côte d’Ivoire,15
"In addition, energy consumption increases environmental pollution in the short run",7
"On Congo (COG), the error correction (ec = − 0.50) is negative and significant for only environmental degradation",15
"Thus, it takes 50% speed to adjust the previous disturbances in environmental degradation in Congo",15
"On Egypt (EGY), the error correction (ec = − 0.52, − 0.89) is negative and significant, meaning that the speed of adjustment in correcting disturbances in environmental degradation and pollution in Egypt is 52 and 89%",15
"Moreover, energy consumption increases environmental pollution in both long run and short run",7
Economic growth increases environmental pollution and reduces thereafter in the long run,8
"On Kenya (KEN), the error correction (ec = − 0.52) is negative and significant for only environmental degradation",15
"Hence, it takes 52% speed to adjust the previous disturbances in environmental degradation to equilibrium in Kenya",15
"Likewise, energy consumption increases environmental pollution in the short run",7
"On Morocco (MOR), the error correction (ec = − 1.35, − 0.74) is negative and significant, meaning that the speed of adjustment in correcting disturbances in environmental degradation and pollution to an equilibrium state in Morocco is 135 and 74%",15
"Economic growth increases environmental pollution and decreases thereafter in the long run; however, economic growth progressively increases environmental pollution in the short run",8
Energy consumption increases environmental pollution in both the long run and short run,7
"Hence, the disturbances in environmental degradation and pollution in Nigeria are corrected at a speed of 38 and 40%",15
"Thus, the speed of adjustment in correcting disturbances in environmental degradation and pollution to an equilibrium state in Senegal is 127 and 78%, respectively",15
"Moreover, energy consumption increases environmental pollution in the long run, hence confirming a previous study (Sarkodie and Owusu 2017a) in Senegal",7
Economic growth increases environmental pollution and decreases thereafter in the long run,8
"On South Africa (SOA), the error correction (ec = − 0.25, − 0.52) is negative and significant, meaning that the speed of adjustment in correcting disturbances in environmental degradation and pollution in South Africa is 25 and 52%",15
Economic growth increases environmental pollution and reduces thereafter in the long run,8
"As expected in South Africa, energy consumption increases environmental pollution in both the long run and short run",7
"South Africa’s energy mix is dominated by more than 90% of coal production, a conventional source of energy that propels environmental pollution, due to associated carbon dioxide emissions",7
"Accordingly, the speed of adjusting the disturbances in previous environmental degradation and pollution in Togo is 54 and 84%",15
"However, energy consumption increases environmental pollution in the short run",7
"On Tunisia (TUN), the error correction (ec = − 1.09, − 0.51) is negative and significant, meaning that the speed of adjustment in correcting disturbances in environmental degradation and pollution to an equilibrium state in Tunisia is 109 and 51%",15
Economic growth increases environmental pollution and decreases thereafter in the long run,8
"Again, energy consumption increases environmental pollution in both the long run and short run",7
"On Zambia (ZMB), the error correction (ec = − 0.31, − 0.71) is negative and significant, meaning that the speed of adjustment in correcting disturbances in environmental degradation and pollution to an equilibrium state in Zambia is 31 and 71%",15
"Likewise, energy consumption increases environmental pollution in both the long run and short run",7
Economic growth decreases environmental pollution and increases thereafter in the long run,8
"Thus, it takes 66 and 19% speed to adjust the disturbances in previous environmental degradation and pollution in Zimbabwe to an equilibrium state",15
Table 9 shows the results of the U-shape estimation of environmental degradation and pollution,15
"On the other hand, the relationship between environmental pollution and economic growth in Algeria exhibits a U shape with a turning point at a GDP of US$ 4554 per capita",8
"In contrast, the relationship between environmental pollution and economic growth in Algeria exhibits an inverted U shape with a turning point at a GDP of US$ 5701 per capita, meaning that the EKC hypothesis is valid in Benin; thus, the initial stages of economic productivity exhibit a scale effect; however, at US$ 5701 per capita, environmental pollution begins to decrease with time",8
"However, a monotone trend occurs between environmental pollution and economic growth at a turning point at a GDP of US$ 5702 per capita",8
"Egypt’s economy and environmental degradation exhibit a U shape with LB GDP of US$ 232/capita and UB GDP of US$ 3264/capita, at a turning point of US$ 2525 GDP per capita, thus following the scale effect",15
"Nonetheless, there is an inversed U-shape relationship between environmental pollution and economic growth at a turning point of US$ 2416 GDP per capita, thus validating the EKC hypothesis in Egypt",8
"As Morocco thrives to increase economic productivity, environmental deterioration increases; however, environmental pollution increases to US$ 2854 GDP per capita and decreases thereafter",8
But the relationship between environmental pollution and economic growth exhibits an inversed U shape with a turning point at a GDP of US$ 1951 per capita,8
"However, an inversed U shape occurs between environmental pollution and economic growth at a turning point at a GDP of US$ 6418 per capita, thus validating the EKC hypothesis in South Africa",8
"Togo’s economy and environmental degradation exhibit a U shape with LB GDP of US$ 131/capita and UB GDP of US$ 589/capita, at a turning point of US$ 494 GDP per capita, hence following the scale effect",15
"Nevertheless, there is a monotonic trend relationship between environmental pollution and economic growth at a turning point of US$ 1120 GDP per capita, thus validating the scale effect hypothesis in Togo",8
"In contrast, the relationship between environmental pollution and economic growth in Tunisia follows an inversed U shape with a turning point of US$ 3608 GDP per capita; thus, the EKC hypothesis is valid in Tunisia",8
"As expected, Zimbabwe’s economy and environmental degradation exhibit a U shape with LB GDP of US$ 327/capita and UB GDP of US$ 1084/capita, at a turning point of US$ − 21,847 GDP per capita, thus following the scale effect",15
"Nonetheless, there is an inversed U-shape relationship between environmental pollution and economic growth at a turning point of US$ 726 GDP per capita, thus validating the EKC hypothesis in Zimbabwe",8
"Zimbabwe has suffered the worst economic crisis within the past 7 years (World Bank 2017), thus affecting agricultural productivity, food security, energy production, and utilization",2
But the effect of the rebound of the economy from 2016 is evident in environmental degradation and pollution,15
There is a unidirectional causality running from energy consumption to environmental pollution,7
"As stated, 70% of Africa’s energy mix is dominated by bioenergy in the form of fuel wood and charcoal production, except South Africa whose energy mix is dominated by coal production (International Energy Agency 2014)",7
"As such, increasing the consumption of these energy sources rather than clean and renewable energy sources reduces air quality, thus polluting the environment",7
"The main drivers of environmental deterioration in Africa include bioenergy consumption (firewood, charcoal, etc.), poor and unsustainable agricultural practices involved in food production (Asumadu and Owusu 2016a), destroying the foliage (permanent crops), converting agricultural land into illegal mining sites, environmental pollution, and high fertility rates leading to high birth rate, thus putting much pressure on the biocapacity which in turn affects the ecological footprint leading to environmental degradation",15
"In this study, we examined the drivers of environmental degradation and pollution in 17 countries in Africa, namely, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Cameroon, Congo, Congo Democratic Republic, Kenya, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, respectively",15
"However, the nexus between environmental pollution and economic growth follows the inverted U shape at a turning point of US$ 5702 GDP per capita, thus validating the EKC hypothesis in Africa",8
"However, its effect on environmental degradation and pollution cannot be equally denied",15
"Therefore, the adoption of energy efficiency options in electricity consumption and heat production and increasing the penetration of clean, renewable, and sustainable energy technologies to the energy mix would fulfill the technic effect, thus increasing the economic productivity while reducing environmental degradation and pollution in Africa",7
"In our effort to combat hunger and promote food security and good nutrition in accordance with SDG (2), the role of food production is essential; nevertheless, poor agricultural practices and unsustainable agricultural practices also contribute to the deteriorated environment and poor air quality",2
"It is therefore important that modern agricultural practices and sustainable agriculture like technological advancement, carbon capture and sequestration in manure management, value addition, etc",2
be employed in Africa’s agricultural systems to boost productivity while reducing its effect on the environment,8
Permanent crops and agricultural land use are essential for life sustenance and critical to environmental degradation and pollution,15
"Issues of deforestation, illegal mining activities, and illegal chainsaw operation are eminent in the subregion",15
Economic growth is essential to every country,8
"However, according to the EKC hypothesis, every growing economy progresses with increasing environmental degradation and pollution to a point in time and reduces thereafter",15
"Finally, the role of sociodemographic factors like birth rate and fertility rate in mitigating environmental degradation and pollution cannot be underestimated in Africa",15
"Women ensure the availability, accessibility, and utilization of food, thus play a critical role in food security, good nutrition, health, and well-being",2
"Increasing population growth increases the pressure on the natural resources which in turn reduces the natural biocapacity, thus leading to an ecological deficit, which results in environmental degradation",15
The costs due to climate change have been increasing day by day,13
"Climate change, increasing temperatures, melting glaciers, storms, and deterioration of natural vegetation are all environmental degradations",13
"The menace of climate change and the experienced various environmental catastrophes worldwide such as floods, drought, and dwindling biological diversities has pushed academics, governments, and all related institutions to put efforts to mitigate climate change’s impacts (Eren et al",13
"Within this scope, the sustainable development objectives come to the forefront to stop environmental catastrophes, defend the ecosystem and natural resources, and generate a sustainable growth path as noted in the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) (2015) and Isik et al",8
"On the other hand, air pollutions are only one piece of the ED, and CE is the only indicator indicating air pollution, which is not a comprehensive environmental degradation index (EDI hereafter) because human activities induce pollution of the seas, soil, and air (Tillaguango et al",15
"The EDs have been experienced in soil, forestry, mining, marine, oil, etc",15
"The African countries have encountered several threats, including hunger, poverty, civil war, child and woman abuse, and migration, and these threats cost millions of lives",5
"The SDGs for African countries recommend the procedures for conserving the oceans, seas, and marine resources, reversing land degradation, and protecting biodiversity (Bartniczak and Raszkowski 2018)",15
"Although African countries are responsible for the smallest share of greenhouse emissions, about just 3.8%, climate changes and other kinds of environmental degradation have been noticed around the region (Our World in Data 2022)",15
"Off-shore oil and gas exploration, extractive other natural resources activities, urban pollution, unsustainable farming, and fishing have induced the soil, water resources, and deforestation, which halt the sustainable development goals (Bartniczak and Raszkowski 2018; Olanipekun et al",15
(1) is estimated by considering the procedure recommended in Bai and Perron (1998) and saving the sum of squared residuals (SSR),16
"k* is selected as the optimal frequency which minimizes the SSR, and Eq",16
"Here, \({SSR}_{unrestricted}\) and \({SSR}_{restricted }\left({k}^{*}\right)\) denote the SSR achieved from Eq. (2) with and without a nonlinear component",16
The findings emphasize that international coordination and joint effort among countries are able to play a vital role in controlling environmental degradation in ECOWAS and ECCAS countries,15
"For the purpose of this study, the role of technological innovation is examined",8
This study examines the impact of technological innovation on G-7 countries’ ecological footprints from 1990 to 2020,8
The results of the study show that technological innovation minimizes the ecological footprint,8
A lower ecological footprint is also associated with increased usage of human capital and renewable energy,7
Depletion of the natural environment is a short-term and long-term consequence of increased GDP growth,8
"In the context of the G-7 countries, our study’s results could support the idea that there are new policy ideas that could help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, and 13)",3
Most governments around the world agree that achieving both economic growth and environmental sustainability at the same time is an important policy goal (Saqib 2022b),8
2019) show that developing technology that is good for the environment is key to reducing emissions from fossil fuel production and boosting long-term economic growth,8
Energy consumption presents environmental problems,7
2022) show that renewable energy helps the economy grow,7
"Under the Kyoto Agreement, nations are also required by law to reduce their environmental impact in order to encourage renewable energy consumption (Becker and Posner 2005; Turner et al",7
Stable macroeconomic performance is also achieved by reducing oil price volatility in the international market because imported non-renewable energy costs are highly erratic (Menyah and Wolde-Rufael 2010),7
"Even though the United Kingdom gets less of its energy from renewable sources than the average G-7 country, it has one of the fastest-growing renewable energy supply rates in the last few years",7
"Technology innovation and renewable energy, as well as GDP, GDP2, and the degree of higher education in G-7 countries, will be examined in this study to see how they affect the ecological footprint",7
The USA and Canada are the G-7 countries with the highest per capita emissions of greenhouse gasses and energy consumption,7
"Considering a number of studies documenting the effects of human-caused climate change and environmental deterioration, attention to environmental issues continues to grow",13
"We cannot ignore the importance of education when it comes to understanding global climate change and the dire consequences that result from it, either (UNESCO",13
(2014) show that education can have a favorable impact on people’s recycling habits,12
(1998) believe that education can minimize deforestation through influencing people’s attitudes toward environmental legislation,15
"(2018), is crucial in lowering CO2 emissions through encouraging energy efficiency",7
"In addition, we examine the role of GDP, human capital, and renewable energy usage in explaining the decline in ecological footprint",7
"As an example, there are many factors that can be taken into consideration, such as economic growth; financial development (Tamazian et al",8
A rise in GDP per capita is likely to increase energy consumption per capita,7
"In other words, an increase in GDP per capita is likely to have a beneficial impact on economic growth (Saqib 2018)",8
"To help the economic process, environmental policy can do two things: First, it can use or purchase current “eco-friendly” technology; and second, it can invest in research and development ((Watson et al",9
Many studies show that technology that is environmentally friendly can minimize the ecological footprint of the energy sector and hence encourage sustainable economic development (Kaygusuz et al,8
"(2022), green financing and green technology policies could help the G-7 countries reach the UN’s SDG-7 and SDG-13 targets",9
"When it comes to environmental and economic well-being, renewable energy sources are widely regarded as among the most reliable (Saqib 2018; Yang et al",7
"(2018) which discovered that energy consumption significantly raises the overall pollution level in OECD countries between 1980 and 2010; in Nigeria, Ali et al",7
"The empirical facts, renewable energy greatly improves environmental eminence in the long term",7
"Renewable energy, according to previous research by Saqib (2022c), reduces pollutants and has a significant impact on reducing the ecological footprint",7
"To reduce fossil fuel dependency and increase economic diversification, renewable energy technology should be integrated into the nation’s power supply (Saqib et al",7
"Human capital, a key production element, can reduce ecological footprint by improving energy efficiency (Mankiw Gregory et al",7
Human capital and ecological footprint studies can aid long-term economic development (Lan et al,8
"(2018) employed ARDL to investigate Pakistan’s natural resources, human capital, economic growth, and ecological footprint from 1971 to 2014",8
Sustainable Development Goals can help universities tackle sustainability and climate change,13
Educational development helps the energy sector and climate change in the long run (Katircioglu et al,13
"GDP is measured as gross domestic product per capita, and technological innovation is measured as the percentage of all technologies",8
"The consumption of renewable energy is calculated as a percentage of the total final energy use, while the value of human capital is determined by the number of years spent in school and the rate of return on education",7
This study used the cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) approach in order to explore the influence of technological innovation on the ecological footprint in the context of control variables,8
G-7 countries can reduce their ecological footprints by implementing a renewable energy policy,7
"A change from non-renewable to renewable energy sources, enabled by environmentally friendly technologies, can assist reduce EFP",7
EFP can be reduced by improving the abatement activity’s quality through human capital development,4
Consumption of renewable energy has a negative effect on EFP and reduces EFP,7
"Pollution reduction is attributed to REC’s function in reducing energy intensity and, as a result, improving environmental quality",7
"The causation test shows that income, technological innovation, REC, and human capital all have a significant impact on changes in EFP",8
"Research on the effects of technological innovation on ecological footprint has mostly ignored critical control variables until now, but this work adds to that body of knowledge",8
"Human capital, technical innovation, renewable energy, and the ecological footprint of the G-7 countries are all examined in relation to each other in this study",7
Human capital development is also required in order to successfully implement these policies,4
"To achieve SDG 7, 10, 13, etc., governments should stimulate domestic investment in alternative and cleaner energy initiatives",7
Concerns about income inequality and environmental pollution have stayed important aspects in reaching sustainable development objectives,10
"Hence, the purpose of this research is to look into the relationship between income inequality, institutional quality, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 42 developing countries from 1984 to 2016",10
"Furthermore, the current study also investigates the role of institutional quality in moderating the relationship between income inequality and CO2 emissions",10
"According to the Driscoll Kraay regression outcomes, rising income inequality (without interaction term) leads to rising CO2 emissions",10
"We focused on developing countries because they are still striving to stimulate the economy, decrease income inequality, and improve living standards for their less vulnerable members of society",10
"However, CO2 emission intensity is believed to be the primary GHG and the most crucial root of global warming and climate change (Ullah et al., 2018)",13
"While several important aspects other than aggregate income affecting environmental pollution have been established in recent studies, the importance of income inequality has often been overlooked",10
"According to Boyce (1994), environmental degradation is affected by both income level and income disparity",15
"We may presume that the beneficiaries will pressure the government to ease laws if they are powerful enough, which leads to environmental degradation",15
"Although the literature on ecological economics ignored income disparity, it has been commonly held that growing income inequality in both advanced and developing countries in recent years has become a significant socioeconomic issue (Piketty & Saez, 2003; Piketty, 2015)",10
"Income disparity, for instance, will decrease overall demand and adversely affect jobs and economic development",8
"Income inequality has a wide-ranging impact on society's various social groups (Grottera et al., 2017)",10
"Moreover, income inequality raises pollution by impeding energy policy",10
The possible explanation is that the important role of the institutions is being overlooked in the relationship between income inequality and CO2 emissions,10
"Since the pioneering studies of Williamson (1989) and North (1990), the institutional economics literature has undoubtedly recognized that institutional quality is among the most important factors influencing economic growth",8
"As a result, reflecting the government's willingness to express and enforce laws and rules that promote the private sector, increase project execution efficiency, protect property rights, have a rigorous law and order, and restrain institutions from political control (Phuc Canh et al., 2019)",1
"On the other side, poor institutions fund the private sector inadequately, which contributes to corruption, an incompetent bureaucracy, and poor environmental legislation (Asoni, 2008)",16
"Many factors are also essential for effective environmental protection, such as public engagement and effective regulation",15
Kashwan (2017) states that the concept of political choice highlights the link between income inequality and environmental sustainability,10
"Using the dataset of 137 nations, the author further shows that income inequality affects the intensity of governance",10
"Against this backdrop, the relation between income inequality and CO2 emissions can relate to institutional quality",10
This study addresses the following main research questions: How do income inequality and institutional quality affect CO2 emissions in developing nations? This study addresses this question by analyzing the linkage of income inequality-CO2 emissions in developing countries by adding institutional quality,10
"This research makes the following contributions: First, this study focuses on the influence of income inequality on CO2 emissions and the effects of institutional quality on CO2 emissions",10
"The potential impact of income inequality on environmental pollution and institutional quality is important, but it's been ignored in the ecological economics literature",10
SDGs show that income inequality and increased deterioration of the environment pose serious threats to human well-being,10
"As a result, tackling environmental issues while ignoring income inequality and institutional quality in this nexus could yield limited results (Salman et al., 2019; Uzar & Eyuboglu, 2019)",10
"Second, notwithstanding, studies by Kashwan (2017) and You et al., (2020) explored the effect of income inequality on CO2 emissions by incorporating democracy as a proxy of governance",10
"Therefore, this study uses the comprehensive index of institutional quality (ISQ) with the help of five elements, namely, (i) government stability, (ii) bureaucratic quality, (iii) democratic accountability, (iv) law and order, and (v) control of corruption",16
The results would provide valuable insights into the effects of income inequality on CO2 emissions under the potential role of institutional quality,10
"In addition, this study also checks the nonlinear effect of income inequality on CO2 emissions in the panel of 42 developing countries",10
"The first stem of literature stated the link between income inequality and environmental performance, whereas the second part concluded the link between institutional quality and environmental quality",10
"In literature, there are different methods defined by which income inequality can impact the level of emissions",10
"Boyce (1994) proposed the first approach known as the political economy approach, which is established on “power-weighted social decision rule” to analyze the influence of income inequality on environmental destruction",10
"The high amount of consumption is related to the effect of Veblen, which specifies that income inequality stimulates status consumption",10
"Whereas the above three approaches give different points of view, they provide conclusive proof that income inequality is closely linked to CO2 emissions",10
Several studies take into account the relationship between income inequality and CO2 emissions and have exciting results,10
"A positive link between income inequality and CO2 emissions has been identified in some research, while some have reported a negative link between income inequality and CO2 emissions",10
The inference is that the institutions are conditioning the regulation of climate change policy,13
"This indicates that bad governance, in the shape of comparatively widespread corruption, can undermine trade and FDI policies to boost pollution levels and vice versa",16
"In short, economies with good governance could set and enforce strict green policies comparative to nations with bad institutions",16
The growth impact medium indicates that institutions could impact the environmental quality through economic development and the progress of other economic sectors,8
"Likewise, if institutions promote the economic transition toward the growth of knowledge sectors, improved technologies, and a higher environmental policy, they can reduce carbon emissions",13
"Additionally, Biswas et al., (2012) propose that the shadow economy could be boosted by weak governance to raise emissions",16
"So, if such an economy is poorly controlled and politically motivated corruption occurs, the shadow economy deteriorates the climate",16
"Bhattacharya et al., (2017) conclude that the production and implementation of environmentally sustainable technologies that might restrict the increase in carbon emissions could be enhanced by institutions that facilitate the preservation of property rights and minimize transaction costs",1
"In other words, if institutions encourage the preservation of property rights and lower the risk of exploitation, they might serve as an opportunity to engage in environmentally sustainable technology that might contribute to reducing carbon emissions",1
It is crucial to highlight that the existing studies on the relationship between income inequality and the environment have neglected institutional quality's critical position in this linkage,10
"Institutional factors such as the rule of law, good governance, corruption, political stability, and government efficacy, among others, all contribute significantly to the success of environmental regulations and pollution-reduction measures",16
"By incorporating institutional quality into the income inequality–environment linkage, we might be able to retrieve clear, reliable outcomes while also resolving the problem specification issue",10
"Therefore, in accordance with the scant literature and the aforementioned conclusions, this study hypothesizes that: H1: Income inequality affects CO2 emissions",10
"The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), proposed by Grossman and Krueger in 1995, depicts an inverted U-shaped link between economic development and environmental pollution",8
"As a result, multiple explanatory parameters were incorporated into the EKC model to enhance its scientific validity and minimize omitted variable issues, such as population density (Selden and Song, 1994, Cropper and Griffiths, 1994), trade (Suri and Chapman, 1998), environmental regulations (Shafik, 1994), and income inequality (Torras and Boyce, 1998; Scruggs, 1998; Heerink et al., 2001; Baek and Gweisah, 2013, Grunewald et al., 2017)",10
Boyce (1994) had been the earliest to claim that income inequality influenced environmental deterioration by political decisions,10
He observed no indication in his empirical testing that income equality and democracy could justify variances in environmental sustainability,10
"As a result, the rule of law has now become a critical component in addressing environmental issues",16
"Strong institutions are consequently required to implement CO2 emission control processes, and corporations would not be unwilling to do so",16
"On the contrary, if institutional quality flaws exist, firms will simply ignore CO2 emissions reduction methods in order to avoid the environmental consequences linked with growth operations (Welsch 2004)",13
"Economic growth has an impact on CO2 emissions through scale and technique effects (Shahbaz et al., 2017)",8
This research also investigates if the connection between economic development and carbon emissions is U-shaped or inverted U-shaped,8
"As a result, we incorporate a squared term of economic growth into the CO2 emissions model",8
"Richer economies may then manage innovations for renewable energy sources, which will improve the atmosphere in the long run (Antweiler et al., 2001)",7
"In addition, this study proposes that “Institutional quality (ISQ)” and “Income Inequality” might have an interaction role besides its direct effect on CO2 emissions in 42 developing countries",10
"Therefore, focusing on this issue, this paper attempts to examine the interaction role of ISQ on the linkage between income inequality and CO2 emission",10
"In the analysis, our main variables are income inequality and institutional quality",10
"The income inequality data, measured as the Gini coefficient, is downloaded from the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID) (Solt, 2009)",10
"Following are the five indicators of ISQ: (i) Government stability, replicating insights of the chances that the government will be weakened or ousted by illegal or violent means, including politically encouraging extremism and violence (GOS), (ii) Bureaucratic quality, replicating views of the quality of community services, the quality of the public service and the amount of its freedom from governmental pressures (BUQ), (iii) Democratic accountability, reflecting perceptions of the answerability of the government and its institutions (DEA), (iv) Law and order, reflecting perceptions of the capability of the administration to articulate and implement law and order in the country (LAO), and (v) Control of corruption, reflecting views of the extent to which power of the public is used for private gain, including both petty and grand forms of corruption, as well as “capture” of the state by elites and private interests (COC) (Teng et al., 2021)",16
"Following the previous literature, economic growth, energy use, industrialization, and trade openness are incorporated (Saud et al., 2019a, b; Yang et al., 2020a; Yang et al., 2020b; Fan et al., 2020; Ali & Kirikkaleli, 2021; Chunling et al., 2021; Qayyum et al., 2021) to avoid an omitted variable bias",8
The education level in developing countries is low due to a high level of income inequality,10
"Besides, the square term of INE is also included in the model to confirm the nonlinear relationship of income inequality on CO2 emissions",10
(2019) argued that strong institutions lessen the adverse impacts of environmental pollution,16
"When the institutions of the country start raising through different channels, such as the governance, the rule of law, control of corruption, it not only affects the economic progress pattern but also influences the environment and, subsequently, affects the distribution of income",16
"The link between economic development and CO2 emissions is inverted U-shaped if, \({a}_5=\frac{\partial {CO_2}_{it}}{{\partial GDP}_{it}}>0\ \mathrm{and}\ {a}_6=\frac{\partial {CO_2}_{it}}{\partial {GDP^2}_{it}}<0\), otherwise, it is U-shaped if \({a}_5=\frac{\partial {CO_2}_{it}}{{\partial GDP}_{it}}<0\ \mathrm{and}\ {a}_6=\frac{\partial {CO_2}_{it}}{\partial {GDP^2}_{it}}>0\)",8
"In addition, the energy consumption is also incorporated in the model",7
"Energy consumption is greatly linked to pollution and is projected to have a positive link with CO2 emissions, that is, \({a}_7=\frac{\partial {CO_2}_{it}}{{\partial ENC}_{it}}>0\)",7
"Besides, CO2 emission is positively correlated with all the variables, excluding income inequality",10
"The coefficient of income inequality is positive and significant at a 1% level of significance in model 1 and model 2; however, it is significantly negative in model 3 of the DK regression, respectively",10
Energy consumption is also showing a positive and statistically significant at 1% level of significance in all the models,7
"The result of income inequality shows that an increase in income inequality increases CO2 emissions, as this study found a significant positive relationship between income inequality and CO2 emissions",10
This offers a strong indication that income inequality and CO2 emissions are strongly linked,10
These results show that income inequality is a major reason for rising CO2 emissions in emerging nations,10
These results encourage the reduction of income disparities by lowering CO2 emissions to enhance environmental performance further,10
This shows that environmental destruction is a problem in these emerging regions due to poor institution performance and environmental protection protocols,15
"In other words, after meeting the threshold level of economic development in the studied nations, a rise in economic growth can contribute to an improvement in environmental performance",8
"More specifically, the impact of growth on CO2 emissions demonstrates that the marginal effect of economic growth is first positive, then steadily declines, and eventually turns negative",8
The regression outcomes of energy consumption in all the models demonstrate the statistically significant positive impact on CO2 at the 1% level,7
"As a result, these economies must pay greater emphasis to advanced approaches that can increase energy efficiency levels",7
The utilization of renewable energy could be a useful approach for environmental sustainability,7
"Secondly, the technique effect may not have come into play to reduce emissions for two main reasons: (1) the protection of domestic industry by the government from foreign competition did not force domestic producers to resort to environmentally friendly technologies, and (2) the imported technologies in the form of machinery are not environment friendly",13
"The signs of all the variables stay the same as documented in models 1 and 2, excluding the sign of income inequality",10
"These findings suggest that strong institutions boost environmental performance, while weak institutions are associated with environmental harm",16
"This supports the regulation effect hypothesis, i.e., with the implementation of (environmental) standards, the trade-off between economic development and environmental quality lessens",8
"As a result, the advancement of institutions has a strong effect on the distribution of income, which is marked by rapid economic development",8
"Therefore, governments must reform their institutions in order to address problems such as income inequality and pollution",10
"Similarly, the results for the squared term of income inequality and GDP have a negative impact on CO2, respectively",10
"These outcomes show a strong relationship between INE and CO2 emissions in the forty-two developing countries, which indicates that INE plays a significant role not only in environmental quality but also in the economic development of the country",8
"(2019), who report a unidirectional causal relationship between income inequality and CO2",10
"The analysis findings show that income disparity is raising the environmental pollution of 42 developing countries in the long run, as this paper found a significant positive effect of income inequality on CO2 emissions in all the models with and without the interaction term",10
(2018) in the case of income inequality and Usman et al,10
Strong institutions improve environmental quality and also decrease inequality in developing countries,16
"First, according to the empirical results, income inequality is harmful to the environment; therefore, studied economies should implement distributive programs to maintain the equitable distribution of wealth to reduce environmental pollution triggered by income inequality",10
There is an urgent need for extensive initiatives that decrease income disparity and maintain a win–win position that decreases pollution without threatening economic development,8
"Third, economic development increases CO2 and exacerbates the emissions caused by energy use",8
"In this context, it is highly recommended that the governments of these nations encourage institutions to assist the department of research and development in bringing out eco-friendly technologies (i.e., solar biogas and biomass)",9
An ideal strategy to widen the study is to use additional environmental degradation measurements and check if the conclusions obtained here are consistent with other environmental degradation variables,15
"Moreover, this study evaluated the relationship between income inequality and the environment while recognizing the significance of institutional quality in developing countries",10
"Nonetheless, this opens the door for researchers to investigate the relationship between income inequality and the environment in other advanced countries.",10
"To determine whether ecological restoration such as vegetation cover could affect the income gap, we used data for 290 prefecture-level cities in China from 2007 to 2018 and analyzed the effect of ecological restoration on income inequality in China",10
"We found that ecological restoration can reduce income inequality in general, but this effect was not statistically significant until 2012",10
Income inequality has become one of the primary causes of social unrest and has slowed the efforts to achieve sustainable development of human society and improve both the national and regional economies,10
"For example, since 1978, when Deng Xiaoping initiated the reform of China's economic system and raised the slogan “let some people get rich first,” China has achieved rapid economic growth, but this growth has been accompanied by China's transformation from an economically egalitarian country to a country with an extreme gap between the rich and the poor (Sutherland and Yao 2011)",8
"To date, a series of historically unprecedented ecological restoration projects have been implemented in China to combat ecosystem degradation, such as the Sloping Land Conversion Program, Natural Forest Conservation Program, and National Parks Program",15
"However, the primary goal of nature reserves is conservation and not poverty alleviation",1
"Our aim is to test whether ecological restoration behavior can help reduce income inequality using econometric methods, provide a new path to alleviate inequality of income, and promote common prosperity not only in China but also with suitable modification to account for unique local conditions, in other developing countries around the world",10
"2021), unemployment (Xue and Zhong 2003), urbanization (Lee et al",8
"All data except NDVI came from the China City Statistical Yearbook, national economic development and statistical bulletins for each city from 2007 to 2018",8
"In addition, it was also suggested that the transportation factor, unemployment, and government fiscal expenditure did not show a statistically significant effect on either kind of income gap for all of China during the study period (Tables 6 and 7)",8
"However, previous research has suggested that low-income families experience faster income growth from local tourism development, which could contribute to alleviating income inequality (e.g., Das and Rainey 2010; Wang and Liu 2018; Zhang et al",10
"Unfortunately, the process of pursuing the common prosperity of urban and rural residents through ecological restoration may be challenging because of some practical obstacles (e.g., employment opportunities, educational attainment, social discrimination)",10
"Although our results in Tables 6 and 7 show that the unemployment rate showed no statistically significant effect on “prosperity” (municipal–provincial income gap) and “common prosperity” (urban–rural income gap), it has been revealed that the Chinese government has never collected statistics on the unemployment of migrant workers, and such neglect of the problems they face reinforces the fragility of their livelihoods (Zhu 2002)",8
"Therefore, the real unemployment situation may be more serious than the statistical number, which may affect the accuracy of our empirical results",8
"Fortunately, rapid urbanization in China, which requires a large labor supply, can increase employment opportunities for unemployed rural residents and narrow the urban–rural income gap (Table 7)",8
"2020), which requires the government and managers to consider alternatives based on the constraints created by local conditions (e.g., economic development level, environmental carrying capacity, access to productive farmland, and labor availability), thereby maximizing the economic benefits local residents obtain from ecological restoration rather than simply using laws and administrative measures to formulate protection resolutions or policies (Hosseininia et al",8
"In summary, reducing income inequality through ecological restoration will be a time-consuming process and requires the constant effort of the Chinese government and local managers",10
"In the long-run, inbound tourism has a positive (negative impact) relationship with carbon emissions that need sustainable tourism policies to delimit carbon emissions",12
"The air-railways passengers carried and trade openness is the main antecedents that influenced fossil fuel energy consumption in the short- and long-run, while in the long-run, tourism income, ICT’s share in energy demand, and industry value-added delimit fossil fuel combustion",7
"The e-tourism index positively influences the country’s economic growth, mobile share in the energy demand, industry value-added, and railways goods transportation",8
"In the long-run, the mobile share in energy demand and railways goods transported increase while air transport freight decreases economic growth",8
"The study concludes that Saudi Arabia’s vision 2030 of e-tourism and green sustainable development could be achieved by promoting green ICTs, cleaner production technologies, sustainable consumption and production, tight environmental regulations, and green travel and tourism infrastructure, which ultimately will support the Saudi’s vision realization programs towards the country’s prosperity",12
"The literature stands out at three main themes, i.e., the role of ICTs in tourism expansion and environmental sustainability, fostering the travel and transportation competitiveness and sustainable tourism, and e-tourism initiatives to mitigate carbon-fossil emissions",12
"The following studies fall in the above three stated themes; that is, Ali and Frew (2010) emphasized the need for e-tourism development to achieve sustainable tourism across countries",12
Touray and Jung (2010) argued that the importance of ICT infrastructure is imperative for sustainable tourism development,12
(2017) considered a panel of selected East-West European countries and confirmed some positive association between tourism and the country’s economic growth in the eastern-western EU countries on the cost of high mass carbon emissions in the eastern EU countries,8
The study concludes in favor of sustainable tourism to limit carbon activities with cleaner production technologies across countries,12
"They found that inbound tourism has a positive impact on Malaysia’s carbon emissions while a negative impact on Thailand and Singapore, which shows that the Malaysian economy strategizes sustainable tourism policies",12
"Simultaneously, it is an urgent need to use the same sustainable tourism policies for the rest of the two countries",12
"Thus, the need for sustainable tourism policies is desirable to reap equal positive benefits acquired all across Chinese provinces",12
"Danish and Wang (2018) analyzed the linkages between international tourism, economic growth, and carbon emissions in a panel of BRICS countries for 1995–2014 and confirmed that the negative externality arises by high tourist arrivals, which damaged the natural environment",8
The results conclude that sustainable tourism policies should be competitive enough to work in the globalization era to support environmental quality,12
(2017) used cross-country panel data to analyze international tourism’s relative contribution to economic growth,8
"The results show that tourism income generally favors regulation of tourism, natural resources, cultural heritage, health hygiene, and tourism prices",11
The study concludes that international tourism income may help to promote sustainable tourism through tourism regulation,12
"The study’s objective is to analyze the country’s e-tourism initiatives that help promote sustainable tourism by limiting carbon-fossil emissions, encouraging natural resource policies, and amplifying growth",12
The study extended the green technology acceptance model in electronic and smart tourism by converting qualitative modeling to a quantitatively modeling framework in environmental sustainability (Chen and Tsai 2017; Choi et al,9
"The study developed a relatively new weighted index for electronic and sustainable tourism, called “eTINDEX” by principle component matrix (PCA), constructed by four main factors, i.e., ICT’s share in ITEPTI, ITETI, ITRPTI, and ITRTI",12
"2014), green exports (Huberty and Zachmann 2011), and sustainable consumption and production (Tukker et al",12
"Similarly, there is a negative relationship (positive impact) between inbound tourism and natural resource depletion, as the higher the international tourist arrivals in a country, the lower the natural resource depletion that confirmed the sustainable tourism infrastructure in a country",12
"The U-shaped relationship is found between country’s per capita income and resource depletion, as higher the per capita income first increases natural resource depletion that further decreases at the later stages of economic development",8
"2015), electrified vehicles to reduce oil dependency (Yuksel and Michalek 2015), and net import in green technology, inputs, and raw material (Otsuka and Muraoka 2017) is deemed desirable for long-term sustained growth",9
The country needs optimized policies for sustainable production and consumption to delimit high mass carbon emissions in a country,12
"The following factors are needed to improve the country’s sustainable agenda, including diversity in the transport system (Rajak et al",11
"2018), and inclusive city planning (Yigitcanlar and Kamruzzaman 2018)",11
"There is a negative relationship (positive impact) of international tourism receipts and ICT’s share in total energy consumption with fossil fuel energy consumption, which exhibits that tourism income and high advanced technology substitute environment via the delimitation of fossil fuel combustion in a country",7
"The share of mobile subscriptions in total energy consumption has a positive impact on the country’s GDP per capita, which confirmed the technology’s viability in advancing nations towards prosperity and sustainability",7
The railways’ goods transportation aided to support country’s tourism development agenda via travel and transport system (Khan et al,11
These steps could lead to transform government through digitalization,9
The study’s objective is to examine the role of sustainable tourism under travel and tourism competitiveness and environmental resource factors in the context of Saudi Arabia,12
"The following policy recommendations are suggested to the government officials to devise long-term sustainable tourism policies to achieve environmental sustainability agenda, i.e., The advancement of high-technology infrastructure leads the travel and tourism sector to become more fuel-efficient that could reduce aviation fuel emissions",12
"Sustainable consumption and production are guided to reduce carbon-fossil-GHG emissions by directing tourists’ consumption behavior, using technology upgraded industrial products, and extending the services sector",12
This paper builds on previous literature that suggests ideological orientation is a moderating variable in the relationship between scientific knowledge and belief in anthropogenic climate change (ACC) in the USA,13
"Previous literature has shown that political views are strong determinants of opinions on anthropogenic climate change (ACC) in the USA, resulting in significant polarization on the issue (Ballew et al",13
"In addition, there is evidence of education—party interaction effects, or similar interactions, connecting other information and political indicators in other topics related to environmental protection (see, for example, Hamilton and Safford 2015)",15
"In summary, there is strong empirical evidence that political ideology acts as a moderating variable between education or self-reported understanding of ACC and acceptance of climate change and its consequences in the USA",13
"One might think that the higher the level of scientific literacy, the greater the concern about climate change",13
"Several studies suggest that the greater the level of science literacy, the greater the polarization on climate change (Drummond and Fischhoff 2017; Kahan 2017)",13
"(2012) concluded that among liberal, moderate, and slightly conservative individuals, concern about (polar) climate change increases as science literacy increases",13
"This relationship would suggest that climate change denial is not due to a lack of science literacy—something that can be solved with more information—but is related to ideological orientation, hence, much more complex to address",13
"In the case of Australia, Tranter (2019: 537) concluded that “Climate-related knowledge is […] positively associated with acceptance of anthropogenic climate change, but the effect of knowledge is moderated by party political identification.” However, unlike in the USA, where numerous studies support strong evidence, the evidence is weaker in other countries",13
(2021: 4) concludes that “parties and citizens agree on strong climate and renewable power aims”: 93% of respondents supported the adoption of the Climate Change and Energy Transition Law,13
"Eighty-one percent of Spanish people would favor stricter government measures to tackle the climate crisis (11 points higher than the European average of 70%), and 76% think Spain should rely more on renewable energies (13 points higher than the European average of 63%)",13
"In this paper, we conduct an exploratory analysis of the relationship between science literacy and belief in climate change in Spain, explicitly investigating the moderating role of political ideology",13
"The variables of interest in this work are three: scientific literacy, climate change beliefs, and ideological orientation",13
"Respondents were asked to indicate their opinion on the following statement: “There is indisputable evidence that humans cause global warming,” where zero indicated strong disagreement and ten strong agreement, in order to measure their degree of belief in anthropogenic climate change (“B-ACC”)",13
"The first was the opinion on food waste (SDG 12: responsible production and consumption), measured using the question, “On a scale of zero to ten, what is your level of concern about food waste (zero corresponds to Not at all, and ten corresponds to Extremely concerned).” The second was the specific knowledge of the scientific basis of climate change, measured with the question “Global warming is caused by the depletion of the ozone layer [True/False].” Firstly, we find that although the level of belief in human-caused global warming is generally high, there are substantial differences according to ideological orientation",12
"Figure generated using the R function “density” with a smoothing kernel set to “Gaussian” Secondly, we can confirm that climate change is a complex phenomenon requiring understanding",13
"Belief in ACC correlated positively with scientific literacy (r = 0.19, p-value < 0.001), as opposed to food waste (SDG 12), which showed no correlation (r = 0.003, p-value = 0.94)",12
"A likely reason for this result is that food waste is close to everyone’s heart, part of everyday experience, and easily understood",12
"In contrast, understanding climate change requires a certain level of scientific literacy, probably making it a polysemic, abstract, and imprecise concept",13
"Thus, all environmental problems appear somehow related to climate change in the collective imagination",13
Proof of this is that 66.6% of those surveyed related climate change to the disappearance of the ozone layer,13
"Thirdly, when analyzing how the correlation between scientific literacy and opinion on climate change varies with an individual’s political view (Table 2), we arrive at a result similar to the one obtained by Kahan (2017) for the USA: the level of belief in human-caused global warming increases with science literacy for left-leaning individuals (0–4 in the political scale), with a correlation coefficient r = 0.59 (p-value < 0.001); in centrist individuals (5 in the political scale), the correlation is not statistically significant (r = 0.11, p-value = 0.23); and in right-leaning individuals (6–10 in the political scale), the correlation is also not significant at the 99% level (r = 0.11, p-value = 0.02)",13
"The point-biserial correlation coefficient between opinion on climate change and having answered the question on the relationship between the ozone layer and climate change correctly is not significant either at a global level (p-value = 0.32) or for the three groups defined according to ideological orientation (p-values of 0.30, 0.61, and 0.05 respectively for individuals on the left, center, and right)",13
None of these groups show any relationship between belief in climate change and an elementary understanding of the scientific foundations of the phenomenon,13
"It is puzzling that, in aggregate terms, belief in ACC correlates positively with scientific literacy (r = 0.19, p-value < 0.001) but shows no correlation with specific knowledge about climate change",13
"A possible explanation is that individuals with more scientific culture have greater confidence in science in general and therefore tend to believe what scientists say, even if they do not understand a particular topic—in this case, climate change",13
Trust in science (linked to greater science literacy) rather than actual knowledge of the science of climate change seems to determine attitudes,13
"According to this hypothesis, some right-wing individuals without a good understanding of climate change science must confront their confidence in science (which pushes in one direction) with their confidence in their political ideology (which pushes in the opposite direction): as Ballew et al",13
"(2019: 15) point out, individuals with a right-wing ideology “may be skeptical of climate change, in part, because some proposed solutions to the problem, such as more government regulation, conflict with their ideological views (i.e., solution aversion).” This dilemma would explain this group’s weak average relationship between science literacy and belief in human-caused climate change",13
"On the contrary, for leftist individuals, their trust in science and in their political ideology push in the same direction, which explains the strong relationship this group shows between science literacy and climate change beliefs",13
"First, climate change is much more complex than other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)",13
Proof of this is that the correlation between scientific literacy and concern about food waste (SDG 12) is zero,12
"At the same time, the correlation is positive and significant for climate change (SDG 13) in aggregate terms, leading us to think that using the term “climate change” in isolation may be counterproductive",13
"Second, we found that even in a country like Spain, where parties and citizens agree on strong climate and renewable power goals and 93% of the population supports the adoption of the Climate Change and Energy Transition Law (Thonig et al",13
"2021), political ideology plays a moderating role in the relationship between scientific literacy and belief in climate change",13
"Third, we document considerable ignorance of the scientific underpinnings of climate change among the general population",13
About 67% of respondents relate climate change to the depletion of the ozone layer,13
"Therefore, increased awareness is probably achieved not so much by influencing general scientific culture but, specifically, about the science of climate change",13
Environmental sustainability has become one of the most common phrases in discussions about climate change,13
"We argued that the local governments play a critical role in lifting the outstanding barriers to cleaner energy investment, addressing disincentives, including pricing carbon dioxide emissions, reforming inefficient nonrenewable fossil fuel subsidies, and addressing regulatory and market rigidities that can undesirably affect the attractiveness of clean energy investment",7
"As renewables have become a persuasive investment proposition, investment into new clean energy has grown from less than 50 US$ billion per year in 2004 to about 300 US$ billion per year in the last decade, exceeding investments into new fossil fuel power by a factor of three in 2018",7
"Yet, investments in clean energy remain beneath their potential",7
Annual clean energy investment worldwide would need a threefold increase by 2030 to around 4 trillion US$ to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 (International Energy Agency 2021a),7
The gap between present clean energy investment patterns and a sustained pathway is enormous (Lyu et al. 2021),7
Clean energy investment would have to double in the 2020s to keep temperatures under 2 °C rise and more than triple to keep the door opening for a 1.5 °C stabilization,7
The 750 billion US$ that is expected to be invested in clean energy technologies and efficiency worldwide in 2021 remains far below what is needed in climate-driven scenarios (International Energy Agency 2021b),7
"Financial development, including climate finance, plays a crucial role in bridging the financial gap and attracting further investment from the private sector to clean renewables by addressing key barriers and risks",13
"In 2013–2018, onshore wind and solar PV consolidated their dominance, attracted 46% and 29% of global renewable energy investment",7
"Other renewable energy technologies, comprising biomass, hydropower, geothermal, biofuels, marine, and geothermal energy, contributed only 7% of the total clean energy investment in 2013–2018, with hydropower making up a somewhat central portion of the total (IRENA 2020)",7
"The Sustainable Development Scenario (SDS) necessitates a new annual clean energy investment of 40 billion US$ between 2021 to 2030 to reach universal access, decentralized, and decarbonized solutions",7
"Moreover, Ahmad and Zhao (2018) expressed that energy investment is positively associated with economic growth and degrading the environment",8
The second crucial research question this research address is how financial development affects environmental sustainability and China’s economic growth. Financial development incorporates a pivotal role in promoting economic development,8
"It encourages economic growth through technological advancement and capital accumulation by pooling and mobilizing savings, promoting investment, encouraging and facilitating foreign direct investment inflows, and optimizing capital allocation",8
Financial development is not merely an outcome of economic growth; it contributes to it and generates higher income (World Bank 2021),8
"The rise in investment and economic accomplishments raises energy consumption and, subsequently, environmental pollutants",7
"The proscribed discarding of gases, contaminated water, heavy metals, radioactive chemicals, and materials into the waterways destroys marine life and environmental degradation (Field 2018)",15
"However, prosperous industrialized manufacturing is crucial to stimulate the production process and thus economic growth",8
"Outbreaks of pandemics lead to the dumping of sewerage from factories in water bodies, and water pollution arises",6
"However, urbanization encourages economic growth and ensures a higher level of economic development (Chen et al. 2014)",8
A thorough empirically studying the case of Chian is crucial as China has the world’s highest clean energy investment,7
"In 2018, China’s cumulative wind power capacity amounted to 209.5 gigawatts which is the highest worldwide",7
"As an industrial and economic powerhouse, China is hampered with massive daily clean energy demand and greater awareness for renewable energy sources",7
"In 2019, China’s solar power installed capacity was 204.7 gigawatts (Statista 2019). Its huge prospective endures up China’s pledge in investing renewable clean energy for further consumption and production",7
"As reported by the International Energy Agency, about 36 to 40% of the world’s wind and solar energy growth will come from China in the next 5 years",7
China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and National Energy Administration planned to spend about 360 billion US$ in the development of renewable energy and creating 13 million jobs in this sector by 2020 (Chiu 2017),7
The extant literature has focused on exploring the complex intersectional relationship between environmental sustainability and economic growth,8
They concluded that investment in electricity generation might have the most incredible social benefits,7
(2021) analyzed creative problem-solving priorities for investment in renewable energy storage,7
They expressed that renewable energy storage investment is essential for environmental concerns,7
(2021) examined the risk priorities for renewable energy investment using fuzzy decision-making modeling with alpha cuts,7
They demonstrated that cost efficiency and organizational effectiveness are crucial components of renewable energy investment,7
They concluded that investment in renewable energy and the energy industry is convincing contributors in explaining carbon emissions,7
Ahmad and Zhao (2018) investigated the causal links between energy investment and economic growth,8
(2021) studied the impact of renewable energy investment on China’s carbon emissions,7
Their findings elucidated the existence of the EKC hypothesis for renewable energy investment and environmental sustainability,7
"They claimed that at the initial stage, renewable energy investment may deteriorate the environment; in the middle phase, renewable energy started playing a role in reducing emissions",7
Abban and Hasan (2021) revisited the determinants of renewable energy investment for the panel of 60 countries,7
A vast body of existing literature examined the impact of financial development on environmental sustainability and economic growth,8
They concluded that indirect channels of financial development reduce carbon emissions,13
Evidence suggested that financial development is crucial for economic growth and substantially enhances growth and development (Khan et al. 2021a),8
Li and Wei (2021) studied the impact of financial development on economic growth in 30 Chinese provinces from 1987 to 2017,8
They claimed that both liner and nonliner relationships do exist between financial development and economic growth,8
(2021) examined the impact of financial development on the sustainable economic growth of South Asian countries from 2000 to 2018,8
They demonstrated financial development as a driving factor in promoting green economic growth,8
Manufacturing industries are contributing to water pollution across the globe,6
"Moreover, the manufacturing sector has involved massive energy and resources, resulting in an enormous impact on economic growth",8
There is a clear indication that a prospering manufacturing sector is fundamental to amplified production in an economy and economic growth,8
"\({CO}_{2}\) is CO2 emissions, \(EFP\) is ecological footprint, and \(GDP\) economic growth",8
Economic growth measured in GDP per capita US$,8
Clean energy investment is estimated as an investment in the energy sector with the participation of the private sector in the current US$,7
"Manufacturing value-added is measured in percentage of GDP, and urbanization is calculated as a percentage of the total population",9
The higher difference of standard deviation value relative to its mean signifies the higher level of dispersion in the economic growth dataset,8
"However, clean energy investment’s data set have the lowest level of dispersion",7
"The results explain that CO2 emissions, ecological footprint, economic growth, financial development, and urbanization are not significant at level",8
"While CO2 emissions, ecological footprint, financial development, and economic growth are not significant, thus nonstationary at the level",8
"Model 1 for CO2 emissions and model III for economic growth presents that at most, one equation is cointegrated",8
Clean energy investment is significant at a 10% level of significance,7
"Its negative values of coefficients for CO2 emissions and ecological footprint implies that a 1% increase in clean energy investment decrease CO2 emissions and ecological footprint (improve environmental sustainability) by 0.342100% and 0.008141% (FMOLS), 0.384760% and 0.153590% (DOLS), and 0.223430% and 0.129080% (robustness)",7
"Moreover, focusing on renewable energy sources instead of nonrenewable fossil fuels might be helpful to avoid harmful environmental impacts, particularly from greenhouse gases and air pollution (Khan et al. 2021d; Khan and Hou 2020)",7
Financial development is 1% significant for CO2 emissions and ecological footprint while 10% significant for economic growth,8
"The positive values of its coefficients indicates that a 1% increase in financial development increases CO2 emissions, ecological footprint, and economic growth by 1.00090%, 0.865628%, and 0.348851% (FMOLS); 0.911140%, 0.731631%, and 0.317777% (DOLS); and 0.642979%, 0.617591%, and 0.007745% (robustness)",8
These findings suggest that financial development deteriorates environmental sustainability and encourages economic growth simultaneously,8
Manufacturing value-added is significant at 5% and 10% levels of significance,9
"The positive values of its coefficients imply that a 1% increase in urbanization increases CO2 emissions, ecological footprint, and economic growth by 2.351375%, 1.704173%, and 3.025273% (FMOLS); 2.271045%, 1.577164%, and 2.987485% (DOLS); and 2.066896%, 1.501690%, and 2.823120% (robustness)",8
"These results signify that urbanization increases economic growth at the expense of environmental sustainability (Ahmad 2020a, 2020b; Ahmad et al. 2019)",8
The importance of environmental sustainability can have a significant impact on the fight against the climate crisis,13
The long-run results advocate that clean energy investment improves environmental sustainability,7
"Besides, the government should resolve regulatory and market rigidities that can undesirably affect the attractiveness of clean energy investment—creating a level playing field between independent energy producers of cleaner energy vis-à-vis nonrenewable fossil fuel-based energy utilities",7
The long-run estimates of this study confirm that financial development deteriorates the environment and stimulates economic growth,8
"Based on the findings, this study suggests the policymakers unlock the opportunities for green investment such as renewable energy, energy efficiency, agricultural development, insurance market, and small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) productivity are potentially commercially viable but facing inadequate owed barriers in supply and demand (Ahmad 2021b; Ding et al. 2021; Xiaosan et al. 2021)",7
"Similarly, the long-run findings of this study elucidate that urbanization stimulates economic growth at the expense of environmental sustainability",8
"Moreover, policymakers are suggested to incorporate sustainable cities integrated approach using least sustainable urban development methodologies, apply sustainable land management to urban planning and development, and seek ad hoc breakthrough for injecting sustainable principles and actions into the city lifestyle.",11
Our empirical results show that conventional and renewable energy aspects respectively worsen and improve environmental quality in both short and long run,7
"Importantly, the study establishes the validity of the N-shaped hypothesis in the two periods (short and long run) as reported by the study regression with 17.830% for GDP growth, −2.241 % for quadratic form of GDP, and 0.094% for cubic form of GDP growth, respectively, in the long run",8
"Moreso, renewable energy shows a magnitude of −1.306% and −0.157% for short- and long-run period, respectively, on carbon dioxide emission",7
Increasing the share of renewable energy in the energy mix (SDG Target 7) and doubling the rate of improvement in energy efficiency (SDG Targets 11 and 12) are among many policy options currently considered to have the potential to facilitate the transition,7
"Following the UN-SDG-13 agenda to decrease ecological degradation, this analysis addresses this important issue by analyzing the impact of energy consumption and renewable energy consumption in the conventional N-shaped EKC hypothesis for the sub-Saharan African countries",7
"Environmental issues, on the other hand, have become topical conversation, and it is gaining attention now among stakeholders and intergovernmental organization on how to sustain environmental quality and stable environmental economic growth (Destek and Sarkodie 2019)",8
"However, carbon dioxide intensity in developing countries is hindrance to their struggle in the direction of economic growth, by this means endorsing the need for industrial economies to intensify finance programs to alleviate global warming enormously caused by their undertakings (Alola and Kirikkaleli 2019)",8
"Comparatively, pollution increases with economic growth and falls after accomplishing a certain verge value",8
"However, increased reliance on fossil fuel, as well as energy shortages and troubling environmental degradation, have increasingly compelled many nations around the world (including our investigation area, i.e., the sub-Saharan Africa) to seek for alternative energy sources",15
Renewable energy have long been accepted as a viable alternative to fossil fuel in the foreseeable future,7
"It is worth noting that, despite the fact that the renewable energy sector has seen incredible rise, especially in solar-wind energy, the percentage of renewable energy usage alone has overstimulated the current history",7
This may be due to the high demand for energy usage and the widespread usage of conventional biomass for heating (summing up almost partial of all renewable energy utilization),7
"Conversely, renewable share of global electricity generation is projected to rise from 18 in 2007 to 23% in 2035, with geothermal energy and clean power contributing 50% and 26% collectively (Apergis and Payne 2012)",7
"While state policies, continue declines in renewable energy technologist cost, and increasing energy needs can all be blamed for the significant growth forecast and regional expansions of renewable energy",7
There has been a decent reaction from the public to embrace renewable energy,7
"Extensive study revealed a wide analysis on the impact of clean energy measures on developing economies, with particular focus on sub-Saharan African regions",7
"The progress achieved in the regulation of carbon emissions as a consequence of industrialization and environmental emissions through sustainable revenues, energy use, and renewable energy use is objectively discussed in our study",7
The inverted U-shaped is also discussed in the sense of the EKC theory that highlights the relationship between economic development and CO2 emission,8
"Economic growth and environmental sustainability are best analyzed using the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) theory, which takes into account the scale, techniques, and composition of social operations",8
Established that this stage of economic growth requires improved resource allocation and effective resource use,8
"Additionally, developing economies with rising incomes devote more resources to research and development in order to substitute outdated technology with new inventions",9
The cumulative impact of all of the aforementioned actions results in an inverted U-shaped association involving economic growth as well as ecological sustainability which is referred to as the environmental Kuznets (EKC) theory,8
Numerous investigations have explained the connection regarding economic growth and ecological emissions,8
"Additionally, this means that during the early period of growth, both economic growth and ecological emissions accelerate concurrently",8
"Nevertheless, once a threshold is reached, ecological emissions decrease as economic growth accelerates",8
This condition has been clarified previously by forecasting an inverted U-shaped association regarding economic growth and ecological emissions which is supported by the EKC hypothesis credibility (Grossman and Krueger 1991; Sinha et al,8
"Additionally, some analyses have found an N-shaped association regarding ecological degradation and economic growth in contrast to the inverted U-shaped association",8
"This also implies that if the state’s renewable energy initiatives are not implemented and enforced during the second turning point for implementation of energy legislation, climate emissions will resume its upward trend",7
"(2000) clarified in their analysis that economic growth results in systemic changes as a result of the introduction of heavy industry, further deteriorating ecological sustainability",8
"Simultaneously, the processed goods are ecologically sustainable, thus enhancing the ecological performance as economic development increases",8
"Seemingly, Apergis and Payne (2010a, b) found a bidirectional relationship between renewable energy and CO2 emissions",7
Ito (2017) indicated that renewable energy consumption contributes to reduction of CO2 emissions,7
Document that renewable energy consumption increase CO2 emission,7
"Furthermore, Apergis and Payne (2010a, b) found a bidirectional relationship between non-renewable energy and carbon dioxide emissions using Granger causality model via error correction model",7
Ito (2017) indicated that non-renewable energy consumption contributes to CO2 emissions in the long run and short run,7
Study indicated that non-renewable energy consumption increase CO2 emissions,7
Bhat (2018) altered that non-renewable energy consumption increase CO2 and renewable is found to be positively impact CO2,7
"From view point of Schneider (2006), shifting from non-renewable energy to renewable energy source is an effective way to minimizing pollution utilizing common correlation effects model",7
"Alternatively, Apergis and Payne (2012) found a poor unidirectional relationship between nuclear energy and economic growth",8
Sadorsky (2009) uses FMOLS in his study and found that GPD impact renewable energy consumption by three pint 5% in eighteen developing countries,7
"Apergis and Payne (2010a, b) found a bidirectional relationship between non-renewable energy and economic expansion",7
"For many years, the link between economic growth and CO2 emissions has been the subject of heated debate",8
Dinda (2004) put it another way that environmental pollution rises faster than income in the early stage of growth and then falls behind economic growth as income rises,8
"On the other hand, Zhang (2021) utilized quantile regression as an inference approach and identified that instead of conventional U-shaped hypothesis, there is N-shaped relationship between carbon dioxide and economic growth in the long run",8
Further motivation for the selection of SSA stems from the region economic architecture and energy mix,7
"Also, the bloc environmental emission reflects environmental deprivation caused by real gross domestic products (GDPC), renewable energy consumption (REC), and energy consumption from fossil fuel sources (EC)",7
"Table 2 gives a summary of the description of the variables:
 While a good number of studies have jointly observed the nexus of non-renewable and renewable energy with carbon dioxide emissions (Inglesi-Lotz and Dogan 2018; Khoshnevis Yazdi and Shakouri 2017; Nguyen and Kakinaka 2019), the current studies have applied the concept for selected sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries which have received less attention by disaggregating energy consumption into energy consumption from fossil fuel sources and renewable energy after the previous literature already highlights",7
"The equation below illustrates the model:
 To ensure a more accurate result, all the parameters are in their logarithmic (log) form using the logarithm of each parameters, and the formula is as follows:
 where CO2, GDPC, GDPC2, GDPC3, EC, and REC are denoted as CO2 emissions, real gross domestic product, square of real domestic product, cubic of real domestic product, energy consumption, and renewable energy consumption, respectively",7
"However, the environmental Kuznets curve can develop numerous shapes because of the vector of real GDP on selected independent parameters according to Balsalobre and Alvarez 2016These shapes are in the form of: ➣If β1 = β2 = β3 = 0, then there is not any relationship regarding ecological quality and economic development",8
"➣If β1 < 0 and β2 > 0 and β3 = 0, then presence of U-shaped curve will be obtained regarding ecological quality and economic development",8
"➣If β1 > 0 and β2 < 0 and β3 > 0, we will then have N-shaped association regarding ecological quality and economic development",8
"➣If β1 < 0 and β2 > 0 and β3 < 0, we will then have an inverted N-shaped association regarding ecological quality and economic development",8
"Since the energy consumption and renewable energy consumption are both extremely unpredictable, the N-shaped EKC would be subject to drastic variations",7
"It applies from these countries, i.e., Botswana, Congo Republic, and Mauritius, that GDPC has the highest mean, median, and maximum values, followed by CO2 emission and energy consumption, while renewable energy consumption has the lowest mean, median, and maximum values",7
"But from the analysis, the remaining countries (Benin, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Zimbabwe) have CO2 emissions having the highest mean, median, and maximum values, followed by real GDPC and energy consumption, whereas renewable energy consumption again have the lowest mean, median, and maximum values",7
It can also be observed from the correlation matrix that the real GDPC has a positive connection with CO2 emission and energy consumption but have negative connection with renewable energy consumption,7
"However, CO2 emissions have a positive connection with energy consumption but have negative connection with renewable energy consumption",7
"Nevertheless, renewable energy consumption has a negative connection with energy consumption.
 It is imperative to conduct a stationarity check in econometric evaluation to prevent spurious error result (Gyamfi et al",7
"From Table 6, it is observed that there is a significantly positive connection regarding economic development (GDPC) and pollution (CO2), as seen in findings of Gyamfi et al",8
Many emerging economics which include the listed African nations have set economic expansion targets in contrast to environmental protection,15
"(2021a, b, c).
 The result also indicates that environmental degradation and energy usage have positive significant association",15
"Again, from the short-run analysis, only renewable energy consumption have a 10% significant connection with CO2 emission",7
"For this reason, the authors investigated the sub-Saharan African countries emission-income association by incorporating renewable energy consumption and energy consumption as control variables from 1990 to 2016",7
The main conclusions from the results of the study are as follows: Economic development contributes to growth of CO2 emission in sub-Saharan African countries,8
"Again, the square of economic development shows a negative significant association with pollution which affirms the existence of EKC in the estimation",8
The cubic GDPC proved the existence of N-shaped relation between economic development and pollution,8
"Moreover, the coefficient of renewable energy consumption is negative and statistically significant at 1% level in the sub-Saharan African countries",7
The coefficient of energy consumption is also positive and statistically significant at 1% level in the sub-Saharan African countries,7
"From the short-run analysis, only renewable energy consumption had a 10% significant connection with CO2 emission",7
It is necessary for policy-makers to consider rising energy intensity as part of anti-emission initiatives,7
Developing countries are facing difficulties in delivering electricity as well as improving access to renewable energy and at the same time optimizing the protection of these substitutes,7
Countries chosen for this initiative are blessed with sustainable energy resources which have been ignored by both the country and its people,7
"The usage of non-renewable energy, which produces carbon, is a significant driving force of energy usage in emerging economies",7
"Moreover, Africa as a continent is expected to provide more than 1750 terawatt hours of hydropower and 14,000 megawatts of geothermal sources with just 7% of the overall capacity being exploited (Shahbaz et al",7
"Besides hydroelectric power and geothermal, there are other environmentally friendly energy options that can be used in households such as bio-fuels and biomass",7
The national and regional governments need to support afforestation and landscaping for reducing pollution on a continent (APF 2009),15
"Taking into account all these considerations, it is important to enforce technical growth policies involving government support, expenditure on R&D initiatives, and funding by indirect steps such as tax cuts",9
The implication of the EKC in the selected developing countries for the carbon emission means that these countries need to minimize environmental degradation on its trajectory for increased income level,15
The need to fortify institutional apparatus is needed to enact effective environmental strategies and regulations to achieve environmental sustainability without compromise for economic development,8
As such there should be concerted efforts on part of all stakeholders and government officials for a paradigm shift to clean energy technologies by substituting the countries’ share of their energy mix from conventional energy of fossil fuel to clean energy sources.,7
The transition to a circular economy is a key concern for the fashion industry,12
The emerging second-hand market is a practice that could enable the circular economy in the fashion industry,12
"This article aimed to fill that gap with the analytic hierarchy process, which demonstrated that garment collection and recycling are not necessarily best practices for the circular economy",12
"For this to happen, close collaboration between manufacturers and retailers in the value chain is needed to move the industry towards responsibly sustainable production and consumption models",12
"The results emphasise that harvesting management and internal competition on low-cost collection are critical business drivers, while responsible consumption and benefits are opportunities for consumers",12
"Moreover, additional points of reflections arise when considering SDG 12 — which aims at reducing the ecological footprint by improving models of production and consumption of goods and natural resources (Medina-Salgado et al",12
"To this end, responsible consumption must be promoted among businesses and consumers, as well as policymakers, researchers, scientists, and retailers",12
"2021), providing key metrics to encourage manufacturers, businesses, and consumers to recycle and reduce waste and to support countries in shifting to sustainable consumption patterns (Symeonides et al",12
The application of sustainable consumption practices may ensure a better quality of life (Rehman et al,12
The circular economy can support the development of new models that align with these outcomes (Robaina et al,12
"Textiles and clothing (T&C) is a sector that plays an important role in the European manufacturing industry, generating a turnover of 166 billion EUR and employing 1.7 million people (European Commission 2022)",9
"Reused clothing is referred to as ‘second-hand’ fashion, because, unlike other marketable fashion, it does not require production and is already part of the circular economy (Kasavan et al",12
Literature analysis highlights the importance of the circular economy in the fashion industry,12
The lack of scalable circular fashion research has hindered industry’s ability to increase its adoption of a truly circular economy (Ki et al,12
It is also necessary to focus on the product life cycle to show the positive relationship between circular economy and sustainability (Colucci and Vecchi 2021),12
"Some authors point out that at the micro level, the second-hand fashion industry has been one of the pioneering industries in the circular economy (Alonso-Almeida et al",12
"This work aims at supporting the development of circular economy models, focusing on the second-hand fashion industry, evaluating both business and consumer perspectives",12
"To this end, a framework of opportunities and critical factors for both categories of stakeholders is realised, and a multicriteria approach is applied to define priorities and assess whether it is feasible to achieve SDG 12",12
"In addition, to encourage the circularity of resources, brands must review their entire supply chain, beyond waste management (Hultberg and Pal 2021)",12
Green lifestyle: consumers may adopt a lifestyle based on sustainable practices that make them direct protagonists during this decarbonisation period,13
Climate change: international players are being called on to make their contribution to the objective phenomenon of climate change,13
"Responsible consumption: the second-hand market enables consumers to undertake non-traditional consumption behaviours, consistent with a more responsible lifestyle towards future generations, recalling the concept of ‘critical consumption’",12
Circular economy rebound: increased production and consumption (i.e,12
‘circular economy rebound’) may reduce the benefits of the circular economy,12
"Fraud: the second-hand market may be operated by third parties, giving rise to a risk of counterfeiting",16
"Social discrimination: the use of second-hand products may be perceived as an indicator of low social status, leading to discrimination",10
"Lack of knowledge: lack of consumer knowledge about real sustainability performance, including the effects of reuse, may prevent responsible consumption",12
"One of the aspects to which attention must be played is that of the circular economy rebound, to avoid a non-synchronisation between supply and demand and to make consumers embracing virtuous behaviours in which their needs are satisfied along with those of the ecosystem",12
"However, while the sum of CCF7 (lack of knowledge) and CCF5 (fraud) was 0.462, slightly lower values overall were recorded",16
"Among the opportunities, CO5 (responsible consumption) was selected as a priority by 12 experts (0.221), while 7 experts instead prioritised CO7 (benefits; 0.207).Footnote 1 The criterion of responsible consumption is the most capable of changing the current model of consumption",12
"Responsible consumption does not only pertain to the act of purchasing, but it is also based on the attitudes and values that motivate responsible or critical purchasing",12
"The benefits of responsible consumption are not dictated by the economic apparatus (indeed, sustainable purchases usually have higher price-points) but are intrinsic, favouring ethically sound behaviour from environmental and social perspectives, capable of supporting the well-being of future generations",12
"As regards the critical factors, CCF3 (circular economy rebound) came out on top, with a score of 0.222, just ahead of CCF7 (lack of knowledge), with 0.218",12
"On this appraisal, the experts were divided, with 11 and 8 supporting CCF3 and CCF7, respectively.Footnote 2 The issue of circular economy rebound should not be underestimated, as it indicates the possibility of non-responsible second-hand purchasing, which would stress sales and increase consumption",12
These results clearly show that the two most important elements were harvesting management on the business side and responsible consumption on the consumer side,12
"With respect to the second criterion, responsible consumption must provoke positive reactions — not only ideologically, but also behaviourally, through acts of purchasing that arise from a circular and sustainable mindset",12
"The achievement of both criteria will require not only corporate interventions, but also the interventions of institutional bodies to provide education and training to foster a complete ethical sustainable model",4
"In addition, the present results lend support for a circular premium (Colasante and D’Adamo 2021; D’Adamo and Lupi 2021), without neglecting the importance of actions aimed at safeguarding working conditions to prevent child exploitation, forced labour, and job insecurity (de Oliveira et al",8
Karami and Gorzynski (2021) argued that co-opetition among competing firms in the same industry may enable firms to achieve greater competitiveness through more sustainable patterns of production and consumption,12
"The present study has shown that circular economy models may be applicable to the second-hand market, but their implementation may risk a worsening of the situation",12
"From the consumer perspective, responsible consumption may trigger the circularity of resources, and such circularity may be linked to economic benefits — which, as always, play a decisive role",12
"At the same time, circular economy rebound should be prevented",12
"Importantly, lack of knowledge may represent an obstacle to the achievement of greater environmental protection",15
"Thus, any model of responsible consumption should ensure that consumers are satisfied with their clothing purchases, without enacting compulsive behaviours",12
"In any case, recycling actions should be promoted to extend the product use phase",12
"Additionally, companies should be called upon to reformulate their business models, adopting green and circular practices based on not only the efficient use of resources, but also an understanding and respect for the human component",12
"The second-hand market is only one of the proposed methods for making the fashion industry more sustainable, alongside improved production efficiency, use of bio-based fibres, and the recycling of used clothes",12
"The circular economy is oriented towards an efficient use of resources, but it is not bound to achieving sustainable goals if doing so is incompatible with social well-being and economic equity",12
"Therefore, the present work has concluded that a circular economy model involving the second-hand fashion industry should only be implemented if it is supported by the responsible attitude of all stakeholders.",12
"The main assumption is that economic growth exhibits a curvy relationship between the two stated factors, as in the early growth stages, emissions intensity increases along with the increase in country’s wealth, while at the later stages, due to advancement in the cleaner production, the country moves towards prosperity by reinvesting the money into carbon mitigation efforts, which tend to decline global emissions (see, Stern 2004, Dinda 2004)",8
"A hypothetical EKC relationship between EI and Y Figure 1 shows that emissions intensity (EI) initially increases as country moves towards industrialization that harmed natural environment in a form of high carbon emissions and larger depletion of resources, while after reaching at certain threshold level, the curve return to decline due to re-invest the income in environmental protection that would be helpful to lessen air pollution and conserve natural resources",15
"The pollution intensive production is merely been visible by some other factors including financial and trade liberalization policies, which supports country’s economic growth on the cost of high emissions intensity, which sabotaged the United Nation SDGs",8
"A hypothetical relationship of IPAT factors Figure 3 shows the positive association between I and PAT due to low advancement in the cleaner production technologies in the country profile, while this relationship could be averted when the following situation would arise, i.e., population genius principle, sustainable development, and green technology (see, Shouket et al",9
"Among 17 goals, the goal-13 is related with climate change that is the major concern area of the globalized world to mitigate high-mass carbon-GHG emissions through sustainable instruments",13
"2018), health effects of climate change (Nichols et al",13
"The study is in line with the United Nation SDGs that emphasized the need of mitigating high carbon emissions through sustainable policy instruments (SDG-13), which would be helpful to redesign healthcare policies (SDG-3) for the betterment of the patients, hospital infrastructure, and reduce communicable diseases",3
Table 3 shows the environmental effects on public health across the globe,3
Malaysia’s growing trends in energy production–elated emissions throw doubt on the country’s possibility of meeting the Paris Climate Change Agreement and SDG obligations,13
The ARDL approach uncovered that economic growth and oil consumption contribute to ecological footprint,8
"Furthermore, renewable energy consumption and gross capital formation reduce the ecological footprint",7
"There has been an improvement in human living standards and well-being in the last several decades, accompanied by an increasing concern for both scientists and policy makers on the environmental damage resulting from the increased economic growth at global level (Adebayo and Acheampong 2021)",8
"To be able to decrease or prevent the harmful effects of human activities on the environment, several governmental and intergovernmental environmental policies are put into action such as Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement aiming to reduce GHGs and \({\mathrm{CO}}_{2}\) emissions to control global warming",13
"Since energy is the fundamental source for human economic activities, thus for economic growth (Khan et al. 2021a; Xu et al. 2022), there has been a tremendous increase in global energy demand (Khan et al. 2021b)",8
There are two main effects of energy consumption on human economic activities through opposite dimensions,7
"In other words, increasing economic human activities promote human living standards, while the accumulative use of factors of production leads to the depletion of resources used for energy production, which in turn negatively impacts the sustainability of economic growth",8
"The major source for energy production in Malaysia depends on non-renewable energy sources such as coal, oil, and gas",7
"However, the increase in oil and gas prices accompanied by the risk of depletion of the resources ascends the solution for energy supply reduction to support sustainable economic growth",8
"The four main targets of sustainable development include eliminating poverty, improving living standards of citizens, delivering higher quality education, and considering environmental quality",4
"For example, oil consumption is the largest chuck of energy sources in Malaysia, accounting for around 36.83% of the total energy consumption",7
"However, since the renewable energy of Malaysia is relatively low, it is possible that the low quantity of renewable could lead to the deterioration of environmental quality in Malaysia",7
"Finally, the initiative of combating climate change is projected to be pushed significantly through the policy suggested in this current study and emulated in other emerging nations with poor policy standards",13
"The overuse and misallocation of resources to generate energy which is crucial for economic growth lead to a decrease in environmental quality which is expressed mostly by carbon emissions (Grossman and Krueger 2002; Ramzan et al. 2021; Kalmaz and Kirikkaleli 2019; Mata et al. 2022; Panait et al. 2021; Yuping et al. 2021; Katircioglu 2021; Katircioglu et al. 2018), and recently by ecological footprint in the academic literature",8
Studies in the literature investigating the relationship between ecological footprint and economic growth are examined by the application of either the cross-country panel (Saud et al. 2020; Sabir and Gorus 2019; Pata and Yilanci 2020; Liu and Kim 2018; Charfeddine and Mrabet 2017; Ulucak and Bilgili 2018; Bagliani et al. 2008) or country-specific time-series (Godil et al. 2020; Hassan et al,8
The first strand of these studies analyses the validity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis to investigate the impact of economic growth on environmental quality which is determined by ecological footprint (Sharif et al. 2020; Sabir and Gorus 2019; Liu et al. 2018; Charfeddine and Mrabet 2017; Ulucak and Bilgili 2018; Al-mulali et al. 2015; Koksal et al,8
"2020), while the second strand aims to investigate the main determinants of ecological footprint by the application of different methods and targets to explore the link between economic growth and ecological footprint by mostly utilizing cointegration and causality tests (Majeed et al. 2021; Kirikkaleli et al. 2021; Ahmed et al. 2021; Hassan et al. 2019; Bello et al. 2018)",8
"Some of those studies focus on Malaysia as a case study to investigate the determinants of environmental degradation (Khan et al. 2021a; Anastasia 2015; Borhan and Ahmed 2012; Aeknarajindawat et al. 2020; Bekhet et al. 2017; Saboori and Sualiman 2013; Saboori et al. 2012, Suki et al. 2022; Ahmed et al. 2019)",15
"Nonetheless, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no study that takes capital formation into account while considering ecological footprint as an indicator for environmental degradation",15
"Furthermore, the outcomes of the studies in the literature demonstrated varying results depending on different variables included in estimations, varying time period data covers, econometric tools employed, and specific features of the country or regions such as characteristics of the non-renewable energy resources, cultures, political foundations, and energy policies",7
"Several studies in the literature aimed to explore the determinants of environmental degradation, since environmental concerns started to gain more importance in recent years",15
"According to the previous studies, the overuse of resources to generate energy to promote economic growth is considered to be the main determinant of the reduction of environmental quality (Grossman and Krueger 2002; Khan et al. 2021a; Zafar et al. 2019; Katircioglu et al. 2017; Bekun et al. 2021; Lean and Smyth 2010)",8
"The data for ecological footprint is collected from Global Footprint Network (2018) and GDP per capita and Gross Domestic Formation are gathered from the World Bank Database Indicators (2021), while renewable energy consumption per capita and oil consumption are obtained from the British Petroleum database",7
"We discovered a positive and significant association between OC and ecological footprint, indicating the nature of oil consumption towards environmental degradation in Malaysia",15
"According to the estimation results, economic growth exhibits a positive and significant association with the ecological footprint in Malaysia not just in the long-term, but also in the short-term",8
"Thus, as the ecological footprint becomes more intense, environmental degradation worsens",15
"Malaysia’s average energy consumption growth rate in the industrial, transportation, and residential sectors has been between 6 and 7% during the last four decades",7
This conclusion suggests that increased oil consumption for other energy-intensive economic operations underpins the association between economic growth and ecological footprint,8
"Although this energy resource promotes and boosts economic growth, its usage raises the ecological footprint",8
"Oil consumption is the largest chuck of energy sources in Malaysia, accounting for around 36.83% of the total energy consumption",7
"However, owing to the advent and development of renewable energy sources, as well as the transition of other fossil energy, Malaysia’s reliance on oil consumption has gradually decreased in recent years",7
"Moreover, renewable energy has a significant and negative interconnection with ecological footprint not just in the long term but also in the short term",7
"The reduction in ecological footprint by 0.16% can be realized by the increase in renewable energy by 1% in model 1; whereas, in model 2, the ecological footprint will decrease by 0.18%",7
"Energy consumption is required to maintain continuous economic expansion; although, only clean energy sources such as geothermal, tidal, wind, sun, and hydropower could assist in achieving long-term sustainability in terms of growth",7
"Moreover, using these energy sources will not only promote a sustainable ecosystem without impeding economic growth but can also assist governments in meeting their environmental goals",8
"However, it is evident that the adverse effect of oil consumption on the ecosystem outmatches the positive effect of renewable energy on the environment",7
"By discovering this, we concluded that the present manufacturing processes are insufficient to satisfy the standards for carbon intensity and energy efficiency",7
This condition is undesirable for long-term sustainable growth,8
"To ensure a cleaner ecosystem, policymakers must pinpoint pollution-intense industries where the use of clean energy resources like biomass, water, air, solar, and wind can be expanded",7
"This positive linkage could be possible owing to the increase in GDP, which in turn increases oil consumption, which results in environmental degradation",15
"Figure 7 indicates the unidirectional causal connection from economic growth to ecological footprint is evident only in the short run, signifying that only in the short run economic growth is a predictor of ecological footprint",8
"Also, Fig. 9 displays the causality association between renewable energy and ecological footprint",7
The unidirectional causal connection from renewable energy to ecological footprint is evident in the medium and long term,7
"Hence, renewable energy is a predictor of ecological footprint in the medium and long term",7
Malaysia’s growing trends in energy production-related emissions throw doubt on the country’s possibility of meeting the Paris Climate Change Agreement and SDG obligations,13
"Graphical illustration of the study Economic growth boosts the ecological footprint in Malaysia, according to the empirical findings",8
"The current research supports this necessity by suggesting that renewable energy reduces ecological footprint; therefore, it enhances environmental quality",7
This shows that Malaysia is on track to reduce environmental degradation,15
"However, additional efforts must be made to incorporate other alternative and cleaner energy sources into her energy mix in order to achieve environmental sustainability",7
This clearly indicates that the Malaysian government and its private sector have to broaden their investment base towards clean and sustainable energy utilization in order to promote clean energy (SDG-7) and the ecosystem (SDG-13),7
"In summary, it is apparent that there is a commitment to find a compromise between Malaysia’s energy mix and its macroeconomic and environmental ambitions by adopting efficient energy conservation policies",7
"In this regard, it is critically important for these nations to sustain their annual rise in their economic growth rates while simultaneously declining the rate of discharge of carbon dioxide emissions",8
"Furthermore, technological innovation is witnessed to moderate the nexus between energy use and economic growth to further reduce the emission growth rate in the BRICS nations",8
"Under such circumstances, development planners worldwide are now highly interested in ascertaining the channels/mechanisms through which higher economic growth and lower environmental pollution can be simultaneously established across the globe (Kartal et al",8
"Although, the neoclassical theories of growth postulate that a particular nation’s economic growth is conditional on its stocks of labor and capital, this view has been challenged by highlighting the importances of other key macroeconomic for stimulating sustainable economic growth",8
"For instance, since the financial sector injects funds into the private sector, in particular, the development of this sector is expected to scale up private credit supplies which, in turn, can be assumed to boost economic growth through capital accumulation-led industrialization (Sobiech 2019)",8
"Besides, financial inclusion is also assumed to help resolve budget constraints to stimulate higher levels of private consumption so that inclusive economic growth can be established; thus, an inclusive financial sector can go hand in glove with inclusive growth achievements (Siddik and Kabiraj 2020)",8
"On the other hand, the crucial role of energy resources in respect of stimulating higher economic growth cannot be overlooked either",8
"Accordingly, unreliable supply of energy, especially electricity, is often responsible for underpinning industrialization whereby the rate of economic growth attainment can be assumed to slow down (Nepal and Paija 2019; Ateba et al",8
"For example, the use of hydrocarbon-based fossil fuels is often held responsible for profusely releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere; consequently, climate change adversities can be triggered (Rehman et al",13
"Contrarily, the employment of hydrocarbon-free renewable energy resources is assumed to inhibit the deterioration of the global climate (Majeed et al",7
"Accordingly, often we hear that switching from non-renewable to renewable energy could resolve environmental hardships (Murshed 2020; Koondhar et al",7
"However, this conjecture has also been criticized in few studies that have concluded that such clean energy transitions actually deteriorate the environment further by concurrently boosting the demand for environmentally unfriendly minerals (Islam et al",7
"Apart from financial development and energy use, technology is regarded as another key influencer of both economic growth and environmental quality (Mahmood 2020)",8
"Besides, in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the role of technological innovation-driven automation in boosting output production (synonymous with a potential surge in economic growth rate) has duly been mentioned in the literature (Prettner 2019)",8
"Conversely, refuting the idea of technology-led economic growth, several studies have also portrayed the dark side of technology by linking technological innovation with poor labor productivity and lower rate of economic growth (Wellisz 2016)",8
"Thus, several studies modeling the EKC hypothesis have controlled for the environmental impacts associated with technological innovation (Sinha et al",8
"Besides, technological innovation can also indirectly impact the environment through the channel of energy use",8
It has been argued that technological advancement-led improvement in the rate of energy productivity is ideal for limiting energy-related greenhouse gas emissions (Murshed et al,7
"The BRICS nations have come of age, especially with the broad-basing of their industrial expansions, in spurring rapid economic growth and are therefore these nations have evolved to be major contributors to the global economy as a whole (Anser et al",8
"Second, this study is one of the few that assesses both the direct and indirect consequences of technological development on economic growth and environmental quality in the context of the BRICS nations",8
"In particular, it is pertinent to explore these indirect channels because the effects of technological innovation on the economy and the environment can be assumed to pass through the channels of financial development and energy use",8
"As a result, the potential moderating/mediating roles of technological innovation are examined in this study for recommending holistic economic and environmental development-related policies",8
"Theoretically, the financial sector is considered one of the major engines of economic growth through the channel of financial development-capital formation",8
"Under such assumptions, several researchers have empirically examined the effects of financial development on economic growth",8
"(2021) concluded that developing the financial system for the private sector, especially in respect of enhancing loan availability, is important for harnessing the economic growth agendas in these countries",8
"Besides, the authors added that digitalization within the financial sector is more effective in promoting growth",9
"Similarly, Ustarz and Fanta (2021) explored the impacts of financial development on sector-based economic growth in Sub-Saharan African countries",8
"Using data from the BRICS, Raghutla and Chittedi (2021) also found evidence of the positive impacts of financial development on economic growth",8
"Siddikee and Rahman (2021), in the context of Bangladesh, found that financial development despite positively affecting economic growth in the short-run, albeit the impact is small, it dampens economic growth in the long run",8
"The authors claimed that initially although financial development helps the foreign direct investments in promoting economic growth, once the share of private credit in the GDP goes beyond 95.6%, it can no longer foster the positive relationship between foreign direct investments and economic growth",8
"Thus, the authors concluded that too much domestic finance (indicating financial development) is not conducive to stimulating higher economic growth",8
"Likewise, in a study using data from 29 Sub-Saharan African nations, Ibrahim and Alagidede (2018) remarked that financial development can be detrimental to economic growth if it enhances finance for risky projects",8
"(2022) recently concluded that the effect of financial development on economic growth in the top financially developed world economies can both be positive and negative; moreover, the authors added that these effects can be expected to change along with regime shifts concerning changes in the level of financial efficiency",8
"On the other hand, much like the financial sector, the paramount importance of the energy sector in respect of influencing the economic growth indicators cannot be doubted",8
"However, similar to the ambiguous nexuses between financial development and economic growth, the existing findings portray both positive and negative effects of energy use on economic growth",8
"Among the empirical studies concentrating on the energy use-economic growth relationship, Shahbaz et al",8
"(2016) opined that for the economies of the BRICS nations to grow, it is essential for these nations to boost biomass energy consumption",7
(2019) also documented statistical evidence regarding higher energy use being translated into greater economic growth,8
"In another study on top 38 renewable energy-consuming nations, Shahbaz et al",7
"Focusing on selected developing nations, Khan and Ozturk (2021) concluded that the development of the financial sector is a pre-requisite for addressing environmental concerns since financial development was found to independently reduce CO2 emissions and also indirectly contribute to CO2 emission reduction by lessening the adverse environmental concerns associated with economic growth, international trade, and foreign direct investment inflows",8
(2018) opined that higher energy consumption degrades the environment through the stimulation of higher emissions of CO2,7
(2021) also used data from the BRICS nations and found evidence that as more renewable energy is consumed the CO2 emission levels tend to decline,7
"Furthermore, linking natural gas and renewable energy consumption with environmental quality in the BRICS nations, Dong et al",7
(2017) said these emerging nations can mitigate CO2 emission levels by scaling up their natural gas and renewable energy consumption figures,7
"Bhat (2018) showed that non-renewable energy use in the BRICS nations is responsible for higher CO2 emissions in the long run only, while higher use of renewable energy is efficient in reducing CO2 emissions both in the short- and long-run",7
"(2016) considered data from five Southeast Asian nations and found evidence that although higher energy consumption results in higher per capita CO2 emissions, this impact is conditional on the level of pollution in those countries",7
"(2019) claimed that irrespective of the level of economic growth, higher energy use is associated with higher emissions of CO2",8
(2016) also concluded that energy consumption imposes environmental adversities by amplifying the per capita CO2 emission figures of the selected countries,7
"(2017) asserted that renewable energy use improves the environment by reducing CO2 emission levels, while non-renewable energy use degrades it by boosting the emission levels",7
(2017) remarked that boosting renewable energy consumption can be an effective means of curbing the CO2 emission levels in these energy nations,7
The Fourth Industrial Revolution has bolstered the importance of technological innovation in catalyzing economic activities under the assumption that improved technology can help to enhance factor productivity to stimulate higher growth,8
"Empirical studies, in this regard, have mostly found technological progress to positively influence economic growth",8
"Accordingly, using data on several indicators of technological innovation, Anakpo and Oyenubi (2022) recently found statistical evidence of positive impacts of these technological innovation-related indicators on per capita economic figures of selected Southern African nations",8
"(2021) concluded that the greening of technologies can enhance the nation’s economic growth level, both in the short- and long-run",8
"For the cases of the Next Eleven nations, the positive effects of technological innovation, measured in terms of a rise in the number of patents applied, on economic growth were also reported in the study conducted by Rahim et al",8
"Besides, using a higher mobile phone penetration rate as an indicator of greater application of advanced information and communications technology, Haftu (2019) asserted that technology innovation is likely to boost economic growth in Sub-Saharan African nations",8
"(2021) concluded that the effect of technological innovation on economic growth can be illustrated as an inverted U-shaped graph; thus, the results implied that as more advanced technologies are utilized, the Chinese economy initially grows up to a threshold point beyond which further innovation dampens economic growth in China",8
"On the other hand, regarding the environmental effects accompanying technological innovation, existing studies have highlighted that technologies progress inflicts ambiguous impacts on the level of CO2 emissions",8
"Accordingly, Chen and Lee (2020) questioned whether or not technological innovation homogeneously contributes to reduce emission across the globe",8
"Based on their findings, the authors concluded that technological innovation has a minimal CO2 emission-inhibiting effect on a global scale",8
"Precisely, the authors identified that in countries with high levels of national income, technological endowment, and CO2 emissions, an improvement in the level of technological innovation is effective in curbing CO2 emissions",8
"However, in countries that do not have these characteristics, technological innovation imposes CO2 emission-boosting effects",8
(2020b) asserted that the environmental impacts of technological innovation are intertemporal since the findings indicated that technological innovation in the short run boosts CO2 emissions while it reduces emissions in the long run,8
"(2021) explored the effects of technological innovation on CO2 emissions, in selected countries that are members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), by estimating a technological innovation index using data concerning different technological innovation indicators (including patent and trademark applications and technical cooperation grants data)",8
The results showed that technological innovation is a key driver of higher CO2 emissions in these countries,8
"(2020) also utilized a technological innovation index and concluded that technological progress is associated with emission reduction in less-polluted Next Eleven nations; contrarily, an opposite impact was evidenced for the highly polluted Next Eleven nations",8
"Furthermore, although most of the related studies available in the literature focus on the direct impacts of technological innovation on CO2 emissions, only a few have emphasized the indirect channels through which technology can enforce environmental consequences",8
(2021) concluded that technological innovation indirectly inhibits CO2 emissions by mediating the relationship between financial risk and CO2 emissions,8
"It is apparent that the existing studies featuring the BRICS nations did not emphasize the need for increasing and reducing the rate of economic growth and CO2 emissions, respectively, and have rather focused on increasing and decreasing their respective levels",8
"However, from the perspective of sustainable development, it is imperative to sustain the increments in economic growth rate while persistently declining CO2 emission growth rates as well",8
"Besides, limited information (none in the context of BRICS) is documented regarding the indirect impacts of technological innovation on economic growth and CO2 emission rates",8
The other independent variable LnENERGY represents the per capita primary energy consumption levels of the BRICS countries (measured in exajoules),7
This variable is naturally log-transformed to make sure that the elasticity of rates of economic growth and CO2 emissions with respect to financial development can be easily predicted,8
"Lastly, the variable TECH_INNOV represents the technological innovation index (a proxy for the level of technological progress) which is predicted using the principal component analysis technique and utilizing three technological innovation-related indicators: (i) patent and trademark applications by residents, (ii) patent and trademark applications by non-residents, and (iii) technical cooperation grants receipts",8
Higher values of the technological innovation index can be interpreted as an improvement in the level of technology and vice-versa (Sinha et al,8
"Furthermore, to check whether technological innovation indirectly affects rates of economic growth and CO2 emissions, we modify our baseline models (shown in Eq. 1) as follows: In Eqs",8
"It can be seen that during the study period, Russia, on average, recorded the lowest rate of annual per capita economic growth, while China accounted for the highest annual per capita economic growth rate",8
"Besides, in terms of growth volatility, Russia recorded the most-volatile economic growth performances",8
"In terms of energy consumption, it is of no surprise that the two most-populated BRICS countries China and India have the highest annual primary energy consumption levels, while South Africa has the lowest level of annual energy consumption",7
"Firstly, the results identify a bidirectional causal association (reverse causality) between economic growth and financial development in the case of the BRICS nations",8
"This finding can be explained by the assumption that as the financial sector gets more developed, the level of private investments can go up which, in turn, can be expected to expedite economic growth rates in the BRICS nations",8
"On the other hand, as economic growth rates go up, there could be more demand for modern financial services; thus, it can lead to further development of the financial system",8
"Under such a circumstance, the interdependency (reverse causality) between economic growth rate and financial development can be anticipated",8
"Moreover, unidirectional causality from technological innovation to economic growth rate is also confirmed by the causality findings",8
This is an expected finding since technological progress is often hypothesized to positively influence the economic growth rate by enhancing the total factor productivity level (Surya et al,8
This finding can be explained by the understanding that financial development can influence the CO2 emission figures of these nations particularly through the channel of energy consumption,7
"Besides, bidirectional causality (reverse causation) between primary energy consumption and annual CO2 emission rate is also confirmed by the results",7
"Based on the underlying preconceived notions, this two-way causal relationship can be explained from the point of view that as the level of energy consumption within an economy goes up, it can trigger a positive change in the level of energy-use-related emissions of CO2, as well (Bouyghrissi et al",7
"Accordingly, it can be said that energy consumption and the CO2 emissions-triggered environmental pollution are interdependent",7
"Lastly, the causality outcomes point out a unidirectional causality running from technological innovation to the annual rate of change in CO2 emissions in the BRICS countries",8
"Firstly, we interpret the findings from the economic growth rate model as presented in Table 8",8
It is evident that the current annual economic growth rate of the BRICS nations is conditional on the previous year’s economic growth rate,8
"Since the corresponding estimated elasticity parameters (in all three models) concerning the one-period lagged level of per capita economic growth rate (i.e., YPC_GR(− 1)) are negative and statistically significant, it can be said that the previous period’s economic achievements are likely to be sustained in the current period",8
"Besides, it is also evident from the results that the development of the financial sector is one of the important drivers of a higher economic growth rate in the BRICS nations",8
"This finding verifies the notion that if greater credit accessibility is ensured, it is likely that the private investors in the BRICS nations would be availing the loans that are on offer and invest them; consequently, private investment-led industrialization, in particular, can be anticipated to boost the economic growth rates of the BRICS nations",8
(2021) also remarked that financial development drives higher economic growth levels in Sub-Saharan African nations which are mostly developing countries,8
"In contrast, our finding contradicts the long-run finding of financial development dampening Bangladesh's economic growth level that was reported in the study conducted by Siddikee and Rahman (2021)",8
"Among the other key results found in this current study, it is evident that energy consumption induces economic growth rate-boosting effects within the economies of the BRICS nations",7
"To explain this finding, it can be said that since energy is consumed for consumption and production purposes, an economic growth rate-boosting impact associated with energy use is justified",8
"Moreover, in respect of economic growth rate being impacted by technological innovation, especially for the BRICS nations to sustain their economic performances, it is critically important invest in projects that are closely linked with the development of their existing technological stocks",8
This statement is backed up by the finding that that a 1% rise in the value of the technological innovation index is likely to boost the annual per capita real GDP growth rate by 15.716–16.750%,8
"This finding adheres to the understanding that technological innovation makes factors more productive whereby the national output production rates can be assumed to increase; consequently, technological innovation can also be justifiably anticipated to surge the rates of growth of the BRICS economies",8
"(2021) also opined that technological innovation guarantees higher economic growth levels in Southern African nations and Singapore, respectively",8
"Furthermore, regarding the indirect economic growth impacts of technological innovation, the results from this study indicate that technological innovation, jointly with financial development and energy use, contributes to a higher economic growth rate in the BRICS countries by moderating the financial development-economic growth rate and energy use-economic growth rate nexuses",8
"Simultaneously, the utilization of improved technology can be expected to enhance the rate of energy use efficiency to amplify the economic growth rates further",8
"Unlike the earlier finding of the previous year’s economic growth rate influencing the current year’s economic growth rate, it can be seen that the rate of change in per capita CO2 emissions at present is not conditional on the last year’s rate of change in per capita CO2 emissions",8
"Among the other important findings from this current study, we find that energy consumption also dampens environmental quality in the BRICS nations",7
"This is because the corresponding elasticity estimates show that if the annual primary energy consumption level increases by 1%, it is likely to surge the annual rate of change in per capita CO2 emissions by 42.965–47.324%",7
"Notably, in 2019, the renewable energy shares in the primary energy consumption figures were merely 3.22% for Russia, 10.5% for South Africa, 14.45% for China, 32.93% for India, and 47.57% for Brazil (World Bank 2022)",7
"Lastly, in respect of environmental effects related to technological innovation, the results show that improvement in the level of technology in the BRICS nations is likely to deteriorate their environmental quality",8
A rise in the value of the technological innovation index by 1% is predicted to be accompanying a decline in the annual per capita CO2 emission growth rates by 131.840–158.230%,8
"However, a similar moderating effect of technological innovation on the financial development-CO2 emission growth rate could not be established",8
"Hence, in line with these findings, it can be said that technological progress can help the BRICS nations to overcome the adverse environmental impacts faced by these nations due to relying heavily on unclean energy resources",8
"Among the two possible mechanisms through which technology can impose these favorable environmental outcomes include (a) new technologies can help to make more productive use of energy so that the undue waste of energy can be curbed and, therefore, its reserve can be conserved; consequently, the growth in the rate of energy-related CO2 emissions can be contained; and (b) improved technologies can drive energy diversification by scaling up the share of modern and cleaner energy resources in the total energy consumption levels of the BRICS nations",7
"Besides, technological limitation/backwardness has often been highlighted as a major inhibitor of renewable energy adoption (Murshed 2020); accordingly, developing new technologies can be assumed to help in facilitating the supply of low-cost renewable energy within the BRICS countries",7
"On the other hand, the failure of technological innovation to jointly contribute to lowering of CO2 emission growth rates further indicates that since the BRICS nations are predominantly fossil fuel-dependent, providing finance to private sectors is likely to surge the demand for dirty energy which, in turn, is most likely to trigger a rise in the rate of discharge of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere",8
The BRICS nations are striving for simultaneously improving their economic and environmental conditions by respectively boosting their per capita economic growth rates and mitigating the discharge rates of per capita CO2 emissions in tandem,8
"Besides, from the point of view of attaining the SDG by 2030, it is essential for these emerging nations to sustain their annual rise and decline in economic growth and CO2 emission rates, respectively, in the future",8
"Hence, this study aimed to juxtapose the impacts of financial development, energy use, and technological innovation on the annual rates of per capita economic growth and CO2 emissions in the context of the BRICS nations considering the study period from 1990 to 2020",8
"More importantly, the causality analysis led to the identification of two bidirectional causalities between financial development and economic growth rate and between primary energy use and CO2 emission rate",8
"In addition, technological innovation was evidenced to indirectly boost the economic growth rate further by jointly stimulating higher economic growth rate with greater financial development and primary energy use",8
"Besides, technological innovation was also evidenced to indirectly contribute to reducing the annual rate of discharge of CO2 emissions by jointly reducing emissions rates with primary energy use",8
"Firstly, regarding policies concerning sustainable economic growth, it is essential for the government to further enhance the share of private sector credit in their respective GDP so that private investors do not find it difficult to expand their output levels due to financial constraints",8
"In this regard, reducing the difficulties in availing of private loans and provision of low-interest loans can be expected to substantially scale up private investment levels to surge the rate of economic growth in the future",8
"More importantly, it is of utmost importance for the emerging nations to achieve technological progress so that the latest technologies can significantly improve factor productivity to further expedite economic growth rates",8
"As a result, these policies can be assumed to comprehensively stimulate higher technological innovation-led economic growth in the emerging economies",8
"On the other hand, since the energy sector is found to be responsible for deteriorating the environment in emerging nations, energy portfolio diversification, especially by replacing unclean with clean energy resources, is of paramount importance for these nations",7
"The improvement of production processes, the development and use of new technologies, materials and energy infrastructure, the transition to new fuels, and the growth of energy consumption—all gives impetus to the advancement and continuous modernization of the energy sector",7
The energy industry is considered the largest polluter of the environment and consumer of natural resources and it is the sector most acutely aware of the transition to a new type of economic development (Rezazadeh et al,8
The achievement of SDGs on national level is directly depended on the energy industry as it is the largest polluter (SDGs …); it would provide access to the clean energy in the near future (SDG),7
"Global CO2 emissions by sector, 1990–2021, Mt CO2 (made by authors using data from IEA 2022) One of the directions of energy sector eco-modernization may be the transition to renewable energy sources, the abandonment of the use of coal as fuel, the implementation of efficient environmental technologies to operating energy facilities, and the development of nuclear energy",7
"However, to make the transition to green energy, it is necessary to replace the existing energy infrastructure with a new one, since currently more than 61% of all electricity in the world is produced from non-renewable resources: natural gas, coal, or oil as reported in Fig. 2 (Statistical Review on World Energy 2021)",7
"Global electricity generation by fuel in 2020, % (made by author using data from Statistical Review on World Energy 2021) The development of green energy gives impetus to the modernization of the energy sector",7
"Already, the energy sector attracts huge volumes of research and development (R&D) investments",9
"In addition, an important aspect of the transition to a new low-carbon and sustainable development vector may be the introduction of the principles of circular economy (CE) and sustainable development at individual energy enterprises (Su and Urban 2021; Karaeva et al",12
"According to the results of the survey conducted in Australia and in which participated 233 regional SMEs, 65.3% of respondents do not believe that they harm the environment and that they need to implement environmental protection practices (Artin 2022)",15
"soil, atmosphere, forests, water, etc.).” It can already be concluded that the achievement of environmental sustainability for local enterprises should consist not only in reducing anthropogenic impact, but also in increasing the efficiency of using natural resources, introducing the principles of circular economy and an effective environmental management system (Xiang et al",12
"2013), improving the energy efficiency of production process (Prashar 2019; Joung et al",7
"A number of studies point out the introduction of the principles of the circular economy (CE), i.e., “take-make-consume-reuse-recycle” in SMEs as one of the fundamental factors for achieving sustainable development (Kristensen and Mosgaard 2020; Nudurupati et al",12
"(2018), environmental sustainability of enterprises includes environmental education, corporate social responsibility, environmentally friendly production, environmental impact assessment, sustainable consumption, etc",12
"Hughes and Troy (2020) observed that now it is easier for large players to adapt to new requirements and realities in the field of environmental protection, since they have the necessary amount of financial resources and have access to innovations",15
"At the level of energy SMEs, the introduction of the concept of sustainable development is only beginning to be considered in the scientific research (Pylaeva et al",9
Traditional energy enterprises most often use traditional energy sources as coal and natural gas to generate electricity on thermal power plants,7
"However, hydropower plants and nuclear power plants might be also attributed to traditional energy objects (Liu et al",7
"Sustainable development in the energy sector (adapted from Davidsdottir 2007) According to Fig. 3, the economic dimension has an impact on both the social and environmental dimensions: on the one hand, energy companies provide stable access to electricity for the population, on the other hand, energy production, especially from fossil energy sources, leads to considerable environmental pollution",7
"The state of global energy markets: any change in the structure of global energy consumption, political upheavals, and a reduction in the production of natural energy resources—all this can affect the current activities of energy enterprises",7
"Use of the best available technologies: in addition to the obvious technological and economic advantages in the form of increasing the efficiency of production activities, modern technologies can significantly reduce the negative impact of an energy facility on the environment (for example, the use of the best technologies in the field of wastewater treatment or processing of industrial waste)",6
"Application of the principles of circular economy: at SMEs, it is possible to achieve faster implementation of the principles of circular economy in comparison with large energy enterprises: rational use of natural resources, recycling of production waste and from operating activities—all this may increase the environmental efficiency of the traditional energy enterprise",12
"Moreover, in recent decades, there has been a trend towards “greening” the energy sector by supporting renewable energy and tightening environmental legislation, which affects the sustainability of SMEs and stimulates their transition to a new vector of development",7
"The implementation of environmental protection measures and eco-modernization of the energy facility also requires large financial, material, and labor costs",15
"In most cases, SMEs do not implement waste management systems: almost all waste is disposed of or stored on the territory of the enterprise, harming land and soil resources (Woodard 2020)",12
The implementation of the industrial and solid waste management system is part of EMS and means the effective application of CE principles,12
"For enterprises using natural gas or fuel oil as fuel, it is possible to introduce a simplified waste management system",12
State support and financing is the only tool that will provide substantial support to SMEs in the energy sector and will allow individual enterprises to achieve environmental sustainability in a short time,8
(2022) emphasize the influence of green innovations and circular economy principles on environmental and social sustainability of SMEs,12
"The most significant factors include: The presence of EMS, which allows accounting and planning of environmental activities of the enterprise Resource efficiency of energy production: reduction of consumption of natural energy carriers with an increase in energy production Use of the best available technologies in the field of production and environmental protection; that factor may significantly reduce the anthropogenic impact on atmosphere, water, and soil resources made by the traditional energy facility The minimum impact of the energy facility on the environment Following the long-term trends of SMEs in the energy sector to achieve environmental sustainability can contribute to obtaining additional benefits in the future: reducing fees for negative impacts, government support, competitive advantages, and improving the image of enterprises in the eyes of consumers",15
Factors of environmental sustainability of renewable energy facilities or nuclear power plants will differ because of the different nature of effects,7
nthropogenic and natural factors lead to substantial environmental degradation,15
"Thus, reducing haze by adjusting the factors studied would not be easy in the short run and require the careful adoption of long-term policies.
Graphical  Rapid economic growth, urbanisation, and anthropogenic activities have not only raised the living standards but also significantly degraded the environment, specifically air pollution",8
"They also explain that the primary objective of emerging economies is simply to increase economic growth, ignoring its negative environmental externalities",8
"Also, this region accounts for 25% of global energy consumption, 2% of global merchandise exports, 15% of global urbanisation, and 15% of government expenditure on education (World Bank 2021)",7
"Since countries in the region are developing economically faster and on the verge of enormous industrialisation, economic growth and energy use tend to increase to meet the demands of new industries, investments, and urban residents",8
"(2016) examined the long-run causal relationship between energy use, CO2 emissions, economic growth, and trade openness in Sri Lanka between 1971 and 2006 and identified a causal relationship between CO2 emissions and economic development",8
They discovered a one-way causality running from economic growth to CO2 emissions and energy use,8
(2014) studied the causality between the energy use and environmental degradation in the South Asian countries from 1975 to 2011; it was found that energy use is a critical component with regard to increasing pollution emissions and a causal relation exists between energy use and environmental pollutants,15
"Based on the Method of Moments Quantile Regression, Fully Modified Least Squares (FMOLS), DOLS, and fixed-affect OLS data from 1991 to 2018, they found that non-renewable energy consumption stimulates CO2 emissions, whilst renewable energy consumption reduces them across all quantiles",7
(2021a) investigated the correlation between public–private partnerships in transport and CO2 emissions in transport using part of urbanisation and renewable energy,7
"These people are also more ecologically aware; as a result, they may urge their local governments to prioritise energy efficiency improvements and optimise the energy consumption structures of regional industries, which eventually contributes to reducing air pollution (Li et al",7
Some researchers examined the economic causes of haze pollution and mitigation strategies qualitatively (Zhao et al,13
"(2016) studied the driving forces of PM2.5 emissions and concluded that economic development, industrialisation, and urbanisation contributed to increasing PM2.5 pollution in the long run",8
"Based on the available literature, studies were independently concentrated on haze pollution caused by economic growth (Wu et al",8
"2020), or energy consumption (Anwar et al",7
We used the change in GDP (gross domestic product) purchasing power parity (2017 constant) as an indicator to quantify economic growth,8
Energy use (kg of oil equivalent per capita) data were used to proxy Energy Consumption (EC),7
"(2016) studied the driving forces of PM2.5 emissions and concluded that economic development, industrialisation, and urbanisation contributed to increasing PM2.5 pollution in the long run, and it is also in line with our result",8
"According to Table 6, the coefficient of ECT (− 1) of PM2.5 and energy consumption is negative, whereas the level of education is positive",7
"Furthermore, a bi-directional short-run causal association was found between PM2.5 and economic growth and a uni-directional short-run causal association running from total rainfall, urbanisation, average temperature to PM2.5 concentration",8
"However, a bi-directional long-term causal association was found between PM2.5, energy consumption, and education level",7
"In addition, it indicates that the increase of PM2.5 in the region is a long-term process driven by increased energy consumption associated with rapid economic expansion and a lack of environmental education",7
"Additionally, economic growth was primarily self-explanatory (91.97%), although 4.35% of it was explained by one standard deviation shock in urbanisation, and the rest of the variables had a negligible effect",8
The energy consumption (11.33%) was explained by one standard deviation shock in the level of educational,7
"Additionally, the result indicates that 4.07% of the urbanisation was explained by one standard deviation shock in economic growth",8
"Most of the effects on urbanisation were explained by its own standard shocks (93.4%), but the energy consumption, rainfall, education, and temperature had a negligible effect on urbanisation (0.63%, 0.000135%, 1.20%, and 0.25%, respectively)",7
"Furthermore, 11.33% of the level of education was explained by one standard deviation shock in energy consumption",7
"PM2.5 first decreased and then stabilised in reaction to shocks produced by declining energy consumption and average temperature, whereas their response to shocks generated by the level of education increased in the first 4 years and then stabilised",7
Economic growth decreased in the first 4 years and then got stabilised,8
The result also revealed that the effect of economic growth increases haze pollution,8
The South Asian countries should do everything possible to boost rainfall by increasing forestry and vegetation,15
"Slowing down urbanisation may help lower PM2.5 pollution in the long run, but this is unlikely to be seen in this region considering the rapid economic development",8
Rapid action on good governance and policy implementation to fight the overall effect of environmental pollution is probably the most important and effective countermeasures to reduce haze pollution,16
A combination of human and natural factors causes significant environmental degradation,15
"Water quality experiments are difficult, costly, and time-consuming",6
"The groundwater quality index (GWQI) and the effective water quality factors (distance from industries, groundwater depth, and transmissivity of aquifer formations) were implemented as output and input variables, respectively",6
"In arid and semi-arid areas such as Iran, due to water scarcity, studies of groundwater are very important for water resources protection and planning",6
"In recent decades, human activities such as agriculture, manufacture, and urban development have affected groundwater quality negatively",11
"Therefore to optimally manage water resources, it is necessary to study water quality",6
SOM has been developed for a wide range of water resources issues and modeling for water quality assessment (Ehsani and Quiel 2008; Iwashita et al,6
Previous studies on water quality using ANNs (Ghose et al,6
"In water quality studies, it is necessary to use an appropriate index",6
"(1970) and later improved by the Scottish Development Department (1975), following the suggestion in Horton (1965) that the various water quality data could be aggregated into one overall index (House and Ellis 1987)",6
(2011) applied a GIS-based multi-criteria analysis by assigning weights to different water quality parameters (Pirasteh et al,6
They grouped water quality into six classes ranging from very mild to unfit for drinking,6
"They found that in most of the study areas, water quality varies from moderate to good except in some areas where the groundwater quality is classified as ‘poor to unfit’",6
"In recent years, much progress in artificial intelligence techniques has been seen and applied in many cases, including environmental and water quality",6
A review of previous studies showed that each of these methods has high performance in water quality modeling,6
"Study area (A) and location of the groundwater wells (B) In this study, eight water quality parameters including cations and anions (K+, Na+, Ca2+, Cl−, Mg2+, and So42−), pH, and total dissolved salt (TDS) were selected",6
"Because of the lack of microbial pollution measurements in the region, there is a limitation in defining the water quality index",6
"Out of 200 drinking water wells in the study area, 85 wells were selected based on their existing qualitative secondary data (water quality experiments)",6
The selected wells had adequate water quality data over a 6-year period from 2012 to 2017 compared to shorter periods for other wells,6
National standards of Iran for potable water quality including the eight parameters are given in Table 1,6
Each parameter has a different weight in terms of its contribution to water quality,6
"To estimate the final index, by aggregating all the normalized parameters, the weights of parameters in the final GWQI are defined based on their participation in the water quality determination",6
The difference between the rate of observed and simulated water quality index is the objective function and the goal is to equalize the simulated and observed values,6
"In the discussion of water quality, accurate estimation of maximum and minimum water quality index values is important to identify contaminated zones or zones with very good drinking water quality",6
"Finally, the method used to classify water quality in general or to achieve water quality classes have performed very well",6
"For example, changes in industrial distances from a specific location or fluctuations in groundwater depth can be used for the tested model and their effect on water quality in the model can be evaluated",6
Coupling artificial intelligence with GIS tools can provide practitioners with an easily interpretable water quality production map to manage these resources,6
The study deals with the effect of political stability on environmental degradation in the long run for the United Kingdom (UK),15
"Hence, empirical results highlight the asymmetric effect of political stability on environmental degradation in the long run for UK",15
"Naturally, it is obvious that energy demand increases while economic growth continues and the population increases (Shahbaz et al",8
"In the literature, various researches examine the role of energy consumption on environment (i.e., Cheng and Yao 2021; Li et al",7
"Moreover, the effects of economic growth (i.e., Nurgazina et al",8
"2022), renewable energy consumption (i.e., Kartal 2022, b; Kirikkaleli et al",7
"In the existing condition, while such countries and country groups as Brazil, BRICS, Canada, China, and Vietnam are uncovered in terms of political stability effect on environmental degradation; unfortunately, there are still other important countries like the UK that has not been examined yet according to the best knowledge",15
"Overall, although the literature includes various studies that examine the effect of political stability on environmental degradation for some country cases, the literature is not reach in examining this relationship for some other countries, such as the UK, which constitutes a literature gap",15
"By considering the significance of the UK from the perspectives of economic size, energy consumption, and environmental quality and the literature gap, this study analyzes the asymmetric effect of political stability on production-based CO2 emissions in the UK",7
"That is why the positive and negative changes in explanatory variables may not have a similar effect on CO2 emissions because they have different interaction channels, such as long-term decisions, promoting renewable energy usage, stimulating green energy innovation incentives and investments, with the environmental quality",7
(2022b) examine BRICS countries for the period 1990–2018 through the moments of quantile regression approach and define that political risk has an increasing effect on environmental degradation,15
"In this context, one of the important indicators is economic growth",8
"In the existing literature, economic growth and its proxies have been used intensively to examine its effect on CO2 emissions, especially in environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) context",8
"In line with the existing literature, economic growth is included, GDP in the current US Dollar (USD) is used as a proxy of economic growth, and it is expected that economic growth has a degrading effect on environmental quality",8
"Also, renewable energy consumption is another important indicator of CO2 emissions",7
"As research in the existing literature, the usage of fossil fuel sources has an adverse effect on CO2 emissions, whereas renewable energy sources make a positive contribution to limiting CO2 emissions (Kartal 2022, b)",7
"Hence, in line with the existing literature, renewable energy is included and it is expected that renewable energy has an improving effect on environmental quality",7
"As a summary, it can be stated that the literature has some researchers that consider political stability in examining environmental degradation, they investigate either a country (e.g., China, Canada, Brazil) or country groups (e.g., G-7, BRICS, BRI), and different econometric techniques (e.g., ARDL, cointegration regression, generalized method of moments, Granger causality, moments of quantile regression, and panel data analysis) are applied for empirical examination",15
"In the empirical examination, quarterly data is used because GDP as a proxy of economic growth is announced quarterly",8
"By following the methodology, this study applies the following empirical model: where CO2, PS, GDP, RE, TO, β, \(\varepsilon\), and t denote CO2 emissions, political stability, GDP current, renewable energy consumption, trade openness, intercept, error-term, and times, respectively",7
"By considering that logarithm series are used in the empirical analysis, Eq. (1) is rewritten as follows: where LnCO2, LnPS, LnGDP, LnRE, and LnTO denote the logarithm series of CO2 emissions, political stability, GDP current, renewable energy consumption, and trade openness, respectively",7
"Besides, economic growth can have an increasing effect on CO2 emissions (\({\beta }_{2}= \frac{\partial {CO}_{2}}{\partial GDP}>0\))",8
Renewable energy can have a mitigating effect on CO2 emissions (\({\beta }_{3}= \frac{\partial {CO}_{2}}{\partial RE}>0\)),7
It implies that economic growth or economic decline has an increasing effect on CO2 emissions meaning that economic structure is fossil-fuel based,8
"In addition, positive shocks in political stability are much more powerful than negative shocks, whereas negative shocks in GDP and renewable energy consumption are much more powerful than positive shocks",7
"Hence, it can be concluded that there are asymmetric effects of political stability on CO2 emissions, political stability has a significant effect on managing CO2 emissions, and empirical outcomes highlight the significance of political stability in terms of environmental degradation for the UK",15
(2022) for the effect of economic growth on CO2 emissions; and  Adebayo et al,8
(2022) for the effect of renewable energy consumption on CO2 emissions,7
"Fifthly, considering that renewable energy consumption is highly effective on CO2 emissions according to empirical outcomes, UK policymakers should continue incentives and policies to decrease fossil fuel sources and increase renewable sources",7
"Hence, the UK can benefit much more from renewable energy usage by declining CO2 emissions from energy consumption",7
"There are monthly data for political stability indicators, but data for most other indicators like economic growth is quarterly according to the best knowledge",8
Green technological innovation (GTI) aims to realize management innovation and technological innovation with the goal of protecting the environment,8
"There are few studies on the health of green technological innovation system (GTIS), and almost no indicators to evaluate whether GTIS status is sustainable",8
"Government funds, foreign direct investment, pollution control investment, green product sales revenue, and green technology trading volume are the foci of healthy improvement of GTIS, and they are all positive indicators",9
"With the establishment of green, low-carbon, and cycle economical systems, green technological innovation (GTI) is becoming an important driving force for sustainable development and an important support for promoting the construction of ecological civilization and promoting high-quality development (The central people's government of the People's Republic of China, 2019)",8
Only a healthy green technological innovation system (GTIS) can promote the orderly development of society,8
"Its purpose is to reduce energy consumption, environmental damage, and human threats, and maximize ecological benefits while obtaining economic benefits (Bosetti et al",7
"“By 2022, a market-oriented GTIS will be basically completed, the position of enterprise GTI will be strengthened, several leading backbone enterprises will emerge, and ‘industry-university-research institute-financial institution-intermediary’ will be deeply integrated and efficiently coordinated, thereby forming a new situation of GTI in which R&D, application and promotion, and industrial development are integrated (The central people’s government of the People’s Republic of China, 2019).” Therefore, how to detect the health of GTIS has become one of the important topics in the field of sustainable development",9
"It can not only meet the needs of human social and economic development, but also respond to man-made and environmental coercion, and maintain the stabilities of various functions in the system and the sustainable development of the system itself",8
"GTIS health evaluation is a research basis for the prediction or early warning of the development status of the green, low-carbon, and circular economy, and an effective tool or means for GTIS management",12
Li and Wang (2021) study the impacts of different subsidy policies on material recycling technology innovation based on the theoretical deduction method,12
"In the progress of achieving SDGs, the health of ecosystems has attracted more and more scholars’ interest",15
"Therefore, this paper selects the industrial enterprises above the designated size, colleges and universities, and R&D institutions with GTI capability in GTIS",9
"Specifically, the former includes green technology R&D investment, green technology R&D personnel full-time equivalent, number of green technology R&D projects, and R&D spending for green products",9
"Considering the availability of green-related data, the green technology R&D investment is expressed as the product of the sum of internal R&D expenditures of three subjects and the proportion of green technology patents in all patent applications (abbreviated as the proportion of green technology patents)",9
"Precisely, the competitive force includes quality of labor, proportion of industrial enterprises above designated size with R&D institutions, and proportion of external expenditure of R&D expenditure",9
"The openness includes annual net inflow of urban employed population, attractiveness to employees, expenditure on green technology upgrading, and green product export rate",9
"All the above indicators are positive except for energy intensity and carbon intensity, which are negative",7
"Proportion of overseas green technology: considering the availability of overseas patented technology, we calculate the proportion of green technology patents in the “Patent Cooperation Treaty” as the proportion of overseas green technology patents",9
"Health grade cloud map of GTIS in 30 provinces in 2019 According to Table 4, we find that the government funds (X222), foreign direct investment (X224), pollution control investment (X225), green product sales revenue (X332), and green technology trading volume (X336) occupy relatively high weights in GTIS, indicating that the five indicators have greater impacts on the health of GTIS and are the main foci for improving the health of GTIS",9
"Fourth, it is imperative to establish a sound green technology trading system to strengthen multi-agent collaborative governance and optimize GTIS construction (Liu et al",9
"It is imperative to establish a perfect green technology trading mechanism to improve the efficiency of green technology trading, increase the benefits of green technology trading, improve the coverage of green technology, and promote the healthy and harmonious development of GTIS",9
"The results show that the government funds (X222), foreign direct investment (X224), pollution control investment (X225), green product sales revenue (X332), and green technology trading volume (X336) have great impacts on the health of GTIS in each province, which are the main points to improve the health of GTIS",9
"Although energy intensity (X333) and carbon intensity (X334) can reduce the health of GTIS, their negative effects are not particularly significant from an overall perspective, which is related to the effective control of environmental regulations, such as cap-and-trade regulation",7
"Analytical results show that the energy intensity (Table S-10) and carbon intensity (Table S-11) of most provinces decline to a certain extent during 2012–2019, resulting in a low negative impact on GTIS health",7
"In addition, in the evaluation system, the green technology trading volume (X336) is a positive indicator reflecting the marketization degree of GTI",9
The added value of green technology trading volume represents the degree of improvement of GTI capacities,9
"The higher the green technology trading volume, the healthier the GTIS",9
"In short, the increase in green technology R&D innovation level can cause an increase in the supply rate and transaction rate of green technology (Feng 2010; Xie et al",9
"The increase in green technology transactions can in turn attract more innovative behaviors, thus creating a virtuous circle environment for the sustainable development of GTIS",9
These considerations can help them determine long-term economic growth and sustainability,8
"Government subsidy intervention is the most direct and effective means to improve the R&D and innovation capacities of enterprises, R&D institutions, colleges and universities, etc",9
"In addition, increasing foreign direct investment and enhancing the utilization rate of international resources can improve the R&D vitality of GTIS subjects, so that they will not be timid in taking action",9
"For example, as one of the important energy industrial bases in China, Heilongjiang province has been dominated by raw coal in energy consumption, which leads to the deterioration of the ecological environment",7
"Finally, in addition to policy demand pull, it is increasingly recognized that GTI can promote sustainable economic development (Lin and Chen 2019)",8
Our results show that green technology trading volume is an important positive indicator that affects the health of GTIS,9
"Therefore, for the regions with relatively low green technology trading volume, it is imperative for the government to strengthen policy demand pulling, improve the efficiency of green market transformation, and expand green technology trading",9
"For example, the green technology trading volume in Heilongjiang province is very low, with an average trading volume of CNY103.716 million in 8 years, far lower than the national average trading volume of CNY486.649 million",9
"Only by increasing intervention and financial support can enterprises (colleges and universities, R&D institutions) be motivated to switch to GTI and improve the health of GTIS",9
We will further analyze the impact of carbon tax policy on GTIS health by collecting carbon tax data of industrial enterprises on provincial regulations in future researches,12
"Accordingly, in the 2019–2023 Strategic Plan of the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, targets to increase the installed capacity of renewable energy sources have been determined",7
"In this context, this article examines fort the first time, the effect of installed capacity of renewable energy sources on sectoral electricity demand",7
"Thus, the study aims to evaluate the renewable energy policies implemented in Turkey",7
"According to the forecast results made in the second stage of the study, it was observed that the higher the increase rate in the installed capacity of renewable energy sources, the faster the electricity demand would decrease",7
"According to these results, Turkey needs to increase the share of renewable energy sources in electricity production in terms of economic and environmental sustainability.Graphical  Energy is one of the basic requirements for sustainable development (Guzović et al",7
"In this sense, it has taken its place as SDG7 with the aim of “Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all” among the sustainable development goals (SDGs) announced by the United Nations (UN) in September 2015 (UN 2015)",7
"Today, many countries are trying to ensure energy security and achieve sustainable development goals by using more cleaner and affordable energy sources (Kumar and Tewary 2022)",7
"Although countries have new technologies that enable energy savings and increase energy efficiency, energy consumption (demand) is constantly increasing (Demir and Cergibozan 2020)",7
"While energy demand is expected to increase globally under ordinary scenarios, fossil fuel resources are decreasing, energy prices are increasing, and environmental issues such as climate change are becoming more important (Büyüközkan and Güleryüz 2016)",13
"Therefore, electrical energy is an extremely important requirement for sustainable economic growth",8
"For many years, fossil fuels such as coal, oil, or natural gas have been the main sources of electricity generation",7
"However, the use of these fuels increases greenhouse gas emissions which cause adverse effects on climate change and the environment (UN 2020)",13
These problems faced by countries that intensely use fossil fuels in their energy mix have led these countries to alternative energy sources,7
"While the total primary energy consumption in Turkey was 152.7 MTEP (million tons of oil equivalent) in 2017, it increased by 0.5% to 153.5 MTEP in 2018",7
"Looking at Turkey’s primary energy consumption in 2018 in terms of sources, oil ranks first with 48.6 MTEP",7
"Renewable energy sources (RES), the consumption of which has been increasing with coal in recent years, is in the last place in Turkey's primary energy consumption with 22.0 MTEP",7
Electrical energy is one of the leading goods and services whose consumption has increased with the economic development in Turkey,8
"Electric energy consumption in Turkey has shown a regular increase as of the years, except for the 2001 and 2009 crisis years",7
Especially SDG 7 is one of the main targets that should be taken forward for Turkey,7
"On the other hand, the intensive use of these resources in the energy mix causes deterioration in environmental quality (Zhang et al",7
The decrease in the load capacity factor together with the increasing energy consumption in Turkey also shows this deterioration (Pata and Balsalobre-Lorente 2022),7
"In the face of this economically and environmentally unsustainable situation, RES seem to be the most appropriate solution for developing a clean and sustainable energy system and achieving SDG7 targets (Yüksel 2010)",7
Turkey has a high renewable energy (RE) potential due to its geographical location (Basaran et al,7
"Turkey’s total realizable renewable energy potential is equal to 13% of the EU’s (European Union) total potential and ranks fifth after Germany, France, Spain, and the UK (Sirin and Ege 2012)",7
"In addition, the highest hydroelectric, wind and geothermal energy potential among European countries belongs to Turkey (Baris and Kucukali 2012)",7
"In this context, Turkey has planned to increase the share of renewable energy sources such as hydro, solar, geothermal, and wind in energy production in order to prevent the energy crisis and reduce environmental pollution (Alkan and Albayrak 2020)",7
Turkey has made significant progress in the field of renewable energy in recent years,7
This law is revolutionary in terms of renewable energy practices and regulations,7
"With the legislations updated recently, electricity generation from RES has been encouraged",7
The production of renewable energy power plants within the installed capacity has increased,7
"In recent years, especially, the increase in the installed power of renewable energy sources (RESIC) other than hydraulics has attracted attention",7
"While the share of geothermal, wind and solar energy resources in the total installed power was negligible (0.9%) in 2008, this rate has reached 15% as of 2018 (TEİAŞ 2018; TSKB 2019)",7
"Development of Turkish electricity installed capacity by primary energy sources Electricity generation from RES (including hydroelectric) in Turkey was 87.2 TWh (terawatt hours) in 2017, and this value increased by 12% to 97.7 TWh at the end of 2018",7
"However, the 30% increase in electricity generation from renewable sources other than hydroelectricity draws attention",7
"Solar energy, which has shown great improvement in recent years, has the biggest share in the increases compared to the previous year, with 169% (4.9 TWh), while biomass energy takes the second place with an increase of 28.6% (0.6 TWh)",7
The increase rate in 2018 was 21.3% (1.3 TWh) in geothermal energy and 11.2% (2.0 TWh) in wind energy,7
"It is noteworthy that the increase in hydroelectricity, which is the most used RES in electricity generation in Turkey, was only 2.9% (1.0 TWh) compared to the previous year (TEİAŞ 2018)",7
"Turkey has set targets for the future in order to use domestic and renewable energy sources more intensively in electrical energy production, to bring these sources to the economy in a reliable and economical way, to increase the diversity of sources and to protect the environment",7
"In this strategic plan, it is aimed to increase the ratio of electricity installed capacity based on domestic and renewable energy sources to the total installed capacity from 59 to 65%",7
"With this strategic plan, Turkey will make a significant contribution to the achievement of SDG 7, as well as realizing its own goals",7
"These targets, which are also used as the base scenario in the simulation application made for the purpose of evaluating the renewable energy policies that are the subject of the study, are presented in Table 1 (ETKB 2019)",7
"As seen in Table 1, the total installed capacity of renewable energy sources (RESIC) is targeted to be 45.809 MW in 2019, 49.748 MW in 2020, 51.843 MW in 2021, 53.649 MW in 2022, and 56.804 MW in 2023",7
"The aim of this study, which deals with the electrical energy demand in Turkey with econometric models is to analyze the effects of renewable energy policies on the sectoral electrical energy demand in line with these determined targets, with econometric simulation method",7
"Based on this purpose, the second aim of the study is to make forecast about the effects of the renewable energy policies implemented in line with the 2023 targets on the electrical energy demand",7
The current study differs from previous studies in terms of examining electricity demand based on renewable energy,7
"It has the distinction of being the first, to the best of our knowledge, by its investigation on the impact of renewable energy policies on electricity demand",7
"(2021) analyzed the impact of climate change on Turkey’s residential, industrial, and commercial electricity demand for the period 1980–2017 by applying the structural time series model and made projections for three different scenarios",13
(2016) aimed at developing an innovative hybrid modeling approach for the prediction of residential energy consumption,7
"Since the current study evaluates the renewable energy policies implemented in Turkey, it is important to mention the studies on this subject",7
"(Kucukali and Baris 2011) evaluated the relevant government policies, financial and peripheral aspects of renewable energy projects, as well as exploring the existence and potential of RES in Turkey",7
"2011) evaluated Turkey’s current energy situation, renewable energy potential and energy policy",7
"(Şekercioğlu and Yılmaz 2012) examined the renewable energy policies of EU and Turkey and created a future projection for the sustainability of Turkey’s renewable energy policy in the short, medium and long-term",7
"Baris and Kucukali (2012) evaluated the existence and potential of RES in Turkey, and the efficiency of government policies focusing particularly on the Renewable Energy Law (Law No",7
(2015) has evaluated Turkey’s renewable energy potential and legal requirements in comparison with the European Union in order to take into account the key priorities in Turkey’s energy policy,7
Melikoglu (2016) has calculated the cost of renewable energy investments based on Turkey’s 2023 energy targets in detail,7
(2017) analyzed Turkey’s transition to 100% renewable energy by 2050 using an hourly analysis model,7
Nwulua and Agboolab (2011) evaluated the state of the electricity industry in Nigeria and investigated Nigeria’s potential for renewable energy sources by taking into account electricity generation and consumption in the country,7
(2012) proposed three electricity supply scenarios for 2030 according to different nuclear power development policies and evaluated the maximum contribution of renewable energy generation for Japan to implement a safe and clean electricity system of the future,7
(2014) examined Finland’s renewable energy policies up to 2020 using a causal loop diagram and system dynamics model,7
(2017) evaluated alternative policy scenarios to achieve the 2030 renewable energy target using the Fuzzy TOPSIS method,7
Ndiritu and Engola (2020) analyzed the effects of the FIT (feed-in-tariff) policy in renewable energy development in Kenya,7
"The variables used in the current study were determined in line with economic theory (factors that should be included in the demand model: price of the good, income, price of substitute goods) and literature review (variables such as climatic conditions, economic development, etc",8
The scenarios have been prepared with reference to the RESIC (renewable energy resources installed capacity) variable,7
"Base scenario uses renewable energy sources (solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, and biomass) installed capacity targets included in the Objective (A1) table of the MENR’s strategic plan as base",7
"In the low scenario, the average increase rate (4.3%) in RESIC during the period of 1988–2004 (before 2005), which is considered as the period when renewable energy policies were not implemented in the time period covered by the study, was applied for each year based on the year 2018",7
"In high scenario, the average increase rate (8.8%) in RESIC was used for each year between 2005 and 2017, when renewable energy policies to be implemented were started and continued within the period examined in the study (base year: 2018)",7
"We can explain the assumptions of these variables applied in the same way in all three scenarios as follows: for GDP, IVA, and TGDP variables, in the country report numbered 19/395 published by the IMF (International Monetary Fund) for Turkey in December 2019, the real GDP growth rates in Table 1 under the title of selected economic indicators are used",8
"In this report, Turkey’s GDP growth rate is estimated as 0.2% for 2019, 3% in the period until 2023, and 3.5% in 2023 (IMF, 2019)",8
"As an indicator of economic development, the coefficient value of UP of 0.127 indicates that RED will increase with economic development",8
"In order to evaluate the renewable energy policies implemented in Turkey, the coefficient value of RESIC included in the model (− 0.597) revealed that there is a negative relationship between RESIC and RED",7
"In the short-run relationship of RESIC with CED, it has been determined that the effect of the policies cannot be seen clearly in the short run, since the use of renewable energy sources is not yet at the desired levels (Topcu et al",7
"Considering the forecast results given in Table 11, it was determined that the renewable energy policies implemented in Turkey decreased the electricity demand in all the sectors examined",7
"When evaluated in terms of scenarios, it is understood that the more the installed capacity of renewable energy sources increases (the use of renewable energy sources), the lower the electricity demand will be",7
This situation can be attributed to the low cost of electrical energy in the total industrial energy cost due to the low share of electrical energy consumption in the total energy consumption of the industrial sector (ETKB 2020),7
"As an indicator of economic development, it has been determined that the increase in the urban population (UP) rate examined in the study more or less increases the electricity demand in all sectors",8
"Increasing technological developments in parallel with the economic development, and accordingly the increase in the diversity and use of electrical appliances, the increase in social living spaces and activities in cities will increase the demand for electricity",8
Turkey’s foreign dependency problem in energy and renewable energy sources that come to mind first in solving this problem are the prominent topics among Turkey’s 2023 targets,7
"This study investigated the effect of renewable energy sources installed capacity (RESIC) on electricity demand, unlike the literature, in order to evaluate the renewable energy policies implemented in Turkey",7
"In other words, residentials can both meet their own needs and contribute to reducing the electricity demand load on the public with the electrical energy they produce using renewable energy sources",7
In this sense Tatlı (2017) remarks that electricity demand can be reduced by increasing the use of renewable energy sources (solar energy) in residentials,7
"This long-term result shows that although there is a large renewable energy resource potential in Turkey, this potential has not yet been utilized at the desired rate, especially due to high costs (Topçu et al",7
"When the effect of RESIC on the government offices electricity demand is examined, the result obtained (− 0.491) shows that a decrease in the electricity demand of government offices can be achieved thanks to the renewable energy technologies to be applied in government buildings",7
"This result means that the use of renewable energy sources in the supply of electricity consumed for lighting parks, streets and avenues can reduce the amount of electricity demanded from the government for these services",7
"Turkey, which mostly uses fossil fuels in electricity generation, is a net importer country in terms of these sources",7
"For this reason, Turkey has turned to renewable energy sources in order to reduce its dependence, ensure energy supply security and prevent the deterioration of its environmental quality",7
It has developed various policies and targets to make maximum use of renewable energy sources,7
"This study; with the purpose of evaluating the renewable energy policies implemented in Turkey, analyzed the electrical energy demand in Turkey on a sectoral basis",7
It has been observed that the increase in the urban population (representative of economic development) increases the electricity demand in all sectors in the long run,8
"In order to evaluate the renewable energy policies implemented in Turkey, it has been determined that the RESIC variable included in the models has a significant and negative effect on electricity demand in all sectors in the long run",7
The Turkish government should develop new and effective policies to increase the share of renewable sources in electricity generation and the total energy mix,7
"Legislative regulations can be introduced for new buildings (such as residentials, factories, commercial buildings, public buildings) to meet their electricity needs from renewable energy",7
"Investments in the renewable energy sector should be encouraged and supported with tax exemptions, low interest rates and subsidies",7
"In order to increase energy efficiency, optimal energy combinations should be determined, taking into account economic and environmental conditions",7
Efficiency increase and sustainability of energy supply can be achieved by increasing hybrid technology power plants that allow the use of renewable and non-renewable energy sources together,7
"This paper analyzes the contributions of renewable energy sources (RES)’s to the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of sustainable development",7
"Moreover, we add energy security as a possible fourth dimension into the analysis",7
"In the last contribution, RES has a positive effect on sustainable energy supply security in the context of electricity generation (.032%)",7
"Although the effects of RES on the environment, social, and energy security are significant, they are limited",7
The first and second criteria have been debated on economic development since the post-war period,8
Renewable energy sources (RES)’s benefit in realizing sustainable development goals looks like mostly fossil energy sources,7
"Hence, they could be beneficial in mitigating global warming and climate change",13
"Furthermore, they might assist the energy security issue by facilitating diversification of energy supply",7
It also contributes more to reducing the recovery cost of health and environmental degradation due to fossil fuel pollution from the production and consumption process,15
Well-being level improves with the help of widespread access to electricity and reasonable energy end-use prices,7
Solar power systems can benefit watering systems and cause more productivity in agricultural implications,7
"In summary, thanks to renewable resources, we can form modern and easily accessible sustainable energy and climate-resistant and ecologically protective infrastructure in rural areas (IRENA 2015)",7
"RES (especially hydropower, wind power, and solar energy) could be an advantageous and robust alternative for the environment regarding a different energy need, particularly electricity production",7
Power plants such as thermal reactors need massive water input for the cooling phase and produce polluted water output at the end of the process,7
"Before explaining the security contribution of RES, the connection between energy security and SD must be clear",7
"In the definition of International Energy Agency (2019), energy security is “the uninterrupted availability of energy sources at an affordable price.” SD is “the idea that human societies must live and meet their needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” according to the definition of The Brundtland Report (1987) of G",7
"Furthermore, sustainable development and energy security are closely connected topics if the connected points become apparent",7
RES has significant implications on energy security (SEC),7
"Over and above, they argue that energy security, like sustainable development, tries to define economic, social, and environmental goals showing often evidence conflicting with each other",7
This issue focuses on environmental awareness about energy power plants,7
"In summary, renewables are directly or indirectly related to some SD targets in the context of energy security",7
"Our goal is to investigate the linkages between economic, social, and environmental dimensions and energy security, probably as the fourth one with RES",7
"As an input factor, the studies generally operate renewable energy consumption (REC), renewable electricity consumption (RELC), biomass consumption (BIOC), renewable combustible and waste consumption (RCW), combined heat and power generation (CHP), and renewable electricity production (RELP)",7
"As an input factor, energy is a significant factor promoting output and thus economic growth",8
"Moreover, most of the studies related to RES are interested in the economic growth and RES connection",8
(2022) study on fiscal decentralization as a determinant of renewable usage and also search the correlation between REC and economic growth,8
(2022) declare the feedback effect between renewable and economic growth (EG),8
Resource dependence and anti-corruption regulations take the role in these thresholds,16
(2022) investigate the connection between RES and green economic growth for the ECOWAS,8
They employ Divisia envelope analysis (DEA) and demonstrate that a 1% increase in RES deployment leads to 3.2% improvement in green growth,8
Research and development activities also result a higher growth rates in green economy,9
The discouraging effect of RES is a finding of some papers; de Oliveira and Moutinho (2022) investigate and reveal that REC diminishes economic growth for BRICS countries,8
"In addition, fossil resources take a more significant share of electricity generation",7
"Investigating the multiple efficacies of renewable energy sources, Andini et al",7
"According to the structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model, RES projects lead to product growth, reduce unemployment, play a positive role in import substitution in energy, and improve environmental conditions",8
(2022) search RES’s effect on ecological footprint at the expense of economic growth,8
Saidi and Omri (2020) analyze both economic growth and emission with REC,8
The results show a bidirectional causality between REC and economic growth (EG) for both the long and short runs,8
"In the context of consumption-based emission, RES is a critical component to fight environmental degradation in Khan et al",15
(2021a) search the impact of transportation investment on carbon emission for China and reveal that renewable energy integration into the transportation might reduce emission level produced by the sector,7
(2021c) and Anwar and Malik (2021d) find similar findings for REC and also depict that technological innovation and institutional quality contribute positively to the environment for G7 countries,8
"Scholars related to the social dimension, such as Pirlogea (2012), find that RES mitigates climate change and contributes to human development for several European Union countries",13
"This link might source from energy-driven emission level; and thus, more energy consumption leads to more developed life quality",7
"Most studies focus on energy security on possible energy generation scenarios of RES, and empirical research is scarce",7
"She uses four indices to calculate the energy security supply index: import dependency index, intensity index, domestic production index, and a composite index",7
The results demonstrate that both primary energy supply and REC contribute positively to energy security,7
(2018) investigate the substitution possibility of RES for fossil fuels in energy security,7
They look at the electricity generation-RELP connection,7
"While solar cells and hydropower have substitution effects, wind power does not have substitute power",7
"Furthermore, they cannot meet electricity generation without fossil fuel recharge due to the discrete nature of RES",7
"In contrast, flexible and controllable fossil fuels support RES in electricity generation",7
The third contribution is energy security as a fourth dimension for SD and investigating the link between renewable and energy security,7
"Energy security dimension: energy security function Moments representing distributional properties are essential in the estimation process, and related models are classified according to these properties",7
"As inputs labor, capital accumulation, fossil, and renewable energy sources",7
Our contribution as the fourth dimension of SD is energy security (Table 6),7
Renewables can be evaluated inside the energy security dimension by substituting the electricity supply of fossil fuels,7
One lagged value of lelg demonstrates the same pattern with one lagged dependent variable in other models and motivates the actual electricity generation,7
"Erdal (2015) measures energy security in the context of indexes and RES enhances import dependency rate (\(\sim\) 0.58), energy intensity (\(\sim\) 0.63), and composite index (\(\sim\) 0.40)",7
"Renewables support energy generation with all sources, especially wind and solar power",7
"Hence, they might contribute to energy security and the economy by sustaining sufficient and permanent energy at a reasonable price (SDG12)",7
"They offer clean energy alternatives for mitigating environmental consequences and climate changes with their more friendly solutions for soil, water, and air (SDG13)",7
"Moreover, renewables might give the opportunity of accessible, fair, and equal energy for all (SDG7)",7
"In this study, we analyze the link between RES with SD dimensions and investigate the energy security contribution of RES from 1995 to 2015 and OECD countries",7
This paper differentiates from others by analyzing the multiple dimension of SD and empirical investigation of energy security,7
They can enhance human development and economic growth by this way (Mitchell et al,8
We obtain similar findings for energy security like emissions and human development having positive but restricted rates of contribution,7
"In addition, R&D investments can be an another strong policy instrument to improve demand for RE technologies, reduce production cost, enhance feedback cycle, stimulate private investments, etc",9
"The Toda-Yamamoto Granger causality test shows a feedback causality between economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions, as well as between GDP and coal consumption",8
"Based on these outcomes, policy directions such as diversification of the South Africa energy mix to renewables and cleaner energy sources and also the adoption of carbon capturing and storage techniques were suggested to engender a cleaner and friendlier environment",7
"Also, the total electricity generation from coal sources is accounted in the following ways: 95% in South Africa, 79% in China, 69% in India, 51% in the USA, 38% in South Korea, and 29% in Japan",7
"Even with the overwhelming evidence supporting coal consumption as an important energy source for many countries, there are scanty studies that have engaged recent and advance econometric techniques in testing the nexus between coal consumption and economic growth (Jinke et al",8
"One of the goals of the United Nations (UN) in terms of its sustainable development growth (SDGs) is access to energy, which is resonated in the goal 7 of the SDG",7
"Across the globe, economies are also confronted with climate change issues that are aggravated by the greenhouse gas as results of CO2 emissions, which is SDGs 13",13
All the above highlights inform the choice of this study’s variables as well as investigate the relationship between energy (coal) consumption and economic growth in South Africa,8
The South African economy has a very rich and dynamic energy mix which is worthy of investigation,7
South Africa is also endowed with reasonable amount of renewable energy sources,7
DEM (2016) reported the contribution of the renewable energy exploited for electricity power generation for industrial and residential consumption,7
"In recent times, energy consumption and real income nexus have dominated literature, and this discussion is ongoing (Balcilar et al",7
"Raza and Shah (2019) examined the causal relationship between coal consumption and economic growth by including fiscal deficit, rural-urban population, and unemployment for Pakistan over the period 1981–2017",8
Their results posit that there is a short-run and long-run bi-directional causal relationship between coal consumption and economic growth,8
"However, Al-mulali and Che Sab (2018) showed that there is no short-run and long-run Granger causality between coal consumption and economic growth for panel countries",8
"Matar and Bekhet (2015) assessed the empirical dynamic relationship among the electrical consumption, economic growth, export, and financial development in Jordan over the 1976–2011 period, providing evidence of a long-run equilibrium relationship between electricity consumption and the economic growth and a unidirectional relationship from real GDP to electrical consumption",8
Their results also confirmed that bi-directional causality between coal consumption and economic growth for China and India,8
Nasiru (2012) for Nigeria found one-way directional causality flowing from economic growth to coal consumption,8
Li and Leung (2012) investigated the relationship between coal consumption and economic growth using provincial level panel data for the case of China,8
"Their findings were conflicting as coastal region revealed a bi-directional causal interaction between, whereas for central region the causal relationship was unidirectional, from economic growth toward coal consumption",8
The bi-directional causality implies both coal consumption and economic growth can have lasting impact on each other,8
"Take for instance, should policies of energy conservation be adopted as the policy direction, this may retard coal consumption, and this will impact economic growth",8
"Likewise, an expansionary energy policy will accelerate economic growth and induce more coal consumption",8
They found unidirectional causal relationship running from economic growth to coal consumption,8
"Reynolds and Kolodziej (2008) investigated the energy-economic growth nexus in the case of former Soviet Union, discovering a unidirectional causal relationship from economic growth to coal consumption",8
(2008) examined the relationship between economic growth and coal consumption in China and found no causality,8
Yoo (2006) in his investigation for South Korea discovered a bi-directional causality from coal consumption to economic growth,8
"Zhou and Chau (2006) found unidirectional causal relationship from oil consumption to economic growth in the short run, whereas in the long run, a bi-directional causal relationship was found",8
Lee and Chang (2005) found evidence of bi-directional causal relationship between coal consumption and economic growth in Taiwan,8
(2004) did not find any causality link between coal consumption and economic growth in the case of New Zealand,8
"(2004) for Pacific Rim countries of Australia and New Zealand found a unidirectional causal relationship from economic growth to coal consumption for Australia, using Johansen-Juselius and Toda-Yamamoto tests; however, any causality nexus emerges when the ARDL model is used",8
"The empirical findings suggest that GDP per capita and energy consumption show positive RSs, while trade and urban population negative ones",7
"Moreover, energy consumption and urban population reveal moderate increasing returns to scale, while GDP per capita exhibits decreasing positive returns",7
"Suppose there is one-way directional causality flowing from real income to coal consumption, this would suggest that policies that is targeted at reducing coal consumption, if executed, will have little or no negative impact on the economic growth",8
"But, if the unidirectional causal effect is opposite of the aforementioned, then policies that are targeted at reducing coal consumption could be detrimental and may result to less economic growth",8
"On the other hand, where there is bi-directional causal relationship flowing from coal consumption toward economic growth and vice versa, coal consumption is capable of stimulating economic growth, and the increase in real income further induces more demand for coal",8
This situation therefore allows both coal consumption and economic growth to serve as perfect complement for each other,8
This further implies that coal conservative policies are very likely to be injurious to economic growth,8
"Economic growth has the highest mean, while coal consumption exhibits the lowest mean",8
This means that an economy at the early stage of its growth trajectory focuses more on economic growth rather than on the quality of its environment,8
There exists a positive relationship between energy consumption (COAL) and CO2,7
A 1% increase in coal consumption increases environmental degradation by 0.76%,15
"As such, South African energy administrators need to diversify the energy portfolio to renewable energy like biomass, hydro, and solar energy sources (Emir and Bekun 2019)",7
Attempt to implement energy conservative policies will hurt economic growth,8
"The present study applies recent and up-to-date econometrics procedure to explore the relationship among coal consumption, economic growth, and carbon dioxide emissions in the case of South Africa",8
"Empirical results show statistical relationship among coal consumption, economic growth, and CO2 emissions",8
This means that all variables are critical for economic growth as an equilibrium relationship is observed among them,8
"As a matter of urgency and deliberately on the South Africa government official’s other local environmental regulation are needed, like the Action Plan for Energy, Climate for the City of Cape Town as well as the adoption of renewable technologies in its energy mix",7
"Thus, the need for synergy between sustainable and efficient energy consumption and environmental consciousness with key macroeconomic objectives is pivotal for robust and sound policy formulation",7
Departure from the already itemize trajectory will not only jeopardize economic progress but also increase environmental degradation in the country,15
This is a foundational prerequisite for sustainable economic growth without threat for environmental quality,8
"For instance, the South Africa government has made stride with the Action Plan for Energy, the Climate for the City of Cape Town, and the adoption of renewable technologies in its energy mix",7
Roads play a pivotal role in the overall economic growth of any country,8
Roads form an integral part of the transport infrastructure,9
"Adaptation to global climate change is also projected to generate the need for a significant increase in pavement maintenance investments (Chinowsky et al., 2013;Qiao et al., 2015;Lin & Ho, 2016)",13
"Therefore, a key step towards a more sustainable infrastructure is to encourage more sustainable road management activities",9
This study contributes to SDG 9 and 11 targeted indicators can be improved using the suggested indicators,9
The Southeast Asian countries have experienced significant degrees of economic growth over the years but have not managed to safeguard their environmental attributes in tandem,8
"As a result, the aggravation of the environmental indicators across this region casts a shadow of doubt on the sustainability of the economic growth achievements of the Southeast Asian countries",8
One of the major novelties of this study is in terms of its approach to assess the renewable energy use-ecological footprint nexus using the renewable electricity generation capacity as an indicator of renewable energy use in the selected Southeast Asian nations,7
"Therefore, these findings imply that in forthcoming years, the selected Southeast Asian countries will need to tackle the environmental adversities by enhancing their renewable electricity generation capacities, increasing investment in technological development, greening the financial sector, and adopting environmentally-friendly growth policies",7
"Hence, the implementation of relevant policies, in this regard, can be expected to ensure complementarity between economic growth and environmental welfare across Southeast Asia",8
"However, although the ASEAN countries prospered economically, a perpetual trade-off between higher growth and lower environmental quality has taken place; mostly accredited to the economic growth anchored by natural and fossil sources consumption (Rosenzweig et al",8
"Accommodating a total population of more than 660 million, the ASEAN-5 countries aim to ensure economic cooperation and economic development within the Southeast Asian region, accounting for almost 3% of the world output level (World Bank 2020)",8
"However, alongside such noteworthy economic growth achievements, the environmental quality in most of these nations has worsened",8
Figure 2 portrays the historical trends in the choices of primary energy inputs used for electricity generation in the selected Southeast Asian countries,7
"Hence, these figures highlight that the renewable electricity generation capacities of these countries are significantly low",7
"Thus, phasing out this traditional dependency on fossil fuels for electricity generation purposes can be hypothesized to reduce the rate of extraction and use of these environmentally unfriendly energy resources which, in turn, is likely to improve the ecological statuses of these countries.
 The choices of energy resources for electricity generation in ASEAN-5",7
Source: World Development Indicators (World Bank 2020) The aggravating trends in the EF figures along with the poor renewable energy utilization scenarios across the ASEAN-5 countries motivate this study,7
"First, the recent ratification of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement between the ASEAN and the five Asia-Pacific nations can be expected to boost the economic growth of the ASEAN-5 countries",8
"However, given the historical trends in fossil fuel dependency in these countries, this forecasted growth can also accompany environmental degradation whereby the EF figures of these can cane be anticipated to further surge in the years to come",15
"Second, since all these five Southeast Asian nations have pledged to contribute to the global attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda of the United Nations and have also ratified the Paris Agreement, it is obligatory for these nations to identify the appropriate channels through which they can inhibit the deterioration of their respective environmental attributes",13
This current study is one of the few studies that have used the EF to quantify environmental degradation in the selected ASEAN countries,15
The justification behind the decision to use the EF is driven by the fact that CO2 emissions have been acknowledged as a vague measure of environmental degradation since it does not consider the multidimensionality of the environmental hardships (Raza and Shah 2018; Balsalobre-Lorente et al,15
"Second, this current study evaluates the environmental impacts of renewable energy use from the supply-side channel",7
The previous studies have predominantly explored the renewable energy-environmental quality nexus for the ASEAN countries using the renewable energy consumption figures (Liu et al,7
"Therefore, this study uses the renewable electricity generation capacities of the selected ASEAN-5 countries to scrutinize the impacts of renewable energy on the environment",7
"Besides, since the total volume of renewable energy consumed within a country is said to be conditional on its maximum capacity to generate renewable electricity, the renewable electricity generation capacity can be considered as a more relevant proxy for estimating the environmental impacts associated with renewable energy use",7
"To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that uses the renewable electricity generation capacity to model the EF levels for the ASEAN-5 countries",7
A limited number of the preceding studies have assessed the technological innovation-environmental quality nexus using panel data sets that included some of the ASEAN nations as well (Usman and Hammar 2020),8
"Although not many existing studies have isolated the effects of technological innovations on the quality of the environment in the selected ASEAN nations, the few which did have rather used the energy efficiency levels as a proxy for technology",7
"In contrast, this study uses the number of patent applications to proxy technological innovations since the patents are referred to as more precise technological innovation indicators",8
"As far as the environmental impacts of affluence are concerned, it is believed that as the national output level within an economy increases, synonymous with economic growth, it is likely to increase the demand for natural and financial resources",8
"On the other hand, it is also believed that affluent economies are able to invest in technological development which can be effective in mitigating environmental degradation along with the growth of the economy (Khattak et al",15
"In line with these contrasting impacts, researchers have often claimed the economic growth-environmental quality nexus to be non-linear",8
This phenomenon is popularly highlighted in the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis of Grossman and Krueger (1991) which postulates that economic growth initially reduces environmental quality but improves it provided a certain level of growth is achieved (Ahmad et al,8
"Therefore, promoting green growth policies is extremely important since such policies not only facilitate the overall well-being of the environment but also helps to protect ecological resources (Ikram et al., 2020; Abid et al., 2021)",8
"On the other hand, technological innovation is believed to influence the quality of the environment",8
Developing countries with low levels of technology are often obligated to make use of environmentally unfriendly energy resources whereby a trade-off between higher economic growth and lower environmental quality can be expected,8
"In contrast, technological innovation is believed to mitigate the adverse environmental impacts of economic growth by making use of relatively more environmentally-friendly energy resources (Ozcan and Ulucak 2020)",8
"Similarly, it has been argued in the literature that technological innovation can help to develop technologies which can monitor, control, and restrict the use of environmentally unfriendly resources, in particular (Murshed et al. 2021a)",8
The idea of transitioning from non-renewable to renewable energy has also been highlighted in Goal 7 under the SDG declarations of the United Nations (Murshed 2021b),7
"More importantly, one of the several targets of Goal 7 is to substantially increase the share of renewables in the global energy mix",7
This is particularly relevant in the context of this study since it attempts to ascertain the impacts of enhancing renewable electricity generation capacity on environmental quality in the ASEAN-5 countries,7
Financial development can also ensure access to low-interest loans for research and development which can be effective in improving the overall quality of the environment (Hayat et al,9
"However, recent studies have also highlighted that human capital development can reduce the adverse environmental impacts associated with population growth (Danish et al",4
"Environmental quality is believed to be influenced by a wide array of macroeconomic variables, including economic growth, energy use, technological innovations, and financial development",8
"As far as the environmental impacts of economic growth are concerned, the preceding studies have conventionally explored the economic growth-EF nexus under the theoretical framework of the EKC hypothesis",8
(2020) employed the GMM econometric methodology to confirm a direct link between economic growth and the EF for 37 Asian countries between 1991 and 2017,8
(2020) found that economic growth and urbanization processes increase the EF in China,8
"(2020) concluded that the EKC was not validated for BRICS and Turkey (BRICST), being energy structure and energy intensity the fundamental driving forces of the EF",7
"In contrast, the use of non-fossil renewable energy resources can be assumed to improve the quality of the environment (Ito, 2017)",7
"Danish and Ulucak (2020) concluded that renewable energy promotes environmental quality in BRICS, concluding that this region requires a paradigm shift to clean energy to accomplish the SDG",7
"(2020a) showed that renewable energy contributes to correct the EF in the BRICS from 1990 to 2014, showing the same evidence in MENA countries in Nathaniel et al",7
"Although the environmental effects associated with renewable energy are often assessed by the impacts of higher renewable energy use on the environmental indicators, it is equally important to evaluate the impacts of the renewable electricity generation capacities on the environment",7
"Besides, investigating the nexus between renewable electricity generation capacity and environmental quality is also critically important from the perspective of reducing the production-based environmental adversities",7
"Moreover, it is to be noted that the electricity sectors of the selected ASEAN nations are overwhelmingly reliant on primary fossil fuel supplies for electricity generation purposes; most of these five nations produce less than one-fourth of respective total electricity outputs from renewable resources (World Bank, 2020)",7
This is a clear indication of the low renewable electricity generation capacities of these countries,7
Fossil fuel dependency is said to be a major contributor to environmental degradation for the ASEAN countries,15
"In this regard, a rise in the renewable electricity generation capacity can be hypothesized to exert favorable environmental outcomes",7
"As far as the empirical evidence on the energy consumption-EF nexus is concerned, Usman et al",7
(2021) concluded that higher renewable energy consumption levels reduced the EF figures of the 15 highest CO2-emitting countries,7
"On the other hand, Destek and Sinha (2020) found evidence of non-renewable energy consumption increasing the EF and renewable energy consumption reducing the EF in the context of 24 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries",7
"In the ASEAN context, Nathaniel and Khan (2020) found higher renewable energy consumption levels to account for lower EF figures in the long run",7
"On the other hand, technological innovations can also indirectly lead to environmental improvement by increasing energy efficiency levels (Wang and Wang, 2020)",7
"2019), it can also help expand the renewable electricity generation capacities of the ASEAN countries",7
(2020b) found evidence of technological innovation mitigating the EF both in the short- and long run,8
"On the other hand, Usman and Hammar (2020) concluded that technological innovation is detrimental to environmental quality since it boosts the EF of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) countries",8
"On the other hand, financial development can also be linked to the development of the renewable energy sector, whereby a favorable environmental impact can be expected (Liu et al., 2021)",7
"Besides, the renewable electricity generation capacities of these nations are also not homogenous",7
"17 is combined as follows:
 where yit is unemployment, xi, t is the vector of independent variables and the residual term (eit) is a multifactor residual term",8
The results show that economic growth exerts adverse environmental impacts both in the short- and the long run,8
"However, compared to the short-run, the long-run environmental impact of economic growth is found to be relatively smaller",8
"On the other hand, the elasticity estimates show that higher renewable electricity generation capacities contribute to environmental improvement in the selected ASEAN economies",7
"A 1% increase in the renewable electricity generation capacity of the ASEAN economies is found to reduce the per capita EF by 0.110% and 0.120% in the short- and long-run, respectively, ceteris paribus",7
"Additional causality relations among the other variables are reported in Table 9 in the appendix.
 Dumitrescu-Hurlin EF causality results The finding of economic growth exerting adverse environmental impacts in the ASEAN-5 countries implies that these nations are yet to prioritize environmental welfare over economic gains",8
"However, the relatively smaller long-run elasticities suggest that the adverse environmental impacts associated with economic growth tend to decrease as the per capita level of real GDP of these nations continues to increase",8
"Besides, although the results do not provide concrete evidence of a non-linear inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and EF, the EKC hypothesis can be said to hold in the context of the ASEAN countries since the long-run environmental adversities are relatively less",8
"This assertion coincides with the findings in the study by Narayan and Narayan (2010), in which the authors found evidence of the long-run adverse environmental impacts of economic growth to be lower than the short-run impacts in the context of 43 developing economies",8
"The positive economic growth-EF nexus, both in the short- and long run, was also put forward by Nathaniel et al",8
"On the other hand, the finding of higher renewable electricity generation capacity being effective in reducing the EF implies that undergoing renewable energy transition is the ultimate solution for the ASEAN-5 countries for reinstating environmental well-being",7
The existing power plants in these countries are monotonically reliant on fossil fuel supplies which exerts significant pressure on the extraction of these resources and also results in emissions of GHG into the atmosphere,7
(2021) recently claimed that enhancing renewable energy utilization is effective in reducing the EF in the long run,7
"However, these findings are in partial disagreement with the findings reported in the study by Nathaniel and Khan (2020) where the authors showed an insignificant effect of renewable energy consumption on the EF figures of the ASEAN countries",7
"Hence, these contrasting findings provide the justification behind our decision of exploring the renewable energy use-EF nexus from the production-side channel using the renewable energy generation capacity as an indicator of renewable energy use in the ASEAN-5 countries",7
"Accordingly, financial sector development can be expected to scale up investments within the renewable energy sectors of the ASEAN-5 countries which can be expected to improve the environment further",7
"Besides, the recent ratification of the RCEP agreement has raised further concerns for the Southeast Asian economies in respect of the environmental adversities which can accompany the economic growth that is expected to be generated from the execution of this agreement",8
"Furthermore, ensuing environmental sustainability has become critically important for these nations, following their commitments to achieving the SDG and the objectives of the Paris Agreement",13
"The findings from the econometric analysis, in a nutshell, revealed that economic growth is detrimental to environmental quality both in the short- and the long run",8
"First, the governments of the ASEAN-5 countries should integrate the environmental development objectives within their respective economic growth policies",8
"As a result, the economic growth of these economies can be sustained without marginalizing the welfare of the environmental attributes",8
"In this regard, it is critically important for these nations to sustainably transform their respective consumption and production processes in an environmentally friendly manner which would not only expedite the economic growth rate but would simultaneously conserve the ecological reserves as well",8
"Second, it is recommended that the ASEAN-5 nations enhance their renewable electricity generation capacities substantially by adopting relevant policies which would facilitate renewable energy transition across the ASEAN region",7
"Therefore, the governments of the ASEAN-5 countries should invest in the development of their respective energy infrastructure to significantly enhance their renewable electricity generation capacities",7
The development of environmental protection-related technologies can be effective in controlling the adverse environmental impacts,15
"Furthermore, the indirect impacts of technological innovation on the environmental quality in the ASEAN countries can be explored using interaction terms within the model.",8
We also identified the streets most selected by the simulated MLCC and then identified a green space which is a convergence point of corridors modeled for both people and bird species,11
"Finally, we suggested priority streets for planting trees and proposed interventions to turn the green space into a multifunctional park, conciliating social and ecological perspectives",11
"They play a role in biodiversity conservation and ecosystem functioning, which has been increasingly recognized and studied (Grimm et al",15
"We must explore new ways of thinking about urban ecosystems as opportunities to conciliate biodiversity conservation, ecosystem functioning, and human well-being",15
"The patch size and vegetation structure of different elements of the urban landscape, such as gardens, urban parks, and wastelands, also positively influence the diversity of bird species and traits within cities (Bonthoux et al",11
"We took into account the positive effects of the woody vegetation on the urban environment (e.g., thermal comfort, pollution control) and consequently, on human well-being (Livesley et al",11
"2017) to simulate MLCC between urban parks and green spaces, our focal areas for functional connection simulation",11
We selected urban parks and squares in which each species was previously observed (occurrence polygons) as sources and targets for bird species,11
"For people, the sources and targets were 10 polygons representing squares and urban parks considered important for people due to their historical value, tourism and leisure use",11
A key concept for developing sustainable cities is to achieve sustainable mobility (United Nations 2015),11
2014) and in turn guides urban planning,11
Priority must be given to the development of public transport systems and improving the quality of walking and cycling environments (Kenworthy 2006) in order to encourage people to walk and cycle instead of driving cars (United Nations 2015),11
"In Brazil, the concept of sustainability in terms of urban mobility has been incorporated, to varying degrees, in urban planning and management actions (Silva et al",11
These areas are important for biodiversity conservation within cities,15
"Thus, integrating birds and human perspectives in order to design ecological corridors and green spaces can assist city planners and managers to reach the 3RD (good health and well-being) and the 13TH (climate action) SDGs (United Nations 2015)",13
"Green spaces also guarantee ecosystem functions and provide ecosystem services that help to mitigate the effects of climate change such as: water protection, landslide prevention, and the reduction of heat island effect and air pollution (Vailshery et al",13
"The 11TH SDG, related to the creation of sustainable cities and communities (United Nations 2015), is currently discussed in many studies from around the world (Kaika 2017; Caprotti 2018; Lytras and Visvizi 2018; Guma 2019)",11
This requires that we take into account both socioeconomic and cultural dynamics and finding a balance between human perceptions and the ecological requirements for enhancing biodiversity conservation (Aronson et al,15
"To meet these aims, we must encourage scientists, landscape architects, resource managers, students, and citizens to discuss, collaborate, and research the planning, design, and management of biodiversity conservation in cities (Aronson et al",15
Decision makers and urban planners need to join efforts and think about cities in a smarter way to make the urban environment healthier for both human beings and other species,11
A necessary consideration regarding urban parks is the ecosystem in which they are inserted,11
The use of iterative simulation modeling can also be an interesting tool for stakeholder engagement into a complex urban planning,11
"Proper planning and management of urban forests is essential to enhance the resilience of cities in the face of climate change, reduce the impacts of urbanization on both people and biodiversity, and meet social and environmental demands.",13
"Likewise, energy consumption and urbanization processes are significant environmental polluters, while trade openness provides insignificant long- and short-term carbon emission effects",7
"Against this background, economic growth within the middle threshold promises a more sustainable environment amid rising national income at all times",8
"In the present economic advancement patterns, the issue of increasing rates of environmental decay and climate change has turned into an incredible challenge for all countries, both developed and developing",13
"Meanwhile, it has been proven that unregulated human activities in all ramifications contribute over 70% to climate change (Adebayo and Rjoub 2021)",13
"In reference to the enormous challenges of environmental decay and changing climatic conditions, the United Nations (UN) has initiated several international conventions, including the Kyoto protocol in 1997, the Paris Agreement in 2015, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2018, which are all geared toward pushing the trajectory of sustainable ecosystems for all inhabitants of the earth",13
"(2021) delineated, among other factors, the prominent place vested the relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution",8
"Accordingly, the EKC hypothesis remarks a unique relationship between economic growth and emissions, whereby environmental pollution increases alongside economic growth at the initial stage; then, over time, higher economic growth invokes significant reductions in environmental pollution (Bilgili et al",8
This suggests a short-run positive and long-run inverse relationship between economic growth and environmental quality,8
"The highlighted relationship within the economic growth–environmental quality nexus is further buttressed by three effects (Grossman and Krueger 1995): the scale, technique, and composition effects cited in extant studies, including Emre et al",8
"Accordingly, the scale effect considers an early-stage positive relationship, the composition effect suggests a likely U-shaped relationship, while the technique effect indicates an inverse relationship between economic growth and pollution mainly due to improved technologies (Bashir et al",8
Recent investigations have also extended the polarized opinions in terms of the pollution-economic growth nexus and the probable validation of the EKC in many countries and over several periods,8
"Based on the above overview of empirical inquiries suggesting open debate in terms of the pollution-economic growth nexus, a notable fact is that an emerging country and top 10 emitters, such as India, was understudied",8
"Furthermore, the IMF remarks that India is also noted as one of the fastest growing economies in the world and the country’s commitment to sustainable growth",8
"Therefore, it is expected that policymakers in India strike a balance between economic growth and the ecosystem leading to sustainable economic growth, thereby ensuring total commitment to UN SDGs 7, 12, 8, and 13",8
"1 and 2, have been provided to illustrate the interactions of economic growth and pollution, as well as environmental-control technological innovativeness in India over the period 1980–2018",8
"Accordingly, Fig. 1 reveals a simultaneous surge in both economic growth and carbon emissions over time",8
"Trend of carbon emission (CO2) and economic growth (GDP) The trend of carbon emissions (CO2) and environmental-control technology (ETec) From the foregoing, this study is a firm commitment to bear, through enhanced econometric algorithms, inclusions of key variables, and updated datasets, how the Indian ecosystem performs amid rising economic growth and the impasse of environmental-control-related technological innovativeness on environmental quality in India",8
"The enlistment of critical variables such as environmental-control-related technological innovativeness, trade openness, energy consumption, and urbanization processes into the EKC framework for India further separates this sturdy from others given that, to the best of our knowledge, most previous empirical evaluations, particularly for India, failed to consider",7
"Therefore, within the context of the present investigation, streamlined policy guidelines to curtail environmental decay and ensure green growth in India and perhaps for other developing economies will emerge",8
"Accordingly, the economic growth variable (GDP2) is decomposed into three (3) tercile partial series following Pal and Mitra (2019)",8
"On the basis of the outcomes of the VIF test (Table 6 in Appendix A), the variable human capital development (HCD) was subsequently dropped from the model because of its high degree of correlation (6.859), which crosses the permissible range of approximately 3 (Everitt and Skrondal 2010)",4
"Accordingly, the MTNARDL estimate reveals interesting outcomes, which, with due diligence, the carbon neutrality commitment and the achievements of relevant SDGs in India become realizable; hence, economic growth (GDP) exerts significant long-term positive impacts on CO2 emissions, while GDP2 at various partial deviations, upper (GDP2W1), middle (GDP2W2), and lower (GDP2W3), exert significant long-term negative impacts on carbon emissions",8
"From the estimates, it is shown that at the middle thresholds of economic growth (GDP2W2), economic growth possesses more environmental quality enhancing effects (0.03%) than the 1% effects recorded at both the upper (GDP2W1) and lower (GDP2W3) thresholds",8
"Specifically, at the middle threshold (GDP2W2), a 1% change in GDP2 results in an approximately 3% significant decline in the levels of environmental degradation in India during the long run",15
"The short-term impacts of economic growth on environmental quality are largely inconsistent, as they vary between significant positive and negative outcomes within some time lags",8
"Among other enlisted control variables, trade openness (lntopn) exerts insignificant long-term positive effects, while energy consumption (lnEng) and urbanization (lnUrbn) also exert significant positive effects on environmental quality",7
"2021), suggest that these variables, especially nonrenewable energy consumption and urbanization processes, are highly unfriendly to the environment",7
"The adoption and implementation of more environmentally friendly approaches, such as renewable energy, could provide a more conducive environment in India",7
Another notable outcome of this investigation is the revelation of a long-term asymmetric relationship between changes in economic growth (GDP2) and environmental quality in India,8
"As remarked within the lower panel (post-estimation/diagnostic tests) in Table 5, the evidence indicates significant long-run (Wald long-run asymmetric test) asymmetric effects between economic growth and environmental quality",8
"Notably, the EKC suggests varying relationships between economic growth and environmental quality",8
"Beyond the above identified lacunas in extant studies, it is also identified that most existing studies relied on linear econometric algorithms that lack the capacity to critically unravel the particular threshold at which rising prosperity does not hurt environmental health",3
"Furthermore, several extant studies have failed to consider how environmental-control technologies moderate the nexus of economic growth and environmental quality, particularly for India",8
"Additionally, energy consumption and urbanization processes wreaked havoc on environmental quality in India mostly in the long run, with notable inconsistencies in the short run",7
"Given the above scenarios, it is more profitable to clean energy sources rather than crude energies",7
"In the same vein, efforts should be extended to balance urbanization processes given their negative consequences on environmental health",3
 study was conducted to examine changes in soil fertility under different fallow periods in fields of smallholder farmers under contrasting soils and agro-ecologies in North West Zimbabwe,15
"There was no significant three-way interaction (p > 0.05) among AER, soil texture and the fallow period on the soil fertility properties except for soil pH",15
Natural fallowing has limited capacity to improve soil fertility status across different AER and soil texture in Zimbabwe on short to medium term as it takes more than 16–20 years to restore the nutrient status back to original fertility status,15
"Therefore, with the increasing population and land shortage, other low input strategies known to improve soil fertility over a short period such as improved fallows are highly recommended",15
"Seventeen SDGs were formulated and promulgated in 2016 with SDG2 and SDG13 focusing on ending hunger through appropriate agricultural practices and climate change, respectively (Friedman and Gostin 2016)",13
This results in soil fertility degradation due to soil organic matter depletion and nutrient mining (Nezomba et al,15
2020; Sheahan and Barrett 2017) and neither do they have adequate organic sources for improving soil fertility in their fields ( Zingore et al,15
"In a bid to rejuvenate soil fertility, most farmers are forced to use traditional methods of restoring degraded land or leave some of their fields under fallow (Saturday 2018; Pandit et al",15
Fallowing is a practice done as a way of restoring soil fertility in response to a decline in crop productivity and often decrease in organic matter content due to continuous cultivation (Burdukovskii et al,15
"Natural fallowing relies on germplasm already on the land with nothing being brought in, while in improved fallows, leguminous plants are grown to improve the soil fertility through biological nitrogen fixation (Mamuye et al",15
"Hence, most farmers rely on natural fallows for soil fertility improvement",15
"(2020), fallowing helps optimize water storage within the soil profile through increased infiltration of water and reduced evaporation as well as increased availability of plant nutrients through reduced soil erosion",15
"Soil regeneration refers to the improvement of soil health and restoration of highly degraded soil, which symbiotically enhances the quality of water, vegetation and land productivity (Rhodes 2017)",15
The amount of soil organic matter is normally low on arable land compared to natural environments because crop harvesting reduces organic matter inputs (Purwanto and Alam 2019),15
"Soil organic matter (SOM) is an important soil quality indicator since it influences nutrient availability, biological activity and soil aggregation (Vortr et al",2
This may reduce the benefits of fallowing since the degree of soil fertility restoration depends on the length of the fallow period,15
"In each study site, the cultivated land and forested areas were used as the negative and positive controls, respectively; naturally fallowed fields and period of abandonment were identified through collective effort as advised by farmers, local leadership and the Department of Agricultural Technical and Extension Services (AGRITEX) officials in the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural Resettlement from both Zvimba and Hurungwe districts of Zimbabwe",10
Soil fertility classification for SOC was done based on criteria outlined by Singh et al,15
"Moreover, improved fallows with N2-fixing trees, such as Acacia angustissima, Cajanus cajan, Tephrosia vogelii and Sesbania sesban, that have been shown to be effective for improving soil fertility such as pH within a shorter time period of 8 months to 3 years may also be an option to consider in the smallholder sector of Zimbabwe (Partey et al",15
Cultivation especially on sandy soils exposes the little available SOC to microbial activity and soil degradation processes as such low values were observed under cultivation (Biinemann et al,15
"According to Gross and Glaser (2021), continuous application of manure induces an increase in SOC and soil fertility",15
"In conclusion, the study revealed that natural fallowing has limited capacity to restore soil fertility status to original levels on contrasting soils in the short to medium term (< 15 years) across different agro-ecological regions (AERs) once the land has been cleared for cultivation in Zimbabwe",15
"Therefore, with the increasing population and land shortage, other low input strategies known to improve soil fertility over a short period are highly recommended",15
"Groundwater is one of the largest sources of freshwater on Earth and is an essential natural resource for human health, energy, food security, and the overall ecosystem (Wada 2016; Velis et al",2
"However, due to exponential population growth and rapid agricultural and economic development, increased pressure has been imposed on the groundwater at alarming levels, resulting in drastic groundwater depletion (Bierkens and Wada 2019)",8
"Furthermore, along with groundwater quantity depletion, deterioration of groundwater quality is another major global concern that impacts human health, ecosystem services, and sustainable economic development (Li et al",8
"This study revealed groundwater quality and contamination, research, and treatment technologies for water quality improvement as the main research themes for the study period",6
"Groundwater-related problems and their management, however, are arguably more severe in developing and underdeveloped countries, owing to rapid economic development, population growth, and urbanization, as also highlighted by Zyoud and Fuchs-Hanusch (2017)",8
"Groundwater, the primary facilitator for Green Revolution, helped to achieve food security and, in addition, also served for drinking and domestic water supplies and industrial supplies for rural, peri-urban, and urban areas in many of the South Asian countries (Hirji et al",2
"For example, ‘‘ground water’’ and ‘‘groundwater,’’ “WQI” and “Water quality index,” ‘‘GIS’’ and ‘‘geographic information system,’’ and “rs” and “remote sensing,” and “ahp” and “analytic hierarchy process.” Therefore, to obtain accurate results, the author keywords were pre-processed where the singular and plural forms of the same terminology were merged, abbreviated forms were expanded, and uniform spellings were applied",6
"Overall, the majority of the groundwater-related articles from South and Southeast Asian countries are published in the Environmental Earth Sciences, followed by the Indian Journal of Environmental Protection, Journal of the Geological Society of India, Pollution Research, and Environmental Monitoring and Assessment",15
"Additionally, both of these countries face serious groundwater challenges due to agricultural intensification, industrial development, population growth, climate change, and thus extended research",13
"To assess and express the groundwater quality and its suitability for different purposes, water quality index (WQI) has been extensively used by researchers",6
"Due to its concise and straightforward application and interpretation of water quality status, its significance has been widely accepted and appreciated (Ram et al",6
"Additionally, groundwater also serves as a vital source of drinking water supply in many rural and urban areas in the South and Southeast Asian countries (Mukherjee 2018; Carrard et al",6
"However, agricultural practices, industrial and commercial activities, and climate change have progressively deteriorated the groundwater quality in many regions (Li et al",13
"Thus, looking at the attention received to water quality and contamination, hydrochemistry and hydrogeochemistry emerged as the two major fields of inquiry in groundwater research",6
This clearly shows the increased consideration given to hydrogeochemical processes that govern the water quality to assess its suitability for different purposes,6
"Trends for different themes related to groundwater management Under groundwater management, evaluating the impacts of climate change and climate variability on groundwater resources is critical because it directly and indirectly affects the hydrogeological processes (Green 2016)",13
"However, the studies on how groundwater resources respond to climate change and anthropogenic activities have started to pick up from the last decade only, with notable contributions coming from India, Thailand, and Bangladesh",13
The themes mainly included (i) impact of climate change on groundwater levels and recharge under present and future scenarios; (ii) building resilience and adaption for agriculture and livelihood under climate change conditions and natural disasters; and (iii) impact of climate change on groundwater quality,13
A growing scientific base on Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) or Artificial Groundwater Recharge supports its rapidly increasing use as an important water adaptation and management strategy to enhance and secure groundwater systems impacted from climate change and natural disasters and the hydrological variability (Dillon et al,13
Understanding their interactions has also been helpful in formulating effective conjunctive water resource management plans,6
"The research efforts also resonate in the high research productivity of the top 20 journals like Indian Journal of Environmental Protection, Pollution Research, and Environmental Monitoring, and Assessment publishing in this domain",15
"Current rate of overexploitation of groundwater resources has posed serious threats to the long-term food, water, and energy security and livelihood of the South and Southeast Asian countries—especially in the semi-arid and arid regions (Rasul 2016)",7
"In addition, research techniques and methods such as remote sensing and GIS, isotope techniques, numerical modelling, analytical hierarchy process, multivariate statistical approaches, and water quality indices showed increased application",6
"Along with this, the current trending research themes such as climate change, artificial recharge, and conjunctive surface and groundwater resources gained attention for sustainable management of the groundwater resources",13
"Ultimately, through this analysis, we observed that most of the South and Southeast Asia countries are affected by groundwater-related problems driven by economic development and population growth",8
The problems of availability and accessibility may get worsened in the years to come due to climate change,13
"This study aims to focus on Pakistan’s fertilizer industry and investigate the causal relationships among environmental consciousness (ECO), green creativity (GCR), green mindfulness (GMD), and energy efficiency (EE), which are all essential mechanisms as well as circumstances that control the situation in well-developed manners",7
The results indicate that environmental consciousness significantly and positively affects employee energy efficiency directly and indirectly in the presence of green creativity as a mediator,7
"Moreover, the moderating effect of green mindfulness persisted only in the association between energy efficiency and green creativity",7
"In the appropriate literature, this empirical investigation is the first of its kind which does not only provide an organized way to examine the effects of environmental consciousness on energy efficiency but also recommend the most effective means for employees and associations to embrace the best policies",7
"Also, important factors such as environmental consciousness, green mindfulnessFootnote 3, and green creativity to assess energy efficiency have been ignored",7
"However, to increase energy efficiency is the main concern of policymakers, especially in developing nations",7
"Along with other challenges, climate change is a massive threat that necessitates extensive community mobilization in the nation",13
"Consequently, this research claims that green mindfulness moderates between environmental consciousness and green creativity, which is positively associated with energy efficiency",7
"A part from that, the mediating role of green creativity, as well as the moderating role of green mindfulness, can jointly be a source of boosting green production through employees’ energy efficiency in Pakistan and can eventually become the reason behind the achievement of SDGs goals, particularly 9, 12, and 13 together",7
"Therefore, it is necessary to empirically explore the contribution of green creativity as a mediator and green mindfulnessFootnote 6 as a moderator in energy efficiency for suggesting the sound policies that might help the policymakers of Pakistan to boost up energy efficiency and environmental consciousness for the accomplishment of sustainable development in the region",7
"Hence, this approach contends that green mindfulness moderates between environmental consciousness and green creativity, which is positively associated with energy efficiency",7
"In light of the preceding discussion, it could be argued that there are six research gaps in the existing literature of environmental consciousness and energy efficiency that the present paper wishes to address",7
"First, until now, the relationship between environmental consciousness and energy efficiency is not tested empirically",7
"Third, the relationship between environmental consciousness and energy efficiency is also not empirically tested in Pakistan",7
"Fourth, few studies have linked green growth with SDGs in their policy suggestions (Yang et al",8
"Therefore, the present study contributes to the literature on energy efficiency by empirically investigating the role of green creativity, environmental consciousness, and the enhancement of energy efficiency in the fertilizer companies of Pakistan which are listed under the Pakistan Stock Exchange",7
"Furthermore, the study also contributes to the existing literature by suggesting how the energy efficiency policies may help in the achievement of SDGs",7
"The context of this research will assist the individuals, industrialists and policymakers, and the government in the improvement of their energy efficiency through significant factors like green creativity and green mindfulness",7
The present study has the following research objectives: empirically explore the contribution of environmental consciousness and energy efficiency in the context of fertilizers companies of Pakistan which are listed under Pakistan Stock Exchange; and to explore the contribution of green creativity and energy efficiency in the context of fertilizer companies of Pakistan which are listed under Pakistan Stock Exchange,7
"This study has the following research questions to address: What is the impact of environmental consciousness on green creativity? What is the impact of green creativity on energy efficiency? Does green creativity mediate between environmental consciousness and energy efficiency? Does green mindfulness moderate green creativity and energy efficiency? The remainder of the research is organized as follows: the literature section is in “Literature review,” the methodology section is in “Methodology,” and the conclusion section is in “Conclusion.” The literature review section comprises of the theoretical as well as empirical review, conceptual model on the basis of multi-approach perspective, justification of the study, and the development of hypothesis",7
"This section first highlights the theoretical reasons for expecting the linkage between environmental consciousness, green creativity, green mindfulness, and energy efficiency to get the best results for accomplishment of SGDs and then explains, “How environmental consciousness, green creativity and green mindfulness contributes toward energy efficiency”",7
"(2021) investigate whether globalization, technical innovation, economic growth, and fiscal decentralization are important elements in understanding China’s environmental pollution",8
"Furthermore, SDGs 2030 can be intended to identify global sustainability concerns for sustainable production and consumption using industrial ecology strategies and processes (Awan 2020a, b, c)",12
"Also, wind power is a preferable choice for renewable sources production in Turkey (Solangi et al",7
"2021 indicate that inadequate governance is the main roadblock to achieving environmentally friendly energy success, despite the use of renewable energy and environmental related technical innovation which helps to enhance the environment (Iqbal et al",7
2021).Although mitigating high costs and financing risks can enhance the penetration of green energy technology (Jabeen et al,7
Energy efficiency (Fiol & O'Connor) is first generally defined as the ratio of useful output and energy input in a process (Patterson 1996),7
"(2008) “proposed a stochastic control model for optimal timing of climate policies where the evolution of energy efficiency is considered and the growth rate of the ENE level decayed exponentially.” Anyhow, after reviewing the above literature, it is assumed that:
 H1: Environmental consciousness (ECO) is significantly influence on energy efficiency",7
"In the process of economic development, green creativity is one of the important measures to protect the environment",8
This study determines the relationship between economic consciousness and energy efficiency by employing green creativity as a mediator,7
"So, for the process of innovation development green creativity is important for environmental protection.” Environmental laws can influence investors’ green creativity in a positive way",15
"2014).
 H3: Green creativity (GCR) is significant to influence energy efficiency",7
"Although green creativity is a critical catalyst for energy efficiency, green mindfulness acts as a moderator between them",7
"We hypothesize that, in addition to a clear causal association between green creativity and energy efficiency, green mindfulness affects the relationship between green creativity and energy efficiency",7
"Thus, we argue that green mindfulness moderates between green creativity and energy efficiency, and propose the following hypothesis:
 H4: Hypothesis: Green mindfulness (GMD) moderates between green creativity (GCR) and energy efficiency",7
"The analysis represents that corporate communal responsibility and environmental consciousness have a direct and favorable impact on green human capital This study explores the empirical contributions of environmental consciousness, green creativity, and green mindfulness to energy efficiency",7
"The study uses environmental consciousness as an independent variable, green creativity as mediating variable, green mindfulness as a moderating variable, and energy efficiency as a dependent variable",7
"However, to test the theoretical models, survey method and random sampling technique (RST) are used.
 The main objective of the study is to examine the relationship between environmental consciousness and energy efficiency of employees from seven fertilizer companies of Pakistan with the inclusion of green creativity as a mediator and green mindfulness as a moderator",7
"It is evident from Table 1 that 49.9% (201) of the respondents possessed a higher secondary school degree, 23.6% (96) of the participants hold a bachelor’s degree, and 18.9% (76) holds master’s degree, whereas only 7.6% (31) of the respondents got their Mphil and PhD degree.
 The environmental consciousness showed the consistency among the items (α = 0.914), green creativity (α = 0.744), green mindfulness (α = 0.941), and energy efficiency (α = 0.729) in Table 3, whereas skewness between −1 and +1 is considered excellent and between −2 and +2 acceptable, and the same is the case of kurtosis (Hair et al",7
Note that one item is also eliminated from the energy efficiency scale,7
"All item loadings are higher than threshold value of 0.7, except for two items from the environmental consciousness scale and one item from the energy efficiency scale",7
"In the present study, there are four latent variables with reflective measurement models (environmental consciousness, green creativity, energy efficiency, and green mindfulness)",7
"In our final model, after removing two items from environmental consciousness, and dropping one item from energy efficiency scale, all outer loadings of the reflective construct’s environmental consciousness, green creativity, green mindfulness, and the energy efficiency are well above the threshold value of 0.70",7
"The composite reliability values of 0.928 (environmental consciousness), 0.847 (energy efficiency), 0.855 (green creativity), and 0.953 (green mindfulness) demonstrated that all reflective constructs have high levels of internal consistency and reliability",7
"In the present study, the AVE values of environmental consciousness (0.563), energy efficiency (0.649), green creativity (0.664), and green mindfulness (0.774) are well above the required minimum level of 0.50 (Hair et al",7
"In the present study, overall, the square roots of the AVEs for the reflective construct’s environmental consciousness (0.750), green creativity (0.814), energy efficiency (0.805), and green mindfulness (0.879) are all higher than the correlations of these constructs with other variables in the path model",7
"From the analysis, it is noted that environmental consciousness is positively correlated to energy efficiency (r = 0.437**, p<0.01)",7
"Similarly, environmental consciousness is positively correlated to green creativity (r = 0.406**, p<0.01), and green creativity is positively correlated to energy efficiency (r = 0.443**, p<0.01) as appears in Table 5.
 However, diagonal values in bold are the square root of AVEs and off-diagonal values are correlated between the constructs",7
"The same conclusions apply to the other factors of environmental consciousness as well as the indicators measuring energy efficiency, green creativity, and green mindfulness",7
"Environmental consciousness has a positive direct effect on energy efficiency (β = 0.166, p value < 0.05)",7
"Green creativity has a positive direct effect on energy efficiency (β = 0.660, p value < 0.05)",7
"3).
 Environmental consciousness and energy efficiency Detection of multicollinearity is a pre-requisite to get authentic and accurate results",7
"We checked the effect of mediating variable, whether green creativity mediates the relationship between environmental consciousness and energy efficiency",7
"A necessary condition is the significance of the relationship between environmental consciousness and green creativity (i.e., β = .0.573) as well as between green creativity and energy efficiency (i.e., β = 0.155)",7
The circuitous impact is the result of the immediate impacts between environmental consciousness and green creativity just as between green creativity and energy efficiency (Saleem et al,7
"In the next step, we analyze the moderating aspect of green mindfulness in the association of green creativity and energy efficiency",7
We hypothesized that green mindfulness positively influences the relationship between green creativity and energy efficiency,7
"The higher the green mindfulness, the stronger the relationship between the two constructs (green creativity and energy efficiency)",7
Results show that the interaction of green mindfulness and green creativity has a positive effect on energy efficiency (−0.249),7
"If the green mindfulness becomes greater (i.e., green mindfulness is expanded by one standard deviation point), this will mean that the correlation between green creativity and energy efficiency would grow in proportion to the size of the interaction term, yielding a value of 0.753−0.642 = 0.111",7
"Thus, when green mindfulness gets greater, green creativity becomes increasingly necessary for the sake of clarification of energy efficiency",7
"The exact opposite interpretation is true for lower-level situations of green mindfulness (i.e., green mindfulness is declined by one standard deviation point): green creativity would increase in its importance for explaining energy efficiency because the interaction term is significant",7
The main aim of this study is to examine the relationship between environmental consciousness and energy efficiency of employees of fertilizer companies with the inclusion of green creativity as mediator and green mindfulness as moderator by using quantitative research methods,7
The quantitative findings show that environmental consciousness increases green creativity in employees which further increases energy efficiency,7
"Furthermore, green mindfulness buffered the effect such that the relationship between green creativity and energy efficiency is higher among employees of fertilizer companies who are higher in green mindfulness",7
Our quantitative findings show that environmental consciousness and energy efficiency are positively linked,7
"It is observed that due to environmental consciousness incidents, the knowledge of energy efficiency among the employees and level of efficiently used energy in the economy increase",7
"In present study, we explore green creativity as a mediator between environmental consciousness and energy efficiency linkage",7
"The environmental consciousness incidents are major source of the increased green creativity level of employees, which further leads to energy efficiency",7
"When green creativity develops among employees due to environmental consciousness incidents, their energy efficiency increases and they desire to be more conscious about environment to enhance energy efficiency",7
Our findings showed that green creativity mediates between environmental consciousness and energy efficiency,7
Environmental consciousness has direct as well as indirect link with energy efficiency via green creativity,7
"Moreover, our results show that green mindfulness buffered the effect such that the relationship between green creativity and energy efficiency becomes more powerful for those employees who are higher in green mindfulness, whereas Dhir et al",7
(2021) investigate the impact of several moderators in the recycling of e-waste by customers,12
"Therefore, to increase the level of energy efficiency, it is very important in the context of public sector organizations in Pakistan to explore this phenomenon in more depth that why do people should be more conscious to environment and what would be the benefit of green creativity in the presence of green mindfulness",7
Training about environmental consciousness and the importance of energy efficiency needs to be arranged,7
"Moreover, cultural aspects cannot be ignored as far as energy efficiency and environmental consciousness incidents are concerned",7
"Furthermore, the literacy rate is low, the unemployment rate is high, and economic conditions are not satisfactory",8
This study is a preliminary investigation that explores the effect of increasing average annual temperature on the competitiveness of 24 major agricultural exports from 2003 to 2020,2
"The revealed export advantage (RXA) is used to explore the competitive performance of selected agricultural exports, which is then normalized to examine the effect of increasing average annual temperature along with official exchange rate, urbanization, and globalization",2
The estimated result reveals that the increasing average annual temperature has a negative but insignificant impact on the export competitiveness of selected agricultural exports,2
"Globalization, however, reveals a significant positive impact on the competitiveness of selected agricultural exports",2
"This study, therefore, urges for the development of the agriculture sector by adopting SDGs proposed by the United Nations for sustainable economic growth and development",8
"The developed countries have achieved remarkable progress concerning the implementation of SDG, whereas developing and least developed countries are facing many challenges due to the prevalence of high poverty levels along with lingering economic growth performance",8
The economic prosperity and progress towards SDGs in these countries is therefore dependent on the achievement of higher competitiveness in the production and export of agricultural products (Ricardo 1817; Heckscher 1919; Ohlin 1967),2
"Moreover, the distorted performance of the agriculture sector is aggravating rural poverty and food insecurity (IPCC 2021)",2
"Furthermore, the literature on climatic change is replete with studies that have explored determinants of CO2 emission and its impact on aggregate agricultural productivity (Abbas 2020, 2021; Chandio et al",2
"2021), whereas studies on climate change and export performance is rather scant",13
(2019) examined the impact of CO2 emission on agricultural exports of Pakistan from 1975 to 2017,2
"Additionally, the performance of this sector is very important to improve the food security situation",2
"Second, the increasing average temperature shortens the life of many perishable agricultural products such as fruits and vegetables and reduces export performance and competitiveness",2
"The findings reveal that CO2 emission has in fact significant positive impact on the production of cereals crops in Pakistan, whereas Abbas (2020) investigate the impact of increasing average annual temperature on cotton production in Pakistan from 1980 to 2018",2
The findings revealed a negative but insignificant impact of the increase in average annual temperature on cotton production,2
"As far as the impact of climatic change on agricultural trade is concern, the literature reveals only one notable study",2
They also highlight various channels through which climatic changes can influence agricultural trade and conclude policy implications to improve performance of agricultural exports,2
2021) with few studies on agriculture value addition and agricultural exports,2
"Furthermore, Mughal (2019) urges that urbanization is a serious problem for Pakistan that causes considerable loss of agricultural land, biodiversity, soil erosion, and grazing",15
The findings of the ARDL model reveal that increase in urbanization has a significant negative impact on agricultural products export of Pakistan in both short run and long run,2
The openness of trade provides an opportunity for developing countries to trade agricultural products and enhance earnings from the agriculture sector,2
"Moreover, this study has not found any disaggregated study at the product level that examines the export competitiveness of agricultural exports",2
"Therefore, the standard model used to examine the nexus between climate change and agriculture sector competitiveness is presented as follows: where RSXA is revealed symmetrical comparative advantage index",13
The increase in average annual temperature can have a varying impact on the production performance of major agricultural products,2
"The literature on climate change is also replete with studies with different findings, such as Chandio et al",13
"Hence, this study is an attempt to explore the competitive export performance of labor-intensive agricultural exports; therefore, (\({\gamma }_{5}\)) is expected to have a significant positive impact on export competitiveness",2
"
The export competitiveness of other agricultural exports in Table 3 reveals that Pakistan has a higher competitive advantage in HS52 (raw cotton), HS13 (Lac; gums, resins, and other vegetable saps and extracts), HS14 (vegetable plaiting materials, vegetable products not elsewhere specified or included), HS22 (beverages, spirits, and vinegar), and HS17 (sugars and sugar confectionery), respectively, whereas the comparative disadvantage is observed in HS15 (animal or vegetable fats and oils and their cleavage products, prepared edible fats), HS16 (preparations of meat, of fish or crustaceans, mollusks, or other aquatic invertebrates), HS18 (cocoa and cocoa preparations), HS19 (preparations of cereals, flour, starch or milk; pastrycooks’ products), HS20 (preparations of vegetables, fruit, nuts or other parts of plants), HS21 (miscellaneous edible preparations), and HS23 (residues and waste from the food industries, prepared animal fodder)",2
"The trend analysis of agricultural exports in this table also reveals positive, but sluggish growth behavior",2
The finding of unsatisfactory performance of agricultural exports is consistent with the results of Abbas and Waheed (2017),2
The export performance and competitiveness of selected agricultural products can be influenced by a variety of production and trade-related factors,2
"The estimated result of an increase in average annual temperature reveals a negative, but insignificant impact on the competitiveness of selected agricultural exports",2
"Since the competitiveness index is the ratio of relative export performance; therefore, the negative impact of Pakistan can be equalized by the deterioration of global agricultural exports",2
"Therefore, the IPCC (2021) is urging serious efforts to contain the emission of greenhouse gases emission along with climate-resilient agricultural technology and seeds to ensure global food security",2
(2019) have concluded that the climate changes associated with increasing concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) can significantly deteriorate agricultural exports of Pakistan,2
" Therefore, the SDGs of the United Nation is urging for sustainable urbanization",11
Many countries have freed massive land for agricultural activities as a result of sustainable urbanization,11
The exchange rate act as the price of imported and exported goods reveal a significant negative impact on export competitiveness of selected agricultural exports,2
"This study is, therefore, a preliminary investigation that explores the effect of the average increase in annual temperature on the competitiveness of 24 major agricultural exports from 2003 to 2020",2
"The revealed export advantage (RXA) is used to explore the competitive performance of selected agricultural exports, which is then normalized to examine the effect of increasing average annual temperature along with official exchange rate, urbanization, and globalization",2
"The estimated results have revealed that the increasing average annual temperature has a negative but insignificant impact on the export competitiveness of selected agricultural exports, whereas urbanization and exchange rate depreciation reveal a significant negative effect of higher intensity, respectively",2
"The index of globalization, however, shows a significant positive impact on the competitiveness of selected agricultural exports",2
Following the guideline of SDGs and successful urban planning in China and elsewhere should be adopted to accommodate the increasing urban population vertically,11
"Moreover, trade liberalization and regional integration would be effective policy interventions to enhance exports of domestic products",11
"This research analyses how the dimensions of food access (physical, social and economic) relate to the food insecurity and dietary diversity of inhabitants of different socioeconomic groups in the rapidly growing Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area (Uganda)",2
We use the Food Insecurity Experience Scale and Household Dietary Diversity Score to assess the overall state of food consumption,2
"While sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is the most rapidly urbanising region in the world, it is also the region with the highest prevalence of severe food insecurity (Fig",2
"The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines food security as “a situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO et al., 2017:107)",2
"Physical, social and economic access to food therefore make up an important pillar of food security",2
"Prevalence rates of moderate to severe food insecurity (FImod+sev) according to the FAO Food Insecurity Experience Scale (Data from Table A-1 in FAO, 2016:36) Food security is a key priority of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)",2
"However, according to Crush and Riley (2017), the SDGs put an uneven emphasis on food production and rural areas, neglecting cities where food access (instead of production) is of crucial importance for the food security of vulnerable urban dwellers (Crush & Riley, 2017)",2
"In SSA, the vulnerability of food access strategies adapted by urban dwellers strongly depends on their socioeconomic status (Mackay, 2019)",2
"Hence, there is a lack of city-wide data concerning food insecurity and accessibility across the socioeconomic spectrum, although this could be valuable for decision makers (Battersby & Watson, 2019) and follow-up research",2
"As a priority SDG, food security relies as much on food access as it does on food production",2
There is therefore an urgency to solve the food access problem in cities if we are to meet the SDGs,2
"Socioeconomic groups residentially cluster amongst similar people, guided by living expenses, support networks and dynamics of social exclusion (Smets & Salman, 2008)",1
"Because of rapid urbanisation, the cost of food insecurity will increasingly be shifted towards vulnerable socioeconomic groups within cities",2
"Therefore, the SSA region is experiencing high levels of food insecurity on one hand, paired with quickly changing urban configurations on the other hand",2
"While usually analysed separately, urban expansion and the associated dynamics can significantly impact the geographies of food insecurity within cities (Mackay, 2019)",2
"Nevertheless, the complex issue of food insecurity in African cities will not be solved by focussing solely on agricultural production",2
"Urban expansions affect the geographies of food insecurity through physical, social and economic access to food",2
"While definitions of food deserts in developed regions focus predominantly on travel distance to food sources (Hamidi, 2020; Shaw, 2016), African food deserts are defined by Crush and Battersby (2016:13) as “poor, often informal, urban neighbourhoods characterised by high food insecurity and low dietary diversity, with multiple market and non-market food sources but variable household access to food.” Horizontal cities with a low availability and quality of infrastructure experience higher levels of food insecurity (Frayne & McCordic, 2015)",2
"On the other hand, mechanisms of social exclusion (Páez et al., 2010) may lead a consumer to avoid sourcing food from specific locations",1
"Thus, in rapidly growing cities, social access to food can be critical for new rural–urban migrants to uphold their levels of dietary diversity and food security",2
"Economically, food access is affected by dynamics of poverty, price volatility, market structures and disruption (Crush, 2014)",2
"Most food insecure households are affected by this dimension of food access, as it is inherently linked to physical and social access",2
These drivers need better understanding and appropriate consideration in policy interventions to address inequalities associated with urban food access,2
"To study the geographies of urban food insecurity, it is therefore crucial to untangle the dimensions of food accessibility",2
"Socioeconomic dynamics in cities can impact social, physical and economic access to food and, in turn, contribute to consumer vulnerability (Leite et al., 2020)",2
"Aiming towards eradicating food insecurity that results from inaccessibility of affordable and healthy food, the body of knowledge on urban food systems increasingly strives for food justice (Heynen et al., 2012)",2
"Understanding urban food insecurity in a food justice framework can contribute to strategy development for a better management of urban food systems as cities quickly grow in terms of population and size (Karg et al., 2016)",2
"Consequently, to find answers to the issues of food insecurity in rapidly urbanising SSA cities, we must consider physical, social and economic accessibility to food (FAO et al., 2017)",2
"Therefore, we aim to research urban food insecurity and accessibility in a socioeconomic framework, taking the fast-growing city of Kampala (Uganda) as a case study",2
"More specifically, the goal of this study is to obtain a better understanding of the impact of physical, social and economic food accessibility on the food security of urban dwellers by answering the following research questions: What are the patterns of food security and dietary diversity of different socioeconomic groups in Kampala? How do the different dimensions of food accessibility contribute to the vulnerability of socioeconomic groups? Our hypothesis is that, depending on income, new rural–urban migrants experience more difficulties regarding food accessibility than more established urban dwellers, making these newcomers more vulnerable to food insecurity",2
This article takes a geographical perspective to study how access to food impacts consumers’ levels of food security and dietary diversity,2
"Through the lens of socioeconomic group dynamics, we explore the impact of spatially related factors such as proximity to formal food sources to explain patterns of food insecurity",2
"Dominant housing type in (sampled) parishes of the GKMA (adapted from Hemerijckx et al., 2020) In the GKMA, inhabitants of a higher socioeconomic position mainly reside on hilltops while low-lying wetland areas are dominated by slum housing (Hemerijckx et al., 2020; Vermeiren et al., 2016)",11
"While urban food insecurity in Kampala has been studied from various perspectives, most studies include urban farming activity, albeit as a proxy for access to land, as a possible determining aspect of food insecurity",2
"In this study, we incorporate urban agricultural activity as a factor that increases physical access to food",2
Our analysis includes demographics by explicitly analysing food access vulnerability through the lens of socioeconomic differentiation,2
"In order to obtain a better geographical understanding of food insecurity patterns and accessibility characteristics, 525 households were surveyed in the GKMA in 2019",2
"The survey protocol consisted of four parts: household demographics and socioeconomic characteristics (Appendix 1.A), food security (Appendix 1.B), dietary diversity (Appendix 1.C) and food accessibility (Appendix 1.D)",2
"First, we applied the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES)",2
"The FAO aims to advance global food insecurity monitoring by facilitating and standardizing its measurement using the FIES (Cafiero et al., 2018)",2
The FIES scale is therefore suitable to measure food insecurity experience in the Ugandan context,2
(1) by Hansen (1959): where: Ei is the formal food access potential at pixel i,2
An advantage of the FFSP method is that it can quickly provide a city overview of food access,2
"To summarise and enable a clear visualisation of the findings regarding food security, dietary diversity and physical, social and economic accessibility to food, a vulnerability radar chart is produced",2
"Table 2 shows the prevalence rates of moderate or severe (FImod+sev) and severe (FIsev) food insecurity for each SEC, after responses were fit to the Rasch model",2
"However, the FIES values indicate there is little difference between the food security of these two groups",2
This social variable appears to play a minor role in the food insecurity of Kampala’s households,2
"In Uganda, the prevalence rate for moderate or severe food insecurity (FImod+sev) is 69.8%, and the prevalence rate for severe food insecurity (FIsev) is 36.1% (FAO, 2016)",2
"Yet, relatively few recent studies explicitly measure food insecurity levels for the capital city Kampala",2
"Pottier (2015) interviewed 118 Kampala households in 2012, but did not aim to explicitly “’measure’ food insecurity”",2
"With a FIsev value of 15.6% for the entire dataset, the food insecurity levels resulting from our analysis are considerably lower than those calculated for these prior studies in Kampala (Caley, 2016; Pottier, 2015)",2
A possible explanation is therefore that the food security in the rapidly evolving city of Kampala has improved since,2
"More importantly, however, we deliberately aimed at studying food insecurity across the socioeconomic spectrum, while for example Caley (2016) surveyed in informal settlement areas only",2
Figure 3 displays the economic access to food of the different SECs,2
"Despite rapid horizontal urban growth, most formal food sources and key access roads are still located in the inner city of Kampala",11
"Formal food system potential (FFSP) based on the proximity of (super-)markets and motorways or major roads (spatial data OpenStreetMap contributors, 2020; population census data UBOS, 2016a) The FFSP result is constrained by the lack of the informal food sources in the input data, although access roads were given a weight to compensate for this drawback",17
"While vulnerable groups with a low-to-middle income actively engage in food sharing networks, these groups lack financial resources to purchase sufficient, diverse foodstuffs",1
"As FFSP values are highest around the inner city of Kampala, newcomers or low income residents settling at the edges of the GKMA experience poorer physical as well as financial access to food",2
"Mainly the established SECs are engaging in urban agriculture, and this is how the EL compensate for their relatively long travel times to food sources. In addition, physical access to food is also directly determined by financial power through the dimension of transport",2
"These findings correspond to prior research showing that affordable transport options are an important factor shaping the livelihoods of Kampala’s inhabitants (Janusz et al., 2019)",11
"In general, we confirm the results of Mackay (2019) who shows that socioeconomic status can strongly shape urban food access strategies and thus, in turn, dietary diversity and food security",2
"Vulnerability radar, showing how each SEC scores on dietary diversity, food security as well as the three pillars of food accessibility: physical, social and economic In order for the world to meet its food security SDG, it must solve issues of food access as well as food production",2
"Urban accessibility to food is the product of socioeconomic factors and geographical access, and understanding the links between these is the first step to solving urban food access and meeting the SDGs",2
"This study assessed the impact of urbanisation dynamics on food accessibility and, in turn, food insecurity of different socioeconomic groups in the Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area",2
"While income is the main restraint for some, the lack of social embeddedness in the city as well as a remote household location can contribute to food insecurity",2
"As different socioeconomic groups are experiencing different accessibility issues, making them vulnerable in various ways, there can be no uniform solution to the problem of urban food insecurity",2
"Hence, more research beyond the consumer perspective will need to be conducted regarding access to food in Kampala",2
"Moreover, while the present study provides an insight into the current status of food access in the rapidly growing GKMA, future research should assess how the food system of Kampala is expected to evolve alongside the rapidly changing built environment.",2
The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10 focuses on combating the climate change and its effects,13
The inclusion of this agenda in the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations has shown that worsened environmental degradation is currently a major threat facing humankind,15
The World Commission on Environment and Development 2015 has highlighted that income inequality is one of the major causes for environmental deterioration,10
"Hence, reducing environmental degradation requires a look at the problem of unequal income distribution",15
"Thus, the objective of the study is to investigate the relationship between income inequality, educational attainment, and CO2 emissions by employing a panel data analysis for a group of 64 countries from 1990 to 2016.The study uses mainly dynamic common correlated effects (DCCE) estimator to take into account the issue of cross-section dependence which has been ignored by most of the previous studies",10
"The findings of the study could provide a better understanding on the root causes of environmental degradation, and further suggest remedial actions to overcome the problem",15
"In this era of modernization, environmental degradation is argued to be one of the most challenging global issues facing the humankind",15
This is particularly true for the developing countries as they have experienced rapid economic growth (Dong et al,8
"Among these pollutants that lead to the climate change, CO2 is found to be the main factor causing global warming (National Aeronautics and Space Administration 2019)",13
"Since the Industrial Revolution which is about 150 years ago, there has been a tremendous increase in CO2 concentrations in the air mainly due to human activities (such as deforestation and burning of fossil fuels) as well as natural processes (e.g., volcano eruption)",15
"Indeed, climate change is a serious global issue that affects every part of the globe—from oceans to the mountains, and from the poles to the tropics (World Wildlife Fund 2021)",13
"Due to climate change, the Earth is expected to suffer from continuous extreme phenomena such as warmer summers, colder winters, melting of glaciers, and rising sea levels that can cause thousands of deaths worldwide (National Geographic 2021)",13
This was then followed by the adoption of Paris Agreement in 2015 that also aims to reduce CO2 emissions,13
"To date, these international efforts have failed in reducing environmental degradation in an effective manner",15
"Far in 1987, the Brundtland report by World Commission on Environment and Development (2015) highlighted that income inequality is one of the major causes for environmental deterioration",10
"In the Brundtland Report (United Nations 1987), it was stated that through education, teachers are able to bring about extensive social changes, including achieving reduced environmental degradation and sustainable living",15
Two main reasons can be put forth to explain the positive linkage between education and environmental degradation,15
The issue of whether economic growth affects environmental quality has been widely debated among the economists and environmentalists since decades ago,8
"As such, numerous studiesFootnote 5 have been done to investigate the nexus between economic performance and environmental degradation, which is commonly known as the EKC",15
"The past studies on the linkage between economic growth and pollution have shown that different shapes of EKC (including the inverted U-shaped and U-shaped) are obtained using various types of pollutants, different research methods and by researching on varying nations",8
This indicates an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and pollution,8
This is because structural and technological changes that are more likely to occur at the later stage of economic development tend to reduce pollutant emissions,8
(2017) investigate the relationship between economic growth and greenhouse gases in BRICS countries,8
The authors further conclude that the impact of economic growth on air quality could be explained by the scale and technical effects,8
There is evidence from the results that the inverse U-shaped is valid between economic growth and N2O emissions in both groups of nations,8
"Thus, some of the previous studies have obtained an N-shaped EKC, indicating that environmental degradation rises once more when GDP touches a certain level",15
"(2000), however, finds a trade-off between reducing pollution and improving income inequality",10
"In other words, as income inequality reduces, CO2 emissions tend to increase that could bring about climatic change",10
"Theoretically, income disparities could either deteriorate or improve the environmental quality",10
Various approaches have been used by past researchers in explaining the impact of income disparities on environmental deterioration,10
"The second approach is related to Veblen effect which states that as income inequality widens, the rich would tend to consume more luxury and prominent products in order to keep their status",10
"As consumption on goods and services increases, energy consumption rises",7
"In accordance to this pathway, a reduction in income inequality would tend to cause an increase in CO2 emissions",10
"Looking at the literature, various studies have been done in analyzing the linkage between income inequality and pollution",10
"On the other hand, others have demonstrated that income inequality has a negative effect on CO2 emissions (e.g., Demir et al",10
"Some other researchers have obtained insignificant linkage between income inequality and pollution in their studies (e.g., Bhattacharya 2020; Ota 2017; Masud et al",10
"For low- and middle-income countries, a negative nexus is shown between income inequality and environmental deterioration",10
"First, an expansion in education with low enrollment rate tends to encourage the adoption of non-renewable energy sources and involvement in energy intensive activities such as trade and car usage",7
These actions lead to environmental degradation,15
"The results of the study indicate that in most of the studied period, education has seen to compensate the increase in CO2 emissions due to economic development",8
"It is suggested from the study that advanced human capital, i.e., additional year of tertiary education has a significant and positive impact on environmental quality",4
(2021) find that educational attainment affects environmental degradation negatively in China,15
"On the other hand, some earlier studies have discovered a positive association between educational attainment and environmental degradation",15
"Furthermore, Hill and Magnani (2002) examine the role of education in affecting environmental degradation in low-income countries",15
(2021) discover that education is a main factor causing environmental degradation in remittance recipient countries,15
The justification put forth by the authors is that these remittance recipient economies have not reached the educational level that enables the switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources,7
"According to United States Environmental Protection Agency (2020), CO2 emissions constitute approximately 76%Footnote 6 of the total greenhouse gases emitted globally",15
"As CO2 emissions are the main source causing climatic change, it will be considered as the proxy pollutant representing environmental degradation in the study",15
"Among a variety of measurementsFootnote 8 for income inequality, Gini coefficient has been the most popular indicator applied in the existing literature.Footnote 9 Gini index is the “best” measurement for income inequality as its comparability between countries is high",10
This allows comparisons of income inequality across a large number of nations,10
"Thus, this study will adopt Gini index as the measurement for income inequality following many other previous studies such as Choi (2006); Frost and van Stralen (2018); Park (2021); Stark et al",10
II represents income inequality and EA denotes educational attainment,10
"To ensure a balanced panel, the choice of countries and time period is solely based on data availability.Footnote 10 All data used in the study are obtained from the World Development Indicator (WDI), World Bank, except for educational attainment and income inequality",10
We acquire the income inequality data from Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID),10
"Based on the value of coefficient, as income inequality rises by 1%, air pollution decreases by 1.968%",10
This result further implies that the speed of adjustment process is acceptable for any shock to the environmental degradation globally,15
"First, the EKC hypothesis is supported, indicating that there is an inverted U-shaped association between economic growth and CO2 emissions in a global context",8
The result implies that economic development initially increases environmental pollution,8
"In other words, GDP growth could be a possible cure for the problem of environmental deterioration from the global perspective",8
"Next, income inequality is found to have a negative and significant impact on CO2 emissions at 10% level",10
"2017; Uzar and Eyuboglu 2019; Zhou and Li 2020) who have discovered a positive connectivity between unequal income distribution and CO2 emissions, the result of this study supports the notion that income inequality is helpful in enhancing the environmental quality",10
The inverse correlation between income inequality and CO2 emissions can be explained by the marginal propensity to emitFootnote 11 of poor people around the world,10
The coefficient recorded from DCCE indicates that 1% rise in school enrolment will cause a 0.867% fall in environmental degradation,15
"A possible explanation for the outcome is that education could help to increase people’s environmental concern, and thus leading to the adoption of clean energy sources that reduces CO2 emissions (Balaguer and Cantavella 2018)",7
SDG 4 emphasizes on increasing access to education by all individuals around the world,4
Providing equitable quality education to all enables countries to overcome environmental problems over the long run,4
Environmental degradation is one of most challenging issues facing humankind,15
"The study will not only provide new insights on factors affecting environmental degradation, but also suggest possible solutions for the problem",15
Our results from both the PMG and DCCE estimators suggest that there is an inverse U-shaped linkage between real GDP and environmental degradation,15
"Bearing in mind these findings, we can have better insights on the determinants for environmental degradation in a global context",15
"First, the confirmation of EKC hypothesis implies that the pursuit of long-term economic growth is required by countries in the world to achieve reduced environmental pollution",8
"However, it is worth highlighting that the policymakers should not depend solely on economic development as a remedy for the environmental problem",8
The GDP growth should be complemented by other strategies (such as education policies) in tackling the problem of global warming,8
Education helps to shape people’s attitude and behavior towards environmental protection and to provide skills needed for sustainable future,15
"Third, the trade-off between income equality and clean environment indicates the existence of a phenomenon called “equity-pollution dilemma”—the belief that income redistribution may cause a rise in CO2 emissions (Sager 2019)",10
"Thus, to achieve a win–win situation between equal income distribution and favorable environmental quality, all countries in the world have to ensure that higher demand for goods and services resulting from narrowing of income gap does not translate into worsened environmental pollution",10
"This can be realized, for example, by adopting renewable energy sources in meeting higher energy demand",7
It is also suggested that the supply of clean energy solutions should be increased particularly in the poorer regions of all countries,7
"Or else, it may raise the consumption on fossil fuels that would lead to worsened environmental degradation globally",15
"In particular, data for income inequality or/and educational attainment are unavailable for some countries",10
"This article examines for the first time the impact of disaggregated energy sources and institutional quality on the ecological footprint (EF) of 29 OECD countries, by explaining how the diversification in countries’ energy mix and their institutional performance are associated with sustainable environmental performance",7
"The robust cross-sectional augmented distributed lag (CS-DL) estimator shows that economic growth and the adoption of non-renewable energies are detrimental to the environment, while the operational quality of institutions adds to ecological sustainability",8
"Moreover, there is evidence that non-renewable energy and institutional quality have a bidirectional causal association with EF",7
The study further demonstrates the inefficient integration of renewable energy forms in OECD countries and the concomitant essential role of institutions on environmental sustainability by providing relevant policy orientations,7
"The operationalization of the former criteria for environmental sustainability is imperative for policymakers in order to eliminate climate change, global warming, pollution, and depletion of resources",13
"Since economic growth is directly associated with environmental survival (Sharma 2011), joint policy programs tend to integrate environmental policies into the economic ones in the policy formulation arena (Jordan and Lenschow 2008)",8
Efficient and clean energy use contributes to efficient and environmentally friendly exploitation of resources and effective environmental management (Nathaniel et al,7
"Renewable energy (RE) exerts a significant role in national energy policies as it provides secure energy, expands countries’ energy autonomy, increases employment, and combats environmental problems (IRENA and REN21 2018; Liu et al",7
Fossil energy is considered the main culprit of anthropogenic emissions and the acceleration of clean energy policies is vital for the innovation of the energy system (Edenhofer et al,7
"However, the level of renewables penetration in countries’ energy mix is strongly correlated with the governmental support policies (IRENA and REN21 2018)",7
"The high cost of renewable technology implementation may hinder this penetration for the sake of short-run fast economic growth, as a result of a policy level myopia (Sharif et al",8
The implementation of effective renewable energy policies on the route for a sustainable environment presumes a robust institutional framework (Panayotou 1997; Bhattarai and Hammig 2001),7
Political instability can have a negative influence on the rule of law as a result of inefficient governmental performance (Abid 2016),16
"The well-established legal and regulatory framework creates inclusive institutions, enforces a sense of trust to the public, and builds institutional transparency and accountability (Ritzen and Woolcock 2000)",16
"Impartial institutions support a strong rule of law accompanied by sound legislation, which has the potential to control the companies’ compliance with the respective environmental standards (Lau et al",16
"On the other hand, corruption may be proved to impede environmental quality indirectly",16
"The limited stringency in environmental legislation increases the intensity of energy use, but the existence of governmental stability could regulate the scale of energy consumption (Damania et al",7
"Besides, institutional corruption and bureaucratic barriers hinder the development and deployment of RE policies by governmental authorities (IRENA and REN21 2018)",16
"To our knowledge, this study employs for the first time these novel methodological approaches to find out how the institutional environment and the disaggregated energy consumption affect the environmental performance of OECD economies",7
"Furthermore, the impact of non-RE consumption and economic growth on the EF is evidenced to be positive and significant",8
"This was recently demonstrated by the ratification of the Paris Agreement, in May 2019",13
The participants of this agreement committed to deploying nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to eliminate climate change (United Nations 2019),13
"While many developing countries lay less emphasis on the adoption of renewable energies due to technology and funding constraints, most developed countries have increasingly focused on clean energy policies",7
"In 2011, OECD countries validated the Green Growth Strategy (GGS) in order to formulate a common policy framework for the promotion of efficient energy targets and environmental sustainable pathways (OECD 2012)",8
(2004) highlighted the negative role of corruption in formulating effective and efficient energy policies in these countries,16
"Destek and Sinha (2020) observed that most of the OECD countries do not face an environmentally sustainable economic growth, implying the existence of ineffective institutional performance",8
These goals urge the need for sustainable growth by supporting the use of clean energies and the improvement of institutional quality and capacity on environmental performance and ecological protection,8
"It is defined as an ecological sustainability measure that encompasses not only the total carbon footprint aspect but also the aspects of cropland, grazing, forestry, and built-up land and fisheries",15
"In the energy and environmental economics literature, the association between energy consumption and environmental quality has been the topic of intensive research",7
"Most of the relevant studies examine energy consumption at an aggregated form (Menyah and Wolde-Rufael 2010a, 2010b; Arouri et al",7
"Since this study decomposes energy consumption in renewable and non-renewable, we focus on the distinctive effects of these two forms of energy on the environment",7
"They concluded that RE consumption is environmentally friendly, as opposed to non-RE, which is considered to be the main culprit for environmental degradation",15
"Besides, they reported a bidirectional causality between the two types of energy consumption and CO2 emissions",7
"In 15 countries where RE occupies a critical role in their energy mix, Saidi and Omri (2020) showed the positive effect of RE on environmental quality, positing no long-run causality",7
"(2010) examining 19 countries of different stages of development found that though nuclear energy consumption mitigates CO2 emissions, RE consumption has the opposite effect",7
"Bhattarai and Hammig (2001) showed the critical role of political institutions and governance in the deforestation process of 66 Latin American, African, and Asian countries",15
They found that institutional and governance improvements reduce the levels of deforestation in Latin America and Africa but increase them in Asia,15
(2012) reported the principal role of a strong rule of law in achieving environmental sustainability,16
"Gani (2012) showed that rule of law, political stability, and control of corruption promote the environmental quality of 99 developing countries, while government effectiveness and regulatory quality do not have a significant effect on it",16
"Abid (2016) demonstrated that political stability, effective governance, and the reduction of corruption decrease CO2 emissions in 25 SSA countries, while the well-defined regulatory framework and rule of law increase them",16
"Abid (2017) argued that the level of environmental quality is vitally connected with the nature of economic growth, and institutions play a key role in this process",8
"Using data from 58 MEAFootnote 9 and 41 EU countries, he found that institutional quality reduces the environmental degradation of EU countries but has no effect on the environment of the MEA region",15
The third strand of the literature incorporates both energy utilization and institutional measures in the examination of the effects of economic development on the environment,8
"Using “law and order” as an institutional indicator, they found that the quality of local institutions is important to lessening environmental degradation in these areas",15
"(2019) applied the system GMM estimation which revealed that economic growth, trade openness, energy use, and urbanization increase CO2 emissions while institutional quality produces the opposite effect",8
"Sarkodie and Adams (2018) used an ARDL model to analyze how renewable, fossil, and nuclear energy along with economic growth, urbanization and institutions affect the environment of South Africa",8
"Al Mulali and Ozturk (2015) employed the FMOLS to find how energy consumption and political stability along with other factors, such as urbanization and industrial development, influence the EF of 14 MENA countries",7
"They concluded that although energy consumption and the other factors increase EF consumption, political stability reduces it",7
"(2020) established that political institutions promote the environmental sustainability of 53 developed and 57 developing countries, while energy consumption increases their EF",7
(2020) explored the effects of institutional quality on 5 environmental indicators and energy consumption of 66 developing countries using the system GMM method,7
"They concluded that the quality of institutions seems to increase environmental degradation, as well as promotes the use of oil and fossil-based energy sources",15
"(2020) established a positive relationship between institutional quality, energy consumption, and CO2 emissions in Pakistan applying an ARDL model",7
"Their results, based on DOLS and FMOLS estimators, revealed that energy consumption and institutional quality (represented by political rights and civilian freedom) increase the EF in these regions",7
"(2017), we formulate the following model to capture the distinct impact of the disaggregated energy sources and the influence of institutions in the environment of OECD countries during the process of economic growth:
 In Eq",8
"As can be seen, the highest contributions are that of “bureaucracy quality” (with a weight of 0.497), “law and order” (weigh 0.466), “democratic accountability” (weigh 0.412), and corruption (weigh 0.407)",16
"These outcomes validate the Pedroni tests which evidence a long-run relationship that interrelates RE and non-RE consumption, economic growth, and institutional quality with the steady-state of OECD countries’ ecological footprint",8
It is shown that there is a unidirectional causal effect running from economic growth to EF and a weak causal effect from EF to the use of RE,8
"This could be attributed to differences regarding the institutional level, the stage of economic growth, and the phase of the fossil fuels decoupling process",8
This study aims at the simultaneous investigation of the dynamic effects of institutional quality and disaggregated energy consumption on the EF of 29 OECD countries during the period 1984–2016,7
The long-run estimates show the stimulative effect of economic growth and non-RE consumption on the EF of OECD countries,8
"In parallel, the D-H causality analysis shows a unidirectional causality from economic growth to the EF and a weak one-way causal effect running from the second to RE consumption",8
"First of all, as OECD countries are the instigators of the SDGs and the Green Growth Strategy (GGS) plan (OECD 2012), they have to reassess their national energy policy portfolios",8
"Most of these countries are subjected to the world’s highest economic growth rates, a fact that makes their need for new energy source exploitation imperative",8
"Therefore, it is evident that OECD countries should give priority to the gradual increase of the renewables share in their national energy-mix, by promoting the substitution of fossil energy from green energy forms",7
Institutional quality in OECD countries is associated with a well-defined legislative and regulatory framework that protects property rights and ensures transparent economic processes,1
"These barriers are associated with the proper energy market regulation, the RE installed capacity, the investment implementation in research and development (R&D), and the public information and perception towards the utilization of renewables",9
"Furthermore, the cooperation among OECD countries (especially in clean technologies applications) is considered critical in the process of materializing their environmental projects in light of their undertaken SDGs",9
"The Initiative received its name due to the global importance of soils for climate change, which can be illustrated by a thought experiment showing that an annual growth rate of only 0.4% of the standing global SOC stocks would have the potential to counterbalance the current increase in atmospheric CO2",13
"As a result and as a supplement to immediate and aggressive emissions reduction, an increase of soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration has been promoted by scientists and policy makers as a prospective additional opportunity to partly counterbalance increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations (e.g",13
"In 2015, the French government launched the “4 per 1000” (4p1000) Initiative at the 21st Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as part of the Lima-Paris Action Plan",13
"As agricultural activities and land use change account for about 25% of the CO2, 50% of the CH4 and 70% of the N2O anthropogenic emissions (Hutchinson et al",15
"Particularly, the Initiative may have the possibility to contribute to SDG 15.3, by combatting desertification and restoring degraded lands through increasing SOC storage",15
"These include (1) biophysical limits (demands in terms of water, nutrients and energy), and other barriers such as (2) the trade-off effects, (3) climate change effects and (4) the socio-economic implications for the agricultural sector, including cultural issues and governance (van Groeningen et al",13
Following land use change (e.g,15
"agriculture), SOC losses generally occur through increased microbial decomposition rates and through soil erosion (Sanderman et al",15
recycling rather than burning crop residues) or following input of exogenous organic amendments (Chabbi et al,12
"Permanence of SOC storage will not only depend on the continuity of best management practices but also on the forms of carbon that comprise SOC stocks and stability of pedoclimatic conditions, which may be compromised by climate change",13
SOC sequestration is only part of the solution to mitigate climate change and must be complemented with other mitigation initiatives that will lead to aggressive and urgent reductions in all greenhouse gas emissions,13
"In this context, the recycling of organic wastes from domestic activities and urban areas as organic fertilisers is an opportunity to transfer organic carbon in ways that enhance SOC storage, ameliorate the nutrient content of soils and close nitrogen and phosphorus cycles at regional scales (Chabbi et al",12
"Use of amendments containing organic carbon in thermally stable forms, (biochar), while being a practical way of recycling organic wastes, may avoid inputs of nitrogen and phosphorus to form SOC because of their low concentrations of both elements",12
"We acknowledge these limitations, but suggest that there are many possibilities for improving nutrient and organic residue management at farm, region and national scales, which could be exploited to maintain and if possible increase SOC stocks and improve soil quality",2
"(2017), a spatially diversified strategy is needed for climate change mitigation from agricultural soils",13
"However, the trading price of carbon is likely to increase with increasing focus on climate change mitigation and adaptation policies providing strong incentives for farmers (Frank et al",13
Smallholder farmers in developing countries may be less interested in change because they are more vulnerable to impacts on food security and community well-being (Lal 2019),2
"One example is the adoption of biochar technology which, despite being a promising option to improve soil quality and increase SOC stocks (Marousek et al",2
Non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions with a much higher global warming potential may limit the climate change mitigation potential of SOC sequestration,13
These interrelationships need to be considered as well as the fact that water shortage following climate change may put at risk SOC in systems with permanent water-logging (exp,13
Increasing terrestrial biosphere carbon sinks could contribute to achieving the ambitious climate change mitigation target of limiting the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels by offsetting emissions,13
"The Initiative addresses global issues to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and food security and, at the same time, local issues to improve soil quality and agricultural production",2
"While there are already other initiatives to promote SOC sequestration and improve soil quality, such as the Global Soil Partnership, the 4p1000 Initiative provides a platform to encourage interactions among scientists, policy makers and practitioners (farmers, NGOs, funders…)",2
"Further, education, identification and coordination of policies as well as provision of financial support to help farmers, who use sustainable SOC improving practices is required (Rumpel et al",2
"To increase public awareness about the necessity to increase SOC stocks, the Initiative promotes SOC sequestration to a wide audience, including farmers and land managers, agricultural suppliers of resources, other contributors to the supply chain, central and local governments, urban waste managers and consumers, etc",11
The Initiative has potential as an international multi-disciplinary platform combining a recommended research programme with a multi-stakeholder action plan to link scientific research and action,9
"Thus, it aims to establish economic growth that values social and environmental issues (D’Amato et al",8
"For the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD 2019) and the National Confederation of Industry (CNI 2013, 2020), the Bioeconomy is linked to the invention and use of biological products and processes in the fields of human health, agricultural productivity, and biotechnology",2
"More recently, the Bioeconomy has been associated with the Circular Economy movement through the concept of the Circular Bioeconomy (Toppinen et al",12
"The Circular Bioeconomy focuses specifically on recovering and adding value to end-of-life products and materials in their biological cycle, in a cascade approach, such as recycling and reprocessing for energy purposes, for example",12
"Last, but not least, a consensus in the current literature is that the Bioeconomy can support advances that will directly contribute to reduce climate change and biodiversity losses, as well as to improve efficiency in the use of resources (WBCSD 2017)",13
"2011; Curran 2013), and it is widely debated in different fields, such as LCA of processes and products, LCA in business (e.g., eco-innovation, LCA organizational), LCA in public policies (e.g., sustainable public procurement), and to assess more sustainable lifestyles (e.g., environmental labeling)",12
"An example of this refers precisely to the LCA interface with Bioeconomy, emphasizing the choice of more sustainable production systems in terms of the selection of bioprocesses (e.g., refineries), bioproducts, biomaterials, biomass, and bioenergy",12
"All of them observed trade-offs in the paradigm shift from current production models to those involving the context of the Bioeconomy, including the different geographical, socioeconomic, and ecological contexts, with emphasis on the impacts related to land use and transformation, biodiversity, and also the impacts of climate change",13
This driver consequently generates a third driver: the lack of qualifications in the workforce to boost sustainable production,12
"The Program “Bioeconomy Brazil—Sociobiodiversity,” from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply, focuses on small and family farmers, traditional peoples, and communities and aims to connect these groups with the business sector through partnerships, promoting the bioeconomy (Brazil 2019)",2
The National Biofuels Policy (RenovaBio) is part of the national energy policy and focuses on promoting sustainable energy through biofuels (Brazil 2017),7
"Besides labeling guidelines, green public procurement is another interesting policy mentioned in the document (European Commission 2018b)",12
"Considering the reality of emerging economies such as Brazil, the policy of green public procurement may face greater challenges than in developed countries, for reasons such as the lack of a sufficient number of suppliers meeting this requirement to participate in public tenders and the lack of popularity of this measure if taken before knowledge dissemination about its relevance",12
Most of the developed countries across the globe have targeted to attain sustainable economic growth,8
"Besides, urbanization is found one of the major reasons for environmental degradation",15
"For example, UN SDGs emphasize global cooperation to mitigate environmental degradation through intergovernmental cooperation (Wang et al",15
"In addition to this, policymakers and environmental research institutes are also attempting to pinpoint dynamics which have the most bearing on environmental degradation",15
"Currently, international trade is having a significant indicator, i.e., export product diversification which directly contributes to the economic growth (Bashir et al",8
"Moreover, it can affect environmental degradation because of energy utilization (Machado et al",15
"2022; Can and Gozgor 2017), countries are able to switch to environmental protecting industries as industrialization allows the switch to technological innovation and plays an indispensable role in reducing GHG emissions (Lorente and Álvarez-Herranz 2016)",8
"In recent years’ industrial economies, commitment to environmental protection aims to lower ecological footprint",15
"2021) and subjects developing economies to higher environmental degradation, often called as “pollution haven hypothesis” (Singhania and Saini 2021)",15
"On the other side, for long-run economic growth, export diversification also benefits developing economies through the transfer of environmental technologies (Hussain et al",8
"Our second objective is to statistically evaluate OECD sustainable development goals from the spectrum of carbon intensity, energy intensity, and export diversification (Ma et al",7
"Third, we include trade openness, financial development, and urbanization as supplementary variables to evaluate energy efficiency targets in OECD countries",7
"2017; Neagu and Teodoru 2019), whereas energy intensity aspect for developed as well as OECD countries has been ignored",7
"Thirdly, for OECD countries, this research shows the heterogeneous influences on the energy intensity of institutional variables that have been ignored in available researches",7
"The inability to interpret institutional quality’s role for energy efficiency improvement is a significant disadvantage in the existing literature, perhaps these are resourceful variables in policymaking",7
"Moreover, the levels of carbon or energy intensities are in association with the structure of economics sectors, which are more closely related to more or less usage of energy and energy efficiency levels (Shahbaz et al",7
"2020) have shown that the rising challenges faced by climate change, innovation, and decreases in emissions are driving economic and environmental cleanliness",13
"The theory is backed by growing energy consumption, i.e., the gross domestic product (GDP) (Murshed and Dao 2020)",7
"The results of the energy conservation policies’ hypothesis have indicated economic growth, i.e., GDP (Liu et al",8
"The theory of conservation implies that a nation relies less on energy sources, and those conservation-oriented policies do not inhibit economic development (Bashir 2018; Arslan et al",8
Trade transparency by increasing the scale impact of domestic output and energy consumption raises market size (Rauf et al,7
For country’s economy plus the degree of economic development and trade transparency ties decide the energy use impacts of trade openness (Paramati et al,8
"To stimulate economic growth, globalization opened up a market through the extension of commerce, construction activities, and technical inflows (Shahbaz et al",8
(2020) analyzed the effect of regional trade against the non-regional trade for economic growth,8
"The results greatly backed Krugman’s theory (1991) and provided a stronger solution to foreign trade and were a driver for economic development, respectively",8
Environmentally sustainable policies for reducing non-renewable energy use could be unfavorable for majority of developing countries in a proportion of renewable energy usage is smaller regarding overall energy use than in developed countries (Armeanu et al,7
The increased energy usage is the foundation for environmental problems with climate change that damages the health of human beings and livelihood opportunities (Mavi and Mavi 2019),13
"Numerous studies published that are covering export diversification along with their impact on economic growth, and sustainable development, provide mixed results",8
Mania and Rieber (2019) argued that developed countries have reconcentration exports strategy on further sophisticated products of the existing basket led them to have a beneficial impact on the sustainable growth rate (long run),8
(2019) investigates the influence of democracy on the economic growth of countries,8
"The results have revealed the constructive role of democracy in the economic growth of the country, including an increase in long-run per capita GDP",8
(2020) examined the connection between government and energy efficiency nexus for the 31 OECD countries,7
The results showed that government efficiency substantially affect the energy efficiency which leads OECD countries to the reduction of energy intensity,7
"Additionally, the U-shaped association exists between economic development and Carbon emissions while an inverted U-shaped Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) for OECD countries",8
"Previous research neither analyzes the influence of trade diversification through extensive and intensive margins and energy use for these margins on developed nations; nor analyzes as a measure of energy efficiency on the influence of trade diversification, broad margins, institutional quality, and intensive margins on energy intensity",7
"To examine the relationship of carbon and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions alongside the export diversification, financial development, economic growth, urbanization, and trade openness, this research used panel data for 29 OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development) countries for 28 years of time span (1990–2018)",8
"For economic growth, export diversification is known as the main element; export diversification is mainly subdivided into three categories, i.e., per the Theil index of IMF, known as export diversification, extensive margin, and intensive margins",8
"The following are the basic panel linear models: The above-mentioned equations, CO2 and GHG indicate carbon dioxide emission and greenhouse gasses emission while EXPDIV demonstrates export diversification, FIND indicates the financial development variable, ECGRT demonstrates the economic growth variable, URB indicates urbanization, and finally, TRDP indicates trade openness",8
"Additionally, we have checked robustness by including economic variables, i.e., economic growth, trade openness, and urbanization in the above equations",8
"Further, we examined the robustness of all equations by including economic variables i.e., economic growth, trade openness, and urbanization in the above equations while using panel quantile regression",8
"After checking the association of carbon and greenhouse gas emissions with all selected economic variables (export diversification, financial development, economic growth, urbanization, and trade openness) through panel quantile regression",8
"The examined outcomes of the Levin-Lin-Chu (2002) for unit root test showed that carbon dioxide emission, trade openness, financial development, Bureaucratic quality, Democratic accountability, and government stability are perfectly stationary at I(0) and I(1), while the remaining variables, i.e., intensive, extensive, diversification, economic growth, and urbanization are perfectly stationary at I(I)",8
The examined results of the GDP growth and the CO2 emission are inline to early studies,8
The examined findings of one-step difference GMM indicate that export diversification positively influences the carbon dioxide emission while One-step system GMM and Two Step system GMM results indicate that export diversification assists in lowering the environmental degradation (Bashir et al,15
"The findings of one-step difference GMM specify that 1% growth in economic development reasons to decrease the pollution about 9.4% on the side, results of one-step system GMM indicates that a 1% upsurge in economic growth is mainly grounds to rise emissions in the study countries for about 6.1%",8
"(2019), which demonstrates that trade openness helps reduce environmental degradation in Pakistan",15
Table 6 determines the examined outcomes of export diversification positively impact the environmental degradation in the 29 OECD countries,15
"(2021), who used PMG statistical approach to reveal that institutional quality, economic growth, electricity consumption and foreign direct investment directly correlate with environmental deterioration",8
(2021) to indicate the reduction in environmental degradation,15
The findings of economic development show a positive influence regarding degradation of environment,8
These outcomes for the economic growth is parallel to Khan et al,8
"(2020), which argued that economic activities cause environmental degradation in Pakistan",15
"(2020), which explored the positive influence of export diversification on environmental degradation in 35 developing economies while negatively affect panel of 95 developed countries",15
"(2017), used ARDL approach for the duration of 1971–2011 to empirically state that financial development is basic cause regarding environmental degradation in Pakistan",15
"(2019), which revealed that trade openness causes environmental degradation in Pakistan",15
"The findings of simultaneous quantile regression and panel quantile regression indicate that a 1% increase in export diversification causes environmental degradation about 47, 64, 130, and 186% while 56% according to panel quantile regression results",15
"Institutional quality plays a crucial role in the environment, as a stringent policy may reduce environmental degradation or vice-versa",15
"The observed findings of one-step difference GMM, one-step system GMM, and two-step system GMM models for institutional quality and environmental degradation are the same as Bashir et al",15
"Besides, financial development uncovered to a negative influence on Carbon emissions which eventually leads to environmental sustainability and sustainable economic growth",8
"Secondly, the simultaneous quantile regression, panel quantile regression, and the GMM results reveal that export diversification, economic growth, financial development and urbanization significantly contribute to enhancing GHG emissions, which leads to environmental destruction",8
"First, as we can observe that current study’s empirical evidence document that export diversification lowers carbon emissions to improve environmental quality but on the other hand assists environmental degradation through higher GHG emissions",15
"Hence, the balance between environmental and trade regulations must be addressed in emerging and developed economies to overcome possible negative externalities from export diversification",17
"Second, domestic market protectionist policies must be replaced with higher trade openness to entice foreign investors to introduce environmentally friendly technologies to ensure environmental sustainability and archive compliance with UN SDGs",17
"Lastly, institutions of developed countries have a foremost role in any sustainable economic growth and better environmental policy: therefore, the quality of institutions must be improved to further help achieve Sustainable Economic Goals (SDGs).",8
"Hazard comes in the form of water supply and drainage shortage, flooding, pollution, water quality, groundwater depletion and drought indicators",6
"Vulnerability considers factors such as the educational level of the population, access to health services, illiteracy, housing conditions, unemployment and the proportion of indigenous language population",8
"This is particularly relevant for large countries like Mexico, with about two two-thirds of its territory in arid or semi-arid areas, which face natural water scarcity, and only one-third with very high relative water abundance",6
"Such is its importance for Mexico that it was incorporated into the National Water Program 2019–2024 (still in discussion at the time of writing this paper), considering this concept as a strategic objective, through prevention, resilience and climate change adaptation actions, promoting green infrastructure for population center protection and addressing emergencies caused by extreme and anthropogenic natural phenomena [7]",13
"A wide range of water-related risks undermine human well-being and can contribute to instability, violent conflicts, human displacement, migration and acute food insecurity; which in turn can undermine municipal, state, and even national security [14]",2
"Regarding water security, the United Nations Organization set out 17 Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with the goal 6 “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all",6
"The United Nations Statistical Commission approved the official list of global SDG indicators in March 2017, including indicators for monitoring progress in SDG 6 targets, which may be complemented by additional national, regional and thematic indicators [29]",6
"[13] proposed a global water security index (GWSI), based on SDG 6, which integrates physical and socioeconomic criteria of: availability, accessibility to services, safety and quality, and management",6
"There is no methodology in the literature that allows to generate an indicator on water security based on a probabilistic analysis that integrates both social vulnerability as well as different hazards integrated into a single map, including drought, overexploitation of aquifers, water availability and extreme weather events",13
"It is sought that the results obtained serve as a reference to the decision makers for the development of the most vulnerable communities, as well as identifying the areas where it is most necessary to implement public policies [8] that allow a better use of the water resource, with the purpose of increasing water security",1
"It has two components [access to drinking water (ADW) and access to sanitation (AS)] and nine variables (drinking water coverage, urban drinking water coverage, rural drinking water coverage, disinfected water, drainage coverage, urban drainage coverage, rural drainage coverage, wastewater collection efficiency, and municipal wastewater treatment coverage)",6
"For the first, the following information was given: The number of inhabitants The number of inhabitants with access to the public sanitation network The generated wastewater (L/s) Installed capacity for wastewater treatment 
To calculate the generation of wastewater per municipality, the first is multiplied by the second and by 0.75 (which represents the portion of wastewater that makes it to drainage)",6
"The institute published an atlas titled “Atlas of Water Vulnerability in Mexico 2015 in light of climate change” [2], among other documents which go as far as the municipal level",13
"With respect to their municipal extension, the states that present more extreme weather events are the state of Chihuahua (104,996.26 km2), Durango (87,672.19 km2) and Baja California Sur (73,277 km2) (Fig. 3)",13
"It is known that these areas of the country present problems of access to drinking water (HWDWS), sewerage (HWD) and electricity (HWE), along with low educational level (AEL) and poor health care coverage (PWHC)",6
"These states have the aggravation of being located in zones that are characterized by being eminently arid, which is why their population and distinct economic activities are highly vulnerable amid water scarcity provoked by drought, given that in the majority of them extreme dry and semi-dry climates predominate",6
"Priority attention zones generated by CONAGUA [7] In a more general way, the results were also compared to the global water security index (GWSI), based on SDG 6., obtained for Mexico by [13]",6
"In the global world map of the availability index, integrated in turn by the water scarcity index, the drought index, and by the depletion of aquifers, the average value observed for Mexico is ≈ 0.50",6
"Known challenges to overcome in reaching water security are water scarcity, water pollution, the adverse effects of hydrometeorological events, growing water conflicts and environmental deterioration of basins and aquifers [1, 4, 15, 22,23,24,25,26, 31]",6
"In the future, it is recommended to incorporate information relative to the authorized budgets and their effective employment in the municipalities related to flood control, droughts, water treatment, improved drinking water services, etc.—actions that directly strengthen water security in the country",6
"1 IntroductionThere is broad agreement that food security as defined by the World Food Summit exists when “all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for a healthy and active life” (FAO 1996)",2
From this consensus emerged a complex definition with four dimensions that are understood as necessary conditions for food security namely: 1) availability; 2) accessibility; 3) utilization; and 4) stability (Pinstrup-Andersen 2009),2
"While different conceptual constructs, risk factors, consequences and measures may be relevant to each dimension, the complexity of how they interact, and how their absence gives rise to food insecurity is a recognized “wicked problem” (Candel 2014)",2
"In his work looking at the implications for food security governance, Candel (2014 p",2
"288) noted that as a wicked problem, food security is “ill defined, ambiguous, contested and highly resistant to solutions”",2
"In addition to the commonly recognized extreme situation of hunger at its most severe levels, food insecurity may be related to different forms of deprivation including material poverty, malnutrition (presenting as obesity and undernourishment), and socio-cultural losses (Farrell et al",2
"2017;Hendriks 2015) such as the loss of indigenous crop varieties and traditional ecological knowledge.Across the world, the consequences of food insecurity present a growing challenge and have been on the increase since 2015 (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, WHO 2018)",2
"Global estimates suggest that one in three persons are affected by malnutrition manifested as undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and or overweight and obesity (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, WHO 2017)",2
"These trends are worrying. International food, nutrition, and agriculture organizations suggest that at current trajectories, all forms of malnutrition will increase globally to one in two persons by 2030(FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO 2017)",2
"This recognition of a global imperative for action has been enshrined in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in particular Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #2, end all hunger and malnutrition by 2030",2
"While not a new global target, there is more at stake to “balanc[e] growth and environmental sustainability; [and] reduc[e] vulnerabilities to adverse trends such as climate change” (Sachs 2012 p",13
"As flagged by the 2018 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, the intersection of these climate-related impacts with global conflicts contributes to increased food insecurity (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO 2018), and underscores the importance of data-driven, multi-stakeholder decision making to build the governance capacity of food systems in order to achieve SDGs by 2030 (HLPE 2017, 2018).Well-developed food insecurity measures that allow global comparability are a critical component in mobilising existing knowledge and information exchange (Pérez-Escamilla et al",2
"In 2013, recognising this global data gap in measuring food insecurity, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations took action to develop a new tool called the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES)",2
"This tool has been noted as able to improve food security governance by: facilitating planning, decision making and implementation; overseeing transparency and accountability of institutions; providing benchmarks for equitable resource allocation and; developing coherent and coordinated policies (Pérez-Escamilla 2012; Pérez-Escamilla et al",2
"to collect FIES data through the Gallup World Poll, which is an international survey administered annually to individuals in approximately 150 countries.This introductory paper explains the reasons for this special section and provides a rationale for the theme “Food security and the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES): Ensuring progress by 2030”",2
"In order to show the importance of the FIES in fostering progress in the area of food security, we describe the development of experience-based food security scales (EBFSSs) and trace the rationale, usefulness and limitations of the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES)",2
We then identify what the five papers in this special section contribute to our understanding of food insecurity and together their overall contribution to the food security literature,2
"Finally, we conclude with lessons provided by this special section and highlight the future of the FIES and its potential contribution to the discourse on the global food insecurity",2
"There is broad agreement that food security as defined by the World Food Summit exists when “all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for a healthy and active life” (FAO 1996)",2
From this consensus emerged a complex definition with four dimensions that are understood as necessary conditions for food security namely: 1) availability; 2) accessibility; 3) utilization; and 4) stability (Pinstrup-Andersen 2009),2
"While different conceptual constructs, risk factors, consequences and measures may be relevant to each dimension, the complexity of how they interact, and how their absence gives rise to food insecurity is a recognized “wicked problem” (Candel 2014)",2
"In his work looking at the implications for food security governance, Candel (2014 p",2
"288) noted that as a wicked problem, food security is “ill defined, ambiguous, contested and highly resistant to solutions”",2
"In addition to the commonly recognized extreme situation of hunger at its most severe levels, food insecurity may be related to different forms of deprivation including material poverty, malnutrition (presenting as obesity and undernourishment), and socio-cultural losses (Farrell et al",2
"Across the world, the consequences of food insecurity present a growing challenge and have been on the increase since 2015 (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, WHO 2018)",2
"Global estimates suggest that one in three persons are affected by malnutrition manifested as undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and or overweight and obesity (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, WHO 2017)",2
"These trends are worrying. International food, nutrition, and agriculture organizations suggest that at current trajectories, all forms of malnutrition will increase globally to one in two persons by 2030(FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO 2017)",2
"This recognition of a global imperative for action has been enshrined in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in particular Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #2, end all hunger and malnutrition by 2030",2
"While not a new global target, there is more at stake to “balanc[e] growth and environmental sustainability; [and] reduc[e] vulnerabilities to adverse trends such as climate change” (Sachs 2012 p",13
"As flagged by the 2018 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, the intersection of these climate-related impacts with global conflicts contributes to increased food insecurity (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO 2018), and underscores the importance of data-driven, multi-stakeholder decision making to build the governance capacity of food systems in order to achieve SDGs by 2030 (HLPE 2017, 2018)",2
Well-developed food insecurity measures that allow global comparability are a critical component in mobilising existing knowledge and information exchange (Pérez-Escamilla et al,2
"In 2013, recognising this global data gap in measuring food insecurity, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations took action to develop a new tool called the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES)",2
"This tool has been noted as able to improve food security governance by: facilitating planning, decision making and implementation; overseeing transparency and accountability of institutions; providing benchmarks for equitable resource allocation and; developing coherent and coordinated policies (Pérez-Escamilla 2012; Pérez-Escamilla et al",2
This introductory paper explains the reasons for this special section and provides a rationale for the theme “Food security and the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES): Ensuring progress by 2030”,2
"In order to show the importance of the FIES in fostering progress in the area of food security, we describe the development of experience-based food security scales (EBFSSs) and trace the rationale, usefulness and limitations of the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES)",2
We then identify what the five papers in this special section contribute to our understanding of food insecurity and together their overall contribution to the food security literature,2
"Finally, we conclude with lessons provided by this special section and highlight the future of the FIES and its potential contribution to the discourse on the global food insecurity",2
"Clearly, consequences of food insecurity are on the increase, both among those who are undernourished and those who are obese and overweight",2
"Unless some of the contestation related to the concept of food insecurity is resolved, solutions will remain constrained by differences in terminology, theoretical constructs, direction of causality and disciplinary boundaries (Hendriks 2015)",2
"In part, this challenge to developing common measures and models is explained by the complexity of the concept of food security, which involves dimensions and their connections to multiple social, biological, nutritional, and economic factors",2
Efforts around developing a common measure has put emphasis on the food access dimension,2
"Ongoing research has seen a shift away from defining and measuring food security based on the availability dimension, and towards access, which is related to the distribution of food (Sen 1981; Smith et al",2
"Recognizing that accessibility, availability, and utilization of food are interrelated and hierarchical dimensions of food security, (Webb et al",2
"These food security dimensions are dependent on stability of the food system, highlighting the need for sustainability as a critical component of food security (Hendriks 2015)",2
The FIES is a part of a series of developments that examines food insecurity as a “lived experience” (see Frongillo 2013),2
"Early developments on the access dimension of food security provided much of its foundational work, starting with research on experience-based food insecurity scales (EBFSSs) by Radimer and colleagues (Radimer et al",2
"EBFSSs emerged out of ethnographic research on low income women in the United States, looking at the women's perceptions and experiences related to food insecurity caused by resource inadequacies (Radimer et al",2
Findings revealed a theoretical construct of food insecurity that involved a “managed process” as respondents faced reduced access to food (Ballard et al,2
"As food access conditions worsened, respondents compromised on food choices, resulting in reductions in the quality and diversity of their diet",2
"This stage has now been identified as part of the obesogenic pathway in food insecurity (Hendriks 2015; FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO 2018)",2
"As food insecurity becomes more severe, food insecure respondents reported that they ate smaller meal portions, skipped meals, and eventually went without food for an entire day or longer",2
"We now understand that this pathway leads to undernourishment (Hendriks 2015; FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO 2018)",2
"Considered ground-breaking findings, research on EBFSSs showed that respondents were able to survive short and long-term food insecurity and extreme hunger through this “managed process” (Ballard et al",2
"Further, these experiences were seen as linked to different severities of food insecurity",2
"A major contribution of EBFSSs has been linked to their ability to use answers provided by respondents on their food experiences and to classify them along a food insecurity continuum (Jones et al., 2013)",2
This recognition of food insecurity as experiences lived by respondents helped researchers understand the changes in these experiences over time because of the lack of money or other resources,2
"Further, ongoing research has revealed an integrated theoretical construct that includes the food security continuum and the “managed process” of food insecurity with key cross-disciplinary concepts such as: “the FAO’s four dimensions…nutritional inadequacy, the triple burden of hunger, nutrient deficiencies and obesity” (see Fig. 1) (Hendriks 2015 p",2
"More recent work has developed further understandings of several pathways that connect inadequate food access to multiple forms of malnutrition (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO 2018)",2
Food insecurity severity continuum theoretical conceptual framework that brings together emerging issues,2
"2013; Hendriks 2015 Rather than looking at actual food consumption, EBFSSs provide an accurate assessment that can be used to place individuals or households along the food insecurity continuum that includes hidden hunger, by accounting for individuals or households' expected behaviours in times of limited food access (Coates et al",2
"When complemented with other indicators related to food security such as nutritional status and socio-economic indicators, EBFSSs can improve our understanding of the consequences and determinants of food insecurity in vulnerable populations (Cafiero et al",2
"Additionally, by measuring psychological effects (anxiety) of the food insecure before any nutritional changes, researchers and policy makers are better able to measure, trace, and respond proactively to instability challenges related to food security (FAO 2014)",2
See Table 1 for the many benefits of using the FIES to measure food insecurity,2
"At that time, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) created the FIES as an internationally validated global tool for measuring food insecurity (Brunelli and Viviani 2014; Cafiero et al",2
"Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM) and Latin American and Caribbean Food Security Scale, which is known by its Spanish acronym as ELCSA (Ballard et al",2
"In 2017, these findings were published in the annual report of State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) that presented comparable national estimates of food insecurity prevalence for the first time (Cafiero et al",2
"In light of the flexibility of the FIES, developers acknowledged that when using this single tool at the global level for cross-country comparison, it is likely that some food insecurity experiences occur due to variation in cultural contexts and livelihood arrangements (Cafiero et al",2
"However, when researchers measured criteria validity of the tool, results showed that despite the diversity in the global population, food insecurity was associated with commonly cited determinants and consequences of food security such as national income, health, and well-being (Jones 2017; Smith et al",2
"While the articles in this special section showcase the application of the FIES in varied contexts and regions, they also shed new insights and research directions on global food security in three broad approaches",2
"First, the Gallup World Poll, with the FIES that was administered to individuals across numerous countries in six continents, provides a rare opportunity to examine food security issues across scales; at global and national levels while taking into consideration individual-level variations",2
"In the first article, Graham and colleagues (2019) identify vulnerable segments of populations that are compounded with low perception of life satisfaction and food insecurity, with a focus on gender disparities",2
"Large-scale analyses regarding food security have enormous potential in identifying common patterns across diverse contexts and cultures, enabling regional studies to delve into specific policy drivers pertinent within each country",2
"In their article, De Sousa and colleagues (2019) identify growing trends of food insecurity among 18 Latin American countries from 2014 to 2017",2
The article finds individual perceptions of social support as one of the key factors associated with the experience of food insecurity in the region,2
"Similarly, Sadiddin and colleagues’ (2019) article examines the relationship between food insecurity and the international migration decision process of individuals residing in Sub-Saharan Africa",2
"In contrast, Omidvar and colleagues (2019) report in their article that insufficient state-level regulations and welfare support in relation to shelter affordability to be highly associated with food insecurity among individuals living in rich and politically stable countries within their study region",2
"These regional-level studies help identify pockets of society that are experiencing food insecurity, that likely would have been obscured by factors such as average rising income and regional political stability",2
"Lastly, one article in the special section uses individual-level FIES data to examine the realities of food insecurity among a marginalized group",2
"In their article, Park and colleagues (2019) reveal that among the elderly in 48 developed countries, their experience of food insecurity associates with variables such as perceived weak social support and conversely with household size",2
"The research findings suggest that kinship and social support can play an important role in maintaining food security, especially among those who are marginalized in society",2
"Not only are correlations between experiences of food security generalizable across countries, but nurturing existing social and kinship networks also has the potential to lift those who are vulnerable out of food insecurity",2
The importance of measuring food insecurity using cross-culturally adequate measures has been the focus of several efforts across the world for almost 30 years,2
"As a result of multinational research initiatives and based on the successful application of these EBFSSs, mainly in developing countries but also in the United States and Canada, FAO developed the Food Insecurity Experience Scale as the leading indicator for the Voices of the Hungry project",2
"In 2016, FAO published the report Methods for estimating comparable rates of food insecurity experienced by adults throughout the world, presenting the prevalence of experienced food insecurity at the individual level for 146 countries (FAO 2016b)",2
"Additionally, in 2017 the prevalence of severe food insecurity was incorporated for the first time into the report on the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, WHO 2017)",2
"In February 2019, high level food security policy makers and academics from around the world convened at an expert meeting on the FIES to discuss the validity of this tool at the FAO Headquarters in Rome",2
"Papers presented and discussions highlighted the theoretical framework underlying the instrument, and participants reviewed the cumulative evidence on its validity, as well as its policy relevance in line with the Sustainable Development Goal #2 (Zero Hunger)",2
"Through these steps, policymakers and academics acknowledged that at present, the FIES constitutes the only food insecurity measure at the household or individual level that provides the opportunity to generate internationally comparable, standard measures of food insecurity with details on levels of severity",2
This special section on articles examining food insecurity used the FIES to provide robust empirical support for correlates of food insecurity and its relationship with different factors in a wide variety of contexts and settings worldwide,2
This special section also highlighted the multiple ways in which food insecurity affects different aspects of life similarly across the globe,2
"This crucial information will need to be incorporated into legislation, public policies and programs further enhancing governance around food security",2
"In conclusion, the aim of this special section was to advance our understanding of food security, first by showcasing the methodological advances provided by the FIES that incorporate direct experiences of the food insecure, and to conduct unprecedented global and regional level studies focused on the understudied access dimension of food security",2
"Second, we present manuscripts from global and diverse geographic contexts to enhance current understanding of the ongoing changes to food security conditions across the globe",2
"Collectively, this special section demonstrates the robustness of the FIES and its importance for monitoring and evaluating advances towards internationally agreed milestones in the fight against food insecurity.",2
Most cities in developing countries suffer environmental degradation caused by the growth of unplanned areas that sprawl in the cities,15
"In the current paper, we attempted to integrate a set of selected UN-based urban indicators based on the New Urban Agenda (NUA) within a GIS framework to observe and assess some aspects of urban vulnerability among city districts based on deprivation",11
"Results also revealed that vulnerable districts encompass the highest percentage of slums, highest density of population, highest rates for urban growth and poor connection to services",11
"Environmental degradation, poverty, lack of urban services, transport and inadequate shelter are among the main areas of concern",15
"In this context, the sustainable urban development issue was raised to include urban vulnerability indicators as a measuring instrument and in the implementation of policies to reduce these impacts' severity and frequency",11
The New Urban Agenda (NUA) was endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly on 23 December 2016,11
"The NUA works as an accelerator of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 11- ""Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”",11
Sustainable Development Goal 11 sets targets and defines indicators to measure progress and growth,11
"The core dimensions of the New Urban Agenda guidelines are: Social sustainability, Economic sustainability, Environmental and Spatial sustainability",11
Studying the urban environment has gained the attention of many researchers through several studies on different aspects,11
Priority areas are urban poverty alleviation and how to face various challenges,1
"2016), infrastructure, Zeleza-Manda (2009); Luqman and Van Belle (2017) economic and social well-being and public health (APHRC 2014)",3
(2017) focused on Cape Town’s participation in piloting SDG 11,11
Agreements such as the UN Global Goals and the New Urban Agenda and current pressing problems such as the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic proves that it is impossible to tackle socio-ecological system issues without considering urban vulnerability models (Spiliotopoulou and Roseland 2020; Kumar et al,11
"In this section, we assume that the triggering factors governing the potential transmission of infectious diseases excel in zones suffering deteriorated environments in cities",3
The efficacy of the vaccine on infectious diseases has been strongly related to socioeconomic and demographic conditions (Bluhm and Pinkovskiy 2020),3
Geographical information system (GIS) is an effective tool for managing a pandemic and improving the quality of healthcare by analyzing the spatial distribution of infectious diseases (Lovett et al,3
"Sub-indicators for social degradation are shown in Fig. 6, while the sub-indicators for environmental degradation are shown in Fig. 7",15
Standardized factors maps for shelter degradation; A unsuitable habitat; B quality of buildings; C governmental buildings; D overcrowding; E average size of the family; F no sanitation.; G no water network; H no electricity network; J natural gas network Standardized factors maps for social poverty; A rate of illiteracy; B primary education ratio; C secondary education ratio; D higher education ratio; E single ratio; F divorced ratio.; G Underage ratio; H old age ratio Standardized factors maps for environmental vulnerability; A population growth; B population density; C vacant land ratio; D air pollution; E soil pollution; F noise; G water pollution; H high-voltage pressure areas Standardized factors maps for economic vulnerability; A average price of residential land; B road density; C utilities Figure 9 shows the spatial distribution of low- and high-risk zones of COVID-19 based on each urban vulnerability indicator,6
"Standardized factors maps for COVID-19; A unsuitable habitat; B old age ratio; C population density; D overcrowding; E average size of the family; F no sanitation; G no water network; H no electricity network; J natural gas network The final four combined urban vulnerability indicators result of the weighted linear combination aggregated vulnerability index maps for the four sub-models (shelter degradation, social degradation, environmental degradation and economic degradation maps) (Fig. 10)",15
"Yet, from the authors’ vision, the equal scenario is quite convenient because it takes into consideration the chosen indicators of sustainable urban development and treats the themes (urban, social, economic, or environmental) equally rather than focusing on either of them",11
"The results emphasize the importance of AHP, MCE and GIS in the reflection of spatial justice in utilities, infrastsructure, habitat quality and overall environmental quality in city planning",11
"In the current work, spatial models have been utilized in the assessment of the urban environment vulnerability among the districts of Asyiout City",11
The study attempts to conduct a diagnostic assessment for the overall urban environment and the factors that are assumed to trigger the spread of airborne diseases such as influenza and COVID-19,11
"Issues such as evaluation of inequality, poverty distribution , poor infrastructure and/or inadequate housing can be measured and mapped",11
The authors hope that the current results would contribute to the management of the new epidemic outbreak and contingency plans for the citizens in Asyiout and for the overall improvement of the citizens' quality of life following the vision of the New Urban Agenda.,11
This review will describe how soil erosion and sediment dynamics have (i) been used to assess the impact of humans on the planet and (ii) affected the global climate and influenced water security,15
Some of the main global impacts of enhanced soil erosion and changes in sediment dynamics and sediment composition include: changes in radiative energy balances and impacts on the cryosphere; the global carbon cycle; and greenhouse gas emissions,15
"While soil erosion and sediment dynamics have provided a wealth of information and greatly enhanced our understanding of the role of humanity in modifying the planet, suggestions are given for further research",15
"While the emphasis of this paper is on sediment, they are strongly linked to soil erosion as this is often the primary source of this material and, therefore, both are considered",15
This review will describe how soil erosion and sediment dynamics and composition have (i) been used to assess the impact of humans on the planet and (ii) affected the global climate and influenced water security,15
"In some cases, this is due to agricultural intensification following World War II and, in particular, the conversion of pasture to arable land and increases in stocking density (e.g., Foster and Lees 1999; Walling et al",15
"While individual case-study examples are informative—as often the detail and resolution of the sediment records are of a high level—such studies may be unable to determine if an impact is due to a localized activity (e.g., a mine or single farm activity) or is of regional or global significance (e.g., due to regional/national policies or climate change)",13
"In many cases, such records are linked to changes in sedimentation rates, which provide a measure of rates of soil erosion and sediment delivery to the receiving waterbody; useful reviews are provided by Dotterweich (2013) and Vanwalleghem et al",15
(2019) reconstructed sediment accumulation rates for 632 lakes throughout the world to infer the start of anthropogenic soil erosion,15
They were also able to use downcore profiles of the concentrations of pharmaceutical products in the sediment to infer human behavior via the management operations of nearby wastewater treatment plants,6
2020) There are several contemporary measurement and monitoring approaches that can be utilized to assess the impacts of humans on soil erosion and sediment dynamics,15
"In the case of soil erosion and redistribution, this includes: (i) measuring specific erosion processes over time (e.g., use of erosion pins, erosion bridge, erosion plots; Shakesby 1993; Lawler et al",15
"Fallout radionuclides (FRNs), such as unsupported lead-210 (210Pbun), cesium-137 (137Cs), and beryllium-7 (7Be), have been used to estimate rates of soil erosion and sediment redistribution, particularly on agricultural land (Mabit et al",15
"One of the main advantages of the use of FRNs like 137Cs is that they can be used in most parts of the world given their global distribution, thereby providing a common approach and enabling rates of soil erosion and sediment redistribution, and identification of sediment sources, to be compared (Mabit et al",15
"2018) have resampled the activity inventories of FRNs at the same site after a period of time (i.e., decades) to assess to impact of land use changes and management on rates and patterns of soil erosion and sediment redistribution",15
"Variations in sources reflect the construction of a dam and creation of a reservoir in the 1950s, as well as changes in land use (mainly forestry activities and expansion of agriculture) in addition to wildfires and pine beetle outbreaks (modified from Gateuille et al",15
"There is a vast literature on the use of models to estimate contemporary rates and patterns of soil erosion (e.g., see Merritt et al",15
"(2020) were able to investigate the effects of changes in land use, conservation measures, and climate on global soil erosion rates for 2070",15
"While socio-economic developments caused increases or decreases in erosion relative to values in 2015, depending on the scenario, in all cases, climate change projections increased water erosion rates (+ 30% to + 66%), especially under the RCP8.5 greenhouse gas emission scenario",13
"2018) or likely changes in future sediment fluxes due to climate change using an ergodic approach (e.g., Palazón and Navas 2016), which in turn have forecasting implications",13
"Other models which link soil erosion with sediment dynamics at the watershed scale include the SEdiment Delivery Distributed model (SEDD; Ferro and Porto 2000), the SEdiment DElivery Model (SEDEM; Van Rompaey et al",15
"Some studies have used climate scenarios based on global circulation models to predict future changes in soil erosion and sediment transport (e.g., Asselman et al",15
"(2018) have identified that a problem with this approach in models of soil erosion and sediment routing is that structural connectivity tends to view landscape topography as essentially static over time, whereas over medium to long time scales this may not be true, especially as humans modify the landscape",15
"These include the role of soil erosion in modifying vegetation cover and its subsequent effect on, for example: (i) the hydrological cycle (e.g., transpiration, evaporation, runoff); (ii) soil-atmosphere gas exchanges (including greenhouse gases); and (iii) heat exchanges by altering surface albedo",15
They assert that the increase in atmospheric dust levels in Antarctica partly reflects land use changes such as overgrazing and deforestation in South America,15
"For example, changes in surface albedo (i.e., reflectivity) influence the amount of incoming solar energy that is either reflected back into the atmosphere or absorbed by a surface",7
"2007) have attempted to determine the role of soil erosion by water on the terrestrial carbon cycle and, in particular, if soil erosion and sediment redistribution cause a net carbon sink or source",15
(2007) also calculated that soil erosion in the world’s agricultural landscapes resulted in a global carbon sink of 0.12 (range 0.06–0.27) Pg C year−1 and that 16–21 Pg of carbon has been buried in agricultural landscapes over the past ~ 50 years,15
"In these cases, the link is between: (i) human-induced changes in land cover/land use; (ii) subsequent changes in soil erosion, and sediment dynamics and composition; and (iii) changes in climate",15
"A useful review of the magnitude of greenhouse gases released due to melting permafrost is provided in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (e.g., Meredith et al",13
"In addition to processes in the soil, such as the breakdown of organic matter by microrganisms allowing the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, geomorphological processes are influencing the exposure of soil and organic carbon through soil erosion, channel bank erosion, and mass movements, and by influencing the transport and deposition of sediment and associated carbon in aquatic systems (Abbott and Jones 2015; Vonk et al",15
The program has 17 sustainable development goals (SDG) of which SDG6 addresses water and sanitation,6
"SDG6 has six main targets, including the following: (i) improve water quality (target 6.3); (ii) increase water use efficiency and ensure freshwater supplies (target 6.4); and (iii) protect and restore water-related ecosystems (target 6.6) (United Nations 2018)",6
"The targets within SDG6 align with the broad concept of water security, which recognizes the need to protect water (quantity and quality) to meet the needs of human well-being, socio-economic development, and the preservation of ecosystems (United Nations 2013)",8
"Soil erosion of agricultural land (i.e., arable and pasture) influences the amount of land allocated to agriculture—i.e., erosion reduces the productivity of land requiring more land for the same crop yield—thereby creating “watershed disturbance,” and in turn contributes to sediment and chemical loading (i.e., “pollution”)",15
"In turn, the examples illustrate how sediment dynamics and composition may influence how the United Nations Member States meet SDG6 targets in terms of aquatic ecosystems (Section 3.2.1), water quality (Section 3.2.2), and freshwater supplies (Section 3.2.3)",6
"The latter two factors have been linked to increases in sediment delivery from land uses such as agriculture, forestry, mining, and urbanization, in addition to disturbances to river channels (e.g., bank erosion, and gravel and sand mining)",15
"Given that a large number of pollutants are associated with particles (Horowitz 1991), then soil erosion and sediment transport processes are fundamental in controlling how hydrophobic contaminants behave in drainage basins",15
"In the 1950s and 1960s, specific accidents, events, and developments brought attention to other sediment-associated contaminants such as: (i) (methyl)mercury (e.g., Minamata, Japan); (ii) persistent organic pollutants, such as PCBs, PAHs, DDT, organo-pesticides and herbicides; (iii) phosphorus, due to increased application of fertilizers; (iv) fallout radionuclides, due to above-ground atom-bomb tests (e.g., 137Cs); (v) personal care products (see Section 2.1.2); and (vi) other emerging contaminants such as pathogens (e.g., Carson 1962; Schindler 1977; Correll 1998; Smil 2000; Rahman et al",12
"It also presents a risk to human health and suggests that there may be high levels of microplastics in surface drinking water supplies during high-flow events in drainage basins where there are industrial (e.g., manufacturing) and urban activities (i.e., high population densities, wastewater treatment plants, and combined sewer overflows) that produce microplastics (Fig",6
"Schematic representation of sources, pathways, and sinks of microplastics in a drainage basin with an emphasis on processes in the river channel; WWTPs, wastewater treatment plants Dams and associated reservoirs represent one of the greatest disturbances to the functioning of river systems by fragmenting drainage basins, reducing connectivity, and modifying water flows (Walling 2006; Vörösmarty et al",6
"2019), and globally, the total area of deltas has increased as losses due to dams have been offset by net increases in sediment supply due to deforestation and other land use activities (Nienhuis et al",15
"Despite the widespread recognition of the problems that dams and reservoirs create in drainage basins and coastal zones, and specifically on water supply issues due to sedimentation, it is possible to limit these issues through a combination of watershed management and reservoir engineering (Kondolf et al",6
Classification of strategies for managing reservoir sedimentation (from Morris 2020; reproduced with the permission of MDPI) Sediment transport and sedimentation in river channels also have impacts on water security by influencing the provision of reliable freshwater supplies and affecting water quality through elevated turbidity and contaminants,6
"In many cases, the situation is made worse by river engineering activities for hydropower, navigation, and (ironically) flood control, which have influenced river discharge and the conveyance of both suspended sediment and bedload (e.g., Habersack et al",7
"Despite the obvious importance of sediment delivery, transport, and sedimentation on water quality, aquatic ecosystems, and flood risk, many have argued (e.g., Förstner 2002; Förstner and Owens 2007; Brils 2008, 2020; Collins and Anthony 2008) that European Union countries might fail to meet the required targets identified in these directives due to a lack of understanding of the importance of sediment dynamics and composition",6
"Most of the examples above have been used to describe the timing and magnitude of the negative impact of humans on environmental systems, specifically in terms of soil erosion, sediment dynamics, and sediment composition, over a range of times scales including historic (Section 2.1), recent (Section 3), and future (Section 2.2)",15
The examples below help to illustrate how information on sediment fluxes and quality can be used as an indicator to assess if management and mitigation measures are being effective in reducing wider environmental degradation,15
"For example, reductions in excessive soil erosion and sediment delivery to watercourses are good indicators of improvements in soil and water functions and probably overall ecosystem health",15
"In most cases, rates of soil erosion and sediment fluxes in rivers have decreased dramatically often due to the implementation of conservation measures like landscape engineering, river terracing, check dams and reservoir construction during the period 1960s to 1990s, and more recently from the Three Gorges Reservoir and programs aimed at restoring the “natural” vegetation cover (Wang et al",15
"In many respects, the Green for Grain program may be the largest national program to reduce soil erosion and sediment transport to date, and sediment monitoring stations have been central to both its creation (by identifying the need) and its evaluation",15
"After 2000, industrial activity in the region increased, due to a second industrial transition, but this did not result in a noticeable increase in copper concentrations due to more stringent environmental protection policies and regulations, including the European Water Framework Directive (Álvarez-Vázquez et al",15
"The previous sections have illustrated how information on soil erosion, sediment dynamics, and sediment composition have been central to our understanding of the natural evolution of the Earth and especially the role of humanity in modifying environmental systems, often in a detrimental way, such that we now consider ourselves in a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene",15
"However, studies have shown that reduced soil erosion is not always matched by reduced sediment yields if other processes buffer the system (e.g., Trimble 1983)",15
"This is particularly important because often, human behavior is not rational given our known understanding of environmental degradation, and humanity has often been slow to respond to known global environmental problems (e.g., Carson 1962; Hansen et al",15
Food security is a global concern affecting even highly developed countries,2
"Ongoing globalisation of food systems, characterised by trading interdependencies, means that agricultural production can be disrupted by climate change, affecting food availability",13
"The results revealed that Sweden’s grain imports may be most vulnerable, and animal products least vulnerable, to climate change",13
"Management strategies based on this preliminary assessment can be developed by integrating climate vulnerability deriving from food trading into the ‘Gravity’ model, to improve prediction of trade flows",13
"SDG 2 focuses on hunger, food security, nutrition and sustainable agriculture, with the food security concept gaining particular momentum amongst researchers, governments and the private sector (FAO 2020; UN 2020)",2
There are concerns about how the target ‘Zero Hunger by 2030’ will be achieved (UN 2020),2
"Food security requires that ‘all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life’ (FAO 2002)",2
"Nearly 2% of the world’s population, predominantly in Africa, southern Asia and the Caribbean, are classified as being in crisis, emergency or catastrophe conditions, as a result of food consumption gaps, acute malnutrition or food needs being met through depletion of livelihood assets (FSIN 2020)",2
"Historically, food shortages have been a challenge confined primarily to the developing world, so research to date has approached food security from the perspective of developing countries",2
Food security research in developed countries has concentrated on accessibility (socio-economic conditions) and utilisation (malnutrition and obesity) (Ashby et al,2
"Globalisation of the food chain is increasing, with food imports today representing three times their value in 2000 (EC 2019)",2
"Since approximately 80% of the world’s population live in import-dependent countries, the risk of food insecurity due to reliance on trade needs to be explored further, to mitigate the risk of food shocks (Porkka et al",2
"Recent studies have confirmed that observed climate change has affected crop suitability in many areas of the world, including Europe, resulting in changes in production levels of the main agricultural crops, and this trend is expected to continue (Hoegh-Guldberg et al",13
"As a result, Sweden’s agriculture sector is predicted to benefit from climate change",13
"However, extreme weather events are expected to become more frequent and pose the most significant challenge to Swedish agriculture (Jordbruksverket 2017; Wiréhn 2018)",13
Maize production in Northern Europe is projected to experience mean yield decreases of between 1 and 14% (RCP8.5) (Wiréhn 2018; Hristov et al,2
Climate change adds complexity to the intricate global system of food interdependency by increasing the risk of disruptions to the stability of agricultural production,13
"Thus, net importers of food, including highly developed countries, are indirectly exposing themselves to climate change occurring beyond their own borders (Cottrell et al",13
"Therefore, presumed ‘secure’ food systems within developed countries need to re-think the effects of climate change (Tendall et al",13
"In this regard, the Swedish Climate Change Adaptation Network (SCCAN) stresses the need for rapid adaptation of the agriculture sector (SMHI 2021)",13
"Sweden was used as a case study to assess vulnerability to indirect climate impacts associated with food imports, focussing on the availability dimension through trade",2
"Specific objectives of this study were to (i) provide context for Sweden’s current position as a net food importer, both globally and within the European Union (EU); (ii) identify Sweden’s main trade sources and their import contribution to the 10 most relevant food categories and associated sub-categories; (iii) assess the climate vulnerabilities associated with Sweden’s trading partners; and (iv) discuss the impact of these partnerships on Sweden’s food security",2
"In 2018, 2.7 million of the 3 million ha of arable land available in Sweden were cultivated, so the scope for expansion is limited (Jordbruksverket 2017; OECD 2020)",15
"In 2018, Swedish food imports were 6.6 billion USD and food exports represented 3.9 billion USD (WITS 2020)",2
Climate vulnerability is the degree to which a system is susceptible to the effects of climate change (Parry et al,13
"In this study, climate vulnerability is assessed using CVI, which is calculated as follows (Eq",13
Exposure of a country’s food system to climate change depends on its reliance on climate-vulnerable countries (Benzie et al,13
"To comply with the conventional understanding of low and high exposure, the exposure values needed to be inverted so that a low value equated to low exposure of the food system to climate change",13
2020) quantifies impacts of extreme weather events (related to precipitation and temperature) in terms of fatalities and economic losses arising from those events and provides a value for sensitivity,13
"The weighting gives preference to I and L since their values, and the final score, undergo change not only due to absolute impacts of extreme weather events (direct impacts) but also to population and economic changes (indirect impacts) (Eckstein et al",13
"Adaptive capacity (A) is the ability of a system to adjust to climate change due to access to financial, technical, educational and community resources (Brooks 2003; Benzie et al",13
"Seafood imports almost doubled, from 22% in 2000 to 41% in 2018, whilst vegetables/fruit imports decreased from 32% in 2000 to 21% of total food imports in 2018",2
Grain imports accounted for 7% of total food imports in 2018,2
"a Contribution of the 10 top food import categories in Sweden in 2000, 2010 and 2018 to total Swedish food imports and b overall import value of the top Swedish food imports for each food category and their sub-categories in 2018 (based on Statistics Sweden 2019) In terms of the import values (kUSD) of the food sub-categories included in this study, seafood products, in particular, salmon, accounted for the highest import value in 2018 (Fig. 2b)",2
"Europe/Central Asia has been Sweden’s main partner in the past two decades, providing 87–91% of annual food imports",2
"Regional food imports to Sweden in 2018 by value, as a percentage of total imports (based on Statistics Sweden 2019) The global distribution of Sweden’s top trade partners for each of the highest import value food sub-categories is shown in Fig. 4",2
"Partners which both produce and export are shown in red, re-exporting partners are in yellow Table 3 shows the overall individual climate vulnerability scores for each of the 28 food sub-categories and the overall score for the 10 food categories",13
"The CVI scores are based on level of exposure, sensitivity, adaptive capacity and vulnerability to climate change",13
"Animal products had the lowest vulnerability to climate change (CVI = 12), closely followed by seafood (CVI = 14), and meat and poultry (CVI = 16) (Table 3)",13
"However, there is a risk of disease and invasive species (Hoegh-Guldberg et al",15
"Fruit (CVI = 27), vegetables (CVI = 36), coffee, cocoa and tea (CVI = 37) and sugar (CVI = 38) showed low–medium vulnerability to climate change",13
"For fruit and vegetables, the majority of the sub-categories had low–medium vulnerability to climate change",13
"The impact of climate change on Central and South America, over the next few decades, will vary between regions",13
Local crops cultivated in specific climate conditions are particularly affected by climate change (Hoegh-Guldberg et al,13
"Climate scenarios indicate that countries such as Brazil may become too dry and hot to permit productive coffee production, particularly given the limited potential for irrigation in countries already suffering from water scarcity (EC 2020)",6
"Grains (CVI = 45) and spices (CVI = 54) had medium–high vulnerability, whilst nuts (CVI = 66) had high vulnerability to climate change",13
"However, if extreme weather events increase in frequency and intensity, the timeframe to ‘bounce back’ will be reduced",13
Sweden’s pedoclimatic properties and its increasing population require the government to look beyond its borders and offer climate mitigation/adaptation support to the key partners,13
This study revealed some of the hidden links between climate change and the global food trading system,13
More detailed knowledge of food system vulnerabilities to climate change is required to develop policies and measures which can help achieve the SDG2 targets,13
"To determine how climate vulnerability impacts trade patterns, the results from this study could be integrated into the ‘Gravity’ model, together with data from the CEPII database",13
Food security in Sweden and some other developed countries relies mostly on imports,2
"Amongst the main imported food categories, grain, nuts and spices are the most vulnerable to climate change, whilst animal products are the least vulnerable",13
Quantitative analysis of emerging climate impact provides a new perspective on how indirect climate impacts can affect a country’s food security,2
"Different reasons behind this proliferation of aquaculture and land-use conversion from agriculture have been reported in earlier studies, including higher profitability, high market demand, reduced agricultural productivity, and detrimental effects on agriculture production from natural hazards like cyclones (Chopra et al",2
"The SBR region was declared as a National Park in 1984, and in 1987 it was inscribed to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites",11
‘Traditional’ aquaculture is mainly practiced by marginal and small-scale farmers as fewer investments are required,9
"However, due to high investments, this practice is difficult to adopt for marginal and small-scale farmers",9
"Socio-economic drivers include increased unit area profitability due to higher market demand and prices for the aquaculture products, increased leasing costs for agriculture lands, and less interest of the farmers in agriculture as food security is ensured by the Government ration",2
"Environmental drivers include reduced agricultural productivity due to salinization (i.e., especially after cyclone Aila), easy access to brackish water for aquaculture, scarcity of freshwater for irrigation, and frequent inundation of agricultural lands due to embankment breaching",2
"Irrespective of the farming practices two types of laborers are associated with aquaculture of which one is the construction workers for preparation of ponds and dykes and other workers for regular maintenance of the entire farm and farming (water quality monitoring, water exchange of the ponds, maintenance of the shrimps and fishes, and harvesting)",6
"In addition to agriculture, livestock rearing (poultry farming, duckery) and small business have been reported as other small sources of income",9
Lime is also applied for water quality management,6
"In all the brackish water farming type water quality parameters like temperature, salinity, pH, Secchi depth, dissolved oxygen (DO) is regularly monitored especially in semi-intensive farming where these parameters are monitored every day as shrimps are highly susceptible to little change in water quality",6
"vannamei) was introduced into the Indian Sundarbans in 2013, by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research-Central Institute of Brackishwater Aquaculture (ICAR-CIBA) Kakdwip Research Centre",2
"For example, soil salinization and degradation of land caused by the expansion of aquaculture will hinder the achievement of SDG 15.3 and 15.1, which aim to end desertification, restore degraded land, conserve and restore terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, respectively",15
"Furthermore, our analysis indicates that semi-intensive and intensive aquaculture practices potentially make very little impact on socioeconomic and food security development goals within the SBR, such as SDG1.2 (reducing poverty through employment) and SDG 2.1 (access to nutritious food), due to ownership by and employment of people from outside of the SBR",2
If financial incentives continue to drive conversion it may result in some food insecurity and local food sovereignty in the future,2
"Through two case studies in British Columbia, Canada, this research focused on how the concept, principles, and practices of holistic urban productivity can help address urban sustainability planning, implementation, and assessment processes",11
"The research findings showed a range of challenges in urban sustainability such as the persistence on utilitarian approaches to resource management and community planning, the prioritization of short-term policies, a general resistance to systemic thinking, and various shortfalls in municipal capacity",11
These obstacles reflected the reality and complexity of urban sustainability processes and highlighted the need to redesign current decision-making,11
"The impact of human activity on Earth in the Anthropocene ranges from extreme climate phenomena and inequality to ecosystem services decline and species extinction, and threatens human and ecological well-being locally, regionally, and globally [1, 2]",15
The Brundtland Commission was among the first to describe the connection between human activities and increasing environmental degradation [3],15
"In this “urban century”, planetary realities and increased environmental and social awareness have led to significant international agreements such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the UN Habitat New Urban Agenda, and the Paris Climate Agreement [5]",11
"For example, although the SDGs contain a goal for inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable cities, all SDGs are locally relevant [7, 8]",11
"We look at how the concept, principles, and practices of urban productivity can help address urban sustainability planning, implementation, and assessment (as major steps in the policy process) and thus advance theory and practice of SCD",11
"The paper begins with a brief overview of urban sustainability literature and practice, a presentation of the urban productivity concept and a brief discussion of its potential to address urban sustainability processes and outcomes",11
"It then presents two case studies in the Metro VancouverFootnote 1 region of British Columbia, Canada, and the research findings on perceptions and challenges in urban sustainability planning, implementation, and assessment",11
The final section discusses implications of the research findings and offers corresponding recommendations for integrated and effective urban sustainability through application of the urban productivity principles and practices,11
"Sustainability as a body of knowledge originates in 18–19th-century discourses on environmental and social justice but contemporary SD theory and practice have been shaped by seminal works of the 1970–1980s such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the Club of Rome report on limits to economic growth, and the Brundtland Commission report [4]",8
"Early applications of SD and SCD were informed by weak sustainability theory that assumes indefinite economic growth with efficiencies and innovation compensating for ecological damage [4, 15]",8
The literature on weak and strong sustainability reflects a decades-long debate on economic growth and whether resources should be managed with technology (weak sustainability) or by limiting demand (strong sustainability) [4],8
"Guided by stronger sustainability approaches and global movements for equity, socio-ecological considerations are increasingly included in local decision-making through community-led action, social economy, community economic development, and participatory processes [18, 19]",8
"Apart from the CCT, for this research we consulted sustainability frameworks such as the SDGs, LEED v4.1 Cities and Communities, Global Resilient Cities Network (City Resilience Index), ISO37120 Sustainable cities and communities, EU Reference Framework for Sustainable Cities, International Eco-City Standards, Community Foundations of Canada Vital Signs, One Planet Communities, Eco2Cities, and The Natural Step",11
"Many tools and frameworks, however, do not analyze urban sustainability with a whole-systems, full-process, equitable, and future-oriented approach to ensure success in achieving sustainability goals [23, 33, 34]",11
Urban sustainability requires integrated decision-making to support a transformation from the currently dominant individualistic approach of impact reduction to the systemic logic of urban systems restoration and inclusive co-production [14],11
"Initiatives such as restorative justice programs, reclaimed and regenerated spaces, free community-run libraries, innovation districts with green space and transit hubs, social innovation and sharing economy, and inclusive training for young entrepreneurs, can be found worldwide, from Vancouver, Canada, and Kigali, Rwanda, to Copenhagen, Denmark, and Medellín, Colombia [32]",11
"Unlike other frameworks, it is not meant to solely measure municipal service performance or climate action progress",13
"Rather, it is designed to holistically evaluate policy impact while identifying systemic synergies to support transformative action toward cities that decouple well-being from economic growth and live within planetary boundaries [32]",8
"The holistic urban productivity framework [32] The niche of this holistic framework lies at the intersection of its four principles: Systemic and long-term thinking (strategic, synergistic, integrating social productivity approaches, and future-oriented through backcasting i.e., following sustainability paths toward pre-determined long-term goals); Equity and justice (solidarity, food security, sharing, equitable resilience, social connection, equitable opportunities, and well-being); Urban co-production and governance (inclusive and value-driven decision-making, citizens co-produce and co-manage the urban commons as important change agents); (Re)generation (living systems perspective, circular flows of tangible and intangible urban assets, adaptive processes, living within the Earth’s carrying capacity)",2
"This research started with a review of the literature on sustainable community development, urban sustainability and holistic urban productivity and related concepts and initiatives",11
"Contextual research revealed three types of shared challenges: social (housing stock inadequacy and unaffordability and homelessness), infrastructural (wastewater management and transportation infrastructure), and economic (shortage of work opportunities and of local economic activity)",6
Case study data analysis revealed topics or challenges that can be grouped into four major sustainability-related themes (and some miscellaneous findings): perceptions on sustainability and urban sustainability; issues and perceptions related to systemic and long-term thinking; barriers linked to local government powers and responsibilities; and issues in progress measurement and sustainability evaluation,11
"While many viewed their city as advanced or leading in environmental preservation and heritage protection, they believed that economic and infrastructure issues still kept the community far from their acceptable level of resilience or sustainability",11
"Note that the scale is from 1 (least important—light blue) to 5 (most important—darkest blue) Seeking to gauge the potential of urban productivity, we asked a question that included productivity principles and goals in disguise, with language such as diversified employment, restored natural environment, circular economy, and healthy and connected community",12
"They linked the physical capital to their city’s effort to maintain infrastructure and achieve energy efficiency goals, and the natural capital to their city’s positive record of protecting surrounding nature",7
The economic aspect was also considered highly desirable which perhaps reflects municipal priorities for increased local economic development,8
"The example of waste management came up several times in the interviews: if citizens want weekly garbage pick-up and are willing to pay more, the city must deliver accordingly – even if this means increased volumes of garbage and CO2 emissions",12
Several interviewees expressed concerns that they couldn't make a difference or resolve issues in aspects such as the energy mix or socio-economic opportunities and equality,7
"Energy decisions, particularly those seeking to reduce energy consumption and building emissions, are not entirely within the local government's purview",7
Working closely with municipalities provided us with valuable insights regarding urban sustainability application and the factors that determine or at least influence both action and lack thereof,11
"Responses on defining sustainability and on the importance of the physical and natural capitals were anthropocentric in focus, consistent with our observations of Council meetings: issues pertaining to local infrastructure, protection of the surrounding environment, and economic development dominated Council discussions in both cities",8
"Participants’ descriptions of urban sustainability as mostly linked to land use, infrastructure, and impact reduction align with the literature on understandings and applications of urban sustainability [4, 12, 13]",11
"In both municipalities, trade-offs and conflicting interests often led to prioritizing shorter-term economic—and to some extent ecological—sustainability policies over social topics such as gender equality, governance, safety and well-being, institutional trust, culture and heritage, etc",5
"Such processes can undermine systemic analyses and, by extent, inclusive decision-making and governance [68, 69]",16
"Participant perceptions reflect the reality and complexity of urban sustainability decision-making processes in Canada and elsewhere, as described in the literature [21, 59, 67]",11
Aligning local goals with the national context and the country’s international commitments is an important opportunity for urban sustainability,11
Holistic urban productivity principles such as systemic analysis and regeneration can help cities set goals beyond impact reduction and environmental protection,15
"This figure links the principles and generic goals of the holistic urban productivity concept and the proposed framework with the urban sustainability shortcomings as identified in the research findings to suggest a direction for the future development of cities Our overarching recommendation is that cities should build on the signs of systemic thinking we spotted in the data, through continuing education and adoption of tools such as the Urban Productivity Framework that fosters whole-systems processes",11
Expansion with case studies globally can help promote the concept’s systemic viewpoint and establish the transition toward urban space co-production and co-management with effective and inclusive decision-making processes that can help cities live within the Earth’s carrying capacity,16
Current global calls for climate action coupled with social justice and equity offer a window of opportunity in the journey toward the productive and sustainable city,13
This research identified a range of challenges and obstacles to urban sustainability that the concept and framework of holistic urban productivity can help address,11
"Cities can achieve sustainable urbanization by promoting the right to the city and the design of nature-based urban environment without compromising collective and individual health and well-being [14, 80]",11
"One of the important risk factors for particularly lung cancer (Vena, 1982; Raaschou-Nielsen et al., 2016), stroke (Hong et al., 2002; Tian et al., 2018), type II diabetes (Rao et al., 2015; Renzi et al., 2018; Liu et al., 2019) and cardiovascular diseases (Yamamoto et al., 2014; Abdollahnejad et al., 2017; Rajagopalan et al., 2018; Lelieveld et al., 2019) is air pollution",3
The risk factor of air pollution varies at different levels of socio-economic development,8
"Especially in recent years, many studies have been carried out on the health effects of air pollution in Turkey",3
"Version 2.0 of the AirQ + software, which was developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe and the Bonn Office of the European Centre for Environment & Human Health to calculate the mortality and morbidity of air pollution at a given settlement with reference to the General Principles of Health Risk Assessment of Air Pollution (WHO, 2016b), was used in the present study",3
This indicator is of importance as it allows for a depopulated assessment on the health effects of air pollution,3
"In this respect, specifying limit values for PM2.5 in the Regulation on Air Quality Assessment and Management within the framework of WHO documents and EU regulations is thought to be of importance step for the effective monitoring of its effects on human health",3
It would be beneficial to conduct studies towards adopting sustainable production and consumption principles with the aim of reducing industrial air pollution,12
"The various lockdown measures are undermining food security, because stay at home orders have among others, threatened food production for a continent that relies heavily on agriculture as the bedrock of the economy",2
"Qualitative data comprising 12 countries south of the Sahara reveal that lockdowns have created anxiety over food security as a health, economic and human rights/well-being issue",2
"When 2019 The State of Food Security and Nutrition Report (FAO 2019) chose the theme: safeguarding against economic slowdowns and downturns emphasizing the importance of protecting nutrition and food security during crisis, presciently it was preparing for the COVID-19 pandemic",2
"Regulatory responses such as lockdowns have negatively undermined economic outcomes and stability while highlighting existing gross disparities, social injustices, availability and access to food and food security (Arndt et al",2
Disruptions in food supply chains cause limited availability and access to food (Reardon et al,2
Countries with no nationwide welfare policies to enhance household food security (Banerjee et al,2
2015) and that are heavily dependent on food imports are especially likely to suffer during crises and food disruptions (Vogel and Smith 2002),2
"Women being largely in the informal sector in these countries tend to experience food insecurity due to vulnerability and not having much access to resources, networks or decision-making power (Quisumbing et al",2
"These prescriptions restricted mobility, livelihoods, gender equality and family support networks, leading to socioeconomic consequences, including major loss of income (Ragasa and Lambrecht 2020) and disruption of agriculture activities such as farming, access to farm inputs and markets (Arndt et al",5
2020) that have exacerbated food insecurity and related nutrition deficiencies (Naja and Hamadeh 2020),2
"Depending on the implementation of these measures and related policies to ease the effects of COVID-19 on a national basis, households may experience varying levels of concern for food and nutrition security, especially where urban–rural partnerships become severed (Sukhwani et al",2
The impact of food security deterioration under COVID-19 has worsened the abilities for compliance of African countries with the right to food as protected in article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related instruments (Mechlem 2004),2
"The COVID-19 pandemic could double the number of acute crisis-level hungry people, increasing from 113 million to 265 million, including 73 million people in acute hunger crisis mode (Global Report on Food Crisis 2020)",2
"Reduced remittances (which in 2018 accounted for US$46 billion compared to US$32 billion foreign direct investment in sub-Saharan Africa), restrictions in mobility and decline in employment formally and informally have curtailed the well-being and food security situation of households during the pandemic (Lambert et al",2
"For example, the negative impact on informal financial remission channels poses a serious food security problem for migrants (Duvenage 2020; Madonsela et al",2
"According to Lawson-Lartego and Cohen (2020), “if people are worried about what to eat and other basic needs, they will not respect the lockdowns necessary to combat the COVID-19 pandemic” reflecting a special nature of this COVID-19 shocks as compared to the 2002 food crisis (Vogel and Smith 2002), 2008 world financial crisis and other crisis (Schmidhuber and Qiao 2020)",1
"The impacts of the wide array of lockdown measures are yet to be fully investigated (Kosnik and Bellas 2020), especially in Africa where agriculture is the backbone of the economy, livelihoods and household food security (Lawson-Lartego and Cohen 2020)",2
"The intersections of gender and age with food insecurity have gained even less attention, at this early stage in the investigations (Ragasa and Lambrecht 2020; Zeinali et al",2
Policy tracking studies by IFPRI on agriculture- and food security-specific responses to COVID-19 progress reveal little focus on women or gender balance (Ragasa and Lambrecht 2020),2
"Thus, this paper evaluates the local spread and economic impact of COVID-19, and the implications of lockdown measures on food security in selected sub-Saharan Africa countries, using observational cases and quantitative digital online data sources",2
It contributes to the ongoing debate about the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 with focus on food security in Africa by providing quantitative estimates of the local spread and the economic impact of COVID-19 on food worries,2
"In building a case for a feminist economist theory approach to government interventions, we briefly consider two key terms that circulate within food studies, namely food security and food sovereignty",2
"In other words, while commercial interests and global food interests may especially value commercial agriculture and its contribution to food security, a food sovereign context recognizes that subsistence farming is the foundation of commercial farming",2
"On the flip side, food security as advocated by FAO (2011) is ensuring global food production that meets the nutrition and food preferences required to lead active and healthy lives, suggesting multitier levels of food security beyond safe and nutritious food (Sachs 2013)",2
Access to food additionally empowers and dignifies individuals and their social relations,2
"To that end, the discourse around food security hinges on four supportive pillars: availability, access, utilization and stability",2
"In providing a feminist analysis of food security, we briefly define each pillar giving mention to the gender-differentiated needs with each pillar",2
"Access addresses direct correlations between women’s decision-making power and access to and control over resources, investment in the resources that ensure food availability and who then has access to food, be it physically, socially or economically (Richards et al",2
"As with availability, women’s access to inputs vital for food production is limited, meaning that food access at household level involves gendered inequities to food access when women and girls are the ones without sufficient nutrition in lieu of other family members (Pilla and Dantas 2016)",2
Utilization is addressed in connection with food access as the nutritional value of food consumed,2
"Food security encompasses food quality, nutrition and safety",2
"Malnutrition is rife in individuals where unequal gender relations limit the access of girls and women to nutritional knowledge, food and decision-making processes (Smith and Haddad 2015)",2
"Stability speaks to the reliability, consistency and stability of food availability, food access and food utilization",2
"Questions around stability extend to economic/financial stability in food prices, the ability to store food and continued access to food even during times of crises such as the current pandemic (Coates et al",2
"Approaches and policies to food security from a macro level may fail to adequately address the gender-differentiated needs, as the governance of dominant food systems may unintentionally fail to consider the granulated levels of food production discussed here",2
"A feminist analysis of food security argues for the right of all women, men, girls and boys to have access to safe, healthy and adequate food",2
"We take the practical feminist approach to ensuring the recognition of women’s central role in food security, advocating feminist economic theory (FET) as a lens through which food worries are scrutinized",2
Food activists argue in this regard for the recognition of men and women as economic agents equally contributing to food security (cf,2
"Hence as governments work on food security, distributional measures need to be socially just in valuing unpaid contributions from women",2
Our study employs a FET lens to further develop a deeper understanding of the impacts of COVID-19 on food security,2
"More specifically, this article considers to what extent policy interventions are inclusive in counting unmeasured economic phenomena such as the informal economy, unpaid work and social collective drives, considering that most statistics bureaus draw on data from the market economy to inform national accounting policies",8
"The conceptual framework adopted in this study builds on complementary insights drawn from the FAO’s ‘four pillars approach’ as outlined above (FAO 2008), the ‘food systems’ approach (HLPE 2017) and Sen’s ‘entitlement’ approach (Sen 1981) for the analysis of food security impacts of COVID-19 (Devereux et al",2
(2020) have also reflected on the potentials of these three frameworks in explaining food security impacts of COVID-19,2
"Unlike these frameworks, the entitlement approach is suitable for disaggregating and nuancing the demand-side drivers of access to food at household level",2
"Despite the emergence of literature on the impacts of COVID-19 in Africa, case study reports and quantitative analysis assessing the combined effects of health and economic consequences of COVID-19 on food supply and food security outcomes are scarce",2
"A few studies have been initiated in South Africa by the social justice and COVID-19 policy and monitoring alliance (SCOPRA) that aims to constitute a social accountability bulwark and regularly track COVID-19 policies and relief measures in line with SDG 10, 16 and 17",10
Our main hypothesis is that food security in Africa has been negatively affected by COVID-19 health and economic impacts and women are more vulnerable,2
"Consequently, women are likely to be the most anxious—psychologically affected and concerned—physiologically about food security resulting from COVID-19 impacts",2
"2020), and which are also at risk of food insecurity",2
The conceptual framework in Fig. 1 proposes a feminist economic approach to household food security,2
"Through FET, government policies would recognize the full spectrum of women’s paid and unpaid work, respecting its value as part of the process of promoting equal access to resources",8
Impact pathways of COVID-19 on Household’s Food and Nutrition Security Our study relies on both qualitative and quantitative analysis,2
"In addition, we provide observational cases of events relating to food security and consideration of gender dimensions linked to the specific countries used in the quantitative analysis",2
"Based on the conceptual framework developed in Fig. 1, we modelled the effect of concerns about COVID-19 on food security",2
"In addition, issues about food security and COVID-19 infection differ across urban and rural areas, so we also consider subsample analysis focusing on these areas",2
"Furthermore, the data used in this study do not have household information about the respondent such as household size, household dependency ratio, income and housing characteristics, which may affect food security",2
"Where FET would laud the survey research for extracting data from the individual as a unit of analysis as opposed to the household as an economic unit for understanding food security worries, FET would still ask the extent to which binding social relations were measured (cf",2
"Approaching gender, age, locality and restrictions as social constructions can improve the objectivity of practice around food security",2
"Drawing on FET, we push for untangling the gendered processes in productive and reproductive labour, specifically the valuation of women’s unpaid work",8
"Through FET, we scrutinize the distribution of income and resources as they pertain to realizing food security as we attempt to understand the people behind the statistics",2
"Tables 2, 3, 4, and 5 report the results of our four-dimensional analysis of the effect of concern about COVID-19 on food security",2
This finding supports previous research findings on the impact of pandemics and outbreaks on different dimensions of food security (e.g,2
"According to this evidence, disease outbreaks and pandemics threaten production (Ohadike 1981) and access to food mainly through losses of income and assets, which consequently inhibit their ability to buy food",2
"Poorer households in developing countries spend up to 80% of their income on food (Bashir and Schilizzi 2013) and have limited access to financial markets, making their food security particularly vulnerable to extreme events, economic downturns, and unpredictable income",2
"2018) or waged employees, and they are uncovered by health or unemployment insurance schemes",8
The results show that stay-at-home orders (SAHO) and partial lockdowns that SSA governments implemented as measures to prevent the spread of the virus were associated with amplified food security worries (Arndt et al,2
"Several recent studies have found that mobility restrictions and social distancing measures due to COVID-19 have further triggered consumers’ worries about food insecurity, reflected in hoarding behaviours, panic-buying and stockpiling of groceries and rapid changes in food consumption habits and diets (Coopi 2020; FEWSNET 2020; Sukhwani et al",2
"With regard to gender differences, the results of Models 2 and 3 in Table 2 show that the sign and magnitude of the effect of COVID-19 concerns on perceived food insecurity worries by females and males are qualitatively similar and are in congruence with those of the full sample model",2
"However, a comparison of the marginal effects of the restriction measures’ variables for males and females indicates that SAHO and partial lockdown measures significantly increased males’ perceived food insecurity worries compared to their female counterparts",2
"There may be numerous reasons for this, the obvious one being the sample and how representative it may be of women’s food security worry; we recall that the female ratio of responses is 45%",2
"Second, how the data are collected and analysed is a profoundly gendered process, in that women struggle to verbalize their own value contributions when asked, because they do not have the required vocabulary and they fail to see their own contributions to food security as real work (MacDonald 1995, p",2
"Statistical bureaus are therefore faced with the challenge of measuring and valuing unpaid work, when the standards of measurement are the market economy",8
FET is interested in understanding the interaction between paid economies and unpaid work especially as unpaid/informal work is embedded in measuring the market economy,8
"From a spatial dimension, the results of models 7 and 8 reveal that concerns about the spread of COVID-19 significantly increase worries about food security among urban dwellers, whereas this effect was statistically insignificant in rural areas",2
"Overall, the results further support our principal findings in the previous section (Table 2) and imply that the “economic impacts” of the virus have significantly raised individuals’ worries about food insecurity",2
These economic impacts presented the pathway through which the virus threatened individuals’ food security and raised their worries about not having enough food to eat,2
"Clearly, the COVID-19 pandemic is having a significant impact on food security in SSA",2
"For example, girls are more likely to encounter sextortion, unwanted pregnancy and various forms of gender-based violence (Rafaeli and Hutchinson 2020)",5
"However, poverty and informal employment rates are generally higher in rural areas, whereas access to social networks is relatively lower, which combines to create a situation of extreme vulnerability (FAO-CELAC 2020)",8
Envisioning these contributions has an impact on national interventions for food security,2
The positive effect of concern about COVID-19 on food worries due to the movement restriction could be explained by the impact of movement restriction on household income and physical access to food,2
"Coupled with the closure of open-air markets and a ban on street vendors in most countries during this period, this disrupted food access and reduced diet quantity and quality (Devereux et al",2
We have identified and classified policy actions into three subthemes and related them with the four FAO pillars of food security,2
Households with low levels of education and high dependence on labour income experienced real income shocks that jeopardized household food and nutrition security (Arndt et al,2
"In Tanzania where the measures focused more on the economy, women in the informal sector, mama ntilies (informal food vendors operating at construction sites and office premises), did not receive much support, hence negatively affecting food security at household level (United Republic of Tanzania 2020)",2
This is a clarion call for more sex-disaggregated data collection on COVID-19 economic and social effects in the context of food security,2
This paper has sought to discover how COVID-19 and related government restrictions have affected households’ food security in Africa,2
It has also sought to assess the adequacy of socioeconomic relief and related mitigation strategies,13
We have used both quantitative and qualitative approaches to understand the data and to assess the effects of COVID-19 on food security in twelve countries from the four corners of Africa,2
These impacts have increased the burden on African countries in terms of securing food security both as a health and as an economic imperative but also as a matter of solidarity and human rights (South African Government 2020),2
The governments of the countries assessed here have proactively acted to contain the spread of COVID-19 and started initiating the economic recovery processes of the respective countries though one still observes increasing cases of COVID-19,8
"Except for a few attempts such as the Feed Africa Response (Blanke 2020), there is insufficient evidence of inter-state collaboration through the above economic regional bodies to collectively address the cross-border challenges relating to food security and to have collective solutions (Torero 2020)",2
This is also summarized as 10 recommendations for African governments to ensure food security for poor and vulnerable populations during COVID-19 in a recent publication (Lawson-Lartego and Cohen 2020),2
A major lesson from the government interventions during COVID-19 is that countries that had already established good social protection structures such as South Africa (Jansen 2020) and Rwanda (World Health Organization 2020) found it relatively easy to adapt quickly in decentralizing social protection interventions,1
Some cases of selective targeting and exclusion of social protection delivery have included leveraging food and financial relief for political gain,1
"We nevertheless observe a shift towards heightened food security awareness and responsiveness, but more effort is required to improve policy responses and governance (Maher et al",2
"If COVID-19 programmes had incorporated a feminist lens, better outcomes could have been tracked and achieved, with regard to both gender equity and broader social inclusion for all groups",10
"FET would insist on accounting for the inequities in societies by combining quantitative methods with qualitative data to further the understanding of informal and unpaid work as vital parts of any economic system (Power 2004, pp",8
"FET argues that “unpaid work is an economic category and is endogenous to the economic process, for example in relation to labour supply” (van Staveren 2010, p",8
"Given that the right to food is a fundamental human right, it is also important that governments in Africa and elsewhere begin their policy design processes with an understanding that whatever they do should not undermine food security",2
"ess to basic water, sanitation and hygiene services is the most effective mechanism to reduce many infectious diseases",3
"In addition, schools with hygiene and environmental health clubs had an 11.8-fold higher access rate to basic hygiene services (AOR = 11.8 with 95% CI 1.35–104) than schools without such clubs",3
The investigation provides some insights into how access to WASH services can be improved at the grassroots level,6
Federal and regional governments should implement effective interventions that assist schools to attain Sustainable Development Goal 6 by 2030,6
School administrators and other partner organizations should take proactive measures to enhance and maintain the WASH services,6
"Access to basic water, sanitation and hygiene services is the most effective and fundamental prerequisite to reduce many infectious diseases [1]",3
Access to essential WASH services in schools benefits the learning environment and the children's health [7],6
"Credible literature has shown that effective WASH services help to reduce many health problems affecting school-aged children and the community [8, 9]",6
"A significant risk factor is the lack of WASH services, especially in low- and middle-income countries",6
"Also, it's believed that between 60 and 80% of infectious disease infections in Ethiopia are caused by a lack of access to clean water, poor sanitation, and inadequate hygiene services [19]",6
Access to school WASH services is affected by many factors,6
"According to a study conducted in 14 low- and middle-income countries, sharing a school water point with the community, having a parent-teacher association that supports WASH, having support from an outside WASH program, having a menstrual hygiene and management curriculum, having a designated hygiene focal person, and having school funds for WASH services were identified as core determinants of school WASH [11]",6
"Access to basic water, sanitation and hygiene services is the most effective mechanism to reduce many infectious diseases",3
"In the Town, a large project titled ""Hygiene and Environmental Health Services"" is currently underway",3
Water samples from the schools’ water storage were taken to test the bacteriological and chemical water quality,6
The WHO recommendations for drinking water quality served as a model for the sampling techniques [25],6
"The outcome variables of this study were basic water, sanitation and hygiene services, and drinking water quality",6
"To measure the coverage of school WASH services, the JMP core questions and indicators were asked to school directors and assessed observationally",6
"Additionally, to measure water quality, water samples were taken from the schools' drinking water storage",6
"Further, the American Public Health Association/American Water Works Association/Water Environment Federation (1998) Standard techniques for evaluating water and wastewater were followed to evaluate the nitrate concentration using an ultraviolet spectrophotometer [30]",3
"The scientific and ethical review board of the Ethiopian Public Health Institute gave its approval to the investigation's protocol, which was given the reference number EPHI-IRB-358-2021",3
The schools' water quality was determined according to the World Health Organization drinking water guideline [31],6
"Service level Definition Drinking-water service ladders  Basic service The proportion of schools (including pre-primary, primary, and secondary) with drinking water from an improved water source available at the school  Limited service Drinking water from an improved source, but water is unavailable at the school at the survey time  No service Drinking water from an unimproved source or no water source at the school Sanitation service ladders  Basic service Having improved sanitation facilities at the school that was single-sex and usable (available, functional, and private) at the survey  Limited service Improved sanitation facilities at the school that are either not single-sex or not usable at the survey time  No service Unimproved sanitation facilities or no sanitation facilities at the school Hygiene service ladders  Basic service During the survey, handwashing facilities with water and soap were available at the school  Limited service Handwashing facilities with water but no soap available at the school at the time of the survey  No service No handwashing facilities available or no water available at the school In total, 82 heads of schools participated in the study, with a 91.5% response rate",6
Nearly half (46.7%) of the schools lacked at least one weekly lesson on the benefits of WASH services,6
"Access to basic WASH services among school facilities of Bishoftu Town, Ethiopia Most (96%) of the schools' primary water sources were improved",6
"Further, 32% of the schools had no functional handwashing facilities",6
"Besides, 78.6% of the schools had no handwashing facilities accessible to students with limited mobility or vision",6
"In addition, 43% of the schools lacked handwashing facilities that were reachable by the smallest students (Table 3)",6
"Accordingly, a significant association between six explanatory factors (sex of school directors, having hygiene and environmental club, having a budget line specifically for WASH, community involvement in planning, monitoring, and maintaining WASH services, having at least one weekly lesson about WASH, and ownership of the schools) and the basic hygiene service was observed",6
"Similarly, a binary logistic regression analysis was carried out to determine the association between the independent and the outcome (basic water and sanitation services) variables",6
"The best way to reduce many infectious diseases is to have access to basic water, sanitation, and hygiene services",3
"To stop the spread of infectious diseases, the World Health Organization has acknowledged the need for water, sanitation, and hygiene practices in schools worldwide",3
"The key tenets of the SDGs—access to clean water, adequate sanitation, and hygiene services—assist in improving children's health and academic performance in school",6
"This could be a significant risk factor for the spread of several infectious diseases resulting from poor water, sanitation, and hygiene services",3
"Unsafe water and inadequate sanitation systems cause social, economic, and political instability",6
"It means the schools had handwashing facilities with water and soap available, having handwashing facilities with water but no soap available at the school at the time of the survey",6
"Poverty, a lack of political will, and a small budget for WASH services could be the leading causes",6
"Although the present study's coverage of basic drinking water and sanitation services was in line with the worldwide report from 2022 [10], still many schools remained without these amenities",6
"Contaminated water is linked to the transmission of diseases such as cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, hepatitis A, and typhoid fever",3
Poor water quality and poor hygiene practices are disastrous for young and school-aged children who spend a lot of time at school,6
"In this investigation, 61.3% and 6.7% of the schools used open burning and dumping to manage solid waste",12
"However, schools with hygiene and environmental health clubs were 11.8 times more likely than schools without such clubs to have access to basic hygiene services (AOR = 11.8 with 95% CI 1.35–104)",3
"In addition, access to basic hygiene service was 8.5 times more likely for schools having a budget line designated particularly for WASH services (AOR = 8.5, 95% CI 1.00–70) than for schools without it",6
These results confirmed that the significance of WASH clubs and the allocated financial resources for WASH services are key determinants of the accessibility of basic hygiene services in schools,6
"Additionally, schools that had community involvement in the development, monitoring, and upkeep of WASH services were 12 times more likely to have access to basic hygiene services than schools that did not (AOR = 12 with 95% CI 1.88–78.48)",6
This demonstrated that the 2030 SDGs agenda for school WASH services could not be achieved without community participation,6
This further demonstrated the significance of WASH lessons and how learning about WASH services affects the accessibility of basic hygiene services in educational settings,6
"However, due to their priority and budget constraints, this study measured the drinking water quality only for microbial and selected chemical contaminants",6
A sizable number of schools were still without access to water and sanitation services,6
The findings of this investigation suggest that federal and regional governments should implement effective interventions that assist schools to attain Sustainable Development Goal 6 by 2030,6
"Additionally, the administrators of the schools and other partner organizations should take proactive measures to enhance and maintain the WASH services",6
"Furthermore, the schools should implement eco-friendly solid waste management practices like composting, recycling, reduction, and reuse methods.",12
"With enhanced focus on global sanitation, access to toilets at the household level is increasing in developing countries although the provision of sewer networks is not expanding at the same pace",6
"The results indicate that sewerage network coverage exists for 60%, 63%, and 50% of the areas in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad respectively",9
"Total wastewater treatment in Karachi and Islamabad is 10% and 9% respectively whereas, in Lahore, there is no infrastructure for the same",6
The safe sanitation in Lahore (8%) and Islamabad (25%) is coming from on-site sanitation systems with fecal sludge buried safely onsite,6
National level sanitation programs exist in the country but are limited to reducing open defecation and containments of fecal sludge only,6
"The inclusion of complete fecal sludge management related framework, guidelines, and policies can help achieve the goal of safe sanitation for all",6
Access to safe water and sanitation is a basic human right (WHO/UNICEF 2017),6
Target 7C of MDGs has planned to reduce the number of people without access to sanitation by half (Bartram et al,6
Goal 6 of SDG is the provision of safe drinking water and sanitation for everyone,6
The rapid decrease in open defecation and provision of basic sanitation was achieved through a massive increase in on-site sanitation (OSS) technologies especially in low and middle-income countries (Water 2021),6
"To achieve equitable sanitation, quadrupled-paced improvement is required as one-third of the world’s population still needs basic toilet facilities (WHO/UNICEF 2020)",6
Huge economic implications exist for countries that fail to address safe sanitation,6
"According to the World Bank, 165 million children globally under the age of five are trapped in poverty and living under substandard sanitary conditions",6
Children living in places near open defecation are 11% more likely to have stunted growth (WHO  2018),6
"Since 2000, Pakistan is among the 16 countries that have reduced open defecation by more than 20% yet 16 million people still practice open defecation (Ababa 2016)",6
"Every year 94,000 people including 53,000 children under five die from diarrhea due to poor quality of water and sanitation (WHO/UNICEF 2021; Ali et al",6
"Thus, a local scenario investigation is always required to identify the stakeholder, local practices followed, the weak links of safe sanitation, and how they can be addressed",6
Karachi Water and Sanitation Board (KWSB) is the department responsible for the provision of water and sanitation facilities for the city,6
The untreated wastewater heavily pollutes these streams and carries the same toward the Arabian Sea (Amin et al,6
Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA) Lahore is responsible for services provided related to water and sanitation,6
National and provincial policies along with national water and sanitation plans were analyzed,6
KIIs were conducted to get insight from the personnel administrating the water and sanitation services,6
"Limited secondary data is available on sanitation systems, especially OSS, and priority is given to ending open defecation",6
"The service delivery assessment (SDA) is a tool used that analyses the quality of the ecosystem including planning, policies, financial health, regulatory and institutional arrangement",10
"It is an analytical framework with three building blocks used to measure (1) the quality of the enabling environment, (2) the level of service development, and (3) the level of commitment to maintain the WASH services sustainability",6
These tools are easy to use and at present widely adopted by the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) to compare management in cities across developing countries (Baltazar et al,6
"Out of the remaining 40%, 3% use OSS technologies (mix of pits and septic tanks), 1% population practices open defecation and the rest is connected with open drains",6
Fecal sludge generated by OSS (3% population) is also disposed of openly and 1% population practices open defecation,6
"Although, the National Sanitation Policy (NSP) 2006 mentions “safe disposal of excreta by using sanitary latrines, creating an open defecation free environment” (GoP 2006)",6
Oxidation ponds-based wastewater treatment units are considered and public-private partnership is encouraged,6
NGOs and development partners often coordinate directly with the municipalities and community based organizations (CBOs) and private sector operators play a role in supporting safe sanitation (GoS 2014),6
"In Lahore, 63% of the population is connected to the sewerage network, 34% is relying on OSS and 2% perform open defecation (Fig",6
There are no safely managed public toilets resulting in open defecation (2%),6
Lahore is the country`s second-largest city but without any wastewater treatment plant,6
Pakistan made significant progress in reducing open defecation and providing basic sanitation during the MDGs era 2000–2015 (Ababa 2016),6
The safe sanitation in Karachi is 10% and is generated by the primary wastewater treatment plants,6
"In Islamabad, the major portion of safe sanitation (25%) is coming from the peri-urban areas where fecal sludge is disposed of onsite",6
Lahore is only generating the safe sanitation score (8%) from OSS disposing of fecal sludge insitu,6
The main reason for low safe sanitation scores in the major cities of Pakistan is that the sewerage network is considered a permanent solution and OSS is regarded as temporary,6
Annually US$12.3 billion is required for safe water and sanitation provision in Pakistan including US$7 billion for capital and US$5.3 billion for operation and maintenance (Richard Watts et al,6
"(a) Sewer and OSS coverage in South Asian countries; highest sewer network in Pakistan and lowest in Sri Lanka, (b) Proportion of safely managed OSS sludge treated, disposed insitu and basic sanitation coverage in South Asian countries National and provincial level policies have been made to improve water and sanitation provision in Pakistan including the Constitution of Pakistan (1973), National Sanitation Policy (2006), National Water Policy (2018), and provincial sanitation policies for Punjab and Sindh",6
Recently Clean Green Pakistan Movement (CGPM) has emphasized treating liquid waste to improve sanitation and public health,3
"The strong political will and partnership with donor agencies like WHO, UNICEF, World Bank, national and local level NGOs have made Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka open defecation free (Giribabu et al",6
"In Pakistan, the major reason for no safely managed sanitation is due to unavailability of government capacity to regulate and enforce sanitation standards for safe public health and the environment",3
"To meet the targets of safe sanitation in Pakistan, it is important to look beyond containment and improvise the policies related to collection, transport, treatment, and safe disposal",6
"Lack of coordination among government departments and stakeholders, non-existent FSM policies, lack of financial resources, poor implementation of existing policies, lack of FSM capacity among practitioners, political instability, and natural disasters have led to limited safe sanitation in Pakistan",6
Citywide inclusive sanitation (CWIS) targets safe sanitation provision for everyone either connected by a centralized/decentralized sewerage system or utilizing OSS (Narayan et al,6
Wastewater treatment plants are not available in all the cities,6
The major safe sanitation score from Lahore (8%) and Islamabad (25%) is coming from fecal sludge buried onsite safely,6
FSM can be included in already existing water and sanitation policies with a due highlighted share on the complete service chain,6
This is a novel approach to communicating with the relevant stakeholders to promote more sustainable resource management,12
"Soils provide several ecosystem functions and services, such as food provision, climate regulation, waste recycling, water purification and recreation [1,2,3]",12
Various initiatives around the world aim to curb land degradation,15
"The ‘4 per1000 ‘Initiative, launched in 2015 at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP 21), aims to increase global soil organic carbon stocks from 4 to 1000 (0.4%) per year to offset global emissions of carbon [8]",13
These initiatives represent a concerted effort to bring attention to the importance of soil and prevent further soil degradation,15
Decreasing or eliminating land degradation is essential to maintaining ecosystem functions and services and is more cost-effective than rehabilitating land after degradation [11],15
Lack of recognition of the value and functions of soil by different stakeholders has historically fostered widespread land degradation [13],15
"For each activity that could contribute to soil degradation but is replaced and reported by the user with soil-improving activity, the user would gain a point",15
"Given the increasing environmental impacts generated by soil degradation, it is necessary to raise awareness in society about the importance of conserving global soils [13]: the soil must be considered an integral part of the human-nature relationship and as indispensable to the natural processes that allow life on Earth",15
"For example, The Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) & School Program performs workshops with soil painting with teachers and students and the Soil Quality Indicators methodology addresses adults (farmers, students, teachers, and indigenous people; for more information and to watch the institutional videos about these activities consult Appendix 4 and 5)",2
"


This study follows the goals of the United Nations Sustainable Development as well as the 2030 Agenda in terms of climate change mitigation.


Enhancing the naturalness would increase these ecosystems’ ability to act better as a buffer in extreme climate events",13
"Restoration of peatlands would increase natural responses to expected climate change, protecting landscape equilibrium and population safety",13
"Peatlands are among the most valuable ecosystems on Earth since they are critical for preserving global biodiversity, providing several hydrological services [1], minimising flood risk and address to climate change [2,3,4]",13
"Water resource management is a global critical issue, but assumes particular relevance in small islands, as usually water resources are limited and demand is often high, thus planning is essential for water appropriation, as well as for resource conservation and protection [17]",6
The need for researching this issue has been highlighted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [21] and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 13 (in  ) defined as “take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts” as well as the goals of the 2030 Agenda (in  ),13
"One of the main future challenges is the establishment of strategies to minimise the impacts of extreme events due to climate change, and the Azores Islands are no exception",13
"Studies of this nature are of growing relevance due to the increasing manifestations of climate change events [28,29,30,31]",13
"Peatlands are defined by the unique climatic conditions of each location, and their state of naturalness both conditions [32] and is conditioned by [30, 33] the nature of climate change in a given region",13
Peatlands can be the key to limiting climate change,13
"These two parameters, water storage and time efflux can be related to other services like erosion protection (by regulating the efflux of the water) and local scale climate change mitigation (by retaining water) [10, 14, 16]",13
"This manuscript is organised as follows: in Sect. 1 we describe the current knowledge of the Azorean peatlands, from the typologies, main threats and services such as water retention capacity and time efflux, analysed in this study and the importance of peatlands hydrological services in a context of climate change; Sect. 2, corresponds to the methodological description and is divided in three parts, it begins with an explanation of how the actual and potential peatland areas were obtained, on which an analysis of the services considered in this research was carried out; Our results (Sect. 3) are presented, also in 3 parts, quantifying the actual peatland areas, as well as the potential areas and calculating the hydrological services (water retention and water efflux) in both scenarios, presenting the data in cartographic and numerical form; The following section (number 4) is the discussion, where the results obtained in this study are compared with other realities, showing an identical range of values, including also the comparison of the actual and potential hydrological services of Flores and Terceira Islands; The final section, the conclusion, points out how a possible peatland recovery could mitigate potential effects of climate change in the region",13
"The Regional Programme for Climate Change in the Azores (PRAC [48]), presented several possible future scenarios for Azores’ climate",13
"This could become more common and intense, associated with climate change [48])",13
"Urgent action is required to protect and sustainably manage and restore peatlands for global biodiversity protection, which can also play an important role in reducing GHG emissions",15
"Control surface and subsurface runoff, reducing the torrential regime after heavy rains, diminish soil erosion and regulate the microclimate on islands through evapotranspiration",15
"Peatland vegetation also delays surface water runoff after major storms, characteristic of the Azorean archipelago, reducing soil erosion",15
The implementation of restoration measures would significantly increase the buffering capacities of peatlands in a scenario of climate change,13
"Over the last decade in particular, lean and green thinking has emerged as a desirable strategy to improve efficiency and environmental outcomes towards sustainable business practices that meet circular economy objectives",12
"This model guides SMEs to use the best tools and processes given their circumstances and aspirations.ConclusionsThe model has the immediate benefit of focusing SME time and resources towards circular economy enquiry, reducing uncertainty and enabling forward-planning",12
"With the increasing trends of global waste generation and environmental pollution, there are many conversations internationally around how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can become more resource efficient and reduce waste",12
"Within this realm, conventional ‘lean thinking’ has expanded into ‘lean and green thinking’ as a targeted intervention for SMEs to reduce waste and pollution, comprising an integrated approach that focusses on resource optimisation and promotes strategies to ‘do more with less’",12
"Our findings are immediately useful for industry practitioners, government policymakers addressing circular economy opportunities at a firm level, and governance leaders in bridging the gap between ideas and action for scaling up sustainable business practice in SMEs",12
"With the increasing trends of global waste generation and environmental pollution, there are many conversations internationally around how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can become more resource efficient and reduce waste",12
"The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call for direct, urgent and collaborative efforts from the industrial sector to engage in sustainable consumption and production and focus more on the triple bottom line approach of environmental, social and economic) [1], also known as the 3Ps (i.e",12
"Within this realm, conventional ‘lean thinking’ has expanded into ‘lean and green thinking’ as a targeted intervention for SMEs to reduce waste and pollution, comprising an integrated approach that focusses on resource optimisation and promotes strategies to ‘do more with less’ [4]",12
"The study developed a novel ‘Lean and green strategy model’ for SMEs to strategically use lean and green tools, enabling them to deviate from ‘business as usual’ in a linear economy and contribute to the circular economy instead",12
"The findings are immediately useful for industry practitioners, government policymakers addressing circular economy opportunities at a firm level, and governance leaders in bridging the gap between ideas and action for scaling up sustainable business practice in SMEs",12
"Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are estimated to contribute to nearly 70% of global industrial pollution [5, 6] triggering many conversations internationally around how this market segment can become more resource efficient and reduce waste [7, 8]",12
"Recently this has been supplemented by unambiguous requests from the United Nations (UN) through its Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), calling for direct, urgent and collaborative efforts by the industrial sector to engage in sustainable consumption and production [9, 10]",12
"SMEs can implement sustainable practice through substituting virgin raw materials in products with post-consumer materials, recycling and keeping resources the life cycle for a longer period of time [12]",12
"Within this realm, conventional ‘lean thinking’ has expanded into ‘lean and green thinking’ as a targeted intervention for SMEs to reduce waste and pollution [4, 23,24,25], comprising an integrated approach that focuses on resource optimisation and promotes activities to do more with less",12
"Furthermore, considering SMEs’ cash flow and low operating budgets [38], low level of sustainability awareness [39], lack of technical know-how [40] and limited focus on sustainability as a business priority [41], it is still unclear how to select or integrate such tools to harness best sustainable business outcomes in a cost-effective way [36]",12
"Building on previous research on exploring the role of lean thinking [24], and characterising sustainable business practice [35] this study aimed to investigate how lean and green tools could be targeted to drive particular sustainable business practice priorities, enabling SMEs to deviate from doing business as usual in a linear economy and contribute to the circular economy",12
Circular economy is described as whole economic system with a closed loop material flow [42] and was then extended as an economic system that is restorative and regenerative by intention and design [43],12
"Analysis of key literature from the last two decades highlights the emergence of lean thinking as a preferred business strategy for SMEs globally, in addition to an increasing call for manufacturing SMEs to reduce waste, improve manufacturing performance and fulfil ethical responsibility as good corporate citizens [37, 44]",12
"Firm B is a business that has diversified from farming enterprise to establish a value recovery process of recycling and colouring waste pallets and crates, into commercial mulch",12
"This firm has a holistic approach to increase utilisation of urban waste that is perceived as ‘wrong time and place’ materials, to ‘right time and place resources’",11
"As SMEs in the South-East Queensland manufacturing industry, both enterprises identified the strategic need for engaging in sustainable business practice",9
"For example, the Operations Manager of Firm B (FB-P3) highlighted that the National Association for Sustainable Agriculture Australia (NASAA) recommends potting mixes without peat products, as invasive mining processes are extracting peat at a rate higher than it can be replenished",2
Firm B showed strong performance in resource recovery and waste management where they have diversified their business from sugar cane farming to recycled mulch manufacturing and food waste composting,12
"Sustainable-Value Stream Mapping (Sus-VSM) was used by Firm A, using integrated resource, energy and emission matrices to reduce waste by showing the times and points of waste generation: “Halfway through a process where people start looking at it, why are we doing this? We have to keep them focussed till the end",12
Firm B commented on engagement with government professional bodies such as ‘Citysmart’ and local councils to develop socially acceptable and sustainable recycling practices,12
They are involved with local councils to develop a food waste monitoring tool and to reduce the odour issues in the social environments and provide solutions to reduce the waste going into landfills,12
"For example, Firm B prioritised critical performance area to be reducing ‘muda’ (waste) and waste management using a waste product of one process as a raw material for another",12
This practice also catalysed this company to shift its business agenda and diversify their agricultural products,2
"In exploring critical performance improvement areas, SMEs can consider opportunities to align core business functions with the following streams: People: Sustainability leadership and direction, Sustainability advocate, Ongoing education and training Planet: Environmental management, Creative-innovation, Regenerative business practice Profit: Integrated vision, Process efficiency and effectiveness, Risk assessment, This initial analysis will aid the SMEs to find strategy-action gaps and then developing measures to capitalise on the performance improvement opportunities to close the gap",4
"Of the 40 lean tools identified in Table 7, 5S, quality circles, PDCA cycles, internal training, internal auditing and green tools/concepts such biomimicry, waste and water management can be strategically used along all three performance improvement areas",6
Senior decision makers of Firm A did monitor and evaluate the usefulness of a procedural structure that enables better decisions and efficient use of resources to achieve environmental performance goals,12
Implementation of lean and green activities will strengthen the economic competitiveness and attract funding/ aids from professional bodies and government,3
"SMEs have opportunities to become leaner and greener through reducing waste, recycling towards more sustainable production achievement",12
One of the potential challenges for the wider adoption of rice–fish coculture is water management,6
"We suggest that the efficient application of blue and green water in rice–fish coculture could help confronting water scarcity, reducing water footprint, and increasing water productivity",6
"One of the key bottlenecks and limiting factors for rice–fish coculture is water management, including drought, water scarcity, inadequate water depth, lack of irrigation facilities, and insufficient water control (Horstkotte-Wesseler 1999; Frei and Becker 2005a; Nabi 2008; Ahmed and Garnett 2011)",6
"Clearly, there is a research gap about water management in rice–fish culture",6
It is therefore necessary to focus on water management for the successful adoption of rice–fish coculture,6
"Fish require a sufficient level of water to survive, and thus, a greater depth with water quality must be maintained in rice ecosystems, where water exists for at least 4 months or longer",6
Water quality in rice fields is also affected by floods due to contamination with land-based pollutants that undermine fish growth and production,6
"In developing countries, small-scale farmers are unable to build their narrow and low dikes in rice fields due to financial constraint, and typical dikes are about 25–30 cm high with similar width (Halwart and Gupta 2004), making them vulnerable to flood",9
"The existence of fish in rice fields increases rice yields as the movement of fish help enhance dissolved O2 levels, recycling nutrients, increase soil organic matter, and control aquatic insects, plants, organic detritus, and plankton that compete with rice for energy and nutrients (Mustow 2002; Halwart and Gupta 2004; Giap et al",12
The key approach to alleviate water scarcity is to increase agricultural water productivity,6
"Water productivity can be improved through modernization of agricultural practices, water saving irrigation approaches, enhanced soil fertility, and increased yield (Dugan et al",15
It can also be improved through integrated soil and water management (Falkenmark and Rockström 2006),6
Blue water scarcity has become an increasing concern due to the expansion of irrigated agriculture to boost crop yield to match the raising demand (Liu and Savenije 2008; Liu and Yang 2010),6
Increasing food production in the future will need to overcome the challenge of blue water scarcity (Liu and Savenije 2008; Liu and Yang 2010),6
It has been predicted that about 59% of the global human population will face blue water scarcity by 2050 (Rockström et al,6
It has been suggested that changing global cropping patterns may help minimize blue water scarcity (Chouchane et al,6
"The application of blue water in rice-fish farming increases water efficiency by providing dual crops, coupled with an increase yield of the main crop (rice) for the same water",6
"Moreover, the future consumption of green water by the world’s food production, under predicted climate change and population growth scenarios, is expected to further increase to a higher scale than the direct consumptive blue water utilization (Rockström et al",13
"Water scarcity in food production arises not only from shortage of blue water, but also from lack of green water (Falkenmark 2013)",6
"Water shortage has intensified notably over the last decades, and presently one-third of the global population resides in areas reported to be experiencing blue and green water scarcity (Porkka et al",6
"Tackling water scarcity and reducing water footprint in rice-fish coculture could increase water and crop productivity through the efficient use and management of blue–green water To address water scarcity in rice–fish cultivation, there are many options, including (1) rainy season cultivation, (2) use water runoff, (3) improve irrigation management, (4) store water in reservoirs, and (5) rainwater harvesting (Table 5)",6
Catching water runoff and storing in small reservoirs are effective blue water management strategies (Hoff et al,6
These can increase the application of blue water resources for irrigation in rice–fish cultivation and are viable options to address water scarcity,6
"In Africa and Asia, rainwater harvesting is an ancient idea for water management (Oweis and Hachum 2006; Liu et al",6
"2009), which is gaining significance for enhancing green water efficiency (AFED 2010)",6
"Thus, a more efficient water resource utilization through appropriate irrigation techniques and other strategies should be considered to reduce blue water footprint (Chukalla et al",6
The water footprint of aquaculture is due to a combination of water lost and water pollution,6
Swimming and foraging activities of fish in rice–fish coculture help nutrient recycling (Giap et al,12
"Thus, grey water footprint, which is water pollution related to the use of fertilizer and pesticide, can be reduced through rice–fish culture (Chapagain and Hoekstra 2011; Mekonnen and Hoekstra 2011; Aldaya et al",6
This in turn maintains water quality to increase rice and fish productivity that will greatly reduce grey water footprint,6
"Ultimately, rice–fish coculture maintains environmental sustainability for crop and water productivity to increase food security, economic profitability, and social acceptability (Fig. 4)",2
"Rice-fish coculture maintains environmental sustainability for enhancing crop and water productivity, which may increase food security, economic profitability, and social acceptability Integrated rice–fish cultivation has the potential to increase net food (rice and fish) production, while simultaneously reducing water footprint, compared to traditionally practiced rice monoculture",2
One of the potential challenges for the greater adoption of rice–fish coculture is water scarcity,6
The effective application of blue–green water in rice–fish coculture can improve water efficiency by delivering dual production benefits with increase yields,6
Blue water irrigation with green water rainfall can help resist water scarcity for rice–fish coculture,6
"Management strategies, including improving irrigation systems and rainwater harvesting could address water scarcity",6
"Eventually, the effective application of blue–green water is a viable tool towards addressing water scarcity and the increase of the adoption of rice–fish cultivation would ultimately contribute towards reducing water footprint",6
"Key stakeholders including farming communities, government and non-governmental organizations, international agencies, policymakers, and researchers need to collaborate to support blue–green water management for the wider adoption of rice–fish coculture",6
"Food waste prevention and reduction are an economic, social and environmental concern included among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development",12
"The third target under SDG 12 (Target 12.3) on Responsible Production and Consumption aims to halve food waste by 2030 at retail and consumer levels, considering that more than half of its quantity is generated by final consumers, both indoor and outdoor",12
"Through the limited but significant results achieved, the authors highlight the logistics of the methodology and the food waste generation trends among a small sample of Italian families during the Covid-19 pandemic",12
"Further, healthier work–life balances, adequate time management and smart food delivery seem to be good opportunities for food waste reduction in households",12
"Food waste has negative economic, social and environmental impacts, and its importance has increased over the last years (Hall et al",12
"Among them, the main challenges are related to Goal 2 “Zero Hunger” and Goal 12 “Responsible Consumption and Production,” with reference to Target 12.3, which requires, by 2030, to “halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses.” Furthermore, to accelerate the achievement of these SDGs, the European Commission (2015) has launched the “Closing the loop - An EU action plan for the Circular Economy,” implemented with the introduction of a monitoring framework for the circular economy (European Commission 2018)",12
"Worldwide, yearly food waste quantity is nearly 1.3 billion tons (International Food Policy Institute 2019; FAO 2019), equal to roughly one-third of global food production",12
"Several studies have focused on food waste measurement, trying to quantify and qualify food waste along the whole food supply chain, from cradle to grave",12
Since the highest amount of food waste is generated in households (Møller et al,12
"2014), the increase in domestic food consumption has inevitably spilled over into waste generation, including food waste",12
"Through the limited but significant results achieved, the authors highlight the logistics of the methodology and the food waste generation trends among a small sample of Italian families during the Covid-19 pandemic",12
"To this extent, the main research questions investigated within this paper include the following: a) Are food diaries a reliable tool to measure household food waste; b) how have food consumption and food waste been characterized during the Covid-19 pandemic according to the sample; and c) which research directions should be investigated in the field of household food waste after the Covid-19 pandemic? As stated by the legislative framework, Directive (EU) 2018/851 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2018 on waste (OJEU 2018) defines food waste by referring to Article 2 of Regulation (EC) 178/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council (OJEU 2002)",12
"According to the definition of food, which includes “any substance or product, whether processed, partially processed or unprocessed, intended to be, or reasonably expected to be ingested by humans,” food waste is everything that has become waste",12
"For instance, FAO (2011) described food waste as “the masses of food lost or wasted in the part of food chains leading to edible products going to human consumption,” distinguishing those occurring at the agricultural, industrial processing and retail stages (food losses) from those at the final consumption stage (food waste), whereas other reports and academic literature (Beretta et al",12
"As reported by FUSIONS (2016a, b), food waste is represented by “fractions of food and inedible parts of food removed from the food supply chain to be recovered or disposed.” According to (Quested and Johnson 2009; Beretta et al",12
"(2013), to investigate the drivers for food waste and possible strategies toward its reduction, the authors distinguish between avoidable (food still edible by humans), potentially avoidable (food that some people eat and others do not) and unavoidable (inedible food) food waste",12
"Moreover, in line with the scope of the analysis, in the following sections, the authors refer to food consumption as the whole food purchased by participants (global input at the beginning of consumption stage) and food waste (output of food intended for disposal)",12
The difference between food consumption and food waste represents food intake,12
"Then, only food waste occurring at final consumption at home is taken into account, not considering the losses from the agricultural to retail stages",12
"Among the five main methodologies listed in the Commission Delegated Decision (EU) 2019/1597 of 3 May 2019 (OJEU 2019), food diaries (sometimes called “kitchen diaries”) refer to individuals or groups of individuals (e.g., families, cohabitants) asked to measure and self-report food waste occurring in their daily lives (FUSIONS 2014), including the quality and quantity of discarded food, the waste generation step (e.g., preparation, leftovers), the main reasons for discarding it and its disposal route (e.g., kitchen bin, home compost) (Quested et al",12
"2015), representing a useful tool in food waste research even with the limitations (Langley et al",12
"(2020) investigated the main differences in food waste production relative to the sociodemographic characteristics of household members, whereas Leverenz et al",12
Other studies have measured food waste with food diaries: Katajajuuri et al,12
"To strengthen data quality regarding food waste and to avoid over- or undervaluation problems due to people’s memory or individuals’ approximation, the authors stressed that participants should weigh food waste with a kitchen scale (digital or analog) and report data on sheets every time food waste occurred (WRAP 2014; Istat 2011)",12
"Lastly, since WRAP (2014) estimated that food waste recorded over a seven-day diary period tends to be 17% higher on the first day than the average of the other six remaining days, the authors applied an uncertainty of 15% to all mass variables from the second to the seventh day",12
"All information on the moment of waste generation, the causes of food waste and the disposal procedures, expressed in keywords, have been analyzed according to a qualitative content analysis (QCA) and then summarized in Table 5",12
All answers – read word by word in order to capture key thoughts or concepts on food consumption and food waste trends in households – “provided knowledge and understanding of the phenomenon under study” (Downe-Wamboldt 1992; Hsieh and Shannon 2005; Kasavan et al,12
"Food consumption and food waste, considering Gustavsson et al",12
"The authors, to evaluate food waste–associated financial costs (€), transformed mass values into monetary values based on average consumer prices mainly registered in February 2020 (Istat 2011; Ismea 2020; Ministero dello Sviluppo Economico 2020a, 2020b) and considering an average increase in food prices of +0.8% during the Covid-19 pandemic (Istat 2020a)",12
"Furthermore, to calculate food waste–associated nutritional losses (MJ), the authors have considered average nutritional values in accordance with FAO’s (2020c) nutritive factors and Beretta et al",12
"(2010) and Richter and Bokelmann’s (2017) research, the authors are conscious that achieved results are not representative of the Italian population and, consequently, of food waste in Italian households during the Covid-19 pandemic",12
"The Sankey diagram, in a visually effective and concise manner, illustrates food consumption (food intake + food waste) and food waste for all participants during the seven-day period, showing the quality and quantity of inputs purchased by households and related food intake, as well as food waste leaving the process",12
Sankey diagram for food consumption and food waste (kg) during Covid-19,12
"The average weekly food consumption for respondents was approximately 6.56 kg of food, of which related food intake was 5.93 kg and food waste was 0.63 kg",12
"On average, food waste represents approximately the 9.5% of global food consumption (Table 3), with several differences in the share of food waste among food categories: fruits (22%), vegetables and legumes (19%), fish and fish products (14%), meat and meat products (6%), milk and dairy products and pasta and rice (3%), bread and bakery products (2%) and prepared meals (1%)",12
"In terms of financial costs and nutritional intake, Table 4 illustrates the following: a) food consumption– (purchase) and food waste–associated financial costs calculated to transform mass values into monetary values (see Section 2.3); and b) food consumption– (purchase) and food waste–associated nutritional values calculated according to Istat (2020b) and FAO (2020c) (see Section 2.3)",12
a Food consumption and food waste associated financial costs (euro); b Food consumption and food waste associated nutritional intake and losses (MJ); c Share in food waste associated financial costs by food categories (%); d Share in food waste associated nutritional losses by food categories (%),12
"Furthermore, the total financial costs associated with food waste have been estimated to be approximately €65 (roughly 9%), which means approximately €5 per household and less than €2.5 per respondent per week, of which more than 37% are related to fish and fish products and roughly 23% to meat and meat products",12
2 and Table 4 illustrate the food consumption and food waste nutritional intake balance expressed in MJ,12
"Before conducting the explorative research, the authors believed that limitations in food distribution or even a lack in food accessibility would have caused severe societal consequences all over the world, even increasing food waste at the household level to higher rates (World Economic Forum 2020)",12
"Moreover, considering that all outdoor food service facilities have been closed (e.g., companies and school canteens, leisure and hospitality facilities), all grocery shopping opportunities have been limited and millions of people have been forced to stay at home, the authors would have expected an additional sharp increase in food waste at final consumption due to sudden changes in food habits and related negative emotions (Russell et al",12
These considerations on food waste increase have been essentially based and summarized in the so-called “stock-effect” – mainly due to the fear of not finding food in the medium to long term – and in the “I-stay-at-home-effect” (Nielsen 2020a),12
"Moreover, several reports all over the world (National Geographic, 2020) have stated that people are cooking more at home, thus producing more tonnages of food waste than usual",12
"2010; Richter and Bokelmann 2017), the authors have detected a kind of counterbalanced effect, which has helped to better understand if and how a reduction in food waste coefficients and mass values has occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic",12
"(2020) estimated an average amount of food waste per respondent per day of approximately 0.21 kg in Croatia, whereas Silvennoinen et al",12
"The highest average coefficients of food waste per food category have been recorded for vegetables (19%), milk and dairy products (17%) and bread and bakery products (13%), with an average daily coefficient in the range of 10–12% (Silvennoinen et al",12
"Results from this explorative paper, on the contrary, have recorded decreasing average tendencies, assessing an amount of food waste per person per day of approximately 0.09 kg (−30% on Italian literature values) (Jörissen et al",12
2015) and an average food waste coefficient of roughly 9.5%,12
Previous studies on the main drivers of food waste (Aschemann-Witzel et al,12
"Furthermore, not to be underestimated is the stock-effect, which hypothetically leads to greater awareness about food waste",12
"Basically, the fear of reduced medium- to long-term food availability should lead consumers to preserve resources and manage them in a more sustainable way, consequently reducing food waste",12
"However, the food diary participants still highlighted several causes of food waste",12
"2018), the analysis revealed that quantities of unavoidable food waste (inedible food such as bones, skins and scraps) cannot significantly be reduced but that impressive efforts could be done to minimize avoidable and potentially avoidable fractions",12
Table 5 records the main reasons for food waste generation extrapolated by the sample and proposes possible strategies toward its reduction according to the referenced literature,12
"As the participants stated, the highest amount of food waste is represented by unavoidable waste, occurring almost always during food preparations (e.g., skins and scraps of fruit and vegetables, egg peel)",12
"Moreover, diary keepers are usually not aware of all the food being disposed of at home by other household members or are confused about what should be accounted for, thus understating the amount of food waste",12
"Lastly, as already stated in terms of self-reporting risk, people who participate in the experiment are usually not representative of the whole population, since it is expected that some participants are more interested in food waste issues than others, and adjustments in such direction are extremely difficult and aleatory",12
"Nevertheless, food diaries still represent a valuable tool to improve knowledge on food waste trends and collect objective quantitative (e.g., mass value, financial costs and nutritional values) and qualitative data (e.g., causes of food waste, disposal procedures)",12
"Based on the pre-Covid-19 food waste literature data (FAO 2017, 2018, 2019; Caldeira et al",12
"The identified causes could represent the key variables for further research, in order to develop food waste minimization strategies and achieve the 2030 SDGs",12
"Moreover, future directions of the analysis should focus on the role of smart food delivery toward food waste reduction with regard to its opportunities to enlarge customers’ awareness on products and improve buying decisions",12
"One of the main hypotheses from the presented explorative research, and in line with the few studies conducted on food waste in Italy in times of economic crisis (Fanelli and Di Florio 2016), is that food consumption and food waste behaviors have been more virtuous, showing that the Covid-19 pandemic has enhanced people’s attitude toward food waste reduction and more sustainable consumption models (Galanakis 2020; Jribi et al",12
"Moreover, it has been shown that effects, such as stock-effect and I-stay-at-home-effect, positively influenced food waste reduction",12
"The authors are convinced that food diaries, even with some limitations related to difficult recruitment, risks of self-selection and high dropout rates, could contribute to increased qualitative and quantitative knowledge on food waste issues (e.g., mass value, financial costs and nutritional values), especially considering the lack of information regarding the Covid-19 pandemic behavior",12
"However, further studies will investigate food waste behaviors and social attitude/responsibility at a large scale in an attempt to complete food waste measurement with more detailed and reliable data",12
"In addition, the authors believe it is essential to investigate further the role of smart food delivery and time management toward food waste reduction",12
"By taking advantage of such a disaster, awareness on previous unsustainable behavior could increase, thus enhancing awareness about the food waste issue, both at the industrial and household levels",12
"To succeed, we cannot afford to lose insights and information originating from multiple knowledge systems.Footnote 1 The rapid acceleration and intensity of global environmental change places great demands on humanity to develop innovative ways and processes for connecting knowledge systems that are conducive to sustainability learning and recognize the complexities of social–ecological systems and the challenges of the Anthropocene (Berkes et al",4
One example is climate change in the tropics and the role of agrobiodiversity for adapting to variability and sustaining local livelihoods (Mijatović et al,13
"They include for instance the understanding of sea ice dynamic and climate change (Laidler 2006), population dynamics of fish and other wildlife (Mackinson 2001; Moller et al",13
"2013), as well as land use change and farming practices (Brookfield et al",15
"This is visible and embedded in the goals of many international efforts, from the on-going proposals for the new sustainable development goals (SDG; e.g., to improve food security and decrease local vulnerability to environmental change) to the Aichi targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD 2013a)",2
"For example, Fortmann and Ballard (2011) argue that that overly narrow understanding of what constitute valid scientific practice have led to the detrimental exclusion of knowledge produced by local scientific practices from official forest management and forest policy in the US",15
"In some cases, local knowledge offers fine grain information about particular phenomena (e.g., sea ice change, fish school movements, and forest management techniques) while in other cases, it helps to extend the spatial (e.g., reindeer herding using a landscape scale for understanding biodiversity changes) and temporal (e.g., key historical events or oral history expanding the time depth) scales of observation",15
"A multi-scalar approach contributes to understanding the complex and diverse local and sub-regional effects of national and global drivers of change, from climate change to market fluctuations, as well as local responses to change",13
The planetary boundary definition of a safe operating space for a stable and resilient Earth system provides an operational framework for defining what constitutes sustainable agriculture,2
2014) that the “safe operating space” exploration of food security (Beddington et al,2
"2009), analytically frames the problem and describes the interconnected forces of population growth, consumption growth, environmental change, and food security",2
"Therefore, in the Anthropocene, humanity faces the imperative question of how to transform agriculture that feeds the world, contributes to eradicate poverty, and contributes to a stable planet",1
"Given the decisive role of world agriculture on human development and on Earth system processes, we argue in this paper that sustainable agriculture is the only strategy that can deliver productivity enhancements to meet rising food needs and enable an Earth system operating within planetary boundaries",2
"2014), and its role in addressing global food security (van Noordwijk and Brussaard 2014)",2
"Here, SIA is largely on how to enhance agricultural productivity while reducing its environmental impacts (Conway 1997; Godfray and Garnett 2014; Kuyper and Struik 2014)",2
"Sustainable intensification, in this context, seeks to increase agricultural output while keeping the ecological footprint as small as possible",2
"This is, in no doubt, a useful and relatively important feature of sustainable agriculture, particularly as mainstream agriculture development still concentrates on productivity and places limited focus on sustainability",2
"It remains focused though on avenues for resource efficiency, e.g., based on assumptions that efficiency in water and fertilizer use represents the avenues towards sustainable agriculture",2
"There is an urgent need to shift this around and instead use sustainable principles as the entry point for generating productivity enhancements, which fundamentally requires real progress in increasing agricultural output by capitalizing on ecological processes in agro-ecosystems (Struik et al",2
"Sustainable intensification of agriculture, in our proposed paradigm, aims at hunger reduction through biodiversity conservation that secures ecological functions in agricultural landscapes",15
"Agriculture is the single largest user of freshwater in the world, with 70 % of the totally withdrawn water of almost 6000 km3 year−1 being diverted for agriculture (Kabat 2013), which has resulted in approximately 25 % of the world’s major river basins no longer reaching the ocean (Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture 2007)",6
"World agriculture must now meet social needs and fulfill sustainability criteria that enables food and all other agricultural ecosystem services (i.e., climate stabilization, flood control, support of mental health, nutrition, etc.) to be generated within a safe operating space of a stable and resilient Earth system, which in turn can be defined from Earth system science applying the planetary boundary framework (Table 1)",3
"It furthermore requires building the capacity to deal with rising frequency and amplitude of shocks and stresses as a result of global changes (e.g., droughts and floods exacerbated by climate change; disease outbreaks promoted by globalization)",13
This landscape approach needs to be nurtured and facilitated by a social–ecological framework for policy design and on-ground implementation (IAASTD 2008; Garnett et al,15
"In others, yield reductions or land reallocation will be needed to ensure sustainability and deliver benefits such as biodiversity conservation, carbon storage, flood protection, and recreation (see Box 1)",15
"Adopt circular approaches to managing natural resources (e.g., nutrient recycling) and mixing organic and inorganic sources of nutrients",12
"Build robust institutions of small farmers, led especially by women, which enable an equitable interface with both markets and government",2
"The sources of sustainable practices range across all areas of agricultural development, in soil tillage systems, water resource management, crop and nutrient management, livestock practices, integrated landscape management, pest management, and management of ecosystem services are already evident and what is required is a scaling up",6
For example: The Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture (2007) showed that there is a large untapped potential in upgrading rainfed agriculture in savannah regions (covering 40 % of the Earth’s surface) by enhancing rainwater harvesting,6
"In addition, in southern Niger, farmers are innovatively regenerating and multiplying valuable trees on their lands, and this has improved about 5 million hectares while producing more than 500 000 additional tons of food per year resulting in improved food security for about 3 million people",2
Other ecosystem benefits registered included reduced wind speed and evaporation (Reij et al,15
Other ecosystem benefits have included improved moisture and fertility in the cultivated fields and reduction of downstream flooding (Awulachew 2010; Liniger et al,15
"In Brazil, conservation agriculture (CA) which is practiced on over 25 million ha (accounting for over 25.5 % of arable land) is defeating erosion and drought",15
"Food security is increased, utilizing ecosystem services, without exhausting the endangered resource",2
"An ICRISAT-led activity is promoting integrated watershed management in the Yewol watershed in the Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia",6
"Adopting a livelihood-centered paradigm for sustainable intensification within planetary boundaries is a major challenge for research and development that will require new approaches to how research for development is formulated, managed, and executed",9
Sustainable intensification is only part of what is needed to improve food system viability and sustainability and is not synonymous with food security,2
"Both sustainability and food security have multiple social, ethical, and environmental dimensions",2
"Much hope has been generated by India’s 12th Five Year Plan, which adopts a paradigm shift in water resource management, exactly along the lines proposed in this paper (Shah 2013)",6
"A promising development is the emphasis in the strategic plan of the CGIAR until 2030 (CGIAR 2015), which places reduced poverty, improved food and nutrition security for health, and improved natural resources and ecosystem services, as its three highest level system outcomes",2
"Similarly, FAO pursues a strategic transformation, which endorses an ecosystem approach in agricultural management for sustainable crop production intensification, provides associated policy advice, and envisages a vision of sustainable food and agriculture that merges access by all to nutritious food with ecosystem-focused natural resources management (FAO 2011b, 2014)",2
The shift outlined in this article demands a new framework for research and development,9
"New research and development is required to advance fresh integrated whole-of-systems approaches for sustainable intensification, which can inspire and influence all domains involved in agricultural development, from economics to biotechnology",9
These would be large R&D investments,9
"CSA presents a wide range of practices and technologies including; weather-smart (weather forecasts, climate-informed agro-advisories, weather insurance and climate analogues for planning), water-smart (aquifer recharge, rainwater harvesting, community management of water, laser-land levelling, micro-irrigation, raised-bed planting, solar pumps), carbon/nutrient-smart practices (agroforestry, minimum tillage, organic materials input, integrated nutrient management, biofuels, and limited/no synthetic chemicals use), and institutional/market smart activities (learning platforms or farmer to farmer learning and capacity development, financial services, market information, gender-equitable approaches, and off-farm risk management strategies) (Aggarwal et al",15
"Assessment of the mitigation potential of various low-emission agriculture practices strengthens local, national and international level reporting, GHG stock-taking and mitigation strategies (Streimikis et al",13
"For instance, the adoption of CSA practices including organic materials input and agroforestry increased soil organic carbon (SOC) by 42‒196% at the depth of 0–15 cm in agricultural soils in Eastern Africa (Tanzania, Kanye & Uganda) (Ambaw et al",15
"Chemical substances affect soil quality and reduce soil organic carbon (SOC) content, thereby generating emissions and reducing soil sequestration ability (Awasthi 2022; Ouédraogo et al",2
"An experimental study by Mairura et al., (2022) in Central Kenya concluded that legume cultivation has a positive effect on agriculture by adding and recycling biologically fixed nitrogen, enhancing nutrient uptake, breaking down the crop pest cycle and reducing GHG emissions",12
Not a discouragement for maize production in the smallholder context but signifies the need for crop-specific mitigation measures,2
"The nutrient requirement of maize was higher, limiting the sufficiency of organic inputs for maize production",2
"(2022) reported low SOC stock of maize cultivation under different management typologies in Togo, indicating the complexity of maize production and the need for targeted abatement measures",2
"Farmer eligibility is decided by vulnerability mapping, countries’ consistency in seeking support for climate change adaptation and mitigation, media alerts and calls from the scientific community about a specific area and needs (Representative, CCAFS)",13
"The study found that farmers’ willingness to participate in CSA was due to climate crisis, increase yield/productivity, technical knowledge and understanding of practices, risk aversion and fear and gender disparity",13
"Aside from the adverse on-farm climatic impacts, interviewees indicated that the climate crisis also affects their properties (houses), causes psychological worries (anxiety, depression and stress) and migration (people seeking better livelihoods elsewhere); “Floods and storms destroy houses and other properties",13
"Severe depression and stress can be associated with climate change in the community” (F07, Bompari CSV)",13
"Farmers, already frustrated about the adverse impacts of climate change were willing to adopt CSA to reduce the consequences of climate change on their livelihoods; “Experiences with adverse climate change impacts are clear, adoption of the CSA practices can help reduce the climate change impacts” (F04, Doggoh CSV)",13
"The practices were supporting more women to reach their production goals and household food needs without comprising time for other household responsibilities; “As a woman, the CSA practices have been supportive",2
2022) who established that women are more likely to adopt CSA practices and engage in good farming practices to enhance food security,2
Land access and secure rights increased the bargaining power of vulnerable groups including women and migrants,1
Targeted maize interventions could increase soil carbon stock in maize cultivation and reduce GHG emissions,13
Recyclable waste sorting has become a key step for promoting the development of a circular economy with the gradual realization of carbon neutrality around the world,12
"This study demonstrates the good performance of RWNet models that can be used to automatically sort most of the recyclable waste, which paves the way for better recyclable waste management",12
The rapid development of industrialization and urbanization has brought considerable quantities of municipal solid waste (MSW),12
"To improve the level of global governance, UNEP and the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA) jointly released the “Global Waste Management Outlook,” trying to propose global solutions for solid waste management",12
"Especially, MSW management is the key goal target of SDG11, and waste reduction and recycling were also pointed out in SDG12 (Brunner and Rechberger 2015)",12
"Recyclable waste management is also emphasized by the circular economy, which is low consumption and low emissions and is also in line with the SDGs (Schmidt-Traub et al",12
"Thus, recyclable waste sorting has become a key step for promoting the development of the circular economy with the gradual realization of carbon neutrality around the world",12
"In the “National Recycling Strategy” of USEPA, it indicated that efficiencies of recyclable waste sorting should be enhanced, including reducing the cost of sorting, decreasing the number of residual waste, and improving the quality and quantity of recyclables (Regan 2021)",12
"However, these methods are needed to extract hand-designed features, which show poor discrimination ability and weak generalization for high-level features (Zhang et al",10
Deep learning like a convolutional neural network (CNN) has already been applied in recyclable waste sorting (Adedeji and Wang 2019) and food waste sorting (Frost et al,12
"Developing an intelligent and efficient method for recyclable waste classification and recycling is imperative due to the continuous increase of global MSW, especially during the period time of the global COVID-19 pandemic (Ge et al",12
"Based on these findings, market-based environmental regulations should be introduced, which would encourage economic development as well as technology innovation.",8
"Reinterpreting the commons in light of political economy, ecology, and pluralistic approaches, a critical review of existing scholarship, economic analysis of law, and case study investigations are performed",4
"Germane environmental policy implications deriving from SDGs, resilient governance, and polycentric perspectives are thus extrapolated",16
"The governance of common-pool resources (CPR) can yield a large range of provisions that are today paramount in the field of international cooperation, sustainable development, environmental, resource, and energy governance, as well as climate change adaptation (Ostrom et al",13
"On the other hand, to let polycentric and adaptive governance work, “peaceful contestation and enforcement of a shared system of rules” is required to guarantee “the attribute of continuous competition and conflict resolution” (van Zeben 2019a)",16
"Taking a pluralistic look, this inquiry’s objective is to examine diverse perspectives from existing scholarship and legal doctrine, and to elicit fresh insights",4
"The outcomes—made up of strategic and practical (CPR) conflict resolution; and CPR role in Constitutions and laws enforcement, civil movements for CPR, and effective public CPR management",16
"Commons are goods of the natural and cultural heritage of common utility, which are primarily used to address a fundamental right",11
Herein lies the most innovative attribution to the vulnerable groups destined by this piece of law,1
This bottom-up movement generated the proliferation of a wealth of scholarship on the commons and water tutelage,4
The proposed indicators are remarkable in policy terms: indicator 68 attempts to measure land consumption rate to population growth rate ratio; while indicator 70 measures the area of public and green space over total city space,11
A notable example is represented by renewable energy communities evidence,7
"In the polycentric model attributes and institutional essentials (Ostrom 1972) depend on the existence of three prerequisites—namely access to information, capacity to learn, and access to justice (van Zeben 2019b)",16
"Polycentric governance has practical applications also for spatial development, territorial sustainability, and land preservation, with the scope to avoid land degradation (Orchard and Stringer 2016; Lanfredi et al",15
The Commission intended to provide a new legal framework for property rights (Bailey and Mattei 2013),1
"35 and 46 state the right to health, social security, and work",1
These constitutions also stress commons protection in a bid to outline socio-environmental conflict resolution and human rights tutelage (Hincapié Jiménez and López Pacheco 2014),16
"The Bolivian constitution envisages water amongst the diverse resources pertaining to the natural heritage (Constitution of the Republic of Bolivia 2008, art",11
"However, multidimensional performance assessments based on sustainability criteria shall be the keystone for progress in water management (Agovino et al",6
Good governance and cooperation would have allowed for the maximization of social welfare and long-term equity—of crucial importance for water governance (Zwarteveen et al,16
"While in Europe, an important piece of law can be found in the Directive 2009/29/EC—enforced by the European Parliament and the Council to “improve and extend the European Emissions Trading Scheme”, which proposes a decentralization of regulatory competencies in law-making related to climate change (Andersson and Ostrom 2008; van Zeben 2014, 2019)",13
Governing the commons on sustainable development grounds implies consideration of the polycentric governance for building resilient communities—characterized by an adaptive capacity to change (Gupta et al,11
"In this conception, the call for resilient governance in complex systems arises",16
"Resilient governance facilitates tackling vulnerability in natural resources systems, their adaptation and the regulation of transition processes (Gatto and Busato 2020)",16
"In particular, the current climate change prospects require urgent policy questions to be addressed where polycentric, resilient approaches for the commons governance pose multiple doubts on the old-fashion tragedy of the commons (Paavola 2011; Patt 2017)",13
This is the case for related cooperative games focusing on circular economy (see Bimonte et al,12
" descriptive analysis of 416 documents was performed using bibliometric techniques, in order to gather existing knowledge in circular economy focusing on waste management (2007–2020)",12
Between the most cited documents stand out those related to calorific value of municipal solid waste and waste to energy technologies for achieving circular economy systems,12
"The conceptual analysis indicates strong linkage between circular economy and sustainable production, waste management, and recycling",12
"Emerging research trends evolved from processes and industry-oriented approach (2017) toward waste management, recycling, and circular economy (2019) and sustainable development and urban solid waste (2020)",12
"The analysis reveals five dominant circular economy and waste research themes: (1) greenhouse gases; (2) circular economy, waste management, and recycling; (3) life cycle; (4) waste treatment; and (5) anaerobic digestion and recovery; trends research are related to policy interventions, and enforcement of authorities’ regulations to foster circular economy transition, increase the use of practices of recycling and reusing, as well as discourage a growing consumption culture",12
Results found denote the challenge represented by the implementation of comprehensive policies in circular economy,12
"Over the past decades, circular economy (CE) has emerged as a paradigm that promotes more responsible production and consumption patterns",12
"Thusly, the CE arises in response to the need to dissociate the environmental pressure from economic growth by consolidating a system focused on reduction, reuse, recycle, and recovery of materials in the processes of production, distribution, and consumption",8
"The latter enacted a specific law on circular economy in 2008, while the European Union approved its Action Plan for its exercise in 2015, which proposed a monitoring framework to evaluate the progress toward it (Moraga et al",12
"In this context, one of the questions that come up is to know whether it is possible to conceive a sustainable production when implying CE",12
"Moreover, can circular economy contribute to sustainable development as a strategy for green recovery in the post-pandemic era? To understand this concept, its evolution, and contribution, a descriptive analysis of the literature was performed using bibliometric techniques, in order to identify the existing knowledge in this field by focusing on waste management from 2007 to 2020",12
"In recent decades, the overexploitation of natural resources and gradual environmental degradation have become a hot topic on the political agenda as a consequence of the rapid expansion of worldwide resource consumption, which is derived from a population growth that has been increasing considerably over the last few years",15
"According to the sixth edition of the Global Environment Outlook (GEO-6), population pressure and economic development are the main drivers of environmental change, followed by a rapid urbanization and an accelerated technological innovation, which are intimately related to global differentiated models of consumption and production patterns (UN 2019)",8
"The former is defined as a regenerative system in which resources, waste, emissions, and energy losses are minimized by slowing and closing product and energy cycles through a durable design, maintenance, reparation, reuse, remanufacturing, reconditioning, or recycling of the arrangement",12
"(2017), through a comprehensive literature review, analyzed a total of 114 definitions; as a result, the findings concluded that the CE is a system replacing the life cycle concept as a combination of material reduction, reuse, recycling, and recovery during the processes of production, distribution, and consumption at micro (products, companies, consumers), meso (eco industrial parks), and macro (city, region, nation) levels",12
Several studies have proven the important shifts concerning solid waste management due to the COVID-19 pandemic,12
"Successive easing and reimposing of lockdown measures that have deeply changed people’s movements, consumers’ behaviors, and waste management have impacted on the production and disposal of municipal solid waste induced by the COVID-19 pandemic",12
"When analyzing the variations of amount and composition of municipal solid waste before the pandemic in 2019 and during the pandemic in 2020–2021 in the USA, Brazil, Canada, the UK, France, and Italy, as the most affected countries, results show that compared to 2019, prolonged lockdowns caused larger decreases in the quantity of commercial and construction wastes versus household waste due to the drastic reduction in business, construction, and tourist activities (Cai et al",12
"It is a fact that these shifts might worsen environmental issues with solid waste management, which definitely existed even before the pandemic",12
"On the other hand, solid waste management (SWM), a crosscutting problem, plays an important role in the current situation related to the pandemic",12
Solid waste–related emissions are also anticipated to increase to 2.38 billion tons of CO2 equivalent per year by 2050 if no improvements is made in this sector (Sharma et al,12
"Moreover, as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, many leading recycling programs had to suspend services due to uncertainty related to volume changes, ambiguous policies and guidelines, duration of the emergency COVID-19, and the constraints with accommodation of safety measures",12
"Therefore, a recovery stimulus, driven by circular economy (CE) based SWM, could assist in attaining the intended targets of UN-SDG and contribute to improve the current situation (Sharma et al",12
"In this sense, circular economy and waste management can contribute to improve the current situation and its challenges toward a post-COVID era",12
"A paradigm shift needs to be done, a shift which considers transition from a model of the linear economy to the reduce-reuse-recovery-recycle-redesign-remake model of the circular economy as mentioned by Sharma et al",12
Dawson (2019) discussed that CE strategy pursues to achieve the maximum value from resources and lowering waste impacts on the environment; such approach encompasses the circularity of materials and ensures their recycling or disposal whenever is possible,12
The transition toward a CE considers not only traditional policies but a change in how waste is disposed following government commitments on waste management,12
"This shift considers a design of products that allows an effective reuse and recycling of materials, oriented to an expansive change from current practices",12
"At present, CE is consolidated as a strategy for a green economic recovery posterior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 global pandemic disease produced by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which strongly impacted industrial, commercial, and social activities",8
"2020) and contributed to SDG 13 “Climate Action,” production and consumption dynamics require a shift toward adaptation and resilience in a post-COVID-19 era approaching CE",13
"According to Sánchez-Gutiérrez (2021), the large amount of sanitary and plastic waste derived from the pandemic, in addition to the current development model and its production and consumption patterns, demand a more efficient, inclusive, and sustainable post-pandemic waste management system aimed at avoiding adverse effects on health and environment",12
"These illustrate the need to provide a solution regarding waste disposal, for both urban and hazardous waste",12
"It is important to underline that the first search considered the following keywords and commands in the title: (TITLE (""circular econom*"") AND TITLE (solid waste)); however, the search yielded only 21 results",12
" As a first stage, the analysis of the information comprised a descriptive analysis in which the aspects of (a) the global annual scientific production, (b) the scientific production by country; (c) the leading journals regarding the topics of circular economy and waste, and (d) the most frequently cited authors were identified",12
"The conceptual structure analysis was developed for identifying the main themes and concepts in which scientific research has been deepened, together with identifying the co-occurrence keywords network",9
Source: Own elaboration based on Scopus database Evolution of published articles on circular economy and waste over the period 2007–2020,12
"The second of them, the year 2050, denotes the date on which the European Commission sets the target for achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions and decoupling economic growth from resource use by 2015 through the European Green Deal, which promotes a modern, resource-efficient, and competitive economy (European Commission 2019)",8
"The obtained results denote the interest of the global scientific community to accomplish with the international agreements, such as the 2030 Agenda, mainly the European Community countries facing the COVID-19 health emergency to confront the new waste challenges presented as a result of the pandemic",3
"Top 20 countries with highest scientific production on Circular Economy (2007–2020).Source: Own elaboration based on Scopus database The analysis centered on the 20 countries with the world’s highest scientific production, of which 14 belong to the European Union, representing 70% of the total",12
"Additionally, the European Commission launches the European Green Deal for the European Union and its citizens in 2019 as a developing strategy for promoting an equitable and prosperous society, with a modern, resource-efficient, and competitive economy, in which the goals for achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions and decoupling economic growth from resource use are set (European Commission 2019)",8
"An important aspect to recognize is shown in Table 1, which highlights most cited countries in circular economy and waste management research, outstanding at the top of the list, China, the UK, Italy, and Spain, which coincides with what was reported in Fig. 3",12
"In this context, the European Green Deal emerges as an initiative for post-pandemic green recovery, aimed to promote a rehabilitation route based on a clean and circular economy that involves all its sectors for reaching an efficient use of resources, biodiversity recovery, and the reduction of atmospheric pollution (European Commission 2021)",12
"The aforesaid underlines the countries interest to encourage CE as an alternative for lowering material inputs, minimize waste generation, and decouple the use of natural resources from economic growth as the path for an equitable, green, and prosperous recovery toward a post-pandemic era",8
"Among these, the following stand out: Journal of Cleaner Production with 43 published articles; Resources, Conservation and Recycling (26), and Sustainability (Switzerland) (20)",12
"(2018) who, when attempting to establish a consensus of the CE concept, conducted a systematic literature review of leading journals, including the Journal of Cleaner Production; Journal of Industrial Chemistry; Resources, Conservation and Recycling; Journal of Environmental Technology; and Journal of Sustainability",12
"Despite that, both analyses put in the first positions the leading journals in CE, Journal of Cleaner Production (Netherlands); Resources, Conservation and Recycling (Netherlands); and Sustainability (Switzerland), which revolve around the disciplines of business, management, accounting, economics, energy, sustainability, environmental sciences, politics, and law",12
The paper “Strategies on implementation of waste-to-energy (WTE) supply chain for circular economy system: a review” by Pan et al,12
"This document illustrates a portfolio of options for waste-to-energy technologies, such as combustion, gasification, and anaerobic digestion, for the purpose of achieving CE systems",12
"The authors recognize the calorific value of municipal solid waste, which implies its use as a “waste-to-energy” energy source, and its conversion into energy as a key factor to reach a CE that maintains the value of products, materials, and resources to market for as long as possible, minimizing waste and resource use",12
(2017) concede that all EU Member States should transit to a smarter waste treatment with focus on CE approach in the context of waste policies,12
"(2018) stresses the relevance of implementing the CE model in food waste concerns, in which globally 1.3 billion t/year of foods are disposed of in landfills and contribute with 3.5–4.2 billion tons of CO2 equivalent",12
This paper is centered on the CE concept and the optimization and improvement of biogas production from an upflow anaerobic sludge blanket reactor using food waste and natural minerals,12
"The results lead to expect to use food waste in the existing anaerobic treatment plants, proposing a selective collection at source of this waste, its deviation from landfills, and use as a secondary resource for energy recovery through a conversion toward a CE",12
"The aforementioned documents denote the importance of waste recovery, optimal use, reduction, and the need to implement waste treatment policies aimed to achieve a CE",12
"In this sense, CE strategy defines its objectives toward the elimination, prevention, reuse, and recycling of materials, which must be achieved by 2030",12
"The second analysis was focused on the conceptual structure through which the main themes and concepts were determined and deepened in the scientific research, achieving the identification of the network of keyword co-occurrence",9
"From the strong relationship between circular economy and waste, the concepts of management, environmental, production, development, sustainable, and recycling are linked",12
"The issue of waste production and management is a critical point when considering the implementation of CE policies, which are focused on promoting a shift in the production and consumption patterns, as proposed in the Sustainable Development Goal 12 of the 2030 Agenda (UN 2015)",12
"The relationship between CE and the production and management of wastes is strongly linked, as shown in Fig. 2, pointing that conceiving CE is not possible without considering a sustainable production that contributes to sustainable development",12
"(2019), in their analysis of indicators to evaluate CE performance, it was found that most CE indicators from literature are focused on the preservation of materials, primarily on recycling, which is another of the most frequently found concepts",12
"Although CE promotes recycling, it is not the only action to be considered",12
"In 2019, the topic of waste management was addressed more frequently (221), followed by recycling (190) and CE (168), whereas in 2020, the most trending topics were sustainable development and municipal solid waste (Table 4)",12
"The focus over the last years has been toward an integral insight, in which an evolution in the research of municipal solid waste and sustainable development toward a waste treatment policy have been noticed",12
"This integral insight considered solid wastes and industrial ecology in 2018, whereas in 2019 it trended toward recycling and waste management",12
"In the same year, the topic of CE was a spotlight among the research topics, while in 2020 the most frequent topics focused on sustainable development and municipal solid waste",12
"Additionally, it was provided a classification of articles to visualize the conceptual structure of circular economy and waste, with the main research themes in the literature (Fig. 5)",12
"The analysis reveals five dominant circular economy and waste research themes: (1) greenhouse gases; (2) circular economy, waste management, and recycling; (3) life cycle; (4) waste treatment; and (5) anaerobic digestion and recovery",12
Visualization of the main identified research themes of waste management and circular economy research in the literature,12
Source: Own elaboration based on Scopus database Visualization of the main identified themes of waste management and circular economy research in the literature highlight those leading terms for each theme,12
"One of the research themes is circular economy mainly focused on waste management and recycling, followed by sustainable development as the terms with higher occurrences",12
"Therefore, CE strategies and waste management should be directed toward elimination, prevention, reuse, and recycling, considering sustainable development as the axis",12
"Once again, the results of the conceptual analysis denote the need to implement waste treatment policies aimed to achieve a CE but also to reduce environmental impact",12
"In contrast, Wang Y excels for his contributions to the e-waste field, covering the ecological and health risk assessment for the spatial distribution of heavy metals in a CE park for e-wastes",3
"Through literature review and the bibliometric analysis, it was possible to identify trends that are important but not sufficiently studied in the field of waste and circular economy, the existing gaps, but also the future possible directions of the aforementioned research",12
"Therefore, waste management has been significantly affected by containment of the spread of COVID-19 and limitations on commercial activities, mobility, and manufacturing sector",12
This represents an important challenge for waste management since it requires an integrated approach that needs to be carried out through policies that ensure sustainable management of waste as well as safety measures for waste handlers,12
Several initiatives have been implemented in different countries in order to tackle waste management and circular economy approach,12
"In terms of plastic waste, the proportion of this type of waste in municipal solid waste is around 8–12% across all the countries, increasing over the past few decades due to increasing industrialization and high growing population",12
"(2021) research focused in Sri Lanka, highlighting three key recommendations to transit to a circular economy: source segregation of plastic wastes, landfill mining to recover nonrecyclable plastics for energy production, and integration of formal and informal sectors",12
"This holistic approach to the management of plastic waste involves improving the mechanical recycling facilities, cofueling in cement plants, municipal incineration, and sanitary landfilling methods",12
"Waste management and valorization solutions such as life cycle assessment, exergy analysis, exergoeconomic analysis, and exergoenvironmental analysis should be considered; (2) optimizing trade-offs between single-use and reusable healthcare materials, products, and instruments to replace as much single-use as possible with reusable ones to close the supply chain loops and maximize the healthcare resource efficiency; and (3) policy incentives to encourage financing in the HCW management sector and enforcing authorities’ regulations to foster the CE transition, mainly in developing countries (Ranjbari et al",12
"Other types of waste, such as construction and demolition waste (CDW), have become important, mainly because they account for at least 30% of the total solid waste produced around the world",12
Circular economy is a possible solution to the increasing amounts of CDW and will contribute as a solution to avoid its dumping in sanitary landfills that will no longer be feasible in the years to come,12
CE and recycling are emerging topics; there is also a rising awareness and increasing research in CE which focuses on effectivity of recycling CDW into new construction applications and reusing of construction materials (Ginga et al,12
"On the other hand, some trends and perspectives could be also drawn in terms of circular economy practices in agriculture",12
(2020) aims to map bioenergy boosters through circular economy practices in agriculture,12
The results obtained showed that electricity generation and biofuel produced from biogas have shown representativeness and are sustainable opportunities to advance the theme,7
"Therefore, this study can contribute to encouraging the agricultural sector in implementing or increasing the use of circular economy practices",12
Current trends in the field of e-waste management demonstrated the need to improve the existing international legal framework,12
"Future possible directions on e-waste should focus on enacting e-waste legislation, such as the introduction of expanded producer responsibility, and create an official recycling industry",12
"In the long term, the introduction of circular economy models should significantly reduce the impact of e-waste on the environment and health and eliminating the danger associated with the export of electronic waste to developing countries, where waste processing facilities do not meet modern requirements and are unsafe",12
"Among the leading journals on the topic of CE and waste, the following stand out: Journal of Cleaner Production; Resources, Conservation and Recycling; and the Journal of Sustainability",12
"(2017) are highlighted as they relate waste use and energy production from waste, including the need to execute waste treatment policies toward a transition to CE",12
"Furthermore, the analysis reveals the strength in which the circular economy is related with waste management, being not only a relevant but a pertinent topic in which scientific research has deepened over recent years; therefore, it is relevant to observe that it is not possible to conceive a CE model without a production contributing to sustainable development, such as established in SDG 12 of the 2030 Agenda",12
"(2019), the focus should not only be on the preservation of materials, such as recycling, but also on functions, products, components, and energy",12
"The evolution in trending research topics over the last 4 years discloses a leap in 2019 from waste treatment to a waste management tending to recycling and CE, reaching a comprehensive vision in 2020, where the main research topics focused on municipal solid wastes and sustainable development",12
"Therefore, it becomes evident to apply methods and tools, such as life cycle assessments, and promote resilient systems during the COVID-19 pandemic to lead to sustainable production and consumption (Tseng et al",12
"The COVID-19 pandemic can serve as a constructive change driver for sustainability and future resilience, but also as a challenge for adopting CE strategies in the face of a scenario with accelerated municipal and hazardous waste generation rates (Wuyts et al",12
"Hence, the importance for developing future lines of research focused on decoupling economic growth from resource use that contribute to an efficient use of resources toward a clean and circular economy, an integral evaluation of the contribution of circular economy to sustainable development, a legal framework that promotes CE, and updated waste management regulations",12
"Trends research were identified, related to policy interventions and enforcement of authorities’ regulations to foster circular economy transition, increase the use of practices of recycling and reusing, as well as discourage a growing consumption culture",12
"Therefore, it is suggested to include for future research other databases, such as Web of Science, as well as to broaden the search by considering the keywords ""circular econom*"" and ""waste valorization"", or ""solid waste"" and ""hazardous waste""; the last two in attention to the waste derived from the pandemic.",12
"Deploying green energy is, directly and indirectly, related to energy- and environment-related sustainable development goals (SDGs)",7
"This study uses the stochastic impact by regression on the population, affluence, and technology (STIRPAT) model to examine the relationship between CO2 emissions, energy efficiency, green energy index (GEI), and green finance in the top ten economies that support green finance",7
The results show that green bonds are a suitable method to promote green energy projects and reduce CO2 emissions significantly,7
"Green energy, green finance, and energy efficiency interactions can be addressed as crucial debates in achieving the related sustainable development goals (SDGs), such as affordable and clean energy, climate action, and life on land, relating to planet protection by 2030",7
"Similarly, green finance can be helpful to green energy project developments that suffer from a lack of capital, especially in the COVID era",7
"Amir and Khan (2021) argued that the economic recession and stagnation caused by the pandemic worldwide (with a 5.2% contraction in global GDP in 2020 (Khanna 2020)) had reduced global capital, leading to a lack of investment in green energy projects",7
"Meo and Karim (2021) discussed the significant role of green finance in increasing investment flows to green projects, suggesting a causal link between green energy and green finance",7
Another important ongoing issue for countries is the challenge of low energy efficiency,7
(2015) stated that energy efficiency is a central issue in combating environmental pollution,7
Green finance can help enhance energy efficiency by improving green energy projects and absorbing capital to implement knowledge transformation in energy efficiency,7
(2021) revealed that green finance positively impacts energy efficiency in China,7
"Assessing the association or causal relationship between green finance, CO2 emissions, green energy consumption, and energy efficiency is essential and could provide valuable insights for countries",7
"(2020) for China, Charfeddine and Kahia (2019) for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions, and Maji (2015) for Nigeria in the short term, under the circumstances such as unfavorable policy implications, exogenous shocks, and economic structures, there would not be any linkage between green finance, green energy consumption, and energy efficiency",7
"According to the data obtained from the World Bank database and the British Petroleum Statistical Review of World Energy 2020, Green Leaders experienced an average economic growth of 2.12% during 2000–2019",8
Their overall renewable energy consumption in the total energy basket contributed approximately 22% over 2000–2019,7
"Source: Compiled by the authors based on the data from the World Bank and British Petroleum Statistical Review of World Energy 2020 Thus, based on the above explanations, we address two critical issues: first, the linkage between green finance, CO2 emissions, green energy, and energy efficiency is not similar among countries",7
"Second, Green Leaders consist of nations that differ in scale and energy consumption patterns",7
"The existence of linkages among green energy, CO2 emissions, green finance, and energy efficiency in these countries would be interesting, especially the direction of a causal link between these variables is still questionable for experts",7
Analyzing the linkage between variables can help deploy green energy consumption and enhance energy efficiency by promoting green finance,7
"Therefore, this paper seeks to expand the extant literature by these contributions: First, this study is the first of its kind to examine the dynamic linkage among CO2 emissions, green energy, green finance, and energy efficiency among the Green Leaders",7
"Moreover, a green energy index (GEI) is constructed based on the principal component analysis (PCA) technique that was employed in the empirical model",7
The issues of green finance and energy efficiency have drawn the attention of a few scholars,7
Prakash and Mahdvi (2020) found no link between green bonds and SDGs in India due to a financing gap in the private sector and the lack of guidelines with India’s climate action plan,13
(2020) analyzed the green bonds issued by the European Investment Banks for green power plants during 2015–2018,7
(2021) studied how green bonds and other variables such as clean energy were related between 2008 and 2019,7
They revealed strong evidence of the impact of green bonds on clean energy development,7
Wan (2020) investigated the linkage between green finance and SDGs for climate change and environmental threats,13
"Consequently, green financing development may positively expand green energy projects",7
"(2020) discussed that using green bonds as an appropriate tool for green financing can lower investment risk, increase return on investment, and attract global investors to green energy projects",7
(2021) studied the role of green bonds’ risk on investors’ trust and found that risk management in the green bond market can make this financing tool efficient and effective for green energy project development,7
Meo and Karim (2021) believed that market conditions and the green finance market mechanism are two significant factors in creating a positive relationship between green finance and green energy projects,7
"A positive impact of green finance on boosting green energy projects, mainly small-scale energy investments, was found by Sachs et al",7
Zhang and Wang (2019) and Polzin and Sanders (2020) stated that green finance could help countries reach sustainable renewable energy development by attracting private investors and creating synergy among state and private sectors,7
"Sarangi (2018) studied different aspects of green energy finance in India and found that the growth of the green energy financing market improves green projects, leading to a more significant contribution of green energy to India’s total energy basket",7
Wang and Zhi (2016) argued that the direct and positive impact of green finance on renewable energy development depends on financial market mechanisms and state policies related to green finance,7
"Goldstein (2001) argued that green economic reforms are vital for all countries to boost investment in green energy production, lowering the environmental pollution",7
"Furthermore, exploring how this variable relates to energy efficiency and green energy consumption in these economies is crucial because of their role in realizing SDGs defined by the United Nations in 2015",7
"First, the causal linkages between green finance, green energy, and energy efficiency were estimated simultaneously",7
"Third, the empirical model consists of the GEI, which includes various green energy resources constructed using the PCA technique",7
"Moreover, the population is considered for P; A means GDP per capita and energy intensity",7
"Table 1 presents the variables used in our model: The GEI, based on green energy consumption, is generated using the PCA technique, considering nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, and biofuel consumptions",7
It can be concluded that A1 has an eigenvalue >1 and explains 67.4% of the total variance of green energy consumption among the ten Green Leaders,7
The results in Table 3 prove that hydro and wind consumption is higher than other green energy consumption methods in the selected component of A1,7
"3, COPC is the CO2 emissions per capita, POP is the country’s population size, GDPPC represents GDP per capita, and EI and GB are energy intensity and issued green bonds and GEI",7
"The main reason for the positive impact of these two variables is the more significant energy consumption, which accelerates CO2 emissions",7
"The results prove that higher energy intensity, a proxy for energy efficiency, accelerates CO2 emissions, implying that among the Green Leaders, a 1% increase in energy intensity (contribution of energy to economic size) accelerates pollutant emissions by approximately 0.09% in the long term",7
Green bond issuance as a proxy for green finance favors green energy deployment and reduces CO2 emissions per capita,7
The estimated coefficient indicates that a 1% increase in the GEI based on green energy consumption can decrease CO2 emissions by approximately 0.92% in the long term,7
"Additionally, several earlier studies have shown the positive effect of renewable energy deployment on reducing CO2 (e.g., see Lysen (1989) for solar energy, Hanaki and Portugal-Pereira (2018) for biofuels, Li et al",7
"(2020) for wind energy, and Hassan et al",7
"Based on the coefficients, it can be shown that population, GDP per capita, and energy intensity cause CO2 emissions per capita in these countries",7
"We replace the dependent variable of CO2 emissions per capita with CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and re-estimate the model using the AMG estimator to check the validity of the estimated coefficients of issued green bonds (a proxy for green finance), GEI, and energy intensity (a proxy for energy efficiency)",7
"Furthermore, the positive impact of energy intensity on CO2 emissions from fossil fuels has been confirmed",7
"Scholars debate the relationship between green finance, green energy consumption, and energy efficiency",7
The significant empirical findings reveal that: In the long term: An increase in the total population of these countries and a higher GDP per capita without energy transition and switching to clean energy may increase CO2 emissions,7
"The issuance of green bonds makes access to financial resources easier, favoring green energy deployment and reducing CO2 emissions per capita",7
The GEI shows the status of green energy,7
"For example, its estimated coefficient indicates that a 1% increase in the GEI can decrease CO2 emissions by approximately 0.92% based on green energy consumption",7
"Additionally, in the short-term: The Granger causality test shows that increased population, GDP per capita, and energy intensity can lead to higher CO2 emissions per capita",7
The empirical evidence shows that green finance and green energy deployment can only help countries reduce CO2 emissions in the long term,7
"Additionally, increasing the volume of issued green bonds as suitable green finance seems to be another key element in restoring economic growth in the short and long terms",8
"Additionally, policymakers should pay attention to energy efficiency to reduce energy intensity and environmental pollution",7
"Accordingly, using international best practices is recommended, such as the EU energy efficiency plan, National Energy Efficiency Action Plan (NEEAP), Thailand 20-Year Energy Efficiency Development Plan, Energy Saving Improvement Program (ESIP), and Turkey’s Strategic Energy Efficiency Plan (SEEP)",7
"Regarding the short-term inefficiency of green finance and green energy consumption in reducing CO2 emissions among the Green Leaders, policymakers should increase green energy use in electricity generation and industrial sectors, which are the two major CO2 emitting sectors",7
"Moreover, prioritizing green energy projects based on financial indicators and CO2 emissions would be a fruitful policy in these countries",7
"Therefore, investigating the relationship between green finance and green energy consumption on CO2 emissions at the country level is recommended for further studies.",7
Organic agriculture and food research (OAFR) is well established and there is an ongoing and vibrant discussion about the future research needs of organic farming,2
"Today, organic agriculture and food research (OAFR) is well established in many agricultural research institutions",2
"Within the context of the future of organic farming (OF), International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) prepared a strategic paper, Organic 3.0, that includes an extensive debate about the necessary requirements and important research needs in OF (Arbenz et al",2
"But when we look at the diverse papers on the future of organic farming, research features are not an issue (e.g., Rahmann et al",2
"Further observations have been done within the context of the application of systems theory and inter- and transdisciplinarity in organic farming research, where we identified discrepancies between what the science community claims and what is reality in scientific practice (Freyer 2016a, b)",2
"In the following, we discuss seven myths about OAFR that are of relevance for the methodological discussions and for the continuing development of organic farming",2
"To unpack the potential of organic farming, it is necessary to develop research methodologies and practices that can help to better understand and develop OF’s specific qualities, including its potentials and limitations",2
"Also ideally, organic farming aims for a systemic marketing approach with short supply chains and direct consumer–producer relations (Freyer and Bingen 2015; Vogt 2007)",2
"Therefore, it is often stated that organic farming is a system-oriented form of agriculture (see e.g., Høgh-Jensen 1998)",2
"Furthermore, “organic farming” is a prominent topic within the International Farming Systems Association (see Barbier et al",2
"2012), a community dedicated to foster the application of systems theory in the area of agricultural research, and also a central reference in the discourse on farming systems research in general (Darnhofer et al",2
"The whole area of organic farming systems research has been also criticized to use the word “systemic” often quite freely without applying concrete systems approach (Bawden 1995, 2012; Fiala and Freyer 2016)",2
"There is need to initiate a broader scientific discourse about this discrepancy; otherwise, we will face problems like it is mentioned in the strategy for organic farming research by the Technology Innovation Platform of IFOAM, where it is stated that system-orientated organic farming research would be necessary, but is very hard to achieve (Niggli et al",2
The understanding of the organic regulations is that they have to be in line with the IFOAM Principles and consequently the organic farming practices are guided by this ethical framework (see Padel et al,2
"Therefore, there is the widespread opinion that understanding organic farming as system requires the integration of an inter- and transdisciplinary process for the identification of long-term research programs",2
"Although the collaboration between practitioners and researchers is not an issue that is specific to OAFR, organic farming has a strong history in farmer-driven research (Fiala and Freyer 2016)",2
It seems natural that the lack of institutional support during the pioneer phase of the organic farming movement (Barton 2018; Vogt 2007; Willer and Schmid 2016) led to a high importance of on-farm research in close collaboration with farmers to advance organic farming practices in comparison to mainstream farming (Vogl et al,2
"Therefore, it is not surprising that in early discussions about the methodological requirements for organic farming, the high importance of and relevance for practitioners was emphasized (Lindenthal et al",2
"2017).Footnote 6 On the other hand, there are also excellent examples, e.g., the German “Demonstrationsbetriebe,” showing how to communicate organic farming practices with the public,Footnote 7 or the “Leitbetriebsnetzwerk” guided by the University of Bonn, which demonstrates how to establish a researcher–farmer collaboration on farm research approach (Berg et al",2
"As already mentioned in myths 3 and 4, the (immediate) usefulness of results for practitioners is often identified as a key feature of OAFR, already raised in the early days of organic farming (e.g., Lindenthal et al",2
"In organic farming, the crop rotation and organic manure and compost management as well as the pH are to optimize, and the nutrient status (farm gate and plot specific) is to analyze before adding any fertilizer from outside the farm",2
"Given the broad range of OAFR, it appears that organic farming has become a topic of interest within the wider scientific community",2
Publications and scientific conferences on organic farming have been increasing in the last two decades (see www.orgprints.org/),2
"2013), but also contributions from scientific disciplines that have been less engaged in OAFR, e.g., medicine, or methodologies that have not paid attention to organic farming practices and product qualities",2
"There has been little debate over organic farming, organic agriculture, and food research since Lindenthal et al",2
IFOAM Principles guide the organic practices and therefore should be more part of research on organic farming and their future development,2
"A research platform on organic farming methodologies and (systems) theories, e.g., supported via a European COST action or the establishment of a platform like FQS (www.qualitative-research.net/), might offer a format to deepen the debate on (innovative) OAFS-specific methods and their potential to innovate the organic farming system",2
"Especially in the context of the further development of organic farming as “Organic 3.0/4.0,” we argue the importance for the scientific community to engage with these myths, to reflect upon them, and to discover others",2
This review gives concise information on green technology (GT) and Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0),9
"Climate change has begun showing its impacts on the environment, and the change is real",13
"Sensors are typically used in IoT environmental monitoring applications to aid ecological safety by nursing air or water quality, atmospheric or soil conditions, and even monitoring species’ movements and habitats",6
"Environmental biotechnology, Green Chemical Engineering, more bio-based materials to separate pollutants, and product engineering of advanced materials and environmental economies are discussed here to pave the way toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the UN and achieve the much-needed IR 4.0 for a greener-balanced environment and a sustainable future.Graphical  In today’s world of climate change and amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a realization has dawned upon the world to protect the planet and people’s health",13
"There is a clear awareness about global environmental issues like global warming, acid rain, ozone layer depletion, the increasing list of endangered species, and incidences of forest fires in the Amazon",15
"There have also been several protocols and agreements signed by the world’s governments, like the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement",13
Several GTs strive to combat climate change by minimizing carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions,13
Solar power is one of the most effective GTs,7
"Governments have taken steps to reduce carbon and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, price the carbon externalities, and increase renewable energy resources like solar and wind energy (McNeely 2021)",7
"This includes—(i) a brief introduction to the global environmental concerns; (ii) in depth detail of environmental biotechnology, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and their applications in bioremediation, biopesticides and more; (iii) methods of proper management of waste and polluted air treatment using renewable and nonrenewable energy resources with more focus on bioenergy and biofuels; (iv) study of renewable biomass-derived carbonaceous materials like cellulose, nanocellulose, chitosan, lignocellulosic residues and how using chemical engineering techniques can make sustainable, highly useful and eco-friendly products; (v) understanding the interaction of pollutants with the environment during separation processes using bio-based adsorbents, hydrogels, and membrane filters; (vi) in-depth information on production engineering and the types of bio-based advanced materials and processes; (vii) understanding process system engineering, the goals and the current research on IR 4.0 and how it can be made into a reality, and lastly; (viii) detailed understanding of environmental/green economies, how the post COVID-19 pandemic has led to more research and paved the way toward the green transition, the Green New Deal for a sustainable world, how can the governments price carbon externalities, how can an individual, community, industry, country, and the world shift toward sustainable transitions in their lifestyle, practices like green entrepreneurship, green housing, green chemistry, and understanding the critical concepts of ecological modernization, de-growth, and more",8
"Climate is a mind-boggling combination of physical and natural environmental elements, including ecological issues like global warming, ozone layer depletion, biodiversity loss, exhaustion of regular assets, overpopulation",15
"The wide range of GMO applications gives people significant advantages; however, many individuals likewise stress over expected risks",2
"As indicated by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), biopesticides can be categorized under three principle classifications: firstly, plant-incorporated protectants (PIPs) or plant substances delivered by genetically engineered plants; secondly, microbial organisms and entomopathogenic nematodes the active ingredient; and third, pheromones (Morán-Diez and Glare 2016)",15
"Hydrolysate can be utilized as a biofertilizer, protein supplements, domesticated animals feed, and bioactive peptides",2
"Among the renewable energy sources, biofuels can fill in as a superior choice to lessen the dependence on fossil fuels",7
Ethanol is another bioproduct that aids in the conservation of natural resources,3
"Bismuth-based photocatalyst (visible light-responsive) is used in wastewater treatment because of its nontoxicity, low cost, modified morphology, optical, and chemical properties (Kumar et al",6
"However, nowadays, more and more engineers are focusing on the sustainable production of devices and products to shift the mindset from carbon-associated growth and clean up after pollution caused to ways in tackling the by-products by either recycling them or destroying them in sustainable processes before starting the manufacturing again",12
It also has good filtration technology and can be used in water filtration tanks and wastewater treatment plants (Table 4) (Nelson et al,6
Electronic battery waste has been a significant cause of environmental concern since there are few effective ways of recycling waste,12
"However, scientists have developed ways to prepare advanced materials from these electronic remains like toner waste-specific metal remains, so on, that can be recycled and used as the anode material for lithium and sodium-ion batteries, instead of preparing new ones, which may not be environmental-friendly and nonrecyclable.
 Li-CO2 batteries (LIBs) came into existence after agreements and protocols like the Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations SDGs, and the Paris Agreement",13
"It has varied applications from the manufacturing industry like lubricants, polymers, rechargeable batteries, and medicine to treat mental disorders (Tabelin et al",9
"However, scientists are now looking for an appropriate anode material and find hard carbon (HC) to be a promising material since it has an excellent sodium-storage capacity, good recycling stability, and is a naturally available material (Wang et al",12
"In terms of waste management, many natural filler materials can be utilized",12
Biochar is used in plants to help fix the CO2 from the atmosphere in a stable form and prevent climate change conditions (Ok et al,13
"It is also expected to transform its business models in the future, like how the Internet, the most significant technological innovation in history, revolutionized the world (Esmaeilian et al",8
The Green Internet of Things (GIoT) is a new topic that has piqued the interest of researchers and businesses since it offers energy-efficient services and allows for the generation and use of renewable energy,7
"The scope and the profound impact of the changes imposed on production, management, and effective governance all contribute to Industry 4.0 as a new revolution and the speed with which technical-scientific breakthroughs are made and spread (Dogaru 2020)",16
"Renewable energy, often known as alternative energy, is derived from a natural source that does not diminish when utilized",7
Renewable energy is the best and cheapest option as an alternative energy source,7
"Renewable energy has enormous potential worldwide, particularly in India",7
"Renewable energy is created primarily from virtually endless sources such as wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, biomass, and other renewable energy sources",7
Industry 4.0 ushers in a new era of supply chain transformation through digitalization and smart technologies,9
"It includes cutting operational expenses, optimizing asset maintenance, reducing energy spending, integrating green energy, minimizing carbon emission, complying with regulations, and predicting consumption and spending IoT also distinguishes itself by allowing individuals to be free of a particular location",7
"This can be done through sustainable transitions, ecological modernization, reconsidering the concept of growth, and how it can be made into sustainable growth",8
GTI may indirectly impact carbon emission efficiency by affecting economic development and urbanization (Khattak and Ahmad 2021),8
There was a sense of forgetfulness to live a sustainable way of life with the arrival of the pandemic,12
"In the USA, officials had to stop all recycling activities due to the fear of spreading the virus among the workers (Irfan et al",12
"There was also a sharp reduction in water pollution, the surface, coastal, and groundwater quality significantly improved",6
"Post-pandemic, there has to be a series of long-term mitigation strategies to maintain this reduced level of GHG emissions (Irfan et al",13
This can result in inadequate policies that can help reduce GHG emissions (Irfan et al,13
Next is the transition to renewable energy through bioenergy with carbon capture (Kumar et al,7
Recycling institutions can significantly reduce the amount of waste discarded and reused again,12
"Also, green’s low-carbon circular economy can be created by using biodegradable, advanced materials (Priya et al",12
Governments worldwide have planned to develop a stimulus for maintaining a good balance between economic recovery and climate issues,8
"The governments can come up with bio-cities in the urban settlements where they can build GT and green material-based buildings (EE investments can be included), promote bio-based public transportation for traveling instead of using individual cars, and promote green spaces by growing trees and urban forestry to engage people in recreational activities and protecting nature around cities (Galanakis et al",15
Governments can provide transportation stimulus packages for sustainable mobility,11
"These are low-carbon policies to reduce GHG levels due to vehicles, significantly individual cars (Griffiths et al",13
"The concept of MaaS (mobility-as-a-service) can also be created—like public transport and Uber, where the public can book seats online and contribute to reducing CO2 emissions (Kanda and Kivimaa 2020)",11
"Generally, three policies would address climate change as an externality—command and control regulation, carbon taxes, and cap and trade (Mintz‐Woo 2022)",13
"In the USA, most of the earlier policies dealt with the cap-and-trade policies and carbon taxes, which considered GHG emissions an externality leading to climate change",13
GT has become a significant factor in economic growth with sustainability,8
"Many countries in Europe are coming up with an economic stimulus that aims to produce in a climate-friendly manner and increase the sorting and recycling of basic materials like aluminum, cement, and plastic (Chiappinelli et al",12
"By 2025, the aim is to get 20% of basic materials in recycled form in Europe via low-emission and recycling processes (Chiappinelli et al",12
"In some cases, the companies may focus on R&D to create innovations by taking certain risks due to more industrial competition, leading to reduced considerations toward GTI",9
"If GT is effectively used, the GT Innovation Efficiency (GTIE) will increase, leading the global value chain in a positive direction, one of the ways to increase sustainable economic growth (Kansara et al",8
The GT transfer and foreign investments significantly affect countries’ economic growth with green technological innovation for developing countries,8
"These green nanoparticles can be synthesized from plants, fungi, bacteria, and food waste products like rice husk to develop many green products—from medicines to developing nanomaterials for solar cells and electric batteries",12
"The changes in lifestyle and technology toward a greener, eco-friendly, and safe direction have motivated individuals, communities, governments, and the world to effectively transition toward a sustainable way of life",12
"Lastly, green entrepreneurship is the new transition toward a greener business model",8
"It considers three pillars: technology, entrepreneurship, and ecological environment",8
Figure 4 gives a glimpse of the 12 model archetypes of green entrepreneurship that can be followed for the sustainable development of greentech businesses,8
"This includes energy efficinnovator, efficient energizer, energy efficretor, material efficinnovator, efficiency material enhancer, material efficretor, recyclinnovator, recyclenhancer, GT, greenhanced substituter, and greentech substituter When the world is experiencing climate change, some significant transitions need to occur",13
"The points above have given us detailed information on the steps taken by the governments, industries, businesses, and individuals to save the environment since everybody has felt climate change and experienced it",13
"Following are the practical transitions that will come into play like the green-based active packaging of goods, urban resilience, rhizoremediation, the new concepts of analyzing the sustainable, circular economy, and how it can be improved",12
"After the COVID-19 pandemic, there has come a renewed opportunity to develop biodegradable packaging for food applications and help maintain a circular economy (Barone et al",12
"These packages provide antioxidant, antimicrobial, and aromatic properties, which improve food quality and give a hygienic and safe food delivery, benefitting the customers",2
It can help analyze sustainable supply chain management and circular economy (Alkhuzaim et al,12
"This consists of a donor-side evaluation by considering the life cycle, sustainable performance assessments, and material flow analysis, i.e., how a particular institution does waste management and cost analysis",12
"This can be a handy tool for researchers who wish to understand how sustainable production, performance, and consumption of GT are done by an institution (Alkhuzaim et al",12
"The sustainable outcomes of various GTs in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution have been brought into focus in this article while discussing global warming issues, the application of environmental biotechnology for a sustainable future, green chemical engineering, interactions of pollutants in the environment, product engineering to develop advanced biodegradable materials such as nanocellulose, biochar, starch, circular economy, and last but not the least the main goals of IR 4.0",12
"The world’s governments can use the Green New Deal goals and strategies to create an eco-friendly transition using bio-based materials, hydroponics, and sustainable forest management",15
"As inventors should know, green inventions and clean technologies are beneficial for business",9
"Such partnerships have become mainstream implementation mechanisms for attaining international sustainable development goals and are also frequently used in other adjacent policy domains such as climate change, health and biodiversity",13
"This article proceeds as follows: first, we define multistakeholder partnerships, outline their rational and summarize available assessments on partnership success; second, we provide a set of concrete recommendations based on lessons-learned from over 10 years of scholarship; and third, we conclude with some reflections on the future of multistakeholder governance for sustainability",4
"More than 340 partnerships for sustainable development were consequently registered at the United Nations (Andonova and Levy 2003), and the ‘partnership approach’ is currently being emulated in many other issue areas of global governance, such health, water governance, and climate change",13
It is also a particularly timely quest given that the year 2015 comprises high-profile negotiations taking place on the Post-2015 Development Agenda: the Hyogo Framework of Action on natural hazards and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),13
"The emergence of transnational multistakeholder partnerships can be traced back to the 1992 Earth Summit, where Agenda 21 called for a “Global Partnership for Sustainable Development” and alluded to multistakeholder partnerships between “public, private and community sectors” to boost implementation (UNCED 1992)",17
"Consequently, multistakeholder partnerships have become integral to global environmental governance from the perspective of governments and are likely to remain so in the implementation of the SDGs, the emerging new climate change regime and other issues areas",13
"Interestingly, a similar process is taking place in the climate-change regime where a web-portal for Cooperative Initiatives has been created to show case climate initiatives submitted by countries and observers to the Secretariat to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (UNFCCC 2014)",13
"Mirroring the SD in Action Registry, a homepage for Non-state Actor Zone for Climate Action (NAZCA) was launched in end 2014 at the 20th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC with over 1000 entries of “Cooperative and Individual Actions on Climate Change in Partnership with Countries” (UNFCCC 2015)",13
"A large number of the actions registered in the sustainable development and the climate change registries do not qualify as partnerships according to our definition; however, it serves as a clear indication of new governance mechanisms increasingly being applied by governments",13
"Second, if they are to be incorporated into the formal regime and given a “seal of approval” from the UN, then there should be a bureaucracy with the mandate and power to vet new initiatives against set criteria, in particular to avoid what has been described as “blue washing.” To promote good meta-governance, goals should be checked against a number of minimum criteria for their conduciveness to the SDGs and other sustainable development-related goals (e.g., climate change 2° target)",13
"It has also been shown that institutional capacity building was needed, in particular, in countries with a violent past (Stringer et al",16
"It is a salient topic, as multistakeholder partnerships are increasingly utilized not only to implement global sustainable development goals such as the SDGs but also to feature prominently in adjacent issues areas such as climate change, biodiversity, and natural disasters",13
"Over the coming year(s), there will be important steps to be made toward implementing the SDGs, reversing biodiversity loss and deforestation, and mitigate greenhouse gases",15
"For instance, Chan and Pauw (2014)—supported by a group of scholar and think-thanks—have suggested a Global Framework for Climate Action (GFCA) to address many of the shortcomings observed in the sustainable development arena",13
"A GFCA would support the mobilization of alternative governance arrangements such as subnational and city initiatives on climate change, by providing brokerage, visibility, and legitimacy",13
This study presents a two-stage analysis of the energy efficiency and environmental performance of Persian Gulf countries in 2000–2014 using data envelopment analysis and Tobit regression,7
The hypothesis of this study is that energy efficiency is low in the Persian Gulf countries and these countries have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,7
"At first, using data envelopment analysis, total-factor energy efficiency and environmental efficiency of the Persian Gulf countries were measured",7
"Then, using Tobit regression, the effects of GDP per capita, oil price, industrialization degree, population size, paper citation rate, foreign direct investment, and the degree of commercial openness on energy efficiency were investigated",7
"The results of the first stage measurements show that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had the highest and second highest total-factor energy efficiency, respectively, while Oman and Iran had the lowest, and second lowest, respectively",7
"The results of Tobit regression revealed that GDP per capita, oil prices, industrialization degree, and population size had a direct relationship with energy efficiency while the paper citation rate (as an index of science, technology, and innovation) and foreign direct investment had an inverse relationship with energy efficiency",7
This study shows that the Persian Gulf countries could potentially reduce their energy consumption by up to 18%,7
Policymakers of the developing nations are more interested in accomplishing economic growth even at the expense of sustainable development,8
"The latest Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) report reveals that the developing nations are demonstrating poor performance in dealing with climate change, in comparison to their developed counterparts in various parts of the world (UNESCAP, 2021)",13
The dominant trend of economic growth in these nations is not environmentally sustainable because it is largely dependent on the consumption of fossil fuels,8
"Therefore, it is usually difficult for these countries to change their policies in order to achieve their goals concerning Climate Action, which falls under SDG 13",13
"In fact, Asian economies have proved very slow in terms of attaining the objectives of SDG 7 and 13",7
"Today, many specialists believe that energy is one of the main factors in production and plays a special role in economic growth and development",8
"In fact, to some ecological economists, energy is the most important factor in the biophysical model of growth whereas, in neoclassical economics, it indirectly affects economic growth by affecting the labor force and capital (Stern, 1993)",8
Efficient energy management is an effective way of reducing energy consumption and spread of pollutants and of improving the quality of the environment,7
"One of the indexes used in investigating energy efficiency is energy intensity, which indicates the amount of energy consumed for producing an output",7
"The low energy efficiency causes not only the waste of energy, but also a great amount of environmental pollution",7
"This is why many academic experts are paying attention to the issue of energy efficiency and are trying to propose modern, reliable, and environment-friendly ideas for improving policy energies in different countries (Adedoyin et al",7
"According to the World Energy Council report in 2018, energy intensity continuously decreased in most parts of the world, but it was increasing in the Persian Gulf countries, where energy consumption increased more rapidly than the region’s gross domestic product, which is due to the development of their energy-intensive industries, especially for producing oil and gas, as well as the low price of energy in those countries",7
"Due to their access to cheap energy sources and energy subsidies, these countries are among the largest consumers of energy in the world and are in no suitable conditions in terms of energy intensity and efficiency",7
The World Bank’s statistics concerning the trend of energy consumption in 2016 show that all the Persian Gulf countries on average experienced a 55% increase in their consumption of energy,7
"Significant development in oil and gas industries, which has led to increase in energy consumption and low energy efficiency, as well as subsidized oil and gas products has made it highly important for these countries to improve their productivity and energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption",7
"This paper, therefore, will contribute to the existing literature by focusing on Persian Gulf countries in terms of their environmental efficiency and total-factor energy efficiency (TFEE)",7
"Thus, this study seeks to answer the following question: what is the level of TFEE in these countries, and what is the effect of each economic and social element on energy efficiency in them? This paper is presented in five parts",7
The International Energy Agency (IEA) considers energy efficiency as a method of managing and controlling the growth of energy consumption,7
"Economists define energy efficiency as the ratio of a monetary variable to energy input (Huntington, 1996)",7
"In general, energy efficiency means using less energy to produce the same product or to provide the same amount of service, compared to the previous situation",7
The concept of total-factor energy efficiency (TFEE) was first proposed by Hu and Wang (2006),7
"This index is a good replacement for the traditional indexes of energy efficiency and can involve all three factors of production (labor force, capital, and energy) as inputs to measure the total efficiency (Honma and Hu 2009)",7
Environmental efficiency is also an aspect of technical energy efficiency which focuses on the inputs in terms of their negative impacts on the environment (Graham 2004),7
"Based on the literature, the purpose of improving energy efficiency is not only to achieve environmental goals, such as reducing carbon dioxide emissions, but also to achieve commercial development, industrial competitiveness and energy security",7
"On the other hand, an improvement in energy intensity (the ratio of energy consumption to GDP), as an indicator of energy efficiency, reveals an enhancement in technology and energy consumption",7
"A high level of energy intensity, in general, can have detrimental impacts on the environment",7
"The correlation between the emission of greenhouse gasses and energy intensity is positive because these gasses result from the combustion of fossil fuels, which are created by producing and consuming energy",7
"(2007), however, believe that income growth does not in itself lead to solving environmental issues and that a reduction in energy consumption is needed to achieve that purpose",7
It is also possible to view the environmental crisis in another way: efficient use of energy can both prevent energy waste and help enhance the environment through reducing greenhouse gas emissions,13
Many researches have been carried out on the relationship between energy consumption and the environment,7
"Sharekian and Lotfalipour (2015) studied the effects of energy intensity, population size, wealth, and energy consumption on greenhouse gas emissions",7
"The results of Kafaie and Aqayan’s study (2015), entitled “Identifying the Factors Affecting Energy Efficiency in Iranian Economy,” showed that foreign direct investment and relative energy prices have a positive effect while added value and the ratio of capital to labor has a negative effect on energy efficiency",7
"Yang and Wei’s study (2018), “The Measurement and Influences of China’s Urban Total-Factor Energy Efficiency Under Environmental Pollution: Based on the Game Cross-Efficiency DEA",7
"Journal of Cleaner Production,” showed that no energy efficiency was achieved during the course of their research",7
"(2018) carried out a study entitled “A Two-Stage Analytical Approach to Assess Sustainable Energy Efficiency” in Turkey which revealed that GDP per capita, population size, and the amount of energy produced from renewable energy sources had a direct positive effect on energy efficiency",7
"Borozan (2018), in “Technical and Total-factor Energy Efficiency of European Regions: A Two-Stage Approach,” argued that there were considerable differences in technical and energy efficiency across EU regions with most regions being technically and energy inefficient",7
"In “Energy Efficiency and Influencing Factors Analysis on Beijing Industrial Sectors,” Wang et al",7
"(2017), using a bootstrap-DEA and Tobit regression, studied the factors affecting energy efficiency",7
"Li and Lin (2015), in “The Improvement Gap in Energy Intensity: Analysis of China’s Thirty Provincial Regions Using the Improved DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) Model,” argued that GDP, industrialized structure, transportation, and fuel prices exerted an effect on energy efficiency",7
"In “Research on the impact of green finance on energy efficiency in different regions of China based on the DEA-Tobit model,” Wang and Wang (2022) used a DEA to evaluate China’s regional energy efficiency and the Tobit model to analyze the impact of green finance on energy efficiency",7
"They concluded that energy consumption structure had negative relationships with energy efficiency in all regions, energy prices had a positive effect in the central and western regions, but no significant effect on the whole country",7
"(2021) measured the overall efficiency of water resource systems, water use (WU) efficiency, and wastewater treatment (WT) efficiency of 11 provinces in western China during 2008–2017",6
"The model used in this research has five variables, of which the total number of labor force, gross capital stock (at the constant price of 2010 US dollar), and primary energy consumption in kilograms of oil equivalent were the model inputs while the real GDP was the desirable output, and carbon dioxide emissions (in kilo tons) was the undesirable output",7
"Owing to the fact that energy is considered as an input, we have used the input orientation to assess energy efficiency in order to minimize the production factors at a certain level of outputs, assuming variable returns to scale and using a multi-stage linear planning model for each DMU",7
The following model was used for calculating energy efficiency: St: where \({Y}_{it}\) indicates the target function which seeks to minimize the inputs of the Persian Gulf countries as the DMU (i) at time (t),7
"Moreover, K, L, E, and j represent the capital, labor force, energy consumption, and the reference unit with the highest efficiency",7
"Since energy efficiency ranges between 0 and 1 (a minimum of 0 and maximum of 1) where the variable is restricted at both the upper and lower limits, parametric estimation using ordinary least squares (OLS) will be biased and inconsistent",7
"In the panel Tobit model, the process of producing data is as follows: In the above equations, \({y}_{it}\) is a dependent variable (energy efficiency) and \({y}_{i}^{*}\) is a random unobservable or hidden variable",7
The research on factors affecting energy efficiency mainly focuses on technical progress (Liu et al,7
"The general form of this Tobit equation is as follows: In order to study the relationship between the variables, the multivariate Tobit regression was used: where \({EE}_{it}\) represents total-factor energy efficiency,\({P}_{it}\) is OPEC oil price (in US $), \({GDP}_{it}\) represents real GDP per capita (in 2010 dollars), \({I}_{it}\) stands for the degree of industrialization—defined as the ratio of GDP of industry to the whole GDP (in 2010 dollars), \({T}_{it}\) indicates the degree of commercial openness (representing the ratio of the totality of exports and imports to the GDP of each country, which shows the degree of the commercial relationships of one country with others), \({CD}_{it}\) is the journal paper citation rate (i.e., the number of citations a paper received in a certain period of time from other papers) used as an index of science, technology, and innovationFootnote 1 (acquired from www.scimagojr.com), \({FDI}_{it}\) represents the foreign direct investment (defined by the International Monetary Fund as an investment made in a foreign country with the intent of lasting interest and exerting significant influence) \({POP}_{it}\) indicates the population of the Persian Gulf countries, and \({\varepsilon }_{it}\) is the residual for country at time (t)",7
"Descriptive statistics and trends of the variables used in this study, including real GDP, CO2 emission, labor force, capital, energy consumption, population size, oil price, degree of industrialization, degree of commercial openness, foreign direct investment, and paper citation rate as the index of science, technology, and innovation in each of the Persian Gulf countries are given in Appendix Tables 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, and 23 and Figs",7
Average TFEE of the Persian Gulf countries with the assumption of VRS and input-oriented approach in the 2000–2014 period Average environmental efficiency with the assumption of VRS and using an output-oriented approach in the Persian Gulf countries (2000–2014) Real and optimal average carbon dioxide emissions in the Persian Gulf countries Energy consumption in the Persian Gulf countries (2000–2014) Labor force in the Persian Gulf countries (2000–2014) Capital stock in the Persian Gulf countries (2000–2014) GDP per capita (billion US dollars) in the Persian Gulf countries (2000–2014) GDP (billion US dollars) in the Persian Gulf countries (2000–2014) Carbon dioxide emissions (thousand tons) in the Persian Gulf countries (2000–2014) Population size (million people) in the Persian Gulf countries (2000–2014) The degree of industrialization (percentage of GDP) in the Persian Gulf countries (2000–2014) The degree of commercial openness (percentage of GDP) in the Persian Gulf countries (2000–2014) Paper citation rate in the Persian Gulf countries (2000–2014) Oil price (US dollars) in the Persian Gulf countries (2000–2014) Foreign direct investment (percentage of GDP) in the Persian Gulf countries (2000–2014) The amount of total-factory energy efficiency is determined by dividing the optimal energy consumption value by that of the real energy consumption,7
"The value of the real energy consumption in the period studied in this paper was taken from the website of the World Bank, and the optimal energy consumption value was calculated using model (1)",7
"Table 1 shows the results of the Persian Gulf countries’ total-factor energy efficiency in 2000–2014, assuming variable returns to scale with an input-oriented approach",7
"In 2000, the value of real energy consumption in Iran was 421.621 kg equivalent of crude oil while the optimum value gained as the output of the model was 99.813 kg equivalent of crude oil",7
"The value of Iran’s total-factor energy efficiency in 2000, 0.70, is calculated by dividing the optimum value by the real value",7
"Considering the values of TFEE, it can be seen that none of these countries had an average energy efficiency of 1, which means that none of them used energy efficiently",7
"The average TFEE in the above-mentioned period was 82%, indicating that the countries of the Persian Gulf region, using their current inputs, could potentially increase their GDP and decrease their carbon dioxide emissions by reducing their energy consumption by 18%",7
"This means that Oman and Iran could potentially reduce their energy consumption by 28% and 42%, respectively, to become energy efficient",7
"Almost all of Iran’s primary energy consumption was accounted for by natural gas and oil, and there were very limited contributions from hydropower, coal, nuclear, and non-hydro power renewables (BP, 2020)",7
"While in 2000, the energy consumption accounted for 588 ktoe (6833 GWh), energy consumption reached 1591 ktoe (18,512 GWh) in 2011",7
"In Iran, most of the greenhouse (especially CO2) emissions have been due to increase in energy intensity (Falahi & Hekmati Farid, 2013; Damankeshide et al",7
"In this country, economic growth (Salahuddin and Gow, 2014; Alqudair, 2011), the production of electricity using fossil fuels, the development of oil industry, and drinking water equipment, as well as other industrial activities, have led to the production of a huge amount of wastewater and greenhouse gasses as well as chemical pollution",8
Severe shortage of electricity is an important barrier to Iraq’s social and economic development even though there has been a significant growth in the power grid capacity of the country,8
"In 2008, the largest solar power project in the Middle East and North Africa, The Green Community, was launched in Dubai",7
"The results show the direction and degree of the impact of oil prices, GDP per capita degree of industrialization, article citation rate, foreign direct investment, population sizes, and energy efficiency of the Persian Gulf countries",7
The effects of various variables on energy efficiency are as follows,7
Oil prices are positively related to energy efficiency,7
"When other variables remain unchanged, the average value of energy efficiency increases by 0.74 efficiency units as the relative energy price increases by 1 unit",7
"(2019a, b) argued that low energy price could restrict the improvement of energy efficiency, and changing the energy price could affect energy consumption",7
Rising oil and energy prices are also causing households in rich Persian Gulf countries to use state-of-the-art cooling devices and reduce their energy consumption,7
Real GDP per capita (in 2010 dollars) is positively related to energy efficiency,7
"When other variables remain unchanged, the natural logarithm of real GDP per capita increases by 1 unit, and energy efficiency increases by 0.75 on average",7
"This indicates that with the improvement of Persian Gulf countries GDP, energy efficiency will be further improved, which is similar to the conclusions of Liu et al",7
"Conversely, countries with high energy efficiency can produce more economic output, thus improving the GDP",7
Energy efficiency and GDP are mutually interactive and increase each other,7
"(2020) but opposite to those of the Wang and Wang (2020) article, which states that the improvement of GDP has a negative impact on energy efficiency, increases the development of industrialization and urbanization, increases energy consumption, and weakens the positive influence of productivity improvement on energy efficiency",7
"The article citation rate as a proxy for science, technology, and innovation is negatively associated with energy efficiency",7
"Keeping other variables unchanged, the energy efficiency increases by − 0.02 efficiency units for each unit of a natural logarithm of article citation rate in each country, which demonstrates that scientific progress plays a negative role in improving countries energy efficiency",7
"This negative effect can mean that the quality of science, technology, and innovation in these countries, as represented by their article citation rates, does not necessarily reflect their technological innovations in energy-related industries or innovations that can help improve energy efficiency",7
"(2020) argue that scientific innovations cannot only improve the energy efficiency by using low energy consumption equipment, but also optimize the production process to enhance the efficiency of production factors, so as to exert a positive influence on the improvement of energy efficiency",7
The size of population is positively related to energy efficiency,7
Energy efficiency increases by 0.007 as the total population size increases by one percentage point,7
"This coefficient is very small, which means that in the Persian Gulf countries, increase in the population size leads to better energy efficiency in the long run",7
"This positive relationship is possible when with investment in education and hygiene, people are turned into human capital, which makes for creativity and innovation and helps improve energy efficiency in the long run",7
Degree of industrialization has a significant negative impact on energy efficiency,7
"When other variables remain unchanged, the energy efficiency drops by 0.04 efficiency units as the degree of industrialization increases by one percentage point",7
"Degree of industrialization prevents the improvement of energy efficiency to some extent, and this is identical with the conclusions of Liu et al",7
"The more this sector is developed due to higher global demand for fossil fuels, the higher energy consumption and, consequently, the lower energy efficiency in these countries",7
"Foreign direct investment negatively influences energy efficiency, which is consistent with the conclusions of most studies",7
"When other factors remain unchanged, the energy efficiency will decrease by − 0.002 efficiency units for every one-percentage-point increase in foreign direct investment",7
(2021) showed that FDI positively increased the energy efficiency after controlling the unobserved fixed effects of country and year,7
(2022) showed that FDI could boost pollution only by raising energy consumption,7
"The negative coefficient of foreign direct investment in this study can be due to more investment in oil, gas, and energy industries than in services and other economic sectors, so that the introduction of new technologies due to foreign direct investment led to an increase in total energy consumption and increased greenhouse gas emissions in these countries",7
"Carbon emissions have become a public concern since Paris Climate Conference in 2015, while energy efficiency improvement and the development of clean energy are crucial to carbon reduction",7
"The main goal of this paper was the evaluation of a two-stage performance, combination of data envelopment analysis, and Tobit regression to assess the energy efficiency of the Persian Gulf countries in the years 2000–2014",7
The Persian Gulf countries have the highest levels of energy consumption per capita and energy intensity in the world,7
"Development of heavy industry and petrochemical plants, and energy-intensive industries in general, as well as using traditional and old means of transportation and warm and dry climates are some of the reasons for high energy intensity in these countries",7
"Third, the results of the Tobit analysis showed that there was a direct relationship between TFEE and the variables of GDP per capita, oil price, degree of industrialization, and population size in a way that an increase in any of these variables led to an enhancement in the energy efficiency of these countries",7
"On the other hand, while science, research, and publications of scientific papers grew in these countries, the new scientific findings did not help them to increase their energy efficiency, or it could be claimed that there was no effective relationship between academic research and industries or energy efficiency",7
No significant relationship was found between commercial openness and energy efficiency,7
"Second, the negative effect of the paper citation rate as a proxy for science, technology, and innovation on energy efficiency clearly shows that more attention should be paid to research and training of labor force, as well as to the improvement of the relationship between the university and the industry as the two main creators of technology and innovation",7
"Third, the negative effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on energy efficiency indicates that such investments focused on energy-intensive industries",7
"Fourth, improving energy efficiency is a fundamental way to ensure energy security and sustainable development",7
"It is, therefore, proposed that regional governments increase investment in clean energy, especially solar energy, which could be helped by the hot and dry climate of these countries",7
"Fifth, the Persian Gulf countries face many common environmental problems such as gas emissions from fossil fuels, oil pollution, dust storms, seasonal heavy rains, sea water pollution, drought, and scarcity of fresh water",6
"The second UN Sustainable Development Goal establishes food security as a priority for governments, multilateral organizations, and NGOs",2
These institutions track national-level food security performance with an array of metrics and weigh intervention options considering the leverage of many possible drivers,2
We studied the relationships between several candidate drivers and two response variables based on prominent measures of national food security: the 2019 Global Food Security Index (GFSI) and the Food Insecurity Experience Scale’s (FIES) estimate of the percentage of a nation’s population experiencing food security or mild food insecurity (FI<mod),2
"At the cross-national level, the quantity and quality of a nation’s agricultural land were not predictive of either food security metric",2
"We found mixed evidence that per-capita cereal production, per-hectare cereal yield, an aggregate governance metric, logistics performance, and extent of paid employment work were predictive of national food security",2
"The results of this cross-national analysis reinforce previous research supportive of a causal mechanism where, in the absence of exceptional local factors, an increase in income drives increase in food security",2
"We demonstrate that using multiple response metrics, repeated random sampling of input data, and iterative variable selection facilitates a convergence of evidence approach to analyzing food security drivers",2
"Recent data indicate that more than two billion people lack regular access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food (FAO 2019), and an estimated 821 million people are not able to acquire enough food to meet minimum dietary energy requirements (FAO 2018a)",2
"The second United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 2) aims to eradicate hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030, yet hunger is slowly rising after decades of decline (UN 2019)",2
"Food insecurity is a complex problem, manifesting as obesity and malnutrition in addition to extreme hunger and starvation (Candel 2014)",2
"A widely used definition from the FAO states that “food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO 1996)",2
"2015), and many food security measurement methodologies have been developed (Cafiero 2016; Carletto et al",2
2013; EIU 2019; IPC Global Partners 2019; Jones et al,17
The Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) measures food insecurity through the lens of a survey respondent’s “lived experience” of food access (Cafiero 2016),2
"The scale builds on experience-based assessment tools, which track the managed process by which a person typically confronts food insecurity (Ballard et al",2
The FIES is globally calibrated to ensure cross-country comparability and has emerged as a leading indicator of food insecurity (Saint Ville et al,2
The official SDG indicator framework designates the FIES-based estimate of the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity in a nation’s population as SDG Indicator 2.1.2 (UN General Assembly 2017),2
The Global Food Security Index (GFSI) is a composite indicator that monitors national-level food security and has been tabulated since 2012 (EIU 2019),2
"The GFSI is built upon 34 unique indicators spanning three conceptual pillars of food security: 1- affordability, 2- availability, and 3- quality and safety (Izraelov and Silber 2019)",2
"Unlike the FIES, which directly measures individuals’ experiences, the GFSI is country-centered and considers food security according to the national capacity to promote food affordability, availability and quality/safety (Thomas et al",2
"The GFSI is a blend of indicators that may themselves be considered determinants of food security (e.g., gross domestic product per capita, funding of food safety net programs) or metrics of food security (e.g., dietary energy adequacy, micronutrient availability)",2
The GFSI uses a variety of national-level data to address the question: how food secure is a given country relative to others? Robust definitions and measures also enable study of the drivers of food security,2
"(2017a) used similar models across Latin American and Caribbean countries to find that low levels of education, limited social capital, and living in a country with low gross domestic product per capita were associated with the most severe food insecurity per FIES scores",2
(2019) used household-level FIES data to analyze socio-demographic correlates of food insecurity among Middle Eastern and North African countries,2
(2018) used the GFSI as a response variable in a cross-country analysis that finds that population and water resource availability were poor predictors of national food security,2
(2019) used the GFSI to identify an inverse relationship between the cholera incidence rate and national food security among 30 countries,2
"Other cross-national analyses have used the Global Hunger Index, child stunting rates, and the prevalence of undernourishment as response variables",2
(2016) examined trends between the Global Hunger Index and a set of long-term food security drivers by describing the food system as a system of equations,2
"The 2018 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report examined the influence of climate variability and extremes on the national prevalence of undernourishment using change point analysis, finding that climate shocks drove food crises, especially in countries where a high proportion of the population depends on agricultural livelihoods (FAO 2018a)",2
"The 2019 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report studied the cross-country effects of economic slowdowns, finding that an economic downturn was associated with a 5% increase in the national prevalence of undernourishment among 130 countries between 2011 and 2017 (FAO 2019)",2
"Other cross-country studies examined child stunting rates, which, though related to national food security, is specifically the result of poor nutrition and health early in life (Milman et al",2
The above studies of food security drivers typically use only one measure of food security or nutrition as the response variable,2
"However, it is well-recognized that no single metric can capture all dimensions of food security, and thus complete assessments of food security use a “convergence of evidence approach” across several metrics (Ballard et al",2
"Following this logic, it is useful to examine the drivers of food security using more than one metric in order to make more robust conclusions about the relative contributions of different explanatory variables",2
"How do the results of cross-country food security models vary when the variable used to define national food security is changed? Further, how do these models respond to changes in data availability (i.e., the countries included in input data) and model formulation (i.e., the explanatory variables selected)? Here, we analyze the importance of several explanatory variables in regressions predicting food security at the national level based on both GFSI and FIES metrics",2
"By conducting the analysis in parallel for each response variable, we compare results from two fundamentally different approaches to assessing food security",2
The Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) measures the access dimension of food insecurity through the lens of a person’s lived experience (Cafiero 2016),2
"Food insecurity is commonly experienced as a continuum, where mild food insecurity is first felt as a worry about how to procure food because of a lack of resources, progressing to compromise on the quality and variety of food, then reduction in the quantity of food, before skipping meals and experiencing hunger associated with severe food insecurity (Coates et al",2
The questions are ordered such that answering “yes” corresponds to increasing levels of food insecurity as the module progresses,2
"From these ordered responses, the Rasch model is used to estimate the level of food insecurity experienced by the respondent (Nord 2014)",2
"FIES respondents can be classified as experiencing a) food security or mild food insecurity, b) moderate or severe food insecurity, or c) severe food insecurity (UNSD 2020)",2
"The moderate food security threshold is set by the 5th FIES Survey Module item, which asks if the respondent has eaten less than he/she thought he/she should because of a lack of money or other resources",2
"The severe food insecurity threshold is set by the 8th item, which asks if the respondent has gone an entire day without eating for lack of money or other resources",2
"Once national FIES measures have been calibrated to the global scale, the prevalence of these levels of food insecurity in the national population is estimated by probabilistically assigning respondents to each class as described in the official SDG Indicator 2.1.2 metadata (UNSD 2020)",2
"It follows that the percentage of the population who experience either food security or mild food insecurity, FI<mod, can be defined as FI<mod = 1 − FImod + sev",2
"We used the percentage of the national population in the FI<mod class as a response variable in our analysis to facilitate comparison with the Global Food Security Index, which increases with increasing food security performance",2
"The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Food Security Index (GFSI) is a composite index that provides a common, cross-national basis for assessing food security (EIU 2016, 2019)",2
"The 2019 GFSI uses 34 unique indicators to cover broad aspects of food security, from average food supply, to diet diversification, to presence of a formal grocery sector, et cetera",2
"Although the expert indicator weights are subjective by nature, three independent recent studies have largely concluded that this index formulation is reasonable for use in assessing cross-national differences in food security (Chen et al",2
"A complex causal chain determines each person’s food security, which may be defined according to the 1996 World Food Summit definition: physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet dietary needs and food preferences (FAO 1996)",2
"For example, disease or inadequate dietary intake may be the immediate cause of undernutrition, but these may be the result of underlying household food insecurity, which is ultimately caused by broader inadequacies in resources (e.g., employment, technology) and other stressors (e.g., political unrest)",2
"Figure A2.1 presents scatterplots between each response variable and each explanatory variable (Online Resource 2).
 We chose the mean Crop Suitability Index (CSI) and hectares of arable land per capita as measures of agricultural land quality and quantity, respectively",15
"Arable land includes area classified by the FAO as under temporary crops, temporary meadows for mowing or for pasture, land under market or kitchen gardens, and land temporarily fallow (FAO 2020a)",15
"The WGI include composite indicators that measure perceptions of governance quality in six dimensions: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption (Kaufmann et al",16
We do not claim that these explanatory variables include all characteristics relevant to national food security,2
"Nor does securing access to food guarantee a high-quality diet for all people: utilizing food for healthy diets also relies on consumer behavior and education, among other factors (HLPE 2017)",2
We do claim that the selected explanatory variables include several basic drivers that help determine the extent of food access within a national food system,2
We analyze how these characteristics can explain cross-national differences in food security,2
"The model formulations for the linear regressions that were fit to these bootstrap samples can be generically written for the ith response variable and jth set of explanatory variables as
 where Y is the vector of food security scores for response variable i, Xj is the matrix of input data for explanatory variable subset j, βij is a vector of coefficient estimates, and εij is a vector of error terms corresponding to response variable i and explanatory variable set j",2
"This study analyzed the relationships between two measures of national food security and a dataset of explanatory variables that characterizes 65 nations in terms of agricultural land quality and quantity, agricultural production, governance and infrastructure, and household income",2
"b Boxplots summarizing response variable scores by region, with y-axes in units of the respective response variables (i.e., GFSI scores and the percent of population experiencing food security or mild food insecurity [FI<mod])",2
"Here, each boxplot is overlaid by the data points it summarizes For both GFSI and FI<mod, North America, Europe and Central Asia, and East Asia and Pacific regions lead in food security performance",2
"For both metrics, the spread in national food security is tight for a cluster of high-performing nations, and much wider in the middle and lower parts of the scale",2
"That is, for most Sub-Saharan African countries in this study, the prevalence of people reporting an experience of moderate or severe food insecurity in the past 12 months is higher than the rate that a model using GFSI’s macro-level indicators would suggest",2
Regressions on FI<mod show how explanatory variables predict the prevalence of food security (or mild food insecurity) in a population,2
Regressions on GFSI show how explanatory variables relate to the Index’s framework for assessing national food security,2
"Considering these categories one at a time, variables related to the quality and quantity of agricultural land were not predictive of either food security metric",2
"The x-axis denotes the explanatory variables included in the regression, where A is arable land per capita, C is the mean Crop Suitability Index, P is cereals production per capita, Y is cereal yield, S is HFCE per capita, E is the percentage of workers in paid employment jobs, L is the Logistics Performance Index, and W is the mean Worldwide Governance Indicator score Both stepwise forward variable selections begin with HFCE as the first variable",15
"HFCE also predicts FI<mod well (median R2 = 0.70 for the leftmost model), but the out-of-sample performance of the regression model improves with inclusion of cereal yield, cereal production and the quantity of arable land per capita (median R2 = 0.77)",15
"The explanatory variables are coded such that A is arable land per capita, C is the mean Crop Suitability Index, P is cereals production per capita, Y is cereal yield, S is HFCE per capita, E is the percentage of workers in paid employment jobs, L is the Logistics Performance Index, and W is the mean Worldwide Governance Indicator score Across both response metrics and all regression formulae, HFCE is the only explanatory variable with a consistently positive and statistically significant coefficient",15
"However, the expected boost in national food security from an increase in HFCE varies across bootstrap samples",2
"This suggests that the magnitude of influence of per-capita consumer spending on national food security depends in part on the countries being considered, and the causal models of food insecurity at work within them",2
"This study analyzes cross-national food security performance using two prominent metrics: the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), and the Global Food Security Index (GFSI)",2
"The FIES is a “bottom-up” survey-based method that measures respondents’ lived experience of food insecurity, and it is used to produce globally-calibrated estimates of the prevalence of moderate and severe food insecurity (Cafiero 2016; Cafiero et al",2
"The FIES primarily assesses the “access” dimension of food security (Cafiero 2016), and the GFSI is not sensitive to all aspects of a healthy individual diet (e.g., specific nutrient deficiencies) (Izraelov and Silber 2019; Thomas et al",2
"Precisely because of their methodological differences, the GFSI and FIES can serve as complementary metrics in a two-pronged approach to considering national-level food security",2
"On its own, the GFSI is a subjective measure of national capacity for food security",2
"Likewise, the FIES is well-equipped to measure food insecurity, but ill-equipped to explain it",2
"Countries with identical prevalence of mild, moderate, or severe food insecurity may face very different challenges",2
"For example, FIES results indicate that roughly 50% of people living in both Honduras and Ghana are experiencing moderate or severe food insecurity",2
GFSI results for these countries reveal that many Ghanaians lack food safety for want of potable water and electricity,2
"Honduras, meanwhile, performs better on food safety but significantly worse on measures of governance affecting national food availability",2
"Across all model runs and bootstrap samples, HFCE was a strong predictor of both national food security metrics",2
The quantity and quality of nation’s agricultural land were not alone predictive of either food security metric,2
The best-performing models during stepwise forward variable selection did retain either arable land per capita or mean CSI as a predictor,15
"However, the coefficient estimates for these variables were consistently negative across model runs, indicating that when all else is held equal, countries with more or better agricultural land resources tended to also have lower national food security",2
We find mixed evidence that the per-capita cereal production and per-hectare cereal yield were predictive of national food security,2
The results of this cross-national analysis reinforce previous research supportive of a causal mechanism where an increase in income drives increase in food security,2
"At the household level, lower incomes are consistently related to worse FIES food insecurity scores (Park et al",2
"However, as our variation in results across bootstraps shows, the strength of the relationship between HFCE and the two national food security metrics varies based on the countries included in the training data",2
"Persistent income inequalities also cut off segments of the population from the benefits of aggregate economic growth and the infrastructure and services that come with it (e.g., quality health care, sanitation, and reliable power)",8
The strong relationship between national food security and HFCE shown here together with the universally low HFCE of subsistence farmers underscores the vulnerability of subsistence farmers to food insecurity,2
"Subsistence farming is intrinsically variable both seasonally and interannually, and excess production from years with high yields is often unable to compensate for lean years because of storage losses, market failures, or lack of access to banking (Chambers et al",8
"Environmental variability, exacerbated by climate change, poses a heightened risk for these farmers, whose food consumption and local agricultural production are tightly coupled (Davis et al",13
2016) or to raise their consumption above the HCFE threshold for achieving higher food security performance,2
"For instance, in our dataset, no country with HFCE below $5000 per capita per year had a prevalence of food security or mild food insecurity above 80% per FIES surveys",2
"The literature has identified on- and off-farm options for improving earnings, raising HFCE, and boosting food security",2
Agricultural development can increase on-farm income and food security when productivity increases are paired with functional crop markets and storage options (Abdoulaye et al,2
"However, without these supporting factors, research finds that marginal increases in smallholder agricultural production or subsidies on agricultural inputs do not always improve food security or income (Harris and Orr 2014; Schreinemachers 2006; Walls et al",2
"(2012) specifically find that Ethiopian households’ consumption expenditures grow alongside off-farm income, and a wide body of literature has shown that off-farm jobs are key enablers of poverty reduction in rural areas (Djurfeldt and Djurfeldt 2013; Haggblade et al",1
"These observations from the literature, combined with our finding that HFCE is a primary driver of cross-national food security, support the proposition that the most effective strategies to improve food security will include measures to increase citizens’ capacity for consumption, whether via agricultural earnings or off-farm income",2
"Our cross-sectional data can only be used to indicate “long run” differences in food security, which are the result of complex relationships between social, economic, and agricultural factors, among others (Headey 2013)",2
"Despite substantial differences in methodologies and theoretical bases, the Global Food Security Index and the Food Insecurity Experience Scale metric (FI<mod) were strongly correlated in our 65-country dataset",2
"In regression models using explanatory variables to predict nations’ food security scores, per-capita household final consumption expenditure consistently explained more variance in food security scores than other drivers",2
The quantity and quality of nation’s agricultural land were not predictive of either food security metric,2
"We found mixed evidence that per-capita cereal production, per-hectare cereal yield, an aggregate governance metric, logistics performance, and the prevalence of paid employment work were predictive of national food security",2
"The results of this cross-national analysis reinforce previous research supportive of a causal mechanism where, in the absence of exceptional local factors, an increase in income drives increase in food security",2
Initiatives that seek to improve national food security by focusing on other drivers without a clear path to improving incomes are less likely to achieve the desired effect,2
"We conclude that the GFSI and FIES are complementary metrics, best used in tandem to monitor and explain national food security performance",2
Perlite is a material extracted from open-pit mines that requires high energy consumption and a long road trip,7
"Nevertheless, coir and perlite evidenced much better scores than peat in the impact subcategory of the contribution to economic development.ConclusionsThis study contributes to a first comparison of three imported growing media constituents for urban rooftop farming from environmental and social perspectives to choose the most suitable option",8
"Geological Survey 2019), or the production of photovoltaic panels, mainly dominated by China, which yielded 43% of the global production in 2018 (Solar Power Europe 2019)",7
"Some of these positive consequences include job creation, GDP increase and improvement of infrastructure (World Trade Organization 2017, 2018)",8
"The S-LCA was conducted in three steps: (a) a social risk hotspot assessment, (b) country- and sector-specific assessment and (c) a company-specific assessment",1
"First, there are five impact categories in the SHDB: community infrastructure, governance, health and safety, human rights, and labour rights and decent work",8
"The questionnaire was divided into a first part including basic information about the company/organisation, then some general questions related to social reports; the last part dealt with more specific questions about three major themes: health and safety, human rights, and labour rights and decent work in the company",8
"The highest risks among the impact categories in Turkey are health and safety (65 h), human rights (28 h) and labour rights and decent work (27 h), and this country exports the third part of total perlite imported to Spain",8
"In general, concerning the coir-based growing media, all of the countries had very high numbers of risk hours, from Ecuador, with 198 risk hours, to the highest, India, with 319 h; in India, governance, human rights, and labour rights and decent work had the highest scores",8
"community infrastructure, human rights, and labour rights and decent work, peat in Germany had the best achievement indicators, followed by perlite in Turkey and coir in the Philippines",8
"In contrast, in the subcategory of the contribution to economic development, perlite showed the best behaviour, followed by coir and then peat",8
"The reason for this result is that the perlite sector and the coir sector (coconut production) in the studied countries are more prominent, creating more jobs and contributing more to the corresponding GDP than the peat sector, which is a small, family sector with fewer than 20 permanent workers in the companies that is shrinking in recent years due to the Climate Action Plan 2050 proposed by the German government to preserve peatlands (Federal Ministry for Environment Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety 2016)",13
"Nevertheless, for the worker group, the worst performance is assigned to perlite in Turkey because of the worst values of the fatal and non-fatal injuries and excessive working hours indicators, whereas coir exhibits the best scores in general in this group but the worst values for the child labour and fair salary indicators",8
"In the same context, the peat and coir companies follow different certifications: the Social Accountability 8000 (SA8000) certification, which involves recognised standards of decent work, and the ISO 9000 production, which is related to quality management systems; however, the perlite company answered positively about the code of conduct in the company but did not mention any specifics",8
"Regarding gender inequality, the coir company received the best score because 50% of employees in management positions are women; however, the company was unbalanced in the workforce because 70% of workforce employees are women",5
"Concerning child labour, all of the companies concurred that it is not an issue in this sector",8
"With respect to policies related to non-discrimination and freedom to join trade unions, the companies asserted that they follow the standards and laws related to their countries, but no specific data were provided",10
"Most of its positive performance is related to peat being sourced from a European Union (EU) country, Germany, because of the deployment of human, labour and social security rights and the remarkable work conditions in this country",1
"This growing medium showed acceptable performance in the SHDB and in country- and sector-specific assessments, such as community infrastructure and contribution to economic development",8
"Regarding the social assessment, owing to its origin in an EU country, peat was the most socially friendly growing medium in the three assessments performed due to its more favourable indicators in impact categories such as community infrastructure, human rights, and labour rights and decent work compared to the other two alternatives",8
"To progress in social assessments and make the assessments more dynamic to perform, we recommend further research aiming to (a) prioritise social indicators, as S-LCA presents multiple indicators; we advocate for centralising efforts in the most common and widespread indicators, such as gender inequality, labour rights, and health and safety, or SDGs indicators; (b) increase the data availability of disaggregated sectors in databases such as the SHDB and PSILCA targeting to easily perform social assessments; and (c) promote among companies the control of social data to generate open-source databases to be used for researchers and organisations",5
"Consequently, this study aids in progress in this sense in the soilless systems sector, a key industry in feeding cities on an environmentally and socially sustainable path, by identifying a market niche to develop new growing medium mixtures for URF with the objective of seeking growing media from local wastes/by-products that are easy to manage and socially and environmentally sustainable.",3
Our findings indicate that individual poverty and regional poverty have different poverty-causing mechanisms and poverty reduction priorities,1
Effective poverty reduction strategies require the coordinated promotion of individual and regional poverty reduction,1
"The reduction of individual poverty should focus on enhancing the livelihood capital of the poor through differentiated policy intervention, while regional poverty alleviation should focus on creating a favorable development environment by increasing infrastructure investment and public service supply",1
"Through joint efforts, the global extremely poverty rate at US$2.15 a day (2017 PPP) decreased from 43.6% in 1981 to 8.4% in 2019, with an average annual decrease of 4.24%, and the number of people who live in extremely poverty dropped from 2114.46 million to 648 million (World Bank 2022)",1
"However, the sudden coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic was estimated to push an additional 80 million to 115 million people into extreme poverty by 2020 alone, which has increased the extremely poor people in the world to more than 730 million people (World Bank 2021)",1
The COVID-19 crisis has caused a debate about whether the SDG goals can be achieved on schedule (Naidoo and Fisher 2020; The Lancet Public Health 2020),3
"To eradicate poverty, understanding where the poor live and why they are poor is essential for the effective allocation of anti-poverty funds and targeted policy interventions (Steele et al",1
Poverty and environmental degradation are often considered as an interactive process (Duraiappah 1998; Ravnborg 2003; Zhou et al,15
Poverty is both the cause and the result of environmental degradation,15
"The poor are often forced to overuse natural resources to survive, and environmental degradation further impoverishes them, which makes it fall into the vicious circle of poverty-environmental degradation-more poverty (Agudelo et al",15
"Fortunately, to eradicate poverty, through comprehensive bottom-up and top-down identification, by the end of 2013, China has identified 128,000 poor villages and more than 80 million rural poor people based on current poverty line standard set by a constant price of CNY 2300 per capita net income in 2010 (Liu et al",1
"This is the first large-scale poverty census in China and even human history, realizing the transformation of anti-poverty targets from the previous poor counties or areas to poor villages and poor households (Liao and Fei 2019; Liu et al",1
It has played a vital role in China’s subsequent smooth promotion of targeted poverty alleviation policies and the realization of poverty eradication goals by the end of 2020 (SCIO 2021),1
"According to the target of poverty targeting or poverty reduction, poverty can be divided into individual poverty and regional poverty",1
"The formation mechanism and poverty reduction priorities of the two are different, and scientific poverty reduction needs to be coordinated",1
"The shortage of social capital is mainly due to social isolation, blocked information transmission, and social security system caused by complex geo-environment",1
"The main poverty-causing factors of regional poverty include insufficient natural resource endowments, complex terrain conditions, unfavorable local conditions (such as remote location and backward transport infrastructure), frequent natural disasters, and fragile ecosystem (Zhou and Liu 2022)",9
"Lack of labor leads to limited sources of income, and unhealthy health can affect employment or even unemployment (Oostendorp 2017)",8
"Social security such as the minimum living security system is an effective way to prevent the elderly from being elected into poverty, especially for the rural elderly who do not have any pension and are in poor health (Engelhardt and Gruber 2004)",1
"Poverty formation mechanism and coordinated poverty reduction path from the perspective of stratified poverty theory Insufficient natural resource endowments, especially land resources, restricts the residents in the region from engaging in agricultural production activities and hinders the growth of their productive income (Zhou et al",1
Unfavorable geographic location is closely related to the level of social and economic development in a region and is the root cause of regional poverty and individual poverty in the region (Barbier and Hochard 2019),8
"Conversely, poverty-stricken areas have backward economic development, unreasonable economic structure, backward infrastructure, low level of education and limited government financial expenditure capacity",8
"Residents in poverty-stricken areas suffer from poor health, lack of employment opportunities, lack of land resources, and insufficient investment in regional infrastructure",9
"Both individual poverty and regional poverty have multi-dimensional characteristics, and the multi-dimensionality of poverty determines its complexity, indicating that poverty reduction cannot be achieved only by a single traditional intervention method (Zhou and Liu 2022)",1
The poverty reduction mechanisms of individual poverty and regional poverty are different (Zhou and Liu 2022),1
"Alleviating or eliminating regional poverty focuses on creating a favorable development environment through transportation infrastructure and public service investment, government investment promotion, preferential policy support, etc., so as to enhance the regional sustainable development capacity and promote social and economic development (Zhou et al",8
"The 1587 counties in central and western China were included, which involves 20.24 million poor households (63.56 million population) in 2013 (Fig. 2)",1
"The poverty-related data included information on the number of poor people, the incidence of poverty, and the main causes of poverty among the poor, which came from county-level statistical bulletins from 1587 counties in China in 2014",1
"At the end of 2013, China launched a nationwide large-scale rural poverty census and identified 128,000 poor villages, 29.48 million poor households, and 89.62 million poor people through bottom-up poverty targeting",1
"Further local autocorrelation analysis identified 6 spatial clusters of rural poor population distribution, namely, Liupan Mountains (A), Qinba Mountains (B), Wuling Mountains (E), Wumeng Mountains (D), Dabie Mountains (C) and the rocky desertification areas of Yunnan, Guangxi and Guizhou provinces (F) (Fig. 3b)",15
"Agglomeration areas with high incidence of poverty were mainly located in the Loess Plateau (H), Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (G), Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau (I), and southwestern Xinjiang (Fig. 3c)",1
"The causes of poverty among the poor households in rural China were complex and diverse, with obvious regional differences (Fig. 4)",1
Most of the poor households had multiple poverty-causing factors,1
"At the end of 2013, among the more than 23 million poor households in China, 42.52%, 36.06%, 26.31%, 25.60%, 11.81%, 10.58%, 7.37%, 4.13%, 3.5%, and 4.9% were poor farmers due to disease, lack of funds, lack of land, lack of technology, physical disability, insufficient endogenous power development, children’s schooling, natural disasters, and backward transportation, respectively",1
" Causes of poverty among poor households in China and its eastern, central, western, and northeastern regions in 2013",1
"The proportion of areas with slopes above 25° in the county had a stronger impact on the incidence of poverty, showing that for every 1% increase in the proportion of the area above 25°, the incidence of poverty would increase by 0.13%",1
"Keeping other variables constant, every 1 km/km2 increase in road density would reduce the incidence of poverty by 6.08%",1
"Although fixed asset investment had a negative impact on the incidence of poverty, the impact was also statistically insignificant",1
"Strangely, we found that the disability of family members helps to reduce poverty level",1
"This may be related to China’s relatively perfect social security system for disabled families, which can obtain more transfer income",1
"Altitude had a significant positive impact on the incidence of poverty in the eastern, central, northeastern, northern and southern regions, while the impact on the western region was not statistically significant",1
"This may be since the central region was the main grain-producing area in China, and ensuring food security was still the priority task of the regional government, and farmers’ income from agriculture had been slow to increase",2
"Precipitation had a negative impact on the incidence of poverty in the southern region, and temperature also exerted a negative and statistically significant impact on the western and southern regions",1
"Furthermore, the improvement of infrastructure can help alleviate poverty",1
"The increase in road density had a significant negative impact on the incidence of poverty in the central, western, and northern regions, but its impact in eastern and northeastern regions was statistically insignificant",1
"As expected, economic growth helped alleviate rural poverty",8
"Economic growth was significant and negatively correlated with poverty incidence in the central and northeastern regions, and southern and northern regions",8
"Through China’s continuous efforts in poverty reduction since 1978, China’s rural poor people have gradually gathered in remote mountainous areas in the central and western regions and have been geographically isolated to form isolated islands (Liu et al",1
"Our results also indicate that by the end of 2013, China’s rural poor mainly lived in mountainous areas such as Liupan, Qinba, Wumeng, Dabie, Wuling and Taihang, and Yunnan-Guangxi-Guizhou rocky desertification areas, accounting for 55% of the country’s rural poor",15
"Regional poverty is driven by the interaction of insufficient natural resource endowments, unfavorable location conditions, historical background, backward transportation conditions, and low levels of socio-economic development (Zhou and Liu 2022; Zhou et al",8
"Furthermore, restricted by factors such as geographical conditions, historical background, transportation, and economic development level, rural poverty in parts of southwestern China had lasted for thousands of years",8
The poverty census or poverty targeting that integrates the geo-environmental and socio-economic variables is essential for effective poverty reduction,1
"At the end of 2020, China eliminated absolute poverty in rural areas, 10 years ahead of the UN’s 2030 SDGs, and made a huge contribution to global poverty reduction (SCIO 2021)",1
Land consolidation and infrastructure improvements have a significant positive effect on poverty reduction in China (Zhou et al,1
Previous studies have observed that natural disasters force 26 million people around the world into extreme poverty every year (Hallegatte et al,1
"Without intervention, climate change would plunge 132 million people into poverty in the next decade (2020–2030) (Hallegatte and Walsh 2020)",13
"COVID-19 has also sounded a wake-up call for mankind, and it has forced hundreds of millions of people into extreme poverty (World Bank 2021)",1
"By the end of 2020, China has eliminated absolute rural poverty and and made outstanding contributions to the world’s poverty reduction (SCIO 2021)",1
"This study attempted to put forward the theory of stratified poverty, emphasizing the difference between the formation mechanism of individual poverty and regional poverty, and advocated the importance of coordinated promotion of regional and individual poverty alleviation",1
"The impact of individual livelihood capital, regional geo-environment and socio-economic development level on rural poverty in China varied across regions",8
"During the period 2013–2020, China implemented extraordinary targeted poverty alleviation interventions or ending-poverty actions and created a miracle of lifting more than 80 million poor people out of poverty in less eight years",1
"Firstly, poverty targeting and poverty mapping were the basis and prerequisite for the scientific allocation of poverty alleviation funds and the targeted intervention of anti-poverty measures",1
This dimension of disaster risk is usually overlooked in many disaster risk management strategies and assessments,11
"In 2017 alone, almost 19 million internally displaced people (IDPs) because of disasters were registered, compared to 11.8 million who relocated to another part of their homeland because of conflict (IDMC 2018)",10
The GDDRM model represents a milestone in the IDP field because it makes possible a first quantification of displacement risk due to disasters and explicitly considers and integrates the IDP dimension into the disaster risk management field,11
The disability adjusted life year (DALY) is a commonly used metric in the public health field,3
"DALYs are estimated by adding two different components, denoted as YLD and YLL, respectively, as follows: YLD represents the adjusted number of years lived with any kind of disability, whereas the YLL is the number of years of life-lost due to premature mortality",3
"Altogether, DALY is calculated as the sum of the number of adjusted life years with disability and the number of life-lost years due to premature mortality (Larson 2013; WHO 2013; Devleesschauwer et al",3
This methodology incorporates the YLD component into the IDPs field by accounting for both the number of internally displaced people and the length of the displacement in a (temporary) new setting,10
The DALY metric uses an egalitarian principle where all persons are assumed to contribute in the same way at the time of aggregating the number of either life-lost years due to premature mortality or the number of years lived with any kind of disability,3
"Finally, to consider only those within the labor force who are employed, the unemployment rate of the domain under study is also considered",8
"For this reason, the need to explore other metrics directly related to production (for example, GDP per employed person), with emphasis on the most vulnerable population (from a socioeconomic perspective), remains",1
"This figure is later affected by the share of the labor force rate, which for Nepal in 2015 was equal to 86.2% (World Bank 2018) and by considering an unemployment rate equal to 3.1%",8
"The latter approach is far more useful in disaster risk management since it provides the opportunity to determine potential direct and indirect losses in several dimensions that in this case, also include IDPs",11
"Quantitative estimates of the lost economic production because of internal displacement have the potential to aid governments and humanitarian and development stakeholders to address the phenomena in a more effective manner, therefore limiting the negative impacts that such losses can have on the lives of all those affected, not only IDPs but also host communities",10
"Despite not being directly related to the housing sector, the disruption in these two sectors also have immediate and longer-term consequences with economic impacts on IDPs, their welfare, and the normal functioning of host communities",10
The quantification of the lost economic production because of internal displacement is a useful activity in disaster risk management and planning,11
"The extreme poverty line is the most commonly used benchmark for poverty, set at US$ 1.90 by the World Bank",1
"Another benchmark, based on the Anker living wage methodology, is the remuneration received for a standard work week necessary for a worker to meet his/her family’s basic needs in a particular place",1
"In all cases, the extreme poverty line of US$ PPP 1.90 per capita per day is insufficient to meet the basic human rights for a decent living in low-income countries",1
SDG 2 addresses zero hunger and sustainable food systems (United Nations General Assembly 2015),2
It contributes to food security and income to escape poverty,2
The most commonly used benchmark for poverty is the international poverty line,1
The international or extreme poverty line for low-income countries was set at US$ Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) 1.90 per capita per day in the year 2011 (World Bank 2015b),1
The ‘costs of basic needs approach’ is widely used to establish the national poverty lines (World Bank 2015a),1
"Despite the fact that eliminating poverty would be a major achievement for humanity, US$ 1.90 per day is deemed the to be the absolute minimum, also referred to as the extreme poverty line",1
Other well-known benchmarks are the minimum wage and the living wage,8
"Several International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions and other statements point to the international agreement on the right to a decent minimum wage or living wage (ILO 2008; United Nations 2007; United Nations General Assembly 1948, art 23)",8
"A minimum wage is more of a political instrument, based on the prevailing economic situation in a country at national scale",8
"Based on their review, Croes and Vermeulen (2016) conclude that no agreed international system or standard is available for determining a fair minimum wage",8
"In the hunger season, these poor households have to buy their food at higher prices (Leonardo et al",1
"It is defined as the remuneration for a ‘standard work week’, necessary for a worker to meet ‘his family’s basic needs’ in a particular place (Anker and Anker 2013c)",1
The international poverty line for low-income countries is based on national poverty lines for the 15 poorest economies in the world,1
"What are the annual housing costs for a house that complies with these local minimum standards for decent housing? Health care costs (key informant interviews, secondary reports) 7",3
"What are the costs of health care services not covered by the basic insurance? Education costs (key informants, focus group discussion, secondary reports) 9",3
"For the living wage also the number of full time labourers is required, which is generally based on statistics on labour force participation rates, unemployment rates and age",8
To assess the role of agriculture in rural development and food security in low-income countries the living income per adult equivalent (AE) seems the most appropriate benchmark to reflect the potential aspirations of rural families,2
"This approach allows to easily calculate the living income related to food security for households of different size based on their composition, including extended families",2
"2010) which ensures sufficient food options for a nutritious and micronutrient-sensitive diet, we distinguish nine food groups: starchy staples, vegetables, fruits, meat, fish and seafood, eggs, milk and milk products, legumes nuts and seeds, and fats and oils, some of which are subdivided",2
"It covers food waste, common cooking practices and retention factors",12
"In addition to the calculated lowest cost, 4% is added to cover food waste, based on 5% waste of fresh foods and 1% waste of processed foods in the consumption phase for Sub Saharan Africa (Gustavsson et al",12
"Whilst the cost of ‘shelter’ is included in the international poverty line, what constitutes acceptable shelter is unclear",1
"Non-food non-housing costs (NFNH) cover costs for education, health and other basic needs, such as clothing and footwear, transport, communication",1
"If basic health insurance is available, this may be the best option, but coverage should be checked",3
Education costs include all annual household-out-of-pocket expenses to cover decent public primary and lower secondary education for all children in the reference household,4
"The only exception is for NFNH costs, where we do not consider recreation, restaurants, alcoholic beverages, tobacco and narcotics as belonging to basic needs, and the PPP-IHC does (World Bank 2015b)",1
"Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda, are classified as low-income countries and were part of the 15 countries included in the assessment of the extreme poverty line of US $ 1.90 in 2011 (Chen and Ravallion 2010; World Bank 2015b)",1
"The national poverty line was US$ PPP 1.47 per adult equivalent per dayFootnote 1 in 2011, excluding budget for housing and clothing national (National Bureau of Statistics Tanzania 2015)",1
"Absolute numbers living in poverty, however, increased due to the rapid population growth (Uganda Bureau of Statistics 2016)",1
The national poverty line was US$ 1.46 (2011 PPP) in 2012 (Jolliffe and Prydz 2016),1
"Ethiopia is characterized by an average GDP growth rate of 11% over the last decade, which is about double of the average growth for Sub Saharan Africa (UNDP 2014)",8
The national poverty line was US$ 1.80 (2011 PPP; Jolliffe and Prydz 2016),1
"The membership covers all public health care costs for six household members, including doctor consultation and complete treatment with medicine and laboratory tests for all common diseases",3
Total health care costs added up to US$ 48 PPP/RH/year (Table 6),3
"Key informant interviews were performed with health care workers at three public health care centres at sub-county level, and at pharmacies",3
"The three most important health care service types were: (i) doctor consultation at a public health care centre, (ii) medicine from a pharmacy, and (iii) laboratory self-test for malaria",3
"The three most common diseases in this area as reported in patient records of the local health care centre were: malaria, urinary tract infection (UTI), and cough/flu",3
"Altogether, health care costs in Isingiro District were estimated at US$ 131 PPP/RH/year (Table 6)",3
"The three most common diseases treated were typhoid fever, diarrheal diseases and malaria",3
The international or extreme poverty line is US$ PPP 1.90 and the poverty line is US$ PPP 3.20 per capita per day (World Bank 2015b),1
This means that in Lushoto US$ 1.21/AE is equivalent to the extreme poverty line (Table 8),1
"Table 8 shows that in all 3 countries the living income is above the extreme poverty line, in Tanzania and Uganda by about 25% and in Ethiopia by 10%",1
"Both for the Lushoto, Tanzania and Isingiro, Uganda, the living income was estimated to be 1.25 times the international poverty line of 1.90 US$ PPP/person/day, the generally accepted benchmark for low-income countries, while in Sidama, Ethiopia it was 10%",1
This analysis also shows that one general poverty line (US$ 3.20 per capita per day) or international poverty line (US$ 1.90 per capita per day) does not adequately reflect the basic rural human needs in different regions,1
"Having said that, if a generally applicable benchmark is required, the poverty line is more realistic than the international or extreme poverty line, also for rural areas in low-income countries",1
In rural Tanzania the living income in 2017 of US$ 4.04 was more than double the national poverty line of US$ 1.60 PPP/AE/day (National Bureau of Statistics Tanzania 2015),1
"This difference between the living income and national poverty line is likely due to differences in the data used, the bundle of goods and the year of assessment",1
"The national poverty line includes a daily energy intake of 2200 kcal per adult equivalent, against 2500 kcal/AME in the Living Income Methodology to account for heavy labour activities",1
The costs for non-food items in the national poverty line are based on the current food cost of the poorest 25% of the population and no allowance for clothing and housing rent are included,1
Early drop-out rates from school are high in Tanzania - which could potentially be a consequence of the expenditure saving strategy of resource-poor households,1
"This is also true for the international poverty line of US$ PPP 1.90/capita/day, last reviewed in 2011 and increased from US$ PPP 1.25/capita/day in 2005",1
"The international poverty line is only updated intermittently, but national poverty lines are updated when new national survey data become available (World Bank 2015b)",1
"Tanzania, Uganda and Malawi are low-income countries; Kenya used to be a low-income country before it officially graduated to be a lower-middle income country in 2014 – just before the study in 2015 (World Bank 2018c) for which an international poverty line of US$ 3.20 was set (Jolliffe and Prydz 2016)",1
"Ghana, Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia are among the 15 poorest countries on which the World Bank based the international poverty line in 2011 (Chen and Ravallion 2010)",1
Between brackets the extreme poverty line US$ 1.90 PPP expressed in the local US$ value and converted to 2017,1
"However, we felt we had no choice other than to accept that the education and medical care provided was designed to meet basic human needs",3
"We expressed the living income per adult equivalent, in contrast to the international poverty line (which is expressed as income per capita), to the Anker Methodology (living wage per worker) and to the Living Income Community of practice (living income per reference household)",1
"This clearly demonstrates that an income around the extreme poverty line of US$ PPP 1.90, although this is per capita, is insufficient to meet the basic human rights for a decent living",1
"It further provides a meaningful benchmark to measure progress on SDG1, to eliminate poverty and SDG2, zero hunger and sustainable food systems, allowing for explicit consideration of the local context.",2
"The empirical findings confirm that (a) EKC hypothesis is valid for Mexico; and (b) gross capital formation, energy usage, and economic growth impact CO2 emissions positively",8
The wavelet coherence technique revealed (a) bidirectional causality between economic growth and CO2 emissions; (b) unidirectional causality from CO2 emissions to energy usage; and (c) one-way causality running from CO2 emissions to gross capital formation,8
"Nevertheless, rising economic growth has also created certain negative results, including deprivation in certain countries, wealth inequalities, and environmental damage in addition to emissions and global warming",8
"According to research published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) research, global warming caused by human activities has caused average temperatures to increase by approximately 1 °C compared to previous industrial times",13
"If the rise in pollution persists in its current form, temperature increases caused by climate change will reach the 1.5 °C mark between 2030 and 2052",13
"Greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution, particularly CO2 emissions, is believed to be the primary factor causing climate change and global warming",13
A range of forums on sustainable economic growth have been conducted on both domestic and foreign levels,8
"The global community, particularly those residing in developing nations, has started to pay attention to these environmental problems, which has led to enhanced environmental consciousness and several international conventions, including the Kyoto Protocol, which was followed by the Paris Agreement",13
"For this reason, a 15-year plan of action, called the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Growth, composed of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and agreed by all United Nations (UN) member states, was developed at the 2015 UN General Assembly",8
"The naivety regarding environmental degradation has severe and permanent consequences, including adverse weather conditions, rising water acidity, habitat destruction, and decreased biodiversity, in addition to social and economic implications that significantly impact human existence",15
"Approximately 1.3 billion people lost their lives between 1998–2017 due to climate change and geophysical events, resulting in a total economic loss of $US3 trillion [4]",13
"In 2013, the transport and electricity generation sectors were the highest generating industries, accounting for 26.2% and 19% of total GHG emissions, respectively",7
"Mexico has the highest per capita power consumption in Latin America and 1 of the dirtiest energy matrices because its economic growth has led to a sharp rise in electricity demand, which has largely been met through fossil fuels",8
"According to the World Bank [5], the amount of energy consumption in Mexico in 2008 was 180.6 million tons of oil equivalents, which represents about 2.4% of the total energy consumed around the world",7
The fundamental relation between economic growth and environmental deterioration has been widely explored in recent studies,8
"As per this theory, economic growth generally measured by per capita income is related to a rise in environmental deterioration, which is usually calculated by the level of a certain form of pollution (emissions) up to a certain point, beyond which the relation has a detrimental effect [16]",8
"In recent years, this theory's relevance has been illustrated in the literature due to the adverse effects of climate change at the world stage",13
"However, they concluded that energy use, birth rate, and GDP growth impact CO2 emissions positively",8
"The author found evidence supporting the EKC hypothesis, suggesting that financial development, urbanization, and electric consumption positively impact CO2 emissions, while renewable energy and CO2 emission have an insignificant linkage",7
"Additionally, in Brazil, it was determined that energy causes real growth, while a bidirectional causality was found between energy usage and GDP growth in China",8
"In South Korea, Koc and Bulus [31] used yearly data for the period between 1971 and 2017 to examine the influence of trade openness, energy usage, renewable energy, and real growth on CO2 emissions",7
"Furthermore, energy usage, trade openness and renewable energy were found to impact CO2 emissions positively",7
[34] on the causal linkage between economic growth and trade openness using monthly data between 1996 and 2015,8
The authors found unidirectional causality running from economic growth to trade openness,8
The investigators found bidirectional causality between CO2 emissions and economic growth,8
"Trade openness is less volatile compared to the other variables, while economic growth has the highest volatility",8
"As a conceptual study, the authors examined the integration order of energy consumption, real growth, and CO2 emissions using Dickey & Fuller [43] and Perron & Ng [44] unit-root tests",7
"Concerning the main aim of this study, the investigators explored the time–frequency dependence between CO2 emission and real growth and energy consumption in Thailand by employing the wavelet coherence approach",7
"The wavelet power spectrum (WPS) captures the vulnerability of CO2 emission, trade openness, energy usage, gross capital formation, and GDP growth, which is illustrated in Eq. 9",8
" a CUSUM, b CUSUMSq After establishing cointegration between CO2 and the regressors, the study investigates the short and long-run connection between CO2 emissions and economic growth square, trade openness, gross capital formation, and energy usage",8
"Furthermore, findings revealed a positive and significant linkage between economic growth and CO2 emissions in Mexico",8
"In Fig. 2, between 1976 and 1993, rightward-down and rightward-up arrows show that economic growth and CO2 emissions are in phase at different scales (different frequencies), indicating that there is positive and significant correlation between economic growth and CO2 emissions",8
"Furthermore, there is bidirectional causal relationship between CO2 emissions and economic growth",8
"In Fig. 3, at different scales, from 1975 to 1995 and between 1998 and 2012, rightward-down arrows show that energy consumption and CO2 emissions are in phase at different scales (different frequencies), indicating that there is positive and significant correlation between energy consumption and CO2 emissions",7
"Furthermore, there is unidirectional causality running from energy consumption to CO2 emissions",7
This finding underlines how energy consumption is important predictor of CO2 emissions,7
"From this perspective, even as nations are focused on achieving economic growth, this raises the question: what are the environmental implications of globalization? Based on this, the study aimed to explore the interconnection between CO2 emissions, trade openness, energy usage, real growth, and the square of real output and gross capital formation in Mexico for the period between 1971 and 2016",8
"Therefore, to decrease the cost of production, policies encouraging the use of renewable energy sources should be assigned more importance",7
"Mexico can increase the share of renewable energy production in total energy generation with appropriate energy policies, since it is a favorable country for renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and hydro-energy, as it is surrounded by sea on three sides and has many dams and lakes",7
"First, owing to the inefficiency of energy consumption in Mexico, energy intensity is high, and second, total energy output relies on non-renewable sources instead of renewable energy sources",7
"Mexico is below the global average in terms of energy efficiency, while energy intensity is higher compared to several nations",7
The WHO declared SARS CoV-2 as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on 30 January 2020 due to its elevated frequency of conduction distressing multiple people in a short amount of time (WHO Timeline 2020),3
"Nemours researcher attempted to investigate the impact of coronavirus on economy, society, public health, and environment",3
They investigated the impact of COVID-19 on public health and global environment and discussed the ways through which COVID-19 can be controlled,3
"Similarly, Coccia (2020) examined the impact of short-time and long-time countrywide lockdown due to coronavirus pandemic on public health in selected countries of Europe",3
They found that long-time lockdown was not effective as compared to shorter one on public health in selected European countries,3
"Just as some previous medical conditions, for example, smoking, cardiovascular breakdown, hypertension, diabetes, or corpulence, the time of individuals dwelling in an area is regularly a major factor (Florida 2020)",3
"Another perspective that raises the contact of people with wild creatures is deforestation, which may regularly add to the spread of any unfamiliar infection or life forms that can have a particularly wrecking sway as set off by this pandemic of coronavirus and others before it",15
“Changing our Reality: the 2030 Vision for Economic Development” involves 17 SDGs zeroed explicitly on guaranteeing correspondence and neediness easing by 2030,8
"(2020) illustrated that COVID-19, like pneumonia, often triggers respiratory disease strongly related to differences in weather and environment conditions between various areas",3
"While the rising impacts of climate change have long called for global emissions mitigation, this pandemic has cut global emissions more effectively than ever in the past",13
Countries should gleam from their battle against the COVID-19 virus and integrate it into the fight against climate change in several respects,13
"It also encouraged global societies to consider regular socio-economic lockdowns in places with higher carbon emissions, to achieve the Paris Agreement’s defined goals",13
"There is, therefore, a greater need for researchers to focus on it and provide the strength and frequency of smart lockdowns with optimal and mathematical solutions, without undermining socio-economic growth",8
"The unemployment rate has risen, although economic development has steadily declined",8
"Pakistan’s GDP growth in 2018 was 5.8%, and by the end of 2020, it plummeted to 0.95% and is projected to decrease further owing to the financial limitation placed by the lockdown of COVID-19, as exposed by Saleem (2020)",8
"Here are some of the salient characteristics:
 The government has issued a monitoring and inspection procedure for persons at all forms of entry points in reaction to the effects on public health",3
"Nevertheless, to answer a rational issue, there is a stronger need for commitment and research; how long is a socio-economic lockout required to balance economic practices and to breathe clean air and alleviate climate change? Based on the exploration of this research, we have the following recommendations",13
"Because COVID-19 has impacted almost every industry, policies should be as realistic and simple to enforce as they have the least socio-economic growth consequences",8
The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 – Life below water – aims to support and encourage action to conserve and sustainably use the oceans,14
"With this 30% target focusing on “areas particularly important for biodiversity” (CBD 2020), coral reefs, on which coastal people depend to thrive and survive, are high on the agenda.Footnote 1 France, for example, aims to designate 100% of its coral reefs – mainly located in its overseas territories such as New Caledonia, which hosts the second-largest barrier reef in the world (Payri 2019) – as protected areas by 2025, whilst also paying particular attention to the land-sea interface related to reefs for potential “strict protection” (French State 2021:17, 20)",15
"During the (re)occurrence of these FSAs, fish – including iconic and endangered species (e.g., Aswani and Hamilton 2004; Tupper 2007; Sadovy de Mitcheson 2016; Hughes et al",15
"Indeed, this knowledge suggests that multispecies FSA sites should be treated as “ocean bright spots” (Pittman and Heyman 2020), where conservation efforts can replenish exploited stocks and rehabilitate marine ecosystems, and thus accelerate progress towards SDG 14",14
"This recommendation similarly applies to reef passages that are threatened by anthropogenic pressures, including impacts of climate change (aggravating the vulnerability of the reefs; Bell et al",13
"Location of New Caledonia in the South Pacific (small insert), and map of Grande Terre (New Caledonia), showing the diversity of marine protected areas (Parc naturel de la mer de corail, UNESCO sites, and various types of provincial marine protected areas; 'réserve intégrale marine' is the strictest, established to prevent any impact from human activities) (modified from Herrenschmidt et al",15
"Reef passages are therefore often favourite dive spots, especially when they attract iconic species (e.g., sharks, napoleon wrasse, or sea turtles), and host FSAs, for instance of groupers: “At the big Kélé bend we have a school of between 20 and 30 female grey sharks for the most part",15
These above quotes also hint towards a possible mismatch between the statements (mainly of surfers and scuba divers) that reef passages need better protection and fishers’ perceptions that there are already enough protected areas (especially when these are next to their jetties so they have to cross all the reserves to get to their fishing area),15
"This exploratory study on New Caledonian reef passages also provides a first glimpse on local perceptions of their essential ecological and socio-cultural roles—for humans (in the Kanak cosmology but also in terms of important fisheries, transport, and biodiversity protection), for fish (large and small), and for the surrounding reef environment",15
"These places and species are relevant for biodiversity protection and ecosystem health, as well as the intertwined human health and well-being (e.g., Betley et al",15
"At the same time, as pointed out by some interviewees, large parts of New Caledonia’s coast are already covered by protected areas",15
"To protect New Caledonia’s reef passages as keystone places therefore seems to be not only a question of simply increasing the number of protected areas (and closed-off space), but rather to also change the character and quality of the existing protection, thereby increasing the level of respect and acceptance of protection criteria",15
"Customary tenure and taboos cover many coastal and marine areas not covered by formal conservation arrangements, and whilst they can be differentiated from marine protected areas in that they frequently do not have conservation as their primary goal (Foale et al",15
"Further research on reef passages will thus contribute to global conservation agendas, aiming at interdisciplinary and inclusive procedures (e.g., concerning local knowledge) surrounding SDG 14 (Life below water), and specifically the target to protect 30% of the Earth’s surface by 2030 (and resistances to it)",14
"1 Theme and focus areasConference sessions will be organized around the following focus areas:


Life Cycle Thinking to achieve Resource Efficiency




Eco-innovation and Sustainable Products



Proving pathways towards Circular Economy through LCA




Life Cycle Inventory data as a fundamental necessity for Sustainable Production and Consumption



Contributors interested in showcasing their work are invited to submit an abstract with no more than 300 words to the conference organizers",12
"In line with the SDGs, the cornerstone for this year’s Indian Conference on Life Cycle Management (ILCM) is the applicability of life cycle-based tools and approaches in enabling a shift towards Responsible Consumption and Production (RCP)",12
"Conference sessions will be organized around the following focus areas: 
Life Cycle Thinking to achieve Resource Efficiency
 
Eco-innovation and Sustainable Products
 Proving pathways towards Circular Economy through LCA
 
Life Cycle Inventory data as a fundamental necessity for Sustainable Production and Consumption
 Contributors interested in showcasing their work are invited to submit an abstract with no more than 300 words to the conference organizers",12
"The relationship between transport and emissions of carbon dioxide should not be overemphasised by plains, since it is an important feature of economic growth",8
"Therefore, more stringent environmental protection legislation and policies are required to regulate the association concerning transport and pollutants (Ouyang et al",15
The results of this analysis could be crucial to safeguarding the ecological maintainability of infrastructure for eco-friendly transport machinery and economic growth,8
"As a way to study the connection between pollution and economic growth, Grossman and Krueger (1991) started an ecological pollution-economic growth connection",8
"As a result, to properly evaluate the relation between six different ecological pollutants and economic development, a cubic relationship was used among all six",8
"The link gained traction through several models of the greater society that risked data-driven explanations for the unprecedented growth in wealth, income, access to services and other trends",1
"There is a belief that both energy and economic growth go hand in hand, but it is only conflicting with the studies (Adedoyin et al",8
"Moreover, diversification of the energy combination with clean has been identified in order to improve economic growth (Cowan et al",8
"The operations of air-rail transport schemes are compromised by energy consumption, leading to pollution of anthropogenic pollutant that influences the atmosphere changes",7
"The build up of ecological pollutants shows air contamination and, with a long-term economic impact, environmental degradation",15
A number of studies have found a clear relationship between the use of energy from transport and transport networks and economic growth (Saidi et al,8
"Therefore, proper travel as well as visitor operation legislation and energy use have an affirmative effect on economic development",8
"In the intervening time, the long-run balance regarding economic development and local air travellers circulation occurs",8
"From local air traveller transport to economic development, there is a short-run uni-directional association (Hu et al",8
"Economic development and demand for air travel are cointegrated, contributing to a rise in demand for air conveyance because of extensive economic events (Marazzo et al",8
"Economic growth has a long-term impact of passenger’s amount arranged to catch a trip and on air traveller circulation, with the same impact on amount of properties (volumes of air cargo) elated by air (Hakim and Merkert 2016)",8
"One, the initial analysis concentrated primarily on the relationship of economic development with the ecology",8
"In addition, different analyses have involved, to economic growth, other energy and macro variables that are linked with ecological decay",8
Extant scholars indicate the worsening impact on the climate of non-renewable energy and justifying impacts of clean form of energies,7
Moreover the function of transport industries in environmental degradation is investigated in limited literature,15
"A positive change in carbon dioxide emissions would suggest environmental degradation, whereas the negative change indicates environmental sustainability",15
Income represented as (Y) is used as an explanatory variable to proxy for economic growth across the countries under consideration,8
An encouraging change in the income values of the panel countries would indicate economic growth,8
"Fossil fuel  energy consumption is a composition of the following products, namely: natural gas, oil, coal and petroleum",7
"Also, findings from all the three techniques again proofs that non-renewable energy inevitably proofs a negative and significantly impact on pollution",7
The fossil fuel-led pollution may be due to the distribution and reliance on non-renewable energy demand around the surveyed nations,7
"Per the WDI (2019), the average portion of non-renewable energy in the energy mix of the surveyed nations was sixty-seven point nine-three percent, whereas the share of clean energy usage was averaged at 32.07 percent in the overall energy usage",7
"Thus further, the dominance of non-renewable energy usage with little to no renewable contribution is an aspect of the main obstacles of ecological protection.",7
"Issues concerning the environment ranging from global warming and climate change issues have become pertinent risk to environmental pollution which have worried both policy managers, scholars and investors",13
"As a policy standpoint, if you take a look at the area of energy, the need to reinforce commitment from traditional energy sources to be moved away from and switch over to renewable energy sources that are reputed not to  be very harmful to the environment",7
"In such future research, a strong policy advocates for such eco-friendly machines to be available in other to meet the net zero emissions target.",13
"The development of road infrastructure everywhere is going at a fast pace which increases the environmental degradation, fossil fuel consumption, global warming, and depletion of natural materials because of hot mix asphalt (HMA) usage",15
The detrimental effects of generation of waste in large quantities at a global scale and virgin material/energy consumption in HMA construction are of prime concern and need to be addressed,7
The concept of energy saving and enhanced safety during site work has stimulated the need for producing alternative and safer methods of production of asphalt mixtures,7
"The prominent benefits of using CBEMs are the availability of products, energy efficiency, placement operation, and improvement in various other engineering properties (Cohen et al",7
"The global aim is to utilize these waste materials effectively in the manufacturing of cold asphalt mixtures so as to address problems of waste material excess, high energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and exhaustion of virgin raw materials",7
"2020), and fly ash from incinerated municipal solid waste (Joumblat et al",12
"Though the waste materials under discussion have been used widely in studies carried out on hot mixes but in our work, here we will focus on cold bitumen emulsions which are proven to be the promising alternative for cold climatic regions resulting in net zero emissions, the later objective being of paramount importance for the sustainability of present as well as future generations",13
Glass accounts for 0.7% of urban waste created in India (Pappu et al,11
Waste glass recycling can be done to a good extent but variations in glass color on recycling have compelled the stakeholders to go for alternative approaches of glass waste management (Tahmoorian et al,12
"CBEMs sharply bring down energy consumption and carbon emissions in comparison to HMA whereas use of waste glass in place of fine aggregate/filler in CBEMs will save the environment, cost, and natural resources thus achieving many sustainability development goals at one time",7
Sample of waste glass Fly ash is a mineral that is produced as a by-product of coal combustion in thermal power plants (Mistry and Roy 2016),7
Studies have indicated that 8 kg of fly ash is released into the atmosphere when 100 kg of coal is burnt in coal-fired power plants (Xu et al,7
"In order to stop uncontrolled discharge of fly ash into the atmosphere, it is collected from exhaust gases on electrostatic precipitators during coal combustion at power plants (Nassar et al",7
"But due to continuous generation of high-calcium fly ash from coal combustion, research is necessary to aim at recycling and utilizing high-calcium fly ash (Li 2011)",12
"Use of fly ash in CBEMs is very anticipated because it will utilize the waste/by-product materials; secondly, it will decrease environment pollution/energy consumption which is otherwise caused by HMA mixtures and it will prove to be very economical",7
"Use of FA as filler in CBEMs is more advantageous as it will absorb more water which aids in the hydration process, thus helping in removal of trapped water and gain of strength (Nassar et al",3
"Recycling of waste glass from various sources has been achieved without any special refining process, hence making it an economical and environment-friendly product (Simone et al",12
Recycling glass can reduce environmental waste and save energy (Abu Salem et al,12
"Despite a 2.3% increase in world cereal production in 2019 over 2018, the number of people facing severe food insecurity may double from 135 million in January 2020 to 265 million by the end of 2020",2
"Thus, there is a need to adopt more resilient food systems, reduce food waste, and strengthen local food production",12
"Home gardening can play an important role in advancing food and nutritional security during and after the COVD-19 pandemic, while also strengthening the provisioning of numerous ecosystem services (i.e., plant biodiversity, microclimate, water runoff, water quality, human health)",6
"The rapid expansion of the COVID-19 pandemic, engulfing 186 countries between December 2019 and March 2020, has aggravated risks of severe/extreme food insecurity from 135 million in January 2020 to 265 million by the end of 2020 (Dongyu 2020)",2
The severe problem of food insecurity will affect populations in both the developed and developing countries,2
"The hotspots of food insecurity in developing countries are South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean, and the Pacific region",2
"Asia and Africa are two continents which have the most people prone to both under-nourishment and malnourishment, and COVID-19 is aggravating the already serious problems of hunger and the hidden-hunger (Fig. 1)",2
"Yet, cities in these countries are not properly designed to provide sustainable sources of adequate and nutritious food for large population even without the disruptions such as that caused by the COVID-19 virus",2
Major disruptions in food supply chain caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have aggravated the already existing severe problems of hunger and malnutrition along with food wastage,2
A major challenge created by the COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting access to fresh and nutritious food at affordable prices to large and growing urban population,2
"Thus, there is a need to adopt more resilient food systems, reduce food waste along the supply chain, and strengthen the growth of local agricultural capabilities through home gardening and urban agriculture (HGUA)",12
"Global prevalence of undernutrition and malnutrition (statistics on undernutrition and malnutrition are from FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO 2017; Ritchie and Roser 2020; WHO 2020) Urban soils are called Anthropic soils, Anthrosols, or Technosols (FAO/UNESCO 1990) because anthropogenic control of pedogenic processes leads to drastic alterations in soil properties",2
"These soils are characterized by poor physical properties (e.g., high bulk density, low water infiltration rate, low plant available water capacity, and susceptibility to drought), unfavorable chemical properties (e.g., low soil fertility, nutrient imbalance, and low soil organic carbon concentration and stock), and low activity and species diversity of soil biota",15
"Application of compost, mulch, and other sources of biomass-carbon (i.e., lawn clippings, leaf litter, household waste) is essential to improving soil quality and functionality and alleviating soil-related constraints to HGUA",2
"Thus, home gardens can improve food security, diversity, nutritious value, and the microenvironment around the family home",2
"UA strengthens many ecosystem services, such as improving human health, food access to local communities, income and jobs along with economic prospects, aesthetical value and beauty, education about farming, and community resilience (Fig. 2) (Oberholtzer et al",2
"Food, environmental, economic, and ecosystem service benefits of home gardens and urban agriculture The conventional system of bringing food into large cities, over an average distance of 800 to 1500 km, involves a large amount of energy and is vulnerable to disruptions such as that caused by COVID-19 (Altieri 2019)",15
"Thus, there is an urgent need for adopting resilient food systems for meeting a partial food needs through a systematic development of HGUA",2
"UA is already producing about 15–20% of the world’s food supply, and this can play an even more critical role in achieving food security during a global crisis such as that created by the COVID-19 virus",2
"Scientific HGUA (i.e., vertical farming) has the potential to alleviate food and nutritional insecurity, while not only reducing demands on finite natural resources but also providing urban populations with diverse, sustainable, safe, and nutritious food",2
These problems must be addressed to produce healthy and safe food,2
"Bioavailability of heavy metals and organic pollutants can be reduced by input of soil amendments including compost, mulch, recycling of the biomass and use of engineered media, which enhance soil health and promote activity and species diversity of soil biota",12
Replacement soil can be produced through urban waste that can be added into contaminated soil (Brown 2018),11
"In addition to increasing access to fresh and nutritious food, HGUA also strengthen supporting, provisioning, regulating, and cultural/social ecosystem services or ESs (Fig",2
"Urban waste, a major environmental hazard and source of pollution, can become an asset by developing a cyclic economy",11
"Compost made from waste is an essential amendment to restore soil health, enhance productivity, and improve the nutritional quality of food grown under HGUA systems",15
"Sustainable management of soils by practicing HGUA can simultaneously enhance humanity’s culture, civilization, livelihood and health (Minami 2009) and create sustainable communities (Sullivan 2010)",11
"The focus of managing urban soils for HGUA is on agronomic productivity, nutritional quality, and the safety of food products",2
"Sky farming; based on circular economy and using aquaponics and hydroponics, is an innovate and new form of urban agriculture",12
" -021-03821-8Article 
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                Download reference “Conference of the Parties” or COPs is a global climate summit which was started by United Nations (UN) to bring all the countries of the world together in order to escalate goals of Paris Agreement (2015) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (a treaty that came into force in 1994) ( -content/uploads/2021/07/COP26-Explained.pdf)",13
COP26 is one of the biggest and most significant summits on climate change since the Paris Agreement in 2015) ( ),13
"Paris Agreement was an international treaty on climate change and was taken up by 196 Parties at COP21where countries were determined to put forward the plans on how to reduce their emissions, known as Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs",13
"In COP26 nearly 200 countries participated to adopt the ‘Climate Pact’, which is directly related to Paris Agreement rulebook and is a way forward to keep the aims of the treaty alive in order to spike the decarbonisation of the global economy ( _21_6021)",13
"The Glasgow meeting made few progresses, such as cutting down on emissions, declaration on zero-emission vehicles to promote greener transport and acknowledging deforestation, but looking at the outcome of the conference, the evaluation reveals that the targets have not been achieved and overall the roadmap is not very clear",15
Climate change is no more a low-level issue but has become a life threatening global emergency,13
"According to a study by Climate Action Tracker, even if the pledges announced at the COP26 meeting are enforced, still temperatures are predicted to rise by 2.4 °C up to 2100",13
This is much above the target of 1.5 °C accepted at the Paris Agreement and the effects of this are likely to be catastrophic in future ( -021-03433-2),13
"In fact, in the latest report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it has been revealed that the planet is going to witness the limit of 1.5 °C in early 2030s itself, triggering irreversible changes in our environment (such as flooding, drought, bushfires, and destruction of species) and called it ‘code red for humanity’ ( )",13
"To highlight the important connect between oceans and climate change, European Union (EU) called for ‘EU Ocean Day’ at COP26",13
"However, acidification of oceans due to unprecedented rate of global warming and overexploitation of its resources remains to be marginalised at climate change negotiations thus hampering its sustainability ( -failed-to-address-ocean-acidification-but-the-law-of-the-seas-means-states-must-protect-the-worlds-oceans-171949)",13
"To further translate the targets of COP26 into actions, one of the objective was to phase out coal and all nations to stop financing or giving subsidies to new coal-fired power plants",7
Protecting forest loss and reversing unprecedented rate of deforestation is critical for climate change and biodiversity loss,15
"Although more than 130 countries at COP26 have pledged to reverse deforestation by 2030, some of them backed out during the final proposal despite having a large proportion of forest covers that need immediate conservation measures",15
"State of World’s Forest Report by Food and Agricultural Organization FAO (2020) suggests that since 1990, forest loss has been estimated to be 420 million hectare, mainly due to land conversion by humans",15
"According to a data of World Resource Institute, about 12.2 million hectares of forest cover was lost in 2020 only",15
"Other drivers include agriculture, poorly planned infrastructure and illegal logging ( -and-forest-degradation)",15
"In addition, forest fires are another major cause of forest loss",15
"In fact, the report also reveals that there is a strong link between deforestation and forest fires and all of the major fires of 2021 broke out on land deforested in 2020, which was mainly due to anthropogenic reasons (such as agribusiness and cattle pastures) ( -brazilian-amazon-is-burning-again/)",15
Land use change is one of the biggest issues which requires to be taken up seriously,15
"Agriculture, land use and forestry have intricate linkages with global warming and are responsible for around quarter of greenhouse gas emissions",15
"There were expectations that COP26 would witness marked changes in food and agricultural system such as shifting towards sustainable consumption of meat and dairy, but that also showed no concrete achievements",12
"This calls for conservation and restoration of ecosystems and also developing defences, warning systems and resilient infrastructure ( -goal-two-adapt-to-protect-communities-and-natural-habitats/)",9
It is high time to take into account the preservation of lands and livelihoods of indigenous people and forest communities as they are the ones who are least responsible for causing damage to the environment but most affected due to climate change and global warming,13
"A report by WMO suggests that rapid pace of climate change has increased the frequency of natural disasters by five-fold in last 50 years, affecting poorer and developing countries in particular ( )",13
This calls for development of proactive measures and integrated policies to reduce disaster related risks to vulnerable communities,1
"Funding is an intrinsic part of climate change and billions of dollars need to be assembled and allocated for tackling the situation, including for research, innovation and implementation of green technologies",13
"In this context, the goal focuses on mobilising finance, suggesting that the developed countries must ensure to keep their promise of organizing USD 100 billion for climate finance per year",13
An international watchdog such as a specific government or advocacy organization is now necessary so as to implement the policies related to climate change and environment,13
"It is also important to mention that progress towards combating climate change, which is the core of COP26 summit, is also a roadmap to Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (SDGs 2030)",13
"Climate resilient development demands an integrated approach for sustainability, economic growth and equitable human environment",8
Realising the importance of ocean’s contribution towards climate change and scaling up of ocean-based strategies is also needed to accelerate net-zero carbon world as they are the natural sinks to CO2,13
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) should be replaced with Gross Carbon Footprint (GCF) and Gross Sustainable Production (GSP) for assessment of sustainable development and measuring the impact of production on the environment (Arora and Mishra 2019),12
"To increase awareness of the current climate crisis, educational and media programs should also be encouraged, especially the participation of young generation to make it a public movement",13
"Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA), is one such solution and could be useful in meeting the challenges of climate change, which involves conservation, sustainable management and restoration of ecosystems",13
It will reduce climate-related vulnerabilities and build resilience to human communities by harnessing ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation ( -briefs/ecosystem-based-adaptation),15
We are in the midst of a climate crisis that is linked to every realm of our life and civilization,13
The clock is ticking fast and this may be our last chance to keep global temperatures in check and prevent the impacts of catastrophic events due to climate change,13
"For example, over 60% of the municipal solid waste in the USA is produced from yard trimmings, food leftover, dumped paper and wood processing residues (US EPA 2018)",12
Significant food loss occurs from the initial agricultural production to various procedures across the food supply chain (e.g,12
"CH4, CO2) and threatening the ongoing battle against intensive climate change and extreme weather events",13
"In order to achieve the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), innovations of cutting-edge technologies are vital for carbon-efficient and closed loop waste treatment",12
Sustainable food security is one of the SDGs adopted to fight poverty and conserve Earth,2
"improvements in technologies and management, reductions in food loss and biowaste) is urgently needed for alleviating the tremendous environmental pressures (Springmann et al",12
"Therefore, establishing a novel system of biorefinery-assisted soil management is essential to create a closed loop resource cycle (Fig. 1), in which the valuable biomass-derived products can be applied in soil for promoting climate-smart agriculture and sustainable development",2
The resource cycle involving biorefinery to enhance food security The type A strategy is the modification of biomass wastes into macro-biopolymeric materials,2
"An example falls into biochars that are commonly derived from the pyrolysis of agricultural and forestry wastes, which has been a focus of environmental research in recent years",15
"These properties are favourable for improving the soil quality and crop yields through better retention of nutrients and water, enrichment in microbial communities, immobilization of potentially toxic elements and neutralization of soil acidity (Purakayastha et al",2
"The isolated products, in micro- and even molecular size, are readily available to the plants, thereby exerting direct and immediate effects on the soil quality",2
Bio-based additives can be potentially applied in agricultural farmland to enhance soil health and food security,2
It is noteworthy that two technological strategies are complementary to each other for actualizing cost-effective biorefinery-assisted soil management for safeguarding food security,2
"The selection of appropriate treatment technology should depend on the sources and compositions of biomass wastes, which determine the feasibility of the valorization treatment in terms of energy efficiency and chemical use",7
"The derivatives can be further transformed and upgraded via redox, hydration, esterification processes, etc., which allow for a wide diversity of bio-based value-added products for sustainable agriculture",2
The current biorefinery research mostly focuses on renewable energy and industrial applications (Alonso et al,7
"This forward-looking development will necessitate collaborative and concerted efforts from multiple disciplines, including environmental/chemical engineering and soil science, to devise innovative pathways of chemical synthesis and performance validation for sustainable agriculture",2
"The agenda of research and development should take into account rigorous quality assurance/control for compliance with safety-related legislation, considering that the “waste-derived” nature of the biorefinery products could pose a challenge to their application in the food supply chain.",9
"Ester van der Voet from Leiden University gave the other keynote address, on the circular economy as the only systematic solution to our current resource issues (Fig",12
"The circular economy has attracted great attention recently, but its contributions to our sustainability are often unclear",12
"Each mining site has a different story: for example, some have seen massive protests, which might represent a social risk related to resources",1
"The other supply chain–related session aimed to highlight “National hotspot analysis & Global supply chains.” Here, two presentations gave different perspectives on analyzing national environmental hotspots, namely those associated with energy consumption and nutrient intake",7
"In particular, the exploitation of renewable energy is expected to play a significant role in promoting regional energy independence and stimulating regional economies through the use of locally available renewable resources",7
LCA is a potentially useful tool for providing a quantitative understanding of the extent to which renewable energy can contribute to local development,7
"The call for the “Local sustainability & Renewable Energy” featured interrelation topic led to a wide range of submissions, so we arranged three sessions of four presentations each",7
"In the discussion related to the “Energy systems & Scenario analysis” session, the participants were made aware that life cycle–based scenario analyses are essential for designing sustainable energy systems",7
"Increasing attention is being paid to the concept of a circular economy, which offers us an opportunity to transition to a new resource-efficient society paradigm",12
"These sessions aimed to showcase state-of-the-art research topics related to the circular economy concept, with a wide range of studies from both the producers’ and consumers’ perspectives",12
"In the “Circular economy & Sustainable design” sessions, which were presented from the producers’ perspective, many studies proposed methods of improving the resource efficiency of product life cycles for washing machines, personal computers, and jet engines via reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling",12
The “Circular economy & Behavioral science” sessions featured several presentations that focused on understanding consumer behavior and its implications for the environmental impact of human activities,12
"Meanwhile, the presentations on the latter topic explored consumers’ perceptions of recycled materials, fair trade products, and reducing plastic bag use",17
LCA studies on resources are an interesting area in the context of circular economy policies,12
"In the “Circular economy & Input–output analysis” session, three presentations focused particularly on materials and waste",12
"The first presentation integrated the waste input–output (WIO) and MaTrace models, showing the potential of steel recycling in a dynamic WIO case study",12
"Here, the targets include achieving sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources, as well as substantially reducing waste generation, via prevention, reduction, recycling, and reuse",12
"The material stock studies were all by Chinese research groups, indicating that such studies are receiving significant attention in China due to its ongoing economic development",8
"These studies, and the related discussion, considered the economic, labor, and health costs of environmentally friendly and conventional agricultural practices and their impacts on local economies and job opportunities, as well as data availability, uncertainty, and reliability and developing a scenario-based dynamic assessment framework, thereby highlighting the worldwide interest in this area and growing efforts to improve the sustainability of agricultural and forest resources",15
"Consequently, demand by customers leads to dissipation of these elements in supply chains, and consumer attitudes to waste management, such as recycling collection, also affect emissions during the end-of-life stage",12
"They analyzed the carbon footprints of upcycled goods and nitrogen flows in Japanese manufacturing sectors, gave a breakdown of nitrogen consumption in Beijing, and investigated the reductions in ore mining and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions due to the zero emissions policy in Tokyo, providing a wide range of knowledge that could contribute to achieving a circular economy",12
"In addition, a case study for the recovery of rare-earth elements through the recycling of fluorescent lamps indicated that the complementary use of attributional and consequential LCA is of relevance for policy-making support",12
"In this case study, the environmental impacts of recycled rare-earth elements were evaluated in comparison with the impacts of virgin materials by using attributional LCA, while the reduction in energy consumption derived by substituting halogen lamps was evaluated using consequential LCA",7
"In order to evaluate the environmental effects of decarbonization-related technologies, it is important to evaluate their supply chains, upstream to downstream, from a life cycle perspective",13
"The case studies reported in this session included estimating the life cycle CO2 emissions of various hydrogen energy carriers used as fuel for power plants, calculating efficiency improvements in steel mills, LCA of carbon fiber manufacturing, and estimating the cost of municipal waste power generation systems",7
"Since the waste management processes for various products have recently become increasingly complex, innovative waste management and recycling methods are required",12
"In the “Waste management & Recycling” session, a recycling company presented a practical study of developing and applying a method of evaluating a recycling pathway from environmental and economic perspectives",12
"There were also proposals focusing on a specific element or product, such as a benchmark for evaluating the chlorine recovery process in a system for recycling polyvinyl chloride waste and a novel electric-pulse disintegration method applicable to recycling home electrical appliances",12
"Of the five presentations in the “Wastewater & Life cycle thinking” session, three were case studies that evaluated the effects of introducing advanced technologies on reducing environmental burdens via improving wastewater or sludge flows, namely recovering energy and phosphorus in wastewater treatment plants in Sweden, reclaiming domestic wastewater by capacitive deionization (CDI) in Taiwan, and improving the wastewater treatment systems in coffee-manufacturing plants",6
"The other two presentations focused on visualizing hotspots, in order to support making decisions about the spatially concentrated environmental burdens caused by wastewater treatment plants in Taiwan, and analyzing sectoral environmental burdens due to urban wastewater flows in China",6
"For example, applying hybrid IOA to Xiamen city, a special economic zone in China, enabled the sectors that generated the most sewage sludge due to wastewater treatment to be visualized",6
"Taking urgent action to combat climate change has been included in the SDGs as Goal 13, in addition to the 2016 Paris Agreement",13
"Mitigation and adaptation are seen as the two wheels of the climate change cart, although they have often been discussed in different contexts",13
"Several presentations assessed the GHG emissions due to these countermeasures, as well as the specific climate change impact effects they achieve, integrating these according to the LCA framework",13
"Both adaptation and mitigation measures eventually lead to reduced climate change impacts, and LCA can evaluate both effects with the same indicator",13
"Combining both approaches, as discussed in this session, should help us to design appropriate climate change countermeasures and build sustainable societies",13
"MTB Recycling (France), presented by Guilhem Grimaud, Bertrand Laratte, Perry Nicolas: “Evaluation tool for engineering sustainable recycling pathways: a case study” Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd",12
"Kenichi Nakajima, Shoichiro Noda, Keisuke Nansai, Kazuyo Matsubae, Makoto Tomita, Wataru Takayanagi: “Global distribution of hidden flows induced by consumption of metals: iron, copper, and nickel” Qinyu Yang, Heng Yi Teah, Ruth Anne Gonocruz, Pawara Muhammad Uswah, Nikolaos Iliopoulos, Motoharu Onuki: “Sustainability assessment of a green campus initiative: based on solar PV system introduction” Yuki Ichisugi, Toshihiko Masui, Norihiro Itsubo: “Carbon footprint projections for Japan using computable general equilibrium” Ryu Koide, Michael Lettenmeier, Viivi Toivio, Aryanie Amellina, Miho Kamei, Lewis Akenji: “Carbon footprint from household consumption and exploration of reduction potentials for the Paris Agreement target: A preliminary study on Japan and Finland” After the last two EcoBalance conferences (EcoBalance 2014 and 2016), special issues of peer-reviewed international journals were published containing papers from some of the most outstanding conference presentations",13
"In addition, 13 papers were published in a special issue of Resources, Conservation and Recycling for EcoBalance 2016 (Elsevier 2018)",12
"We will also publish a special issue of Resources, Conservation and Recycling, entitled “Life-cycle thinking for a less resource-intensive society” (Elsevier 2019)",12
Climate change is one of the most severe challenges for agriculture worldwide,13
"Besides climate change, increasing environmental pollution due to industrial activities and loss of agricultural lands are the other pressures on crop yields",13
"Therefore, algae are considered valuable bio-resources with promising multifunctional components that can be used for environment-friendly breeding practices for sustainable agriculture (Castellanos-Barriga et al",2
"Alien invasive species in this situation, algae, significantly threaten native ecosystems and biodiversity",15
"Based on these findings, this study proposes that the invasive species S",15
"While the theoretical and conceptual development of food security and nutrition from the 1940s onwards is well documented, very little concise analytical guidance is available to support the current demand for evidence-based policy formulation",2
"Only near the close of the Millennium Development Goal era and in the negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), was the narrow focus of hunger and poverty broadened to include food security and nutrition (SDG2)",2
"The recent and widespread appreciation of the role of nutrition as a fundamental element of development policy, and as a driver of economic growth, generates the need for analyses of the potential nutritional gains of development programmes and policies, and the costs of not acting on nutrition imperatives in multi-sectoral public policy initiatives",8
"The clarification of malnutrition by the 2014 International Conference on Nutrition (and the resultant Rome Declaration on Nutrition), shifts the preoccupation with undernutrition in earlier health and development efforts, to the imperatives for addressing malnutrition in all its forms: undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies, as well as overweight and obesity",2
"The integration of global health targets for nutrition into agriculture, food security and development goals in SDG2 and many regional and national plans, shifts the focus of future policy analysis towards multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary domains",2
"Nutrition Economics: Principles and policy applications is a postgraduate training textbook sequel to the first edition of Food Security, Poverty and Nutrition Policy Analysis: Statistical Methods and Applications (by Babu and Sanyal 2009) and its successor, the second edition (by Babu, Gajanan [who worked with Babu to strengthen the Stata® programming content] and Sanyal, Babu and Sanyal 2014), both of which were targeted at undergraduate training",2
"Part A sets the stage for the other chapters, clarifying the terminology that so often causes confusion in food security and nutrition policy discussions, and thereby establishing the foundations for professionals from different disciplines to engage in meaningful ways",2
What makes the chapter unique in microeconomic terms is the adoption of malnutrition in all its forms,2
"The section includes a review of the historical development of programme evaluation methods, applying the theory to assessing the impact of multiple-objective social protection and school feeding programme design on nutrition outcomes",1
It includes practical tools for designing decentralised food security interventions to illustrate the application of optimisation procedures,2
"Aside from providing a solid go-to text on the economics of nutrition within a broader development framework, the book offers a more fundamental contribution to improving the quality of research in food security and nutrition more generally, and within the SDG development agenda",2
"Since the mass production of plastic packaging over the past 50 years, plastic materials have become one of the main contributors to the increment of solid waste",12
The accumulation and fragmentation of plastics have caused a dilemma in handling and operating the waste management system,12
"As a result, plastic debris or microplastic is pervasive in surrounding ecosystems",14
"Most of these applications have been distributed to the aquatic system through household sewage discharge, industrial activities, human activities, and wastewater treatment plants (Li et al",6
"The secondary source of microplastic is the degradation of larger plastic items into small plastic debris by physical, chemical, and biological processes (Wang et al",14
Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) act as pathways to transport microplastics before entering and accumulating in the aquatic ecosystem,6
"Microplastics in terrestrial sources originated from cosmetics products, fibres from washing clothes, industrial resin pellets, cast-off plastic debris, air blasting process, and inappropriate dumping plastics and leachate at disposal area",14
"The ingestion and entanglement of microplastic by a marine organism leads to death, low growth rate, reproductive complications, and hepatitis (Auta et al",3
"Since microplastics are tiny particles with a high surface area to volume ratio, ageing or weathering aids their adsorption ability towards heavy metals",3
The previous study has investigated the potential effect of primary and secondary sources of microplastic on the soil quality and terrestrial soil–plant model (Allium fistulosum (spring onions)) (Machado et al,2
"Based on the observation in this study, it indicates that the widespread microplastic pollutant could influence the agroecosystems and terrestrial biodiversity (Machado et al",15
"Moreover, the detection of microplastic absorption by plants in the terrestrial ecosystem has several implications for environmental sustainability and human health",15
Incineration is one of the physical methods of plastic waste management and began in 1980 (Ncube et al,12
The heavy metal elements in the microplastics could be derived from the plastic polymers themselves or/and the discarded batteries mixed with municipal solid waste that is trapped in the ash when it has been burned,12
Photocatalysis is extensively implemented in wastewater treatment and used to eliminate abundant hazardous organic compounds,6
"This process provides other benefits, for example, the consumption of sunlight as a clean energy source, high proficiency of degradation, and safe by-product generation",7
"The utilization of two parallel wastewater treatment systems to remove microplastic in wastewater, which is oxidation ditch (OD) and membrane bioreactor (MBR), at a full-scale Wuxi WWTP was investigated by Lv et al",6
It has been discovered that a small fraction of microplastic in the MBR has been discharged through the effluent despite considering that membrane filtration is used as an advanced wastewater treatment technology,6
The elimination of most microplastics was at the beginning of the wastewater treatment process before the activated sludge process,6
"maritimum is a fungus that occurs naturally in the marine ecosystem, PE is a biodegradation agent, and PE is one of the most extensively used polymers",14
"As evidence of biodegradation occurred, the FTIR and 1H NMR analysis demonstrated the formation of O-C and O = C functional groups",3
"In this milieu, on the ground of Kaya’s identity and the novel multivariate quantile-on-quantile regression (QQR) (extension of Sim and Zhou’s (2015) bivariate QQR model), the present research studies the impact of industrial value-added (IGVA), population, energy intensity, and carbon intensity on CO2 emissions in India",7
The current analysis also offers policy suggestions for environmentally friendly sustainable economic growth and to achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs) of India,8
Political campaigns to address climate change issues have advanced drastically during the last three decades,13
"In light of this, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was founded in 1992 at the Rio Summit",13
"In addition, governments are now keener than ever to implement solutions to reduce the environmental degradation brought on by their economic route due to the SDG agenda announced in 2015 (Irfan et al",15
The 2015 Paris Agreement and COP26 obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are further behind schedule in terms of implementation (Falk et al,13
"In terms of climate change, India has done remarkably well during the last decade (Rej et al",13
"India is the only G20 country on pace to accomplish the goals of the Paris Agreement, according to climate transparency",13
"The performance of India’s industrial sector, however, is one of the main issues impeding the country’s ability to successfully tackle climate change",13
"However, materials, technology, and renewable energy sources are the three main components of a shift to a green industry",7
The estimation of India’s energy security will change as a result of the switch from fossil to renewable energy sources,7
"However, the supply of renewable energy materials and machinery is geographically concentrated, raising worries about energy security as the green shift develops",7
"Consequently, it is believed that a nation with high energy consumption will likewise have high standards of living but increasing energy use leads to higher CO2 emissions; this hurts the environment",7
The industrial sector of many nations is working to use energy from clean sources to address the pertinent issue of environmental deterioration in order to achieve sustainable growth and development,8
"However, the industrial sector is crucial in achieving the COP26 commitment to decarbonization because it contributes significantly to the economies of many developed and developing nations, and India is no exception",13
" In this backdrop, in the pathway of the carbon neutrality agenda of India, the present paper tries to re-estimate Kaya’s identity (1990) based on the newly developed multivariate quantile-on-quantile (QQR) regression approach (extension of Sim and Zhou’s (2015) bivariate QQR model) using the bi-annual data from 1995 to 2020 while considering the energy intensity and carbon intensity as controlled variables that are unexplored in the sitting of Kaya’s identity previously for India",7
"Second, the model that was taken into account for this study, particularly the addition of carbon intensity and energy intensity, is somewhat innovative",7
"In light of decarbonization in India and elsewhere, this will provide insights into the underlying elements driving the attainment of the SDGs",13
"Finally, academics and policymakers will benefit from this study’s findings by better understanding how asymmetrical environmental effects are caused by industrial value-added, carbon intensity, population dynamics, and energy intensity",7
"Using Kaya’s identity, Zhang (2009) breaks down China’s carbon emissions into four categories: CO2 emission intensity, energy intensity, structural shifts, and economic activities",7
Štreimikienė and Balezentis (2016) linked the GDP growth and GHG emissions by Kaya identity in the EU region,8
The studies on the nexus between CO2 emissions and energy intensity plus carbon intensity are the third thing we have covered,7
"(2022), who employed the Bootstrap ARDL approach for China from 2000 to 2019, economic development significantly increased China’s carbon emissions, raising the possibility of more effective regulation",8
(2022) discovered that the G7 nations’ CO2 emissions have been positively and significantly impacted by economic development,8
Kirikkaleli and Adebayo (2022) also found a negative nexus between economic growth and environmental sustainability in Brazil,8
"According to their forecast, greenhouse gas emissions will increase over the next decades due to both population growth and economic growth",8
"They found that the environmental effect of population, urbanization, industrialization, GDPPC, and energy intensity is decreasing",7
"Based on their suggested scenarios, they also asserted that raising the energy intensity is an excellent way to reduce CO2 emissions",7
Energy intensity and carbon intensity are comparable,7
"As the amount of emissions from a unit of energy utilized increases, the emission level climbs in lockstep with energy intensity",7
"From 1971 to 1991, the industrial sector’s total carbon emissions from 10 OECD countries were subjected to adaptive weighted division rolling, which revealed that these countries’ decreases in aggregate carbon intensity may primarily be attributable to falls in energy intensity (Greening and Bernow 2004)",7
"Concerns have been raised about the manufacturing sectors’ carbon emissions in 13 different countries, and the reduced emissions in the majority of those countries were caused by decreased energy intensity (Schipper et al",7
(2011) looked at changes in the carbon intensity of China’s manufacturing industry and found that efficiency was the reason for the decline in carbon intensity,9
(2020) examined the impacts of energy intensity on environmental deterioration and validated the EKC hypothesis,7
"They discovered that energy intensity reduces CO2 emissions at all quantiles, but it has the highest mitigating impact at the 90th quantile",7
"2014), and others, also demonstrated a comparable impact of increased energy intensity on their CO2 emissions",7
"In their study of the impact of manufacturing value-added (MVA) on environmental quality in India, Hossain et al",9
"In the Kaya identity framework, this study also includes two novel control variables, such as carbon intensity and energy intensity, which were not present in earlier studies",7
"Similar conclusions are also made by Adebayo (2022), who finds that in the majority of quantiles, Turkey’s population density contributes to environmental degradation",15
"Therefore, we have again postulated an asymmetric relation between carbonization and economic growth with the given industrialization",8
"We have found that the lower energy intensity has the highest and most significant negative impact on carbonization (LnCO2) at quantiles ranging from 0.3 to 0.9 quantile, given the 0.2 to 0.6 quantile of LnIGVA",7
"The impact of an increase in energy intensity on LnCO2 is highest at its 0.5 to 1 quantile, given LnIGVA’s 0.8 to top quantile",7
"Therefore, we have again observed the asymmetric relation between carbonization and energy intensity with the given industrialization",7
"From our study, we have found that there exists an asymmetric impact of all the independent variables, population, per-capita GDP, energy intensity, carbon intensity, and industrial value added on the carbonization under Kaya’s identity for the Indian economy",7
Initiatives to promote decarbonization in industries and increase industrial energy savings could lead to industrialization with no impact on emissions,13
"Third, the government should encourage initiatives to make sure that GDP growth is fair and helpful to the underprivileged",8
"Fourth, although oil and gas are now India’s main energy sources, the government has to create a long-term plan to change the country’s energy balance in order to encourage sustainable energy",7
"According to these SGDs of the Millennium Declaration, commitments are to solve the problems of extreme poverty and set specific goals by 2015 (Peterson 2006)",1
"Also, the results of various researches showed that the level of economic growth of the region is the basis of sports industry development and the development of the sports industry is an important tool to encourage the growth of the regional economy and society (Shi et al",8
One of the main activities of large-scale companies in the distribution system of goods which leads to economic development (Rastogi and Arvis 2014),8
"One of the problems with consuming sporting goods is that they are limited to primary resources; Therefore, we need sustainable consumption of goods and resources (Bloodhart and Swim 2020)",12
"Therefore, it can be said that the results of this study will probably contribute to the SD of the sporting goods industry in developing countries",9
China has consumed relatively high energy consumption and large carbon emitters since the 2000s compared to other emerging countries,7
This study explores the impact of non-economic factors on energy consumption and CO2 emissions in China from 1991 to 2019,7
"By using a linear autoregressive distributed lagged (ARDL) bounds testing approach for a cointegration link between non-economic factors, energy consumption, and CO2 emissions",7
"The result shows that education, law and order, and social globalization have negative impact on energy consumption and CO2 emissions in long run",7
The results show that population growth exerts positive pressure on energy consumption and CO2 emissions,7
The impact of non-economic factors in energy consumption and CO2 emissions are also likely to be evident in the future,7
The findings of this study can be valuable to authorities and policymakers in the terms of installing clean energy and green economy,7
Environmental problems have become the major concerns all over the world as global warming and climate change are increasingly putting pressure on ecosystems and humans (Chatti 2020; Sohail et al,13
Sustaining ecological quality without losing economic growth has become the key research agenda throughout the entire world,8
The economic performance of the Chinese economy mainly depends upon its manufacturing performance which is also the main source of high energy consumption and emissions,7
SDG 13 is mainly emphasizing climate action for sustainable development,13
"In this milieu, the Paris agreement (2015) is also an important development to mitigate GHG emissions in a global arena",13
"Following the SDGs agenda, it has become the key concern of the emerging economies to resolve the dual challenges of economic performance and energy consumption, along with environmental quality",7
The literature has mainly considered economic factors as responsible for high energy consumption and environmental pollution,7
The non-economic factors have a crucial role in explaining energy consumption and environmental pollution because they not only interact with economic factors but also directly influence a society’s preferences for clean environment,7
"In this situation, the research scholars need to move beyond conventional avenues of energy consumption and CO2 emissions and need to think about other possibilities such as education and awareness to tackle energy and environmental related issues",7
"The role and importance of non-economic indicators such as education, rule of law, and social globalization are critical in resolving ecological unbalance",16
"The literature on institutions, energy, and CO2 emissions has mainly pointed out political stability and lack of corruption in improving the energy sector and ecological outcomes",16
The importance of the rule of law for environmental performance has received little attention in contemporary literature,16
"The rule of law provides insight on the behavior of society while abiding by the law, mainly in the perspective of policy and regulation execution (Greenidge et al",16
"An effective rule of law ensures policy implementation and confines the firms to apply environmental regulations (Welsch 2004a, b)",16
The extant literature has not produced clear evidence on the impact of the rule of law on GHG emissions,16
Some studies have validated the environmental improving role of the rule of law,16
"For example, Panayotou (1997) proved the favorable effect of the rule of law on environmental quality",16
(2019) also exhibited that a firm rule of law improves economic prosperity and mitigates CO2 emissions,16
"In a recent study, Muhammad and Long (2021) investigate the relationship between rule of law and the environmental performance for “belt and road initiative (BRI)” countries",16
"On the other hand, Abid (2016) showed that democratic norms and rule of law escalate CO2 emissions",16
"Whether social globalization is a panacea or a problem for clean energy and the environment, the literature is not yet conclusive",7
"Recently, China has approved an “environmental protection tax law in 2018,” to limit GHG emissions, while the tax will generate $7.68 billion each year (Jia et al",15
"The non-economic factors in China are also growing side by side with the economic factors; hence, in this study, we have selected China for examining the nexus between non-economic factors, energy consumption, and CO2 emissions",7
"Given the premises discussed above, the main goal of this research study is to explore the role of non-economic factors in energy consumption and environmental quality in China over the period 1985–2019",7
"Few past studies have explored the non-economic factors, energy consumption, and environmental pollution nexus but their findings are inconclusive",7
"This study has a novel and comprehensive contribution to the literature, as it explores the role of non-economic factors on both energy consumption and CO2 emissions in a single study using the ARDL framework",7
"First, unlike past studies which focus on economic dimensions, it mainly focuses on non-economic indicators to explain energy consumption and CO2 emissions in China",7
"Second, it provides fresh evidence of non-economic indicators on energy consumption and emissions using an updated time series data",7
"Finally, the “Conclusion and policy” section provides a “conclusion and suggests policy implications.” It is well-documented fact that corruption exerts a significant impact on the economy of a country in several aspects, such as domestic savings (Swaleheen 2008), inflation (Samimi et al",16
"2012), investment (Javorcik and Wei 2009), and economic growth (Saha and Gounder 2013)",8
Corruption also exerts a negative influence on energy sector,16
Energy efficiency is the minimum cost approach that can be instigated to develop the economy of a country without increasing the consumption of energy,7
This approach is imperative because it can significantly minimize environmental degradation,15
The nexus between pollution emissions and corruption has provoked considerable attention (Akhbari and Nejati 2019; Lapatinas et al,16
"The existing literature demonstrates that corruption directly and indirectly affects pollution emissions (Welsch 2004a, b)",16
One strand of existing literature reported that corruption results in increasing pollution emissions by distorting policies of environment (Baloch and Wang 2019 and Pei et al,16
"For example, Pellegrini and Gerlagh (2006) study infer that corruption considerably weakened stringency of environmental policy and confirmed that corruption contributed significantly affected environmental policies",16
"Dincer and Fredriksson (2018) combined environmental policy stringency, trust, and corruption into an analytical framework and claimed that trust level influenced the effect of corruption on the environmental policy stringencies",16
(2021) confirmed that public sector corruption might exacerbate pollution emissions by narrowing the transparency of the environment,16
"The first strand of literature is related to those studies investigating the association between human capital, energy consumption, and pollution emissions (Akram et al., 2019; Khan et al., 2021)",7
(2020) reported that higher human capital minimizes the consumption of dirty energy and increases consumption of clean energy in OECD economies,7
"In case of China, Ahmed et al.’s (2021) study infers that human capital reduces environmental degradation",15
Our study extends this discussion by examining the role of non-economic factors in energy consumption and pollution emissions in China,7
"The non-economic factors under consideration are corruption, social globalization, education, and rule of law",16
"In the existing literature, no study has incorporated the role of these factors in the nexus of energy consumption and pollution emissions in China",7
The factors influencing energy consumption and CO2 emissions in high pollutant countries have become the subject of extensive empirical research efforts in recent years,7
Past studies also noted that non-economic factors are also important for energy consumption and environment (Shahbaz et al,7
"So, we modify the specifications (2) in error correction format as given below:
 Specifications (3) and (4) are ARDL forms of energy consumption and CO2 models and give long- and short-term estimates through one equation",7
The data nature of our study is annual and limits us to cover the data between 1991 and 2019 because data for corruption and law and order do not cover before 1990,16
This study used energy consumption and CO2 emissions as dependent variables and energy consumption is measured in quad BTU and CO2 emissions is measured in kilotons,7
"While energy consumption, CO2, and population variables are converted into natural logs, next, we employ a dataset for the period 1991–2019 to estimate the preferred ARDL energy consumption and CO2 emissions models.
 In the first step, we employed unit root tests with and without structural breaks to determine the order of integration of all selected variables",7
Our model considers takes energy consumption (EC) as the dependent variable,7
"The independent variables (non-economic variables) are education, corruption, law and order, social globalization, and population.
 The short-run results indicate that education has a negative and significant effect on EC in China",16
The numerical value of education suggests that a 1-year increase in education will decrease the demand for energy consumption by 0.275%,7
"Similarly, a one-unit increase in rule of law will decrease EC by 0.042%",16
It means social globalization does not increase energy consumption significantly in the short run,7
The increasing demand for energy consumption in China is mainly attributed to its large size of population,7
"The effect of corruption, however, becomes insignificant in the long run while the effect of rule of law remaining remains negative and significant in the long run",16
"Similarly, Majeed (2018) social globalization promotes ICT growth that increases the production of ICT goods and energy consumption",7
"Similarly, rule of law is also negatively and significantly associated with CO2 emissions",16
The coefficient of rule of law shows that one-unit increase in rule of law will mitigate emissions by 0.391%,16
"Similarly, rule of law is also negatively and significantly associated with CO2 emissions",16
The coefficient of rule of law shows that a 1% increase in rule of law will mitigate emissions by 0.61%,16
"Thus, corruption is not the main detriment of CO2 emissions in China, while rule of law is the key variable that can influence emissions both in the short and long run",16
"The outcomes of both tests prove the stability of the CO2 model for China.
 CUSUM for energy consumption model CUSUM of squares for energy consumption model CUSUM for CO2 emissions model CUSUM of squares for CO2 emissions model This study examines the influence of non-economic factors on energy consumption and CO2 in China from 1991 to 2019",7
This study uses ARDL approach to examine the cointegration relationship between the concern variables and measure the short and long estimates of energy consumption and CO2 emissions,7
The findings suggest that a cointegration relationship exists between non-economic factors and energy consumption as well CO2 emissions in China,7
"Findings show that education, law and order, and social globalization have a negative impact on energy consumption, while the impact of population on energy consumption is negative in China in long run",7
"Furthermore, education and law and order are inversely linked with energy consumption and CO2 emissions in short run",7
These results hold significant policies for governmental to the reduction of China’s fossil fuel energy consumption and CO2 emissions,7
The findings reinforce that the significance of optimizing the social structure and social globalization may help strong roles in changes in energy consumption,7
"Energy consumption and CO2 emissions are predominantly affected by economic factors in any economy; thus, authorities use the social factors as instruments for a clean environment",7
"To reduce conventional energy consumption and CO2 emissions, China needs a gradual shift from fossil fuel energy sources to clean energy sources by using education, institution, and social globalization",7
"Population growth has positive pressure on energy consumption and CO2 emissions; thus, China should reduce the population growth in the economy",7
"To decarbonize the economy, China needs to increase energy efficiency and maintain population growth in the future",7
"Future research on the energy sector and related policies should emphasize demographic, consumers’ preferences, lifestyles, and cultural factors in explaining energy consumption and CO2 emissions at the national and provincial levels in China",7
Micro-level energy consumption and CO2 emissions data are essential for this purpose.,7
"Studies argue a non-linear relationship between economy and environmental degradation, known as the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC)",15
"This paper, therefore, examines the correlation between changes in environmental conditions and global economic growth, incorporating the growth rate of key control variables (population, financial development, merchandise trade and regulations)",8
"Thus, we intend to identify and address the main gaps in these EKC studies and analyse the impacts of worldwide economic growth on global environmental change",8
"Meanwhile, biochemical cycles, ozone depletion and freshwater use, land change and biodiversity loss boundaries do not support the existence of the EKC shape using the same methodology",15
"To our knowledge, this is the first study using an integrated environmental perspective within the EKC framework, which allows the effect of the environmental degradation to be evaluated cumulatively together with a global scale",15
"Most of these studies have reached a consensus that the climate change process is attributed to anthropogenic influence from industry, agriculture, transportation and other human activities (Deschênes and Greenstone 2007; IPCC 2018b; Tapia Granados and Carpintero 2013)",13
"Similarly, the fifth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),Footnote 2 an organisation that provides a clear scientific view on the current state of climate change and possible environmental and socioeconomic impacts, states that most global environmental change since the 1950s have been generated by humankind (IPCC 2014)",13
"In the pollution-economic growth nexus, one of the most ground-breaking and studied hypotheses in scientific literature is the EKC",8
"It suggests that during the early stages of economic development, environmental quality deteriorates and then as the economy grows, environmental conditions start to improve over time (Grossman and Krueger 1991; Selden and Song 1994; Shafik 1994)",8
"Specifically, in terms of the contaminants utilised within the EKC literature, the most influential pollutants include SO2, SPM, smoke, NO2, CO, CO2, oxygen regimes, faecal contamination, deforestation and heavy-metal contamination in rivers (Bhattarai and Hammig 2001; Caravaggio 2020; Chua 1999; Culas 2007; S",15
"Other less influential measures such as threatened bird and mammal species (McPherson and Nieswiadomy 2005), the percentage of national protected areas (Bimonte 2002) and land consumption (Bimonte and Stabile 2017) have been used as an environmental quality indicator to test the EKC hypothesis",15
"For example, Jha and Murthy (2003) conducted their study using an index that included different degraders and pollutants in order to capture a more comprehensive notion of environmental degradation",15
"Although the EF seems to be a comprehensive measure to explain environmental degradation, new approaches have emerged from an integrated global sustainability assessment (Linnenluecke et al",15
"To analyse the impacts of global economic growth on global environmental change, the PB act as a proxy of changes in environmental conditions",8
The biodiversity loss panel includes 2171 observations for conventional methods and 1965 for system GMM analysis,15
"For the first panel (climate change), the environmental indicator is given by the seasonality correctedFootnote 4 average worldwide annual trend for CO2 concentrations",13
"In the case of the biodiversity loss boundary panel, the number of threatened species was used as a dependent variable",15
"This environmental data is drawn from the world’s central authority on the conservation status of species, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).Footnote 6 This association provides taxonomic data, conservation status and distribution information on plants and animals",15
"Notably, it compiles the Red List of Threatened Species,Footnote 7 which catalogues the relative risk of extinction for categories of critically endangered, endangered and vulnerable species (IUCN 2017)",15
The fourth PB assessed was ocean acidification,14
"On the other hand, the CL indices measure freedom of expression and belief, associational and organisational rights, the rule of law and personal autonomy and individual rights",16
"Thus, we come to the research question of whether the inverted-U relationship between selected global and long-term environmental indicators and the economic growth rate of 177 countries exists as a global EKC, and whether the changes of specific factors such as ∆POP, ∆FD, ∆MT, ∆PR and ∆CL might explain this behaviour",8
"These PB will depend on the economic growth ∆GDP, the squared economic growth ∆GDP2 (to measure the quadratic effect, or in other words, the non-linear specification) and the changes of some control variables (∆X′) mentioned previously",8
"In summary, this chapter seeks to validate the inverted-U relationship between environmental variables under the PB context and an economic variable as the economic growth rate of 177 countries",8
"The highest deviation of these boundaries is in the ozone and biodiversity boundaries and the lowest one by the climate change dimension (∆CCO2).
 The average growth rate for ∆GDP is 0.057 with a maximum value of 1.373 and a minimum value of − 1.420",13
"On the other hand, the long-term economic growth (∆GDP2) only shows a negative correlation for ∆FD and ∆PR, and is only significant for ∆FD",8
"Meanwhile, ∆OZONE, ∆FRESHWATER and ∆LAND present a negative relationship with economic growth in the sample with significance for ∆OZONE and ∆LAND",8
"However, ∆FRESHWATER shows a highly positive relationship with the long-term economic growth (∆GDP2)",8
"In contrast, ∆CCO2, ∆FERTILIZER and ∆OCEAN boundaries state a negative associated with the long-term in economic output, being significant in all cases.
 On the other hand, the relationship between the long-term economic growth and changes of certain environmental indicators show a positive linkage, specifically for ∆FRESHWATER, ∆LAND and ∆BIODIVERSITY with significance for ∆FRESHWATER and ∆BIODIVERSITY",8
"On the contrary, ∆CCO2, ∆FERTILIZER and ∆OCEAN indicate a significant negative relationship with economic growth as well as ∆OZONE, which does not show any significance with the long-term economic output",8
"Moreover, biochemical cycles and biodiversity loss panels exhibit the same behaviour for the linear specification",15
"Under the non-linear specification, the relationship of the ∆FRESHWATER variable with economic growth rate is a U-shape at the 10% level, while under the linear specification they show a negative association at the same level of significance",8
"The Ocean Acidification panel follows a significant inverted U-shape between economic and environmental variables, while the linear relationship does not show any significance",14
"Both panels, entail high significance for linear specification with α2 = − 0.0081 and α2 = 0.1168, respectively.
 The ∆OZONE variable only shows significance for the linear specification in relation with the global economic growth, with negative association, as well as the Land Change panel, which shows the same patterns for its dependent variable",8
"The Climate Change panel has results that differ under the OLS specification, and therefore the results under fixed-effect specifications do not support the EKC hypothesis, like previous studies using the same methodology (Duarte et al",13
"Panel results indicate a positive relationship between the global economic growth and changes of certain environmental indicators (∆CCO2, ∆FERTILISER, and ∆BIODIVERSITY)",8
"Following the non-linear system GMM approach, the Climate Change dimension indicates an inverted U-shape between environmental indicators and the ∆GDP variable, as in the OLS conventional method, confirming the existence of a global EKC for the panel",13
"As the system GMM results show, Freshwater Use and Land Change boundaries follow a U-shape between their environmental indicators and the global economic growth rate with high significance",8
"At the same time, a 1% increase of economic growth produces an increase of 16.23% in the ∆BIODIVERSITY indicator when the ∆GDP is considered and does not present significant effect when ∆GDP2 is analysed, rejecting the EKC hypothesis",8
"As a result, the biodiversity loss panel results are not in line with previous studies which report an inverted-U shape using similar environmental indicators such as the number of threatened species or deforestation (Bhattarai and Hammig 2001; Culas 2007, 2012; McPherson and Nieswiadomy 2005)",15
"Under system GMM methods, the negative association is solely in the Climate Change and Land Change panels",13
"For instance, the Ocean Acidification and Freshwater Use dimensions show a positive relationship when the ∆FD increases by 1%",14
"That means that the environmental quality improves with a 1% increase of FD, being consistent with the literature supporting its contribution to decreasing environmental degradation because of cleaner investment (Jalil and Feridun 2011; Tamazian and Rao 2010)",15
"Although changes in ∆MT have different effects depending on the boundary evaluated, the variable is significant for boundaries under the three econometric methodologies, except for Land Change and Biodiversity Loss panels which do not present any significance under the system GMM approach",15
"That is, a 1% increase of the ∆MT for Climate Change, Biochemical Cycles and Freshwater Use panels results in a rising effect on the ∆CCO2, ∆FERTILISER and ∆FRESHWATER variables using a more appropriated econometric procedure such as system GMM",13
They justify the relationship because the export and import of manufactured goods increases the level of energy consumption and therefore the environmental indicator concentrations (Soumyananda Dinda 2004; Suri and Chapman 1998),7
"On the other hand, the same control variable shows a negative relationship between dependent variables of Ozone Depletion and Ocean Acidification panels",14
That means ∆MT might contribute to improving levels of environmental degradation,15
The boundary with higher correlation with the past value is climate change,13
"Similarly, the Arellano-Bond postestimation suggests that there is no autocorrelation for differenced residual in the first order AR (1) for seven panels, while in the second order AR (2) the Biodiversity Loss panel does not reject the null hypothesis",15
"In summary, when testing seven out of nine environmental dimensions under econometric models, such as the system GMM procedure, and covering all endogeneity types, the EKC hypothesis is supported for the climate change dimension",13
"Freshwater Use and Land Change boundaries justify a U-shape between environment-income factors, while the Biochemical Cycles dimension increases monotonically with economic growth rate",8
"In general, these findings are consistent with using the conventional OLS method, which also supports the EKC hypothesis for the Climate Change dimension",13
"(2009b), our study provides an examination of the growth rate of seven out of the nine boundaries to test the effects of economic growth on them in a global sample of 177 countries",8
"As suggested by the EKC hypothesis, the level or growth rate of the environmental indicator is expected to rise with the economic growth of the majority of economies, and thus contribute to global warming",8
"However, once economic growth reaches a tipping point, the growth rate of environmental dimensions should decrease, improving environmental conditions",8
"In this context, our estimated results state that the climate change boundary indicates that the EKC shape exists when the changes in CO2 concentrations are factored into the analysis",13
"In this regard, there is special attention on the Biodiversity Loss dimension, which shows high values of deterioration",15
"During the last year, there has been growing, significant evidence that degradation of natural capitalFootnote 17 and biodiversity loss are being caused by society, and the variety of benefits that nature may offer us, such as the provision of food, fuel, fibre and freshwater, are being ignored, contributing to a high level of disease transmission, among other key issues (Dasgupta Review 2020; Keesing et al",15
This study examined the role of alternative and nuclear energy in stimulating the environment sustainably while mediating the function of government expenditure and economic growth in the top three highest CO2 emitter countries,8
We apply advanced econometric methodologies for empirical analysis from 1981 to 2016 and find long-run relationships among the variables that suggest general government final consumption expenditure and economic growth are positively related to CO2 emissions,8
"Moreover, alternative and nuclear energy and the square root of economic growth (EKC) improve environmental sustainability",8
The general government’s final consumption expenditure and economic growth deteriorate environmental sustainability,8
"Access to electricity in poorer countries has begun to accelerate, renewable energy is making impressive gains in the electricity sector, and energy efficiency has improved",7
"The importance of embracing and practising sustainability values is of utmost importance for communities because of the impacts of climate change, species biodiversity, deteriorating water supply, and ecological footprint (Salisbury 2021)",13
This description of sustainable development has since been referred to in numerous definitions and clarifications of sustainable energy,7
An expanding variety of research shows a strong relationship between climate change and carbon dioxide emissions (CO2 emissions),13
"Renewable energy sources like wind, hydroelectric power, and solar are more sustainable than non-renewable fossil fuels",7
Nuclear power is also a low-carbon renewable energy source and has a safety record comparable to solar and wind energy sources,7
"Carbon capture and storage innovation can be incorporated into power plants to eliminate harmful emissions, yet it is costly and rarely carried out (Ritchie 2020)",7
Wind and solar energy sources generated 8.5% of worldwide electricity in 2019,7
"More than 2.6 billion people worldwide depend on contaminating fossil fuels such as charcoal or wood to cook, and over 750 million people worldwide lack access to electricity",7
Climate change moderation scenarios expressed pathways in which the world could rapidly shift to low-carbon energy generation techniques (Lyu et al,13
"This study examined the role of alternative and nuclear energy in stimulating the environment sustainably while mediating the role of government expenditure and economic growth of the top three highest CO2 emitter countries (China, United States, and India)",8
Non-renewable energy sources are indeed a challenge for a sustainable environment,7
"The world economy has experienced prolific consumers of renewable energy sources in daily usage (Murshed 2021b, 2021c; Murshed and Tanha 2021)",7
"However, the world economy is still feeling difficulties in achieving its climate change ambitions",13
The increase in energy generation from renewable energy sources reduces CO2 emissions,7
"Environmental sustainability is not consistent with swift economic growth, as ecological deterioration is necessary (Khan et al",8
"The indirect effects may impact economic growth and, subsequently, the environment",8
Sustainability is regarded as the practice that stimulates economic growth but does not worsen environmental settings through inadequate management of natural resources (Khan et al,8
"Grossman and Krueger (1995) presented the primary environmental sustainability perception, examined the interaction between greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and economic growth",8
"Later, Grossman & Krueger (1995) explore the environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) and specify that economic growth is a vital environment engine (Ozcan et al",8
(2020) checked the asymmetric impact of economic growth on Pakistan’s ecological footprint,8
They explained that economic growth increases ecological footprint,8
"Renewables and alternative energy (clean energy) sources like wind, solar, biofuels, hydro, and others are at the heart of the energy transition towards a low or zero carbon-intensive and sustainable energy system (IEA 2020b)",7
Nathaniel and Abdul (2020) expressed that renewable energy consumption improves environmental sustainability (Ahmad et al,7
(2020) estimated the role of renewable energy in stimulating environmental sustainability,7
They demonstrated that renewable energy consumption reduces the ecological footprint (Al-Mulali and Ozturk 2015; Murshed 2020; Sharif et al,7
"The reliable, and scalable low-carbon energy source, alternative, and nuclear energy, will play a crucial role for the world to decrease its bases on non-renewable fossil fuels to resolve the continuing air pollution and climate change (Ahmad et al",13
The share of alternative and nuclear energy sources needs to be fundamentally robust because of its internalizing health and environmental costs and distinctive energy intensity (Khan and Hou 2021b; Tawiah et al,7
(2019) reported that lack of environmental quality due to economic development might worsen health and overall environmental quality,8
"Accordingly, higher government expenditure is more likely to include redistributive transfers, resulting in increased income equality and thus to higher demand for environmental quality",10
This study examined the role of alternative and nuclear energy in stimulating the environment sustainably while mediating the function of government expenditure and economic growth of the top three highest CO2 emitter countries from 1981 to 2016,8
"where \({\beta }_{0}\) in an intercept, \({\beta }_{1} \mathrm{to} {\beta }_{4}\) reflects the coefficients of ALTER (alternative and nuclear energy sources), GOVER (general government final consumption expenditures), GDP (economic growth), and GDP2 (EKC), respectively",8
"It includes nuclear and hydropower, solar power, geothermal, etc",7
"Table 1 reports the outcome of descriptive and principal component statistics for CO2 emissions, alternative and nuclear energy, general government final consumption expenditure, economic growth, and the square root of economic growth (EKC) of the top three highest CO2 emitter countries",8
"Similarly, the highest level of diversification is predicted in the economic growth data set as the standard deviation value of economic growth is the highest",8
"CO2 emissions, alternative and nuclear energy, economic growth, and the square root of economic growth are significant at a 1% level of significance",8
"Table 3 presents the outcome of second-generation panel unit root tests for CO2 emissions, alternative and nuclear energy, general government final consumption expenditure, economic growth, and the square root of economic growth (EKC) of the top three highest CO2 emitter countries",8
"However, CO2 emissions, alternative and nuclear energy, economic growth, and the square root of economic growth are not significant at level",8
"Moreover, CO2 emissions, alternative and nuclear energy, general government final consumption expenditure, economic growth, and the square root of economic growth move together in the top three highest CO2 emitter countries from 1981 to 2016",8
"Overall, results explain that alternative and nuclear energy and the square root of economic growth (EKC) are negatively associated with CO2 emissions of the top three highest CO2 emitter countries from 1981 to 2016",8
General government final consumption expenditure and economic growth are positively related to those CO2 emissions,8
"Moreover, alternative and nuclear energy and the square root of economic growth improve environmental sustainability",8
"However, general government final consumption expenditure and economic growth deteriorate environmental sustainability",8
This finding supports the stance that renewable energy sources could help reduce the electricity sector’s emissions by approximately 81% (Union of Concerned Scientists 2017),7
"Moreover, this finding advocates that renewable energy technologies are clean energy sources and that optical use of these technologies improves environmental sustainability",7
The indirect effect operates through the impact of government expenditure on economic growth and the subsequent association between income level and environmental sustainability,8
"Similarly, economic growth is significant at 1% and 10% significance levels, and the square root of economic growth is significant at a 10% level of significance",8
The positive value of coefficients of economic growth and the negative values of the square root of economic growth depicts the EKC hypothesis in the top three highest CO2 emitter countries,8
The EKC framework has been the dominant theory explaining the link between economic growth and environmental deterioration since the early 1990s,8
The positive coefficients values of economic growth show that a 1% acceleration in economic growth increases CO2 emissions of the top three highest CO2 emitter countries by 2.867575% (generalized panel method of moments) and 0.054317% (generalized linear model),8
"However, the negative coefficient values of the square root of economic growth show that further stimulation in the economic growth of the top three highest CO2 emitter countries decreases CO2 emissions by 0.088852% (generalized panel method of moments), 0.032011% (generalized linear model), and 0.028770% (quantile median regressions)",8
"Moreover, bidirectional pairwise granger causality exists between alternative and nuclear energy and CO2 emissions and economic growth and CO2 emissions in the top three highest CO2 emitter countries from 1981 to 2016",8
This study examined the role of alternative and nuclear energy in stimulating the environment sustainably while mediating the function of government expenditure and economic growth of the top three highest CO2 emitter countries from 1981 to 2016,8
"Overall, our findings elucidate that general government final consumption expenditure and economic growth are positively related to that CO2 emissions",8
"Moreover, alternative and nuclear energy and the square root of economic growth (EKC) improve environmental sustainability",8
"However, general government final consumption expenditure and economic growth deteriorate environmental sustainability in the top three highest CO2 emitter countries",8
"The encouragement of alternative and nuclear energy technologies can support achieving the SDG-7 of access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable modern energy",7
"In this perspective, policymakers are suggested to adopt a comprehensive approach to access the compatibility of these clean energy sources",7
Nuclear power is presently a sustainable energy source; the governments are suggested to make it utterly renewable by changing the source of uranium from mined ore to seawater,7
"The empirical findings of the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag approach revealed that the outcomes of energy productivity instigated a positive (negative) impact on the atmosphere, where a 1% upsurge in positive shock of energy productivity decreased CO2 emissions (CO2E) by 0.265%, and a 1% rise in negative shock caused a 0.837% increase in pollution in the long run",7
"For instance, one of the remarkable recent global sustainability plans was adopted at the 2015 UN summit by the member states as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to integrate economic growth, social progress, and environmental conservation holistically",8
"Moreover, in 2015, the Paris Agreement was activated at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21), and the parties considered as reasonable to have a limit on global warming as 2 °C (preferably 1.5 °C) compared to the pre-industrial levels by the year 2100",13
"With the aim of limiting global temperature rise to less than 2 °C, the Paris Agreement reinforces the mitigation objectives of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions while protecting global environmental sustainability",13
"The Paris Agreement emphasizes the inherent link between climate change’s impact and reaction, fair access to sustainable progress, and other purposes",13
"More recently, a new global agreement — The Glasgow Climate Pact — was reached at the 2021 COP26 summit, which includes significant global aims to turn the 2020s into a decade of climate regulations and improvements",13
This recent gathering of UN member countries was also important in a way to sustain and revisit the decisions that have been made in the previous Paris Agreement,13
"In addition to this, it has been shown in various recent case studies that the rise of economic growth causes energy demand to increase, thus triggering excessive use of fossil fuels and more CO2E, which eventually deteriorate environmental quality (Kalmaz and Kirikkaleli 2019; Umar et al. 2020; Orhan et al. 2021; Shahzad et al. 2021)",8
"These studies have pointed out the importance of environmentally sustainable economic growth, eco-friendly innovations, renewable resources, and energy efficiencies for creating long-term environmental sustainability",8
"The present study focuses on Cyprus, an island in the eastern Mediterranean climate change hot-spot, where surface temperatures are currently warming at a faster rate than both the global and Northern Hemisphere trends",13
"According to the European Environment Agency (EEA) (2020), the National Reform Programme (NRP) of Cyprus upon the related subject includes key horizontal and sector-specific policy actions that seek to find solutions to the economic challenges and realize smart and sustainable growth",8
"On the other hand, Cyprus is subject to the National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs), and one of the main environmental goals of the Cyprus government is to increase its share of production and consumption of renewable energy from 13.9 to 22.9% between the period 2021 and 2030",7
"Regarding the island’s 2020 renewable energy target, the government of that time has achieved and even exceeded its initial target of 13%",7
"The main contributor to achieving this goal was the government’s wind power projects, with the first one costing 170 million euros and containing 41 wind turbines with an 82 MW capacity, which is located close to the city of Paphos",7
"This shows that, while making great progress on the road to sustainable growth, Cyprus is a bit behind compared to many of its peers in the European Union",8
"Achieving such a reduction of GHG emissions and renewable energy target at that pace in this decade would be a critical point for Cyprus, and how the island will achieve this target and reduce its environmental problem would be an interesting question to look at",7
"Additionally, Grossman and Krueger (1991) pointed out that international trade can increase the domestic income level of countries, which can then be used to ignite the process of minimizing environmental degradation in the long run",15
"(2018) argued that international trade and openness could cause countries to transfer their pollution-intensive industries cross-border, which can then be a catalyst for environmental degradation",15
"(2018) also pointed out an increase in environmental emissions due to excessive energy consumption, especially when energy usage is needed for exports of goods and services in international trade",7
"For instance, Wurlod and Noailly (2018) expressed that eco-innovation can reduce inefficiency in energy production, which can help stop excessive energy consumption and improve environmental quality",7
"As seen from the literature and supported by scholars, the causal relationships between economic activities, energy production and consumption, and environmental degradation are interconnected; therefore, their causal investigation should be done together without avoiding the significant defining factors",15
Fan and Hossain (2018) studied the impact of technological innovation and trade openness on CO2E in India and China from 1974 to 2014,8
"Fan and Hossain (2018) performed the ARDL technique to examine the nexus between these variables, and the empirical outcomes presented that trade openness is a damaging factor for the quality of the environment, though there was no significant connection found between CO2E and technological innovation",8
"(2018) concluded that renewable energy and gas consumption increases energy efficiency, which can then enhance the level of environmental quality",7
"The outcomes reveal that energy consumption, financial development, globalization, and trade openness positively influence CO2E while technological advancements and urbanization improve environmental quality",7
"(2020) examined the nexus between financial development, technological innovation, and CO2E in China from 1971 to 2018, and the results showed that economic progress and technological advancements are harmful to environmental quality, whereas advancements in financial activities improve it",8
(2021) explored how structural changes and economic activities impact on the environment in Japan and concluded that economic complexity and economic growth have asymmetric positive but decreasing impact on ecological footprint in Japan,8
The investigators found supportive evidence for the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis that characterizes the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality,8
"By utilizing the wavelet methodologies, the outcomes stated that innovation, globalization, and economic growth reduce the quality of South Africa’s environment in the short and medium term",8
(2022) aimed to explore the impact of the high-tech industry and renewable energy on consumption-based carbon emissions in MINT countries,7
The study of Adebayo (2022) reveals that renewable energy consumption improves environmental sustainability while fossil fuels worsen the quality of the environment,7
"(2014) estimated the causal relationship between tourism, energy consumption, and CO2E and concluded that a high level of energy consumption due to the international tourist arrivals has a significant impact on environmental emissions, which causes climate issues for the island",7
"More recently, Yorucu and Ertac Varoglu (2020)  studied the long-run relationship between CO2E, economic growth, and industrial production for 23 islands from different continents",8
(2020) showed that growth in the tourism sector causes environmental degradation in Northern Cyprus,15
"Based on the findings of previous studies reviewed above, the relationship between energy productivity and environmental sustainability factors varies from one study to another, depending on the selected region, country, data period, methodology, and also the determining control variables, which makes the related case still debatable and interesting",7
The impact of energy productivity on CO2E has not been studied with Cyprus as a case study,7
Energy productivity is generally regarded as a sign of a country’s total production,7
"Energy productivity is also recognized as energy efficiency, and if a country’s production method is productive, it will use a smaller amount of energy for optimum output, resulting in low emissions",7
"Energy productivity, alongside clean and renewable resources, is thought to be a crucial component in reducing the use of fossil fuels and achieving sustainable development goals",7
"As a result, energy productivity is expected to have an inverse effect on CO2E (Wahab et al. 2021)",7
"(2022), this research also involves economic growth",8
"Hence, economic development is favorably associated with CO2E and is expected to have a favorable impact on carbon emissions GDPt > 0",8
"Similarly, energy consumption is also used in the model",7
"So, if the link between energy consumption and CO2E is positive, we intend energy consumption > 0",7
"The regression model is provided below depending on the aforementioned theoretical association: where CO2E shows carbon dioxide emissions, ENG is energy productivity, GDP denotes gross domestic product, ENE is energy consumption, and TRA means trade openness",7
"The data of CO2E (metric tonnes per capita), ENE (total energy consumption), GDP (constant 2010 US$), TRA ((import + export)/2), and ENG (GDP per unit of the total primary energy supply (TPES)) are gathered from World Development Indicators and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development databases",7
"ENG is also referred to as energy efficiency, and if a nation has an efficient manufacturing structure, it will utilize a small amount of energy for rising output, which assists in reducing pollution",7
"Energy productivity is also regarded as an essential component, alongside clean and sustainable sources of energy, in reducing fossil fuel usage and achieving sustainable development goals in Cyprus",7
Enhancing ENG in Cyprus will not only boost economic outcomes but also aid in managing energy consumption,7
"Economic growth is always defined as an increase in output and energy usage, which is instantly linked to more energy use and increased carbon emissions",8
"Nevertheless, considering the positive effect of ENE, this finding indicated that energy consumption in Cyprus contributes to CO2E",7
"It is due to the region’s rapid economic growth and high level of urbanization, which intrigued a massive population",8
"So, our findings strengthen empirical backing for the presence of a beneficial and substantial effect of GDP and ENE in environmental degradation in Cyprus, while TRA has a harmful and significant influence on CO2E",15
"Over the last four decades, countries across the world have started to face more ecological issues than ever while simultaneously achieving gradual economic growth",8
"Therefore, this brought out the vital role of detecting the damaging effects of economic systems and energy consumption and production for maintaining environmental sustainability",7
"The empirical findings of the NARDL approach revealed that energy productivity instigated a positive (negative) impact on the atmosphere, where a 1% upsurge in positive shock of energy productivity decreased CO2E by 0.265%, and a 1% rise in negative shock caused a 0.837% increase in pollution in the long run",7
The geopolitical and environmental consequences of the heavy dependence on fossil fuels are discussed as well as the main solutions being implemented to face these problems: increase of the share of renewables and energy efficiency,7
"However, unlike food, water and air consumption of which is approximately the same for all human beings—rich and poor—the energy consumption “per capita” can vary considerably between the poor and the rich and from country to country",7
"Worldwide energy consumption approximately is 1.5 tepFootnote 1/capita: in the USA, ≈ 7 tep; in India and many other African countries, less than ≈ 0.1 tep",7
Energy consumption varies widely with GDPFootnote 2 per capita and patterns of consumption,7
"With an expanding population, the world’s energy consumption has grown at a rate of ≈ 1.5%/year between 1850 and 1950 and that rate of growth has doubled to approximately 3%/year from 1950 to 2000",7
"The world’s primary energy consumption (EJ) (1850–2000) (GEA 2012) EJ (exajoules), 108 J The energy sources have changed considerably since 1850 when biomass was practically the only source of energy available with a small contribution from coal, which increased rapidly and became dominant",7
"Hydropower, nuclear, biomass, and other renewables made also significant but not spectacular contributions",7
"Today, transportation is almost completely dependent on liquid fuels derived from petroleum (diesel gasoline and kerosene) and represents 23% of the world’s energy consumption",7
"The composition of the world’s primary energy consumption (1850–2000) (GEA 2012) Presently, the world’s energy system remains highly dependent on fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, natural gas) which represent 78% of total consumption; biomass contributes 7%, hydroelectricity 6%, nuclear energy 5%, and other renewables (mainly wind and PV) 4% (Fig. 3)",7
The present energy system is heavily dependent on fossil fuels (85% in primary energy consumption),7
Evolution of primary energy electricity (1970–2016) (IEA 2014) The importance of electricity in the world’s energy consumption could grow even more if electricity use in transportation increased,7
There are two main strategies to address such problems: To use energy more efficiently To increase the contribution of renewable energy sources replacing fossil fuels,7
"By 2030, double the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency By 2030, increase substantially the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix Other options to address the temperature increase caused by CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) are being considered such as CCS (carbon capture and storage) and geoengineering but they have not reached yet a mature stage",7
The energy efficiency is usually measured by the energy intensity I which is rate of energy consumption divided by GDP,7
"Consequently, the energy intensity is decreasing at 2.2%/year (Fig. 6)",7
"Trends in underling components of primary energy intensity at a global level, 1990–2015 (World Bank 2018) The SDGs require a decrease of the intensity of 2.6% per year",7
Mandatory energy performance regulations are an important instrument in driving reductions in energy intensity as well as modernization,7
Transport remains the highest energy-consuming sector and electric mobility represents a key opportunity to drive reductions in transport energy intensity,7
Global electricity market shares: 1980–2014 (Liebreich 2018) A large expansion of electrical vehicles would favor the expansion of renewables for electricity generation but battery-driven automobiles would require also a new extensive grid of recharging stations which particularly in a large country is a serious problem,7
"In large countries such as the USA where electricity is produced mainly from fossil fuels (≈ 90%), the introduction of a large share of renewables will not be simple because it will require a major reorganization of the power sector for the following reasons: Wholesale power prices will decline as well as emissions but volatility of electricity costs will increase “Ancillary services” will become more important such as frequency and voltage regulation, demand response, and especially storage One should also realize the immense amounts of storage that will be needed when renewables are absent (evenings for solar and wind fluctuation)",7
Recent estimates of the International Energy Agency (Birol 2018) indicate that the present investments in the expansion of the contribution of renewable energy sources fall shortly of what is necessary to avoid an increase of 2 °C to the global average temperature,7
It is clear therefore that stronger emphasis on energy efficiency is necessary as well as additional efforts on new technologies such as carbon capture storage (CCS) and eventually geoengineering.,7
"The reduction of income inequality and environmental vulnerability is the most important factor, through which we can achieve the target of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)",10
"The past papers have investigated the nexus between income inequality and carbon emissions; however, the relationship between income inequality and carbon emissions along with ecological footprint has not been studied in the case of developing countries",10
"To this end, this study analyzed the impact of income inequality on both carbon emissions and ecological footprint as well as the impact of carbon emission and ecological footprint on income inequality by using the dataset from 2006 to 2017 for the 18 Asian developing economies",10
"This study confirmed the positive relationship between carbon emissions, ecological footprint, and income inequality under the methodology of Driscoll and Kraay (D&K) standard error approach",10
"Despite a significant alleviation in the poverty level from the last few years, many developing countries are still facing the problem of increasing income inequality (Baloch et al",10
There are large numbers of research studies that investigate the association between inequality and toxic emissions; the greenhouse or conservatory effect is mainly responsible for the rising global warming and climate change,13
"Many research studies in the literature propose that economic growth, however, up to a certain level of economic development, upsurges global warming and greenhouse gases emissions (Forabosco et al",8
The poor people of the society get more affected by the income inequality since they are an extremely vulnerable part of the society,10
"In addition, rising income inequality is degrading the environment by generating problems in the way of policy implications",10
"Furthermore, it is argued that a higher income gap increases environmental degradation through voting and ownership channels (Hailemariam et al",15
"Meanwhile, it is further documented that better environmental quality could be significant for the reduction of absolute poverty (Dorn et al",1
"The low-income group is vastly dependent on environmental resources, and therefore, they manipulate resources in an unsustainable way that increases environmental degradation (Finco 2009)",15
"On the one side, the researchers prioritize the win-to-win solution, such as the concern authorities and policymakers of a country should perform sound by reducing poverty and income inequality with worthy socioeconomic and healthier quality of the environment",10
"Regarding this mechanical tactic, if some elements controlling degrading environment are also supportive for alleviation of poverty and reducing income inequality, counties’ economic performance will be better, and they could enjoy sound environmental quality",10
"On the other side, the trade-off situation (approach), policymakers, and concerned authorities either maintain clean and better environmental quality or embrace income inequality and poverty (Zhao et al",10
"The main inspiration of the above is deep-rooted discussion in the association between environment, poverty, and income inequality",10
Achieving higher economic growth is significant for the reduction of poverty if it is not linked with increasing inequality,8
"Because of this ambiguous trade-off situation, policymakers are trying to reduce environmental degradation that might influence the low-income community at large (Meinard 2021; Scolobig and Lilliestam 2016)",15
"Achieving these simultaneous objects might be a big challenge for policymakers, due to the existing trade-off situation between income inequality and environmental mitigation efforts",10
"Contrasting from those previous studies, in the present research study, we empirically analyze the nexuses between income inequality and environmental vulnerability by using both CO2e and ecological footprint (hereafter, EFP) as a proxy for environmental pollution for the cross-countries panel of 18 Asian developing countries",10
"Increasing the economic activities aims to facilitate low-income people to reduce poverty, which deplete the environment in the form of natural resources such as forest, water, minerals, and land, since only taking CO2e as a measure of degradation might simply provide the narrow aspect of ecology and its vulnerability and, therefore, overlook the main humanoid activities that are responsible for ecological vulnerability",1
"According to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), EFP represents the natural competence of land for sustainable economic growth (Ekeocha 2021)",8
(2017) has studied the trade-off between income inequality and CO2e,10
"In this study, we have analyzed the net impact of income inequality on both CO2e and EFP as well as the actual impact of the CO2e and EFP on income inequality",10
Many researchers have documented that there might be inverted U-shaped association between environmental degradation and inequality,15
"In the literature, the empirical work of Grossman and Krueger (1995) suggested an inverted U-shaped relationship between income and environmental degradation",15
"In recent past literature, EKC hypothesis has mostly concentrated on CO2e, as it is considered to be the main driver of environmental degradation",15
"There is no exactness on how the GDP growth can decline, but there is some agreements on its indirect shocks",8
The EKC hypothesis pattern for environmental degradation has been mixed by many researchers such as Aslanidis and Iranzo (2009) investigate the non-homogeneous nature of relationship between income and CO2e and filed to find the existence of EKC hypothesis,15
"On the other hand, Narayan and Narayan (2010) find this relationship in terms of both long- and short-run income elasticities of environmental degradation revealed significant empirical evidence to support the EKC hypothesis",15
"In recent literature, the empirical study on the EKC hypothesis is investigated by simply incorporating environmental degradation against income",15
The two most popular and important theories on how income inequality could have a positive influence on the quality of environment were introduced in rapid progression,10
"For instance, Cropper and Griffiths (1994) revealed that low level of household income increases aggregate demand and/or consumption for firewood that causes deforestation",15
"(2001), if the relationship is purely concave at micro level, the theory predicts an indirect and negative relationship between CO2e and income inequality for a certain income level",10
(2001) found negative nexus and supported the existence of trade-off situation between reducing CO2e and decreasing income inequality,10
"According to their proposed hypothesis, increasing income inequality will cause the aggregate demand of people for environmental quality",10
"Another possible explanation of this theory is that widening income gap has a leading role in pro-economic growth reforms, and for that, it is not essential to consider environmental pollution",8
"However, these assumptions might be challenged on the ground that factors such as income inequality, CO2e, and EFP lead to cross-sectional dependencies",10
"In our work, we applied D&K standard error regression techniques to check the nexus between income inequality and environmental vulnerability in terms of CO2e and EFP for the panel of 18 Asian developing economies",10
"Since for the ease of interpretation, the analysis of this study is based on log (ln) values of panel data series, the coefficient of long-run elasticity of lninf, lnfa, lnfdi, lnpopg, lnace, and laindu is statistically equal to EFP, CO2e, and Gini coefficient with respect to inflation, forest area, FDI, population growth, access to electricity, and industrialization, respectively",7
"In model I of Table 3, we used Gini coefficient (lngini) as a measure for income inequality which is positive and significant with EFP",10
"Similarly, in model II of Table 3, the coefficient of income inequality is also positive and significant with CO2e",10
This infers that 1 percent growth in the amount of EFP leads to a rise in income inequality by 0.120%,10
This suggests that a 1% increase in the coefficient of CO2e leads to increasing income inequality by 0.025%,10
The excessive usage of natural resources leads to environmental degradation (Baloch et al,15
Another possible explanation could be that income inequality in Asian developing economies may decrease the level of education and raise the affordability to consume high-emitting sources of energy among high-income people,10
"(2019), income inequality in the least developed economies strengthens the industrialists and capital owners who are commonly investing in outdated and high-emitted technology to increase their income and thereby degrading environmental quality",10
"These empirical findings also emphasize the theoretically ambiguous hypothesis of Boyce (1994) that rising income inequality generates class difference (power gap) between poor and rich in a society that leads to worsening the environmental quality, because the high-income people take advantage of the environment, while the low-income people cannot take advantage because all costs are imposed on them",10
Our empirical results urge that reducing inequality could help to control environmental degradation by reducing EFP and CO2e,15
"Additionally, with the wide income gap, low-income people tend to excessively exploit the environmental resources to sustain their livelihood, suggesting rising income inequality is not only a social and economic issue but also an environmental problem",10
"As for models III and IV of Table 4, it infers that higher EFP and CO2e are likely to increase income inequality in Asian developing economies",10
"Therefore, serious steps are taken to reduce environmental degradation in order to control the widening income gap",15
"The findings of the current study are justifiable for low-income and developing economies like Asian developing countries because to reduce extreme poverty, it is essential to establish a new setup of an industrial economy",1
"Furthermore, most of the developing economies initiate development projects to support low-income people without considering environmental degradation, since capital owners and high-income people take advantage of these development projects",15
"As a result, they invest in industries by providing high-emitting energy sources that contribute to a rise in environmental vulnerability and thereby high-income inequality (Grunewald et al",10
"Regarding control variables used in the analysis of this study, as can be seen in model I of Table 3, inflation has a statistically significant and negative effect on environmental degradation",15
"It suggests that a 1 percent increase in the inflation rate will degrade the environment by 0.008 percent in Asian developing economies, whereas in models III and IV of Table 4, the inflation rate has a positive and statistically significant association with income inequality",10
"A 1 percent increase in the coefficient of inflation is contributing to an increase in income inequality by 0.06 and 0.05 percent, respectively",10
"The positive relationship between inflation and environmental degradation suggests that increasing inflation reduces environmental degradation particularly in the short run, as suggested by Khan (2019), Khan and Yahong (2021), and Malik et al",15
"However, the immense usage of cheap energy consumption and massive utilization of fossil fuels badly affect the quality of environmental quality",7
(iii) Industrialization and value added (lnindu) have a negative relationship with environmental quality and positive relationship with income inequality as shown in Tables 3 and 4,10
"Here, it is worth mentioning that this study has incorporated two proxies for environmental degradation (ecological footprints/EFP and carbon emissions CO2e) to check the robustness of our analysis",15
Environmental quality and income inequality are linked with each other and should be taken into account to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),10
"The study has also utilized as many as possible control group variables such as inflation, foreign direct investment (FDI), access to electricity, population growth, forest area, and industrialization",7
"Moreover, population growth is helpful to control income inequality but is detrimental to the quality of the environment",10
The most crucial and possible solution is to implement win-to-win policy that upholds environmental protection along with people’s economic well-being and ensures other important development goals,15
It infers that controlling environmental quality would be helpful to reduce income inequality,10
"At the same time, concerned authorities should implement strict regulations regarding environmental protection by considering the possible impact on people",15
"By this, we infer that higher income inequality leads to degrading environmental quality, while reducing income inequality would be supportive for the environment",10
"In addition, the policymakers of investigated countries need to formulate environmental protection regulations by considering the high interest of low-income people",15
"Particularly, the policy that could address this situation effectively is to impose a toxic emissions tax that would incentivize emissions reduction in the most feasible way, while the allocation of this tax revenue could be utilized to improve public services used by low-income people",13
"Additionally, the empirical results reveal that the inflation rate increases income inequality in Asian developing economies",10
This infers that controlling the general pricing level can decrease income inequality,10
"In addition, we empirically analyzed the causal relationship between income inequality and environmental pollution by incorporating CO2e and EFP in Asian developing economies",10
It is volatile and very toxic (Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety 2017),8
"Gasoline combustion produces carbon (IV) oxide, a greenhouse gas that causes climate change and environmental pollution",13
The per capita NMVOC emissions in Nigeria are higher than those in China and could increase with economic growth,8
"Therefore, quantifying VOC emissions from different sources will aid in developing policies that will help reduce emissions and negative impacts",13
AP-42 is the Compilation of Air Pollutant Emission Factor published by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA),15
"The study estimated potential emissions from (tank truck) loading of gasoline by applying the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Compilation of Air Pollutant Emission Factors, AP-42 (US EPA 2016)",15
It should be noted that MACT (maximum achievable control technology) and NSPS (new source performance standards (NSPS) are both technology-based standards developed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency,15
"A more robust environmental impact assessment will help to highlight the potential implications of increasing VOCs on the immediate ecosystem and biodiversity, as well as on occupational health hazards and infant health risks",8
"The ever-increasing population has put enormous pressure on the available natural resources (land/soil and water), which is threatening future food security",2
"The extensive production of cereals and conventional soil management practices are increasing soil erosion; depleting soil organic matter, soil fertility, water resources, and increasing salinization",15
"Communication and collaboration between scientists, farmers, and policymakers are needed to manage soils for ensuring food security in South Asia",2
"Thus, sustainable soil management is necessary to ensure food security in this region",2
"The growing water scarcity and increased competition for productive resources (soil and water) with limited, if any, scope for expansion of pastureland and croplands pose great challenges to meet this demand on a sustainable basis (IFPRI 2017)",6
"In this review, we have identified the following major causes of soil degradation threatening food security in SA, including (i) soil erosion, (ii) soil fertility loss, (iii) soil structural decline and soil compaction, (iv) soil salinization and waterlogging, (v) climate change, (vi) below- and above-ground diversity losses, and (vii) urban encroachment of cultivated land and brick making",15
Soil degradation hurts the crop production,15
"There are many types of soil degradation, all of which ultimately affect crop production",15
"In SA, ~ 140 Mha of agricultural land is experiencing soil erosion, declining soil fertility, waterlogging, and groundwater depletion (Jahan and Gurung 2017)",15
A study by FAO estimated the severity and costs of land degradation in South Asia worth at least US$10 billion annually which is equivalent to 2% of the Gross Domestic Products (GDP) of the region (Niino 2011),15
The detailed impacts of various soil degradation processes on food crops in SA are discussed below,15
There are two types of soil erosion: (i) water erosion and (ii) wind erosion,15
"Soil erosion in the SA occurs due to both natural and anthropogenic causes like higher rainfall intensity, cultivation on steep slopes, seasonal dry spells in arid regions, naturally erodible and unstable soils, overgrazing, inappropriate use of inorganic fertilizers, deforestation, burning of crop residues, removal of crop residues for animal feed, and continuous monocropping (Lal 2017; Panagos and Katsoyiannis 2019), which are directly or indirectly linked to depleted soil fertility, reduced biodiversity, increased greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions, denuded topsoil, polluted water quality, low crop yields, and jeopardized human wellbeing (Rickson et al",15
The impact of soil erosion is more severe in hilly areas and in semi-arid regions where both wind and water act as major agents of erosion (Gupta and Raina 1996; Iqbal and Khan 2014),15
(2004) reported losses of up to 256 kg ha−1 year−1 of soil organic carbon (SOC) in the Nepal/Himalayan region by soil erosion,15
"Moreover, excessive use of unbalanced synthetic fertilizers, less use of manures, and removal of crop residues for animal feed and other uses exacerbate the soil erosion hazard (FAO 2015; Ali et al",15
"2017), which severely degrade soil fertility (Lal 2015b)",15
The problem of soil fertility is also execrated by the imbalanced use of synthetic fertilizers,15
Continuous cereal-based rotation with most intensive tillage practices is one of the main causes of rapid soil fertility loss in SA,15
"Other reasons for low SOM include the use of monocropping, plough tillage (PT), excessive grazing, deforestation, and continuous cropping without incorporation of a cover crop in the rotation (Table 1)",15
"In addition to depleting SOM, these factors are also the reason for stagnant/declining soil productivity in SA and jeopardizing the food security of this densely populated region",2
The productivity of rice is threatened by water scarcity in SA (Nawaz et al,6
"In some SA countries, water stress caused by low rainfall and less availability of irrigation water has forced farmers to grow alternate crops (author personnel observation) because of low rice yields",6
"In rainfed regions, drought stress reduces crop yields due to erratic rainfalls and non-availability of water harvesting structures (Devendra 2012; Islam et al",6
"If the present climate change–induced water and heat stress continue until 2050, the yields of maize, wheat, and rice will decrease by 17, 12, and 10%, respectively, in SA (CGIAR 2016)",13
"Soil salinity is the accumulation of salts in the root zone that hampers plant growth, with adverse impacts on food security and human livelihood",2
"Saline soils occur throughout SA due to prevailing soil erosion, shallow groundwater tables, tsunamis (Rasul 2014; Lal 2015b), and inappropriate use of canal water",15
"Loss of biodiversity disrupts the functioning of the food web, nutrient recycling, N fixation, carbon sequestration, organic waste recycling, and soil resilience",12
"Accelerated soil erosion, along with crop intensification, not only affects soil fertility but also the below- and above-ground biodiversity, including crop genetic diversity and wild diversity which finally reduces the SOM content (Hobbs et al",15
"Some other studies have reported a decline in soil fertility, due to the removal of the upper soil layer for brick making in India (Kathuria and Balasubramanian 2013) and Bangladesh (Saha and Hosain 2016), with a substantial increase in emission of GHGs from kilns (Nath et al",15
"For example, cover crops promote the supply and accumulation of SOM and improve soil quality (McDaniel et al",2
"2014; Lal 2015b), minimize risks of soil erosion and nutrient leaching, and enhance atmospheric N fixation (Wittwer et al",15
"Growing of summer legumes [e.g., sesbania spp., mungbean (Vigna radiata (L.) Wilczek), and cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.)] as green manure between wheat harvest and rice transplanting can improve soil fertility in rice-wheat cropping system (Shah et al",15
"Site-specific adoption of cover crops and agroforestry has multiple benefits for providing fiber, fuelwood, and biocontrol (e.g., neem) and improving soil fertility, SOM, and soil fauna (Kozlowski 2002; Christie et al",15
"Crop residue management in agro-ecosystems adds SOM that improves soil quality, water infiltration, and nutrient availability",2
"Data from several long-term experiments on diverse soil types and climatic conditions indicate that the synthetic fertilizers alone are not sufficient to increase or sustain soil fertility, and may aggravate soil acidification (Basso et al",15
"On the other hand, the sole use of organic fertilizers can improve soil fertility and quality, but the crop responses to sole organic amendments are slow",15
The temporal crop diversification with planned crop rotations is useful to increase soil fertility than monocropping,15
The introduction of CA has helped farmers worldwide to improve crop yields with substantial reductions in soil degradation and production costs,15
Crop diversification in the CA systems may also improve productivity and profitability in SA,8
"2017), enhances soil fertility, and stabilizes yields",15
"2016), and decrease the N fertilizer use and soil erosion (Lin 2011)",15
"Management practices that enhance SOC include CA, improved crop management, agroforestry systems, improved management of grazing lands, and the addition of organic materials such as manure and compost (Craggs 2016)",15
"Communication and collaboration between scientists, farmers, and policymakers are needed to highlight the value of soil management for ensuring food security in SA",2
"During the pricing of agricultural goods, the environmental costs of soil degradation must be reflected with other pricing elements",15
"Small, well-oriented, and local knowledge-based projects should be developed to reduce the impacts of soil degradation",15
Countries in SA should establish a scientific panel to address soil issues such as the United Nations have set up for combating the issues of desertification,15
There is a dire need for efficient utilization of solutions to tackle the losses by soil degradation which will improve the natural resource base in SA,15
"The “good health and wellbeing” SDG is related to substantially reduce the deaths from hazardous chemicals and soil, water, and air pollution",3
"Likewise, the most relevant SDG to land degradation is “life on land” which focuses on combating the desertification, restoration of degraded soil, and striving to achieve a land degradation neutral world",15
"The international agreements (e.g., zero net land degradation) have the potential to highlight the importance of global soils including that of SA (Halldorsson et al",15
"The use of productive agricultural land for urbanization and brick making, and excessive tillage practices has threatened the long-term food security in SA",2
Monocropping for extended periods has caused biodiversity loss and created pest and disease problems,15
Crop diversification by including legume crops in cereal-based cropping systems is useful in improving soil fertility and increasing biodiversity,15
Small dams should be installed in rainfed areas to decrease soil erosion and store rainwater for crop production and other domestic uses,15
"Adoption of system-based conservation agriculture offers a pragmatic option for sequestering soil carbon, reducing soil erosion, and improving soil organic matter content",15
"child labours, cultural heritage and social benefits, which can be allocated to five stakeholder categories, i.e",11
"fair salary, child labour, forced labour (see Fig. 4), by providing a score",8
economic development; employment) and to social functions (i.e,8
"preserve cultural heritage; guarantee the health and safety of people, involve the local community) (Menghini and Marinelli 2011; Istat 2017; D’Eusanio et al",11
"safe and healthy living conditions, end-of-life responsibility, secure living conditions, cultural heritage)",11
"The analysis compared the subcategories connected to the worker conditions (freedom of association, Child labour, working hours, fair salary, forced labour, equal opportunities, health and safety and social benefits), to evaluate their relevance for the interviewed stakeholders",8
"Figure 7 shows the obtained scores for each subcategory demonstrating that health and safety, forced labour, child labour, fair salary and equal opportunities are the subcategories that obtained the highest scores",8
"Child labour was identified as the most relevant subcategory, followed by the health and safety of workers, forced labour, the protection of equal opportunities and fair salary",8
"The relevance of subcategories for the workers subcategories—score: Min (0 = lowest relevance) − Max (21 = highest possible relevance for the worker stakeholder) The analysis compared the subcategories connected to the local inhabitant conditions (access to material resources, access to immaterial resources, delocalization and migration, cultural heritage, safe and healthy living conditions, respect of indigenous rights, community engagement and secure living conditions) by defining a score for each one",11
"Figure 8 shows the obtained scores for each subcategory demonstrating that the access to material resources, cultural heritage, safe and healthy living conditions, respect of indigenous rights, secure living conditions and are the subcategories that obtained the highest scores",11
"(No 12 = highest possible relevance for consumers stakeholder) The analysis compared interviews conducted pairwise between fair competition, respect of intellectual property rights, supplier relationships and promoting social responsibility, by defining a score for each one",1
"Figure 10 shows the obtained scores for each subcategory demonstrating that fair competition, respect of property rights and supplier relationships are those obtaining the highest scores",1
"Furthermore, it is believed to be significant to support the intellectual property rights as well as the recognition of the intellectual activities of other companies",1
"cultural heritage—number of projects financed by the company to preserve cultural heritage) Finally, the theoretical framework of subcategories and their selected social indicators outlining the type of indicator/data (quantitative, semi-quantitative or qualitative) for the Abruzzo wine sector is shown in Table 4",11
unit processes or production activities along the supply chain at social risk,1
"Therefore, the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative initiated a global consensus process to agree on an updated overall life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) framework and to recommend a non-comprehensive list of environmental indicators and LCIA characterization factors for (1) climate change, (2) fine particulate matter impacts on human health, (3) water consumption impacts (both scarcity and human health) and 4) land use impacts on biodiversity.MethodsThe consensus building process involved more than 100 world-leading scientists in task forces via multiple workshops",13
"Results were consolidated during a 1-week Pellston Workshop™ in January 2016 leading to the following recommendations.Results and discussionLCIA framework: The updated LCIA framework now distinguishes between intrinsic, instrumental and cultural values, with disability-adjusted life years (DALY) to characterize damages on human health and with measures of vulnerability included to assess biodiversity loss",15
"Climate change impacts: Two complementary climate change impact categories are recommended: (a) The global warming potential 100 years (GWP 100) represents shorter term impacts associated with rate of change and adaptation capacity, and (b) the global temperature change potential 100 years (GTP 100) characterizes the century-scale long term impacts, both including climate-carbon cycle feedbacks for all climate forcers",13
"2002), taking advantage of broader consensus efforts, such as those led by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for climate change issues",13
"2014), focusing the effort in a first stage on (a) impacts of climate change, (b) fine particulate matter health impacts, (c) water consumption and (d) land use, plus (e) crosscutting issues and (f) LCA-based footprints",13
climate change or land use impacts) or can be aggregated into overarching areas of protection,13
"It is acceptable, though not promoted, that, for the case that no relevant midpoint impact indicator can be identified along the impact pathway, proxy indicators can be designed, which are not defined along an impact pathway itself, such as for example water scarcity indicators (Sect",6
"LCA studies quantify the climate change impacts of greenhouse gas emissions due to human activities by aggregating them into a common unit, e.g",13
Climate change impacts from human-induced albedo changes were not considered,13
"It is therefore recommended to adopt two distinct and complementary subcategories based on two separate indicators: Shorter-term climate change, addressing shorter-term environmental and human health consequences from the rate of climate change (over next decades, e.g",13
"Long-term climate change impacts, reflecting the long-term effects from climate change (over next centuries, e.g",13
"Its numerical values are similar to GWP with a time horizon of several centuries, which would have also been a suitable indicator to reflect long-term effects from climate change",13
It is also recommended to use GWP20 in a sensitivity analysis for assessing the dependency of the results on an indicator based on very short-term climate change effects,13
"Further technical details can be found in Section 8.SM.11 of IPCC Fifth AR, as well as in the two publications of the climate change TF (Levasseur et al",13
Table 2 provides the recommended values for a subset of the main greenhouse gases contributing to climate change,13
"Additional values for GWP20 and NTCFs for sensitivity studies can be found in the climate change chapter of the full report (Frischknecht and Jolliet 2016, Chapter 3)",13
CFs for near-term climate forcers and GWP20 are available for download on the UNEP-SETAC life Cycle Initiative website ( -lca/lcia-cf/) to perform the recommended sensitivity studies and assess very short-term climate change effects,13
"The use of two complementary climate change impact subcategories in LCA is an element of novelty compared to the traditional practice, which is based on the use of a single climate change indicator (usually GWP100)",13
"Modest adaptation efforts from practitioners will ensure an important step forward in the robustness and relevance of climate change impact assessment in LCA.Footnote 1 For sensitivity analysis including NTCFs, it is also recommended to complement life cycle inventory databases with explicit data on black carbon and organic carbon emissions, which are currently aggregated within particulate matter emissions",13
"According to the ISO water footprint standard (ISO 2014), water scarcity is the “extent to which demand for water compares to the replenishment of water in an area, such as a drainage basin”",6
"While most existing water scarcity indicators were defined to be applicable either for human health or ecosystems impacts, there is a need for a generic water scarcity indicator, which explicitly represents the potential to deprive both human and ecosystems users",6
This normative choice aims to avoid that even an infinitesimal water consumption in an area with AMDi close to zero could entirely dominates the water scarcity score,6
Water deprivation for domestic use may increase the risks of intake of low quality water or lack of water for hygienic purposes that may result in the increase in infectious diseases and diarrhea,3
Water deficit in agriculture and fisheries/aquaculture may decrease food production and consequently result in malnutrition due to food shortage,2
"Regarding the state of available data and science, this work has focused on the development of indicators for assessing the potential damage of water consumption on malnutrition from agriculture water deprivation",2
"the water available minus human water consumption by all users (similar to the water scarcity indicator, AWARE, but not considering the environmental requirement and not divided by area)",6
SEEmalnutrition (DALY/m3) is the socio-economic effect factor of agricultural water use accounting for both the local malnutrition and the international trade effect,2
"The health effect factor is determined as the average DALY of protein-energy malnutrition damage (taken from GBD 2013) per unit food deficiency in kcal, as calculated in Boulay et al",2
Human health impacts due to domestic and agricultural water scarcity have been recognized as a relevant pathway in which water consumption may lead to damage on human health,6
"Caution is required when interpreting impacts caused by food-producing systems, since the produced kcal associated with the functional unit might compensate and offset the calculated potential impact on human health",3
"Refinements are especially needed for modelling the adaptation capacity, the trade effect (account for price elasticity) and for the regional health responses to malnutrition",2
Differentiating between groundwater and surface water would be nice to have for both the human health impacts and the water scarcity indicators but constitutes a topic for further developments since present data availability did not allow for a reliable differentiation,6
Land use and land use change are main drivers of biodiversity loss and degradation of a broad range of ecosystem services (MEA 2005),15
"2017) in terms of three levels (genes, species, ecosystems) and three attributes (composition, function, structure), species richness was discerned as practical proxy and good starting point for assessing biodiversity loss",15
"Land use types covered include annual crops, permanent crops, pasture, urban, extensive forestry and intensive forestry",15
This vulnerability score is based on the proportion of endemic species in an ecoregion and the threat level assigned by the IUCN red list,15
"Table 6 provides the world average characterization factors for six different types of land use, with the smallest CF for extensive forestry, a factor 7 smaller than the highest value for urban land use",15
"Global average characterization factors (CFs) are interim recommended to quantify potential species loss (PSL) from land use and land use change, suitable for hotspot analysis in LCA",15
"Impact scores per kilogram cooked white rice for the rural India, urban China and USA-Switzerland scenarios to illustrate and test the recommended LCIA indicators for climate change, fine particulate matter impacts, water and land use impacts",13
"a Climate change, shorter-term impacts based on GWP100 with climate-carbon cycle feedbacks",13
"b Climate change, long-term impacts based on GTP100 with climate-carbon cycle feedbacks",13
d Water scarcity impact using AWARE,6
"For climate change, Fig. 1 shows the contribution of the main greenhouse gases to shorter-term climate change impacts (Fig",13
1a) and to long-term climate change impacts related to the long-term temperature rise (Fig,13
"Emissions of methane, mainly caused by rice cultivation, contribute substantially to shorter-term climate change impacts",13
"Because methane is a rather short-lived GHG, its contribution to long-term climate change is smaller, which affects the ranking between scenarios",13
"For water scarcity impacts, national average characterization factors for agricultural production are similar in all three countries (China, India, USA) and average results reflect the water consumption considered in the life cycle inventory",6
"In the case of China, the Yellow River has an AWARE factor of twice the national average, whereas production in the Pearl River area (case study region) leads to negligible water scarcity impacts",6
For impacts of water consumption on human health associated with malnutrition (Fig,2
"1e), relative variations between locations mostly reflect the AWARE water scarcity ranking (Fig",6
"Since the case study aims at offering cooked rice, it is also interesting to compare the malnutrition impacts of water consumption with the potential reduction in malnutrition impacts associated with the 3700 kcal (raw) produced per kilogramme of rice",2
"The work and discussions before and during the Pellston Workshop™ resulted in relevant recommendations in the four topical areas climate change, fine particulate matter impacts, impacts of water consumption and land use impacts, as well as on the updated LCIA framework and crosscutting issues",13
close to half of the climate change TF composed of climate scientists or authors of the IPCC fifth assessment report who were not directly involved in LCA,13
"with the development of the new water scarcity index AWARE, making data at watershed and monthly levels available for practitioners",6
"Caution is also required when applying the characterization factors for human health impacts of water consumption to food-producing systems, the produced food having the potential to offset the calculated impacts due to malnutrition",2
"Second, the Pellston Workshop™ successfully proved the willingness of co-operation in the field of LCIA research and development, and the already strong momentum reached in the different TFs should be maintained and further increased",9
Precise measurement of water scarcity is a prerequisite to effective resource management,6
Researchers have developed a range of water scarcity indicators,6
"In this paper, we compared 12 indicators for their sensitivity to blue and green waters, quality-induced water scarcity, environmental flows, data requirements, spatial scale, and adaptive capacity",6
"We found four classical indicators considered in this study deficient in accuracy given their insensitivity to green water, quality-induced water scarcity, environmental flow requirement, seasonality, virtual water, and so on",6
We concluded that water scarcity measurement in a country or region should not be based on a single indicator,6
"Water scarcity, defined as a condition when available water resources fail to satisfy demand, is one of the defining challenges of the 21st century (Pearce 2019)",6
The World Economic Forum 2019 identified water scarcity as one of the largest global risks that could impact the world over the next decade (World Economic Forum 2019),6
"The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nation (UN) estimated that around 4 billion people experience water scarcity during at least one month annually, in addition, more than half a billion live under severe water scarcity permanently (Mekonnen and Hoekstra 2016)",6
"Given the dynamic nature of water resources, accurate measurement of water scarcity is a challenging task",6
"In addition to the type of water scarcity, what makes the assessment complex is the type of water itself",6
Water scarcity indicators are essential to assess the extent of the problem,6
"A thorough understanding of water scarcity helps formulate local, national, regional, and global policies aimed at effective management",6
Water scarcity indicators serve this need by pointing out the type and severity of water scarcity and identifying the areas to be addressed,6
"The literature reveals that none of the 150 + water scarcity indicators developed so far, based on various approaches is holistic enough to encompass all facets of water scarcity (UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) 2003; Vörösmarty et al",6
"The indicators based on resource availability ignore socioeconomic aspects, while those based on human water requirements overlook the quality-induced water scarcity",6
"Therefore, water scarcity indicators were termed “deception of numbers” in the literature (Savenije 2000)",6
Previous reviews of water scarcity indicators can be classified into three categories: (i) comprised of critiques pointing out basic flaws in indicators,6
Previous studies identified several inconsistencies related to the application and meaningfulness of the water scarcity indicators (Savenije 2000; Chenoweth 2008; Serrano et al,6
"(2015) reviewed green water scarcity indicators, Molle and Mollinga (2003) analyzed water poverty indicators, and Hoekstra (2017) appraised water footprint assessments; (3) indicators have been selected from various classes and reviews have been carried out for their strengths, shortcomings, and usage (Plummer et al",6
"In this article, we have compared 12 water scarcity indicators against 7 parameters of comparison, showing how these indicators miss certain areas and how they can be used collectively to supplement their deficiencies",6
Some water scarcity hotspots have also been identified to show how different indicators yield different results,6
Classical water scarcity indicators were developed soon after water scarcity became a pervasive concern in the 1980s,6
Most of these indicators have addressed one or more aspects of water scarcity with a sectoral approach,6
"Its key strength, making it the most commonly used measure of water resources, is its ability to differentiate between climate-induced and anthropogenic water scarcity (Vörösmarty et al",6
"Hence, the idea of the existence of a strong linkage between water resource availability and food security (Falkenmark et al",2
"Also, it is insensitive to green water, quality-induced water scarcity, and EFR",6
Fig. 1 shows world map of water scarcity as per the Falkenmark Indicator,6
(Source: University of Texas) World Map of Water Scarcity as per the Falkenmark Indicator,6
 The Criticality Ratio assesses water scarcity as a ratio of annual water use to total water resource availability (Perveen and James 2010),6
Some studies have considered WTA as maximum and CTA as minimum water scarcity (Munia et al,6
"However, there is still the possibility of misrepresentation of water scarcity",6
"Although CR is sensitive to demand variations, it overlooks several technological and social interventions like desalination, recycling, reuse of withdrawn water, and adaptive capacity",12
Fig. 2 shows world map of water scarcity as per withdrawal to availability ratio,6
(Source: World Resources Institute) World Map of Water Scarcity as per Withdrawal to Availability Ratio,6
 IWMI Indicator differentiates between physical and economic water scarcity (Molden 2007),6
"A country with more than 75% of its river flows withdrawn is considered physically scarce (Brown and Matlock 2011), whereas a country withdrawing less than 25% and showing symptoms of water scarcity, is identified as economically scarce (Rijsberman 2006)",6
(Source: IWMI) World Map of Water Scarcity as per the IWMI Indicator,6
" WPI is calculated using five key components: (1) water availability; (2) population access in terms of time and distance from a water source; (3) institutional capacity to ensure efficient water management and the ability of the population to afford water-saving technologies; (4) use of water for agricultural, industrial, municipal, and environmental purposes; and (5) environment (Sullivan et al",6
"Though not as simple and straightforward as FI and CR, WPI can help make rational decisions and monitor water scarcity in interdisciplinary areas",6
World Map of Water Poverty (Source: The Centre for Ecology & Hydrology of the UK) Sustainable Development Goal 6 aims to ensure the sustainable development of water resources and ecosystems for providing clean drinking water and sanitation to all (Berger et al,6
"To track the progress on SDG6, 11 indicators have been framed, of which the indicator 6.4.2 relates to the “Level of Water Stress” and is expressed as: Where WS stands for water stress, TFWW for total freshwater withdrawn, TRWR for total renewable water resources, and EFR for environmental flow requirement (Vanham et al",6
This is primarily a blue water stress indicator that does not distinguish between water withdrawal and water consumption,6
"It does not take into account green water, quality-induced water scarcity, adaptive capacity, and seasonality",6
"However, the indicators 6.3.1 and 6.3.2 of the SDG6 framework, which relate to wastewater treatment and water quality, can indirectly give a picture of quality-induced scarcity",6
"Holistic indicators, covering multiple aspects of water scarcity, are further categorized into two classes: (1) based on water accounting and (2) sensitive to quality induced water scarcity",6
Quality-induced scarcity can considerably influence the overall availability of water resources,6
"Water quality is deteriorated by a range of pollutants, and water quality standards vary for drinking, irrigation, and municipal water",6
WEI is the percentage of the mean annual total demand against mean annual freshwater resources in the long term (Casadei et al,6
Results are categorized as (European Environment Agency 2013): WEI < 20% = no water scarcity,6
WEI ranges 21–40% = water scarcity,6
WEI > 40% = extreme water scarcity,6
"To overcome these limitations, the modified Water Exploitation Index + was introduced",6
The concept of virtual water was first presented by Allan (1997) as a possible means to mitigate the impacts of water scarcity,6
This overestimation of EFR can lead to the overestimation of water scarcity (Pastor et al,6
This methodology was employed to gauge water scarcity and related environmental impacts by Frischknecht et al,6
(2014) developed the Water Accounting and Vulnerability Evaluation (WAVE) model that considers atmospheric evaporation recycling within the basins that can save up to 32% of water,12
"LCA-based water scarcity indicators can be categorized as midpoint indicators (that take water scarcity as a resource problem), and endpoint indicators (that focus on ecological and health-related impacts)",6
Water scarcity is addressed by LCA at the midpoint level,6
These indicators consider blue and green water as well as quality-induced water scarcity,6
This index assesses water quality by the amount of water required to assimilate the pollutants and dilute them to acceptable water quality standards,6
"The index is presented as: Where I denotes Zeng’s QQ indicator, Iblue represents quantity oriented water scarcity based on criticality ratio whereas Igrey denotes quality-induced water scarcity that considers the amount of water required for dilution of pollutants to an acceptable level",6
"If Iblue >  0.4, the region is facing serious water scarcity from a quantity standpoint",6
Igrey ≥ 1 represents quality-induced water scarcity,6
Socioeconomic aspects fall beyond the scope of this indicator as it primarily focuses on physical water scarcity (Zeng et al,6
"(2016) for the inclusion of EFR as: Where Sqqe means overall water scarcity, Squantity is quantitative scarcity, Squality is quality-induced water scarcity, and P is the percentage of EFR in total blue water resources, Where BWF means blue water footprint, BWA represents blue water availability, W is blue water withdrawal, R is the water consumption ratio, BWR is total blue water resources, GWF is grey water footprint, eij is the EFR in the month under consideration (i) for the desired habitat quality level (j), ni shows the number of days in the month (i), Qi shows mean daily flow in in the month (i), Pij is the percentage of mean annual flow during the month (i) at habitat quality level of j",6
"L is the pollutant load, Cmax is the maximum acceptable concentration of water quality and Cnat is the natural pollutant concentration in the concerned water body",6
"Therefore, adoption of single indicator is not an option and a selection has to be made of multiple indicators so as to make a reasonably inclusive and realistic assessment of water scarcity",6
Water quality-induced water scarcity (WQ),6
"The maps used in this study were utilized to identify three water scarcity hotspots i.e., MENA, South Asia, and Africa, and to show how different indicators produce different results",6
"FI and WTA respectively identified 20 and 19 MENA countries in the severe water scarcity category, while the IWMI indicator testified to the physical nature of scarcity in 18 countries",6
"Despite facing physical scarcity, the adaptive capacity of these nations has enabled them to ensure food security through imports",2
Water scarcity worries South Asia as well (Vinke et al,6
"India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh face severe water scarcity, followed by Afghanistan and Sri Lanka",6
"Compromised socioeconomic conditions, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa (Jemmali 2017), make these nations score high on the Water Poverty Index and 49 out of 53 are extremely water-poor despite having an abundance of water resources available, showing the impact of socioeconomic factors on the gravity of water scarcity",6
"Water scarcity, once considered a myth, now stands established as a grim reality (Falkenmark 2013)",6
SDG 6,6
"Specific to water scarcity issues, Target 6.4 requires that “By 2030, substantially increase water-use efficiency across all sectors and ensure sustainable withdrawals and supply of freshwater to address water scarcity and substantially reduce the number of people suffering from water scarcity“(UN Water 2021)",6
"Ever since the water management challenges surfaced during the latter half of the 20th century, researchers have attempted the development of water scarcity indicators for simple and easily understandable indications of water scarcity",6
Classical indicators provided the foundations for water scarcity measurement,6
"Since these indicators grasp limited aspects of water scarcity, the researchers came up with the indicators sensitive to economic and social aspects of water scarcity e.g",6
"WF, LCA, WEI, WPI, and Social Water Stress Index based on broader sets of water scarcity features",6
Further research pointed out more missing areas including the new realities like climate change,13
"The multiple facets and interconnections of water scarcity with food, energy, ecology, socioeconomics, and governance (Veldkamp et al",6
2015) require integration of these critical areas to make water scarcity measurement as accurate as possible,6
The research evolution from classical to holistic indicators marks the efforts to bring more integrity to water scarcity measurement,6
"Given the multidisciplinary nature of water scarcity, expecting the accuracy and reliability of projections without integrating all spheres and types of water scarcity with the socioeconomic conditions of a region is not a rational expectation",6
The multidisciplinary nature of water scarcity brings another problem: where to draw the line,6
Some of the socioeconomic factors can be related to water scarcity in one location and unrelated in another,6
Water scarcity indicators are relevant to policymakers and the general public as well,6
"These stakeholders need the measurement of water scarcity in a simple, easily interpretable, and straightforward form",6
"As much as possible, efforts to make the indicators holistic should add value to water scarcity measurement in terms of accuracy and simplicity",6
Water scarcity exhibits spatiotemporal variations that need to be grasped by the indicators to make precise measurements of the problem,6
Classical indicators offer a simple representation of water scarcity that proves unrealistic in many cases,6
"Classical indicators based on population growth draw a neo-Malthusian picture of water scarcity that can lead to the adoption of overstretched measures, or sometimes otherwise, resulting in inefficient use of resources and even aggravation of the problem",6
"None of the indicators cover simultaneously all the necessary areas, i.e., blue water, green water, EFR, water quality, etc",6
Accounting for virtual water is especially important for countries that rely heavily on agricultural trade,2
"For a country already struggling with physical security, any measurement of water scarcity without accounting for the export of virtual water will yield unreliable results",6
"Every country has a unique scenario of water availability, spatiotemporal distribution, water quality concerns, EFR, and desalination capacity",6
"Whereas, deteriorated water quality can also reduce the actual availability of water, despite the indicators painting a rosy picture",6
"One of the major problems influencing the adoption of indicators, causing shortcomings and restricting research and development, is data scarcity, especially in the case of composite and accounting-based indicators",9
Measurement of water scarcity requires a reasonably long time series at the desired time step,6
"Before the acceptance of water scarcity as a challenge, water sector policies, plans, and strategies were based on a supply-driven approach",6
Demand-driven approaches have gained currency after water scarcity became more visible (Damkjaer and Taylor 2017),6
"With the advent of holistic water scarcity indicators, the data needs have considerably changed and increased",6
There exists a consensus that the impacts of physical water scarcity are more severe on the downtrodden and vulnerable (UN Water 2007),6
"This challenge is quite pressing for the scientific fraternity and policymakers as both have to undergo twofold change management, i.e., switching from a supply-driven to a demand-driven approach to water management and rearranging data acquisition order and methodology",6
"The goal of this study was to compare 12 water scarcity indicators (5 classical and 7 holistic) in terms of their sensitivity to blue water, green water, quality-induced water scarcity, EFR, data requirement, and suitable spatial scale",6
"In addition, based on previous studies on water scarcity using various indicators, we compiled a global comparison",6
"The main conclusions from this paper are as follows: No single indicator, whether classical or holistic, provides a one-size-fits-all solution for water scarcity measurement",6
"Classical indicators overlook a range of important factors like green water, quality-induced water scarcity, spatiotemporal variations, and other factors influencing the occurrence and severity of water scarcity",6
"However, they are posed with the challenges of huge data requirements, validation, and conceptual integration of all necessary parameters, particularly quality-induced water scarcity and EFR",6
A comparison of water scarcity hotspots shows that different indicators come up with contradicting results,6
"Similarly, Middle Eastern nations identified as severely water-scarce by FI, face no food security issues due to virtual water imports and adaptive capacity",2
"Therefore, a single indicator-based measurement of water scarcity should not be relied upon; rather, a selection should be made from classical, water accounting-based, and water quality-focusing indicators to develop a reasonably reliable and clearer picture of water scarcity in a region.",6
"This article seeks to identify the challenge posed by rapid urbanisation for food security in Tanzania to 2030, the Sustainable Development Goals horizon",2
It is hypothesized that urban food security largely depends on the food supply systems and the rural food production potential,2
"Tanzania has done well to achieve broad self-sufficiency in basic foodstuffs to date, but rapid urbanisation will pose a severe future challenge as regards food security, particularly for the disadvantaged poorer people of the towns and cities in terms of food affordability, stability and food safety",2
"In Tanzania the majority of the urban population—around two-thirds (UN-HABITAT 2013)—live in slumsFootnote 1 and are, in many cases, dependent on precarious employment in the informal sector",8
"Their consumption opportunities are severely constrained by low and uncertain incomes, putting their food security at risk",2
Tanzania’s National Human Settlements Development Policy (URT 2000) did not address urban food security but a later policy document (URT 2006) indicates that the focus is on improving the capacity of rural areas to supply urban areas with food,2
This article seeks to identify the challenge posed by rapid urbanisation for food security in Tanzania in the medium term,2
It is hypothesized that urban food security largely depends on the food supply systems and the rural food production potential,2
"Food security is understood to comprise access, availability, utilization and stability (FAO 1996) but these aspects need to be viewed in their socio-economic context (Grote, 2014)",2
"While these data do not allow us to measure precisely each dimension of food security (access, availability, utilization and stability), they do provide a range of insights into the present situation and, by extension, of the challenges ahead",2
There follows a comparison of the food security situation in Dar es Salaam with that in other urban areas and rural Tanzania,2
"Looking to the future, the pace of urbanisation will pose new challenges for food security",2
"If the urban food supply systems do not then develop efficiently in parallel with the urbanization trend, urban food supplies will become less reliable, resulting in higher food prices, greater price volatility and eventually in food insecurity (Kiratu et al",2
"Furthermore, despite urban growth, the rural population will have increased by 38 %, eating into the local marketable surplus",11
This then gives an indication of the scale of the urban food security challenge facing Tanzania in the medium term: how to produce or procure a sufficient quantity of food; how to deliver it economically and in good condition to urban markets when required; and how to ensure that the needs of marginalised urban populations can be met,2
"Furthermore, despite urban growth, the rural population will have increased by 38 %, reducing the local marketable surplus",11
"Viewed historically, food security policy in Tanzania, as in other SSA countries, has had an urban focus, responding to the emergence of concentrated groups of ‘permanent consumers’, particularly colonial civil servants and wage-labourers (Guyer 1987), leading to policies to control wages and the prices of basic commodities",2
"Later, as urban growth was accelerated by an influx of rural migrants, the informal sector presented a new challenge to the administrative authorities’ management of food supply",11
Dar es Salaam also compares favourably with respect to the proportion of households below the Basic Needs Poverty line,1
"The Tanzanian Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives highlights that food security in urban areas is mainly threatened by increasing food prices and higher price fluctuations compared to rural areas (URT 2006)",2
"Broadly it thus appears that from the point of view of food security, Dar es Salaam is currently managing to avoid serious problems although the situation even there is precarious",2
"Clearly, this poses a considerable challenge to food security in the future and will depend on the ability of the urban food supply systems to meet very large increases in requirements",2
"More important from the point of view of urban food security are fish products, oils and fats, sugar and grain milling",2
The growth of supermarkets can be expected to energize the procurement system in domestic food value chains and have impacts on small-scale farmers in SSA (Neven et al,9
"However, as yet, the impact on urban food security in Tanzania is limited: the relatively affluent consumers are a small minority",2
"Even in the larger towns, as elsewhere in SSA, the vast majority of the urban population lives in dense informal settlements on very low incomes and as such are likely to experience food energy deficiencies (Satterthwaite et al",11
"Although supermarkets introduce higher food quality and safety standards, higher food prices are assumed to exclude especially poor households from benefitting (Crush and Caesar, 2014)",1
"Besides large-scale production and processing activities of companies in urban areas, urban agriculture, including crop production and livestock raising, can significantly contribute to food security of urban dwellers through generating income and supplying food to the urban population (Schmidt 2012, Howorth et al",2
"in terms of land use rights by the municipal and central government in the past (Halloran and Magid 2013) and future urban growth can be expected to reduce the land available for agriculture, both within and beyond existing urban boundaries",11
"In addition to the large companies and supermarkets, there are large numbers of small producers, transporters, traders, etc",9
The small scale farmers usually depend on itinerant middlemen to sell their produce; in Dar es Salaam the major means of transportation of eggs is by bicycle,2
"According to Geier (1995) Tanzania was at that time capable of producing enough food in normal years to feed the whole population adequately and to compensate for regional differences, although Geier also notes that chronic food insecurity and malnutrition were widespread during the difficult 1980s and early 1990s",2
"Thus, while resort is had to food imports in difficult years, Tanzania is not heavily dependent on such imports",2
"However, this could change as incomes rise and the urban population increases.Footnote 5 As Buffie (2010, p.10) observes: “Since most food products are tradeable on world markets, food security depends on purchasing power of the poor, not management of domestic supply.” Notwithstanding that many urban dwellers retain plots in rural areas or engage in urban farming, if urban food security in Tanzania is to be strengthened in the face of rapid growth in urban populations, and without undue reliance on food imports, a strong domestic supply response will be needed",2
"However, despite long-running government extension programmes and projects funded by the World Bank and other donors, low agricultural productivity and high levels of food insecurity in rural areas restrict the surplus available to supply the urban population",2
An approach to try to get a broad view of the domestic supply potential is through trends in agricultural productivity (Table 4),2
Pressures on land due to population growth and land use change (Riisgaard et al,15
"To gain more insights into rural food security and food production potential, a case study is presented from two regions of Tanzania, namely Morogoro and Dodoma",2
"Additionally, information on other income sources such as off-farm employment, self-employment, remittances due to migration, and income from public natural resources were collected",2
"To link value chain activities and welfare indicators to food security, households’ consumption patterns and seasonal variation of the latter were included in the questionnaire",2
"While most people are food secure in Morogoro, high food insecurity prevails in Dodoma (Table 5)",2
The FCS as a composite indicator accounting for diet diversity and food frequency shows borderline food consumption for Dodoma and an acceptable level of food security for Morogoro,2
Not only is the access to food lower in Dodoma but also the period of food shortage (occurring every year) is 1 month longer compared to Morogoro,2
"In an earlier similar study in Rukwa region, Geier (1995) points out the complex causal links among production, cash income, food consumption and food security in rural Tanzania",2
In sum these cases show that the rural supply potential is constrained by large regional differences in yields in small-scale farming in Tanzania and by farmers’ own food security needs,2
"And very often, small-scale farmers who are sellers after harvest times become buyers of food crops in the more food insecure months, especially in the labour-intensive pre-planting season",9
"This might be connected to the higher urbanisation in Morogoro region (29 % with 13 towns > 10 k population, compared with 15 % and 6 towns > 10 k in Dodoma region) as well as other factors such as climate and transport infrastructure",9
This must be considered in the context of prevailing food insecurity in the region indicating that rural households in Dodoma lack money to buy food although they are in need,2
"Most interesting, village households in Dodoma—the region which is characterized by relatively high food insecurity—have many more migrants (n = 94, 21 %) compared to the relatively food secure Morogoro region (n = 29, 6.4 %)",2
"While Tanzania has done well to maintain broad self-sufficiency in basic foodstuffs to date, rapid urbanisation will pose a severe future challenge as regards food security, particularly for the disadvantaged poorer sections of the towns and cities in terms of food affordability, accessibility, stability and food safety",2
"The evidence so far is that Dar es Salaam, the principal city, has managed to avoid serious problems of food insecurity, although the position is more precarious in other urban areas (and even more so in rural areas)",2
"A number of urban supermarkets are now established, particularly in Dar es Salaam, but their contribution to food security is largely confined to the better off urban consumers",2
"In addition to the large companies and supermarkets, there are large numbers of small producers, transporters, traders, etc",9
"This means that future urban food security may depend to a large extent on raising production and productivity in the smallholder rural farming sector, and raising participation of these farmers in food supply chains",2
"In addition, in rural areas where food insecurity is an issue, household members tend to migrate to the urban centres",2
"Furthermore, rural–urban linkages would benefit from a sustained program to strengthen value chains, particularly as regards storage, processing, transport and marketing of agricultural products",2
"Finally, considering the demand-side, increased awareness and education about food safety and food quality would help to contribute to food security in the process of urbanization.",2
"Energy research and development (R&D) and environmental sustainability is often referred to as two interrelated trends, especially in the current context of the 4th industrial revolution",9
"As a primary input of energy innovations, R&D in the energy sector constitutes a vital tool in addressing global environmental and energy challenges",9
"In this frame, we observe the effects of disaggregated energy R&D on environmental pollution within the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) framework in thirteen developed countries over the period 2003–2018",9
"By employing the panel quantile regression technique, we find an inverted U-shaped nexus between economic growth and carbon emissions only in higher carbon-emitting countries, thus, confirming the EKC hypothesis",8
"As such, we demonstrate that there is not any single dynamic in the relationship between economic growth and pollution as reported in previous studies",8
Global warming and climate change has imposed lots of difficulties on human lives and threatened the existence of the ecosystem,13
There has been a consensus among many scientists that the problem of global warming is getting worse due to the unfriendly social and economic activities of humans especially as regards energy consumption (Inglesi-Lotz and Ajmi 2021; Omojolaibi and Nathaniel 2020; Ozturk et al,7
Energy consumption soars as production activities intensify,7
It is now an open secret that energy consumption heralds production activities,7
"Therefore, as economic growth accelerates, energy demand increases while the environment deteriorates (Adedoyin et al",8
The EKC hypothesis elucidates the association between economic growth and environmental pollution (Ali et al,8
"However, sensitivity to environmental wellness begins to increase in the advanced stages of industrialization after economic growth must have exceeded a certain threshold (Nathaniel et al",8
"Fossil fuel consumption, with natural gas and crude oil, has a positive influence on the economic growth trend of the selected countries",8
"As such, the need for increased energy efficiency, FFRD, and RERD are sacrosanct for environmental sustainability",7
"Recently, the need for innovation for achieving energy efficiency, FFRD, and RERD was discussed in a conference put together by UNIDO IPI International Peace Institute (2020)",7
Energy efficiency is required for environmental wellness and sectoral transformation (Wang and Wang 2020; Meo et al,7
"Consequently, a transformation in energy efficiency is expected",7
"2020), renewable energy, (Saidi and Omri 2020; Ikram et al",7
"2020), and energy efficiency (Zakari and Tawiah 2020; Zhang et al",7
Our paper extends the existing literature by assessing the effects of FFRD and RERD on CO2 emissions for a panel of 13 developed OECD members in terms of research and development in the energy sector,9
"Second, we adopt an innovative estimation strategy to account for the potential heterogeneity across countries as well as the nonlinear structure of the relationship between economic growth and carbon emissions",8
"As R&D expenditures increase, more high technology will be produced and this will play a significant role in decreasing energy density, which is one of the most crucial sources of carbon dioxide emissions (Huang and Chen 2020)",9
"For instance, the paper of Lantz and Feng (2006) disclosed the effect of technological advancement, economic growth, and population on carbon dioxide emissions using the GLS method for Canada",8
Research findings for the period 1970–2000 indicate that technological progress has a decreased impact on CO2 emissions,8
"Tang and Tan (2013) analyzed the linkages between economic growth, electricity usage, energy prices, and technology progress in Malaysia for the 1970–2009 period with the Granger causality test",8
The findings show that technological advancement promotes carbon emissions reduction in Malaysia,13
The analysis result demonstrates R&D expenditures decrease CO2 emissions,9
"(2013) concluded that with the input-output model, technological progress in China has an essential role in decreasing carbon emissions",8
"(2014) researched the effect of clean energy, carbon dioxide emissions, and technological novelty for Norway and Canada with the ARDL model",7
(2017) contended the effect of energy research and development improvements on GHG emissions in 28 OECD countries from 1990 to 2014 with a finite inverse V-lag distribution model,9
Su and Moaniba (2017) examine how innovation responds to climate change with ARDL and GMM methods for 70 countries in the period 1976–2014,13
(2017) find out that the progress in energy R&D during 1995–2012 in China was effective in reducing carbon emissions,9
The results show that R&D spending in developed countries is effective in reducing CO2 emissions,9
(2020) demonstrated the impact of R&D input on carbon dioxide emissions in 52 countries using data from 2002 to 2015 by the GMM model,9
They found that R&D is effective in reducing CO2 emissions,9
There are studies in the literature that conclude that R&D spending does not affect CO2 emissions,9
"For instance, the study of Garrone and Grilli (2010) reveals that public energy R&D spending has no important impact on CO2 intensity in 13 developed countries",9
Koçak and Ulucak (2019) examined the impact of R&D expenditures on CO2 emissions by employing data for several OECD countries for the period 2003–2015 period with the STIRPAT model,9
"In the relevant literature, we can also see some studies that find a bidirectional causality between innovation and/or R&D and carbon dioxide emissions",9
"Empirical findings indicate that the existence of a bi-directional causal correlation between energy usage, carbon emissions, and R&D stocks",9
Lin and Zhu (2019) reported the correlation between renewable energy technological innovations and carbon emissions using China’s state data between the years 2000 and 2015,7
"The model given in Eq (3a) represents the basic EKC equation which, besides GDP and GDP2, employs a third variable (lnFossil Fuel R&D) that can additionally explain the changes in carbon emissions",9
"Although both OLS estimates (Table 4) and quantile estimates at 50th, 75th, and 90th quantile (Table 6) verify EKC together with the significant positive impact of fossil fuel R&D on CO2, the magnitudes of quantile estimations are greater than OLS estimations in absolute values",9
"To begin, there have not been differences in the impact of fossil fuels research and development on carbon emissions over different quantiles",9
"Thus, it is apparent that there exists a positive and significant association between fossil fuels research and development and carbon emissions from the smallest to the highest quantile at 1%",9
The increasing effect of research and development expenditures for fossil energy on CO2 emissions indicates that increasing research and development activities designed to replace fossil fuels are not effective to curb emissions,9
This stresses the fact that public policy for shaping research and development in fossil energy should not only aim at reducing the reliance on fossil energy but also consider the environmental implications of such policies,9
"In this regard, this study is consistent with that of Koçak and Ulucak (2019), who found a positive correlation between fossil fuel research and development and carbon emissions in high-income OECD countries",9
This is indicative that in higher polluting countries environmental concerns are prioritized above economic development,8
"From a policy perspective, our findings show that in higher polluting countries, the growth-oriented economic policies are prudent of environmental results, as evidenced by the ratification of the Paris Agreement (net-zero emissions by 2050) by most of these countries",13
This finding is consistent with the view that improving energy efficiency is a key mechanism for lowering the energy intensity and carbon intensity of the economy (Pereira and Pereira 2017),7
"Contrary to widespread expectations, research and development programs on renewable energies and fossil fuels are not effective in reducing CO2 emissions",9
"However, there exists a U-shaped nexus between economic growth and CO2 emissions at the 10th quantile (smallest quantile), which means that at the lower side of quantile (0.10) small or moderate economic growth will lead to a higher level of carbon emissions",8
The non-existence of the EKC supports the claim regarding the environmental unsustainability of the economic growth pattern in lower-emitting countries,8
"This finding addresses the stability issue of the EKC hypothesis evidenced in Altıntaş and Kassouri (2020a, 2020b) and offers a new line of research regarding the empirical relationship between economic growth and pollution",8
"Therefore, we demonstrate that the dynamics of the economic growth pollution are dependent on the levels of emissions, captured across different quantiles",8
"Therefore, policymakers should develop appropriate policies based on a comprehensive consideration of the heterogeneous effects of different components of research and development on CO2 emissions",9
This research investigated the impact of disaggregated energy research and development programs on CO2 emissions within the environmental Kuznets Curve framework in 13 developed countries over the period 2003–2018,9
"On that note, sustainable energy research and development policy would be realizable only when the capture and sequestration of CO2 emissions associated with cleaner fossil fuel power plants as well as environmentally-friendly renewable energy research projects are deemed to be part of the energy research and development scenario",7
We find that there is a strong need for policymakers to understand the differential impacts of energy research and development on carbon emissions to adequately monitor their investments in energy innovations,9
There should be a provision of interest-free loans and other tax incentives for organizations who are willing to carry out R&D on renewable energies,9
"Also, the investment in renewable energy options should be encouraged through public-private collaborations to hedge the risks in renewable energy projects",7
This necessitates the need for even more spending on R&D for long-term sustainability purposes,9
Future works might consider conducting dynamic panel quantile regression models in which lagged values of the variables are also employed to monitor the dynamic effects of R&D expenditures on CO2 emissions,9
"The keyword occurrence map reveals that water quality studies have been extensively studied, but quantifications of the coal mining-induced changes in water regimes at river basin scales are absent",6
"Global warming and increasing energy demands have been worldwide concerns in recent years, posing a threat to reaching a climate-neutral world by 2050 (Wang et al",13
Coal resources are the world’s most affordable energy fuel responsible for carbon emissions,7
"In October 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated that the most effective ways to control global warming require coal resources to be phased out (Woodward et al",13
2021); core industry and coal mining are still significant sources of economic development in many countries (Goswami 2015),8
"Exploration of coal resources has been an effective means to promote economic development, but the devastating effect of coal mining on the environment is inevitable",8
"Last few decades, coal-related scientific research has emerged as a multidisciplinary field, which has witnessed a rapid increase in study literature (Mathew et al",9
(2019) discussed the carbon emissions of the coal mining industry in the context of climate change mitigation using a similar kind of bibliometric research framework which concluded that a lot of studies were aimed at the health hazard of sulfur oxides and nitric oxides released by coal-fired flue gas,13
"HistCite (Garfield 2009), Bibexcel, VOSviewer (Van Eck and Waltman 2013), and many more) for in-depth data analysis to explore the hotspots and trends in scientific research",9
Some researchers have used the Web of Science database to discuss global scientific research on energy using Citespace software (Shen et al,9
"Despite the growing public awareness of environmental protection, limited bibliometric studies in the literature focus on coal mining’s impacts on water and the environment, especially in India",15
"Please note that in Fig. 7, the IITs and NITs are not solely funding bodies but receive research and development (R&D) funding from governmental and private agencies",9
Their team’s most outstanding research focused on aquatic geochemistry perspectives to understand the effect of coal mining on water quality (Singh et al,6
"As shown in Fig. 11, among the 108 records with a total of 665 keywords, top 17 keywords were classified into four clusters with cluster 1 enlisting the 6 most extensive occurred keywords including “Ground-water” (10 links), “water quality” (6 links), and “environmental-impact” (4 links) and followed by keywords like “trace-elements” (7 links), “contamination” (6 links), “heavy-metals” (5 links), and “principal component analysis” (5 links) in the cluster 2",6
"Though there is a huge volume of publications from Indian river basins on “water quality,” “heavy-metals,” and “ground water,” etc., most of the studies are not emphasizing the sources of such contaminations such as the influences of coal mines; it can be observed from the low number of articles as per the choice of our bibliometric keyword search",6
"It is also observed that the keywords “water quality,” “heavy metals,” and “ground water” have shown the total link strength greater than 10, indicating that the research work related to these keywords in the context of coal mining in Indian river basins has been moderately studied",6
"Based on UN SDGs, the evaluation of the value of hydrological services and ecosystem services plays a key role in various sectors, including coal energy sectors, (i) to strengthen environmental actions to protect our planet and (ii) to ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy sustainable growth",8
"Ahirwal and Maiti (2022) recommend including a site-specific restoration plan, native species for reforestation, and local community involvement in restoration programs to attain the UN-SDGs",15
"Though it has been incorporated in the coal mine closure law and regulations, aspects like environmental and hydrological values and benefits obtained from activities like water resources conservation, water regime preservation, environmental protection, ecological restoration, reforestation, and reclamation activities remain to be the least reported research topic of Indian sectors (Srikanth and Nathan 2018)",15
Research focusing on the function of hydrologic flow paths on coal mine lands and mine reclamation and restoration areas would be critical for developing mitigation strategies and to gain new knowledge to ensure sustainable future mining operations (Evans et al,13
"Our study also reveals an overview of the theme concerning the research area of water resources, which showed that though water quality research topics are extensively studied in Indian River basins, less focus has been given to exploring its pollution sources such as mining activities",6
Inclusive Green Growth (IGG) has important reference value for China’s ecological civilization construction and transformation of economic development,8
The regression results also confirm the Environmental Kuznets Curve effect between IGG and economic growth in China,8
"With the announcement of the 2030 Agenda, many countries have begun to adopt Inclusive Green Growth (IGG) as an implementation strategy for achieving the new SDGs",8
The concept of IGG was first proposed in the UN Rio + 20 summit in 2012 to merge the interests of green and inclusive growth (Albagoury 2016),8
"However, the remarkable results of China’s economic development have come at the expense of substantial environmental and social costs (Chai et al",8
"On one hand, extensive economic growth has led to a series of resource and environmental problems, including resource exhaustion, environmental pollution, and ecological destruction (Liu et al",8
"2017; Liu and Dong 2021a); on the other hand, traditional development has led to social problems, such as the unequal distribution of the fruits of economic growth, widening the gap between the rich and the poor, and worsening the income gap between urban and rural residents (Weiss and Cattaneo 2017; Sun et al",8
"The emergence of these problems shows that China’s economic growth is uncoordinated, unbalanced, and unsustainable",8
The root cause of these problems lies in the lack of “inclusiveness” and “greenness” of the traditional economic growth model (Chen et al,8
"The simultaneous achievement of economic growth, social inclusiveness, and environmental sustainability has become a challenge for the Chinese government",8
Efficiency evaluation can be used as a performance standard to evaluate the allocation of resources and quality of economic growth,8
IGG is a combination of inclusive and green growth (Shen et al,8
Inclusive growth was first mentioned in 2007 by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in its report “Inclusive growth: Asia for prosperity” (Ali 2007),8
It is easy to see that the concept of inclusive growth emphasizes the relationship between the economic and social systems,8
"Green growth is proposed in the framework of the sustainable development concept, whereby there is consensus worldwide to achieve the SDGs",8
The concept of “green growth” was first introduced at the Fifth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Development in Asia and the Pacific in 2005,8
Green growth was defined as an environmentally sustainable economic process that promotes low-carbon development and benefits all members of society (UNESCAP 2005),8
"Compared with inclusive growth, green growth places more emphasis on the relationship between economic and environmental systems (World Bank 2012; Capasso et al",8
"As an upgraded version of the inclusive and green growth concept, IGG emphasizes the coordination between the economy, society, resources, and environmental systems",8
"First, the economic development view considers IGG as a sustainable development approach",8
"The second perspective is welfare economics, which states that the purpose of economic growth is to improve welfare",8
There is extensive literature on methodologies for measuring inclusive and green growth,8
"Among them, the methodology for the measurement of inclusive growth mainly considers the social opportunity function (Ali 2007; Sun et al",8
"However, the methodology for measuring inclusive growth often ignores green factors (i.e., environmental factors)",8
"There are also many methods for measuring green growth, including green GDP (Hoff et al",8
"Compared with the methodology for the measurement of inclusive growth, there are limitations in the techniques used for measuring green growth when considering the indicators of social factors",8
IGG evaluation is mostly influenced by research carried out on inclusive and green growth measurements,8
The literature on the spatiotemporal differences between inclusive and green growth is abundant,8
"2022), and exploratory spatial data analysis (Cheng and Ge 2020; Liu and Dong 2021a) to analyze the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of inclusive growth or green growth at the national, provincial, and urban levels",8
"Similar to the literature on spatiotemporal differences, many empirical studies have been conducted on the factors that influence inclusive or green growth",8
"2022), technological innovation (Luo et al",8
"2022), and environmental regulation (Ge and Li 2020; Yao 2021) are considered to be the main factors influencing inclusive or green growth",8
The definition of inclusive growth originally refers to growth with equal opportunities,8
Green growth further emphasizes the promotion of economic growth while ensuring that natural assets continue to provide resources and environmental functions on which human well-being depends,8
"In other words, while maintaining sustained economic growth, we should emphasize the rational distribution of income, equality of development opportunities, sharing of development fruits, efficient and intensive utilization of resources, and development of a friendly ecological environment, so as to achieve sustainable development of society, economy, resources, and environment (Chen et al",8
"In view of the gradually obvious role of science and technology in economic activities, full time equivalent for R&D personnel and intramural expenditure on R&D was selected as the technical input index (Zhao et al",9
"In green growth efficiency, GDP is often used as a desirable output indicator (Song et al",8
The unemployment rate was selected to reflect the equality of development opportunities (Wang et al,8
"The higher the unemployment rate, the more unequal the opportunities",8
These three indicators can together reflect the non-inclusive factor in economic growth,8
"2020), total wastewater discharge, sulfur dioxide emissions, smoke (powder) dust emissions, and general industrial solid waste production were selected as specific indicators of environmental pollution",12
"The smaller the index value, the less damage to the environment, and the more conducive the achievement of green growth",8
(1) Economic development level: we adopted per capita GDP (PGDP) to reflect the economic development level (Guo et al,8
"(4) Industrialization level (INDU): industries contribute significantly to economic development, but they also have a great impact on the environment, so proportion of industrial added value to regional GDP was selected as a proxy variable (Wang and Zhang 2018)",8
(8) Technological innovation (TI): the proportion of expenditure for science and technology to general public expenditure was incorporated into the regression equation (Song et al,8
"The reason is that during this stage, China changed its economic development model and takes a new type of industrialization path, and promoted the rapid development of productivity in all provinces and cities, which has improved IGGE to a certain extent, but the pollution problems caused by the rapid economic development have not been solved, the ecological environment problems are prominent, and the green development momentum is insufficient, which inhibits the rapid improvement of IGGE",8
"Under the dual promotion of location conditions and policy advantages, the eastern region has completed the optimization and upgrading of the industrial structure in the process of achieving high-quality economic development, and the proportion of high-tech industries and service industries has increased significantly to promote green economic and social development; meanwhile, local governments pay more attention to the improvement of people’s well-being and social equity to enhance social development inclusiveness",8
"To sum up, the areas with high efficiency level are mainly distributed in coastal and policy-oriented areas, which have strong economic vitality and high resource allocation rates, and attach importance to high-quality economic development and coordinated development of ecological environment and people’s well-being, with high IGGE efficiency; low efficiency types mainly distributed in some provinces in the northwest and southwest, the industrial development in these areas started late, the foundation is weak, and they pay more attention to economic development, with insufficient investment in ecological improvement and livelihood protection, which hinders the improvement of IGGE",8
"This result indicates that the relationship between economic development and IGGE is not a simple linear relationship, but a U-shaped relationship",8
"That is, upon economic development, IGGE tends to decline first and then rise",8
"Thus, the EKC theory used to explain the relationship between economic development and natural environment can also be used to understand the U-shaped relationship between IGGE and economic development (Destek and Sarkodie 2019)",8
"In other words, the relationship between economic development and IGG in China is consistent with the EKC theory",8
This suggests that the U-shaped relationship between economic growth and IGGE only exists in the province and has no spillover effect on neighboring provinces,8
It should be noted that the relationship between China’s economic growth and IGGE from 2000 to 2020 is on the left of the U-shaped curve (Guo et al,8
"The industrialization is conducive to promoting local economic growth, expanding employment, and increasing people’s income",8
"On the contrary, actively promoting high-tech industries is beneficial to the development of a green economy and reduction of unemployment",8
This result indicates that the environmental protection systems and policies of local government have a negative effect on the IGGE of a province,15
The relationship between economic development and IGGE in China was consistent with the EKC theory,8
"When undertaking industrial transfers from the east, thresholds for access should be set while considering environmental protection",15
"In addition, the “U” relationship between economic growth and IGGE was confirmed",8
Future research could use threshold regression analysis to further explore the threshold effect between economic growth and IGGE.,8
Economic reforms introduced by industrial economies during the 20th century emphasized industrial output and were adopted as the most feasible option to sustain economic growth worldwide (Talbi et al,8
Several international agreements and conventions have tried to address the issue of environmental degradation,15
"Among these, the Paris agreement (2015) and the Kyoto protocol (1997) are notable efforts under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (Bashir et al",13
"Nevertheless, environmental degradation is rampant and creates a significant challenge for the UN SDGs (Hussain et al",15
Grossman and Krueger (1991) recognized three identifiers of environmental degradation,15
"First, the scale effect, higher investments contribute to environmental damage due to more energy consumption in the industrial and manufacturing process",7
"2016; Jalil and Mahmud 2009), renewable energy (Danish et al",7
2018b) as key determinants of environmental degradation,15
"The EKC hypothesis in economic literature can be traced back to Grossman and Krueger (1991) and is termed as EKC after Kuznets (1955), who was the first to highlight the existence of an inverse U-shaped association among economic growth (Bashir et al",8
2015) and income inequality (Apergis and Ozturk 2015),10
"If we are to believe that the assumptions of EKC are true, then economic policies accept environmental damage as a cost to achieve economic growth",8
"On the contrary, if the EKC hypothesis is wrong, emerging economies will advocate for strict environmental policy changes and may not attain income level that causes environmental degradation (Al-Mulali et al",15
(2018) used bibliometric approach to investigate climate change publications,13
"However, most of the existing research trend analysis is limited to a specific contributor of environmental degradation, hence serving as a motivation for us to examine the research trends for EKC hypothesis to provide policy recommendations to prevent environmental degradation",15
This study contributes to environmental degradation literature by assessing the publication hallmarks of EKC publications to grasp current research trends,15
"1 Research content (methods) The degree of collaboration analysis serves as a measure to evaluate scientific research's connective relation with the research level of institutions, countries, and individual authors (Nassani et al",9
The impact factor is a tool to evaluate the quality of journals by providing a reference for scientific research output and journal selection (Hao et al,9
"China maintains its dominance in the EKC publications and its interaction with other economic issues, i.e., how industrial degradation impacts industries and the ability to continue cost competitiveness to ensure sustainable growth",8
Other research areas include preserving environmental quality through higher renewable energy sources,7
Research trend in publications by Chinese research institutes has also been influenced by the commitments from NDRC (National Development and Reform Commission) to prevent environmental degradation by implementing significant changes in policy making (Kim et al,15
"Finally, renewable & sustainable energy reviews is ranked 5th after publishing 90% of its total contribution during the time period of 2013–2018",7
Per annum output of top 10 journals “The performance of high-yielding authors” section analyzes the research of individual researchers and their influence in promoting research collaboration in environmental degradation,15
Precise citation analysis of these arguments will shed insightful information about environmental degradation literature,15
"Next, “The rise and fall of the environmental Kuznets curve” by Stern (2004) articulated properties of EKC hypothesis and concluded that developing countries are adapting to environmental degradation by adopting higher standards and are becoming more protective of the environment than developed nations",15
(2013) concluded that adopting energy-efficient tools as policy measures should combat environmental degradation,15
"Strategic diagram representing research trends of environmental Kuznets curve and environmental degradation documents In current study, trade openness and sustainable development are motor themes",15
"Ecological footprint, environmental degradation, and air pollution are highly developed and isolated themes",15
"Finally, the environmental Kuznets curve and environmental Kuznets curve’ interaction with renewable energy are highlighted as basic and transversal research themes",7
"i.e., climate policy, externalities, biodiversity conservation, and waste generation",15
"The second category (2012–until now) has expanded the discussion by investigating structural changes, environmental policy, technological innovation, green growth, OECD countries, industrialization, and ecological economics",8
"Increased dependence on resources such as fossil fuels contributed in the emergence of climate change as a major problem in recent times, with global warming being the underlying cause",13
"Carbon trading market is the first policy instrument, which allows trading of carbon emission based on the amount of pollution control (Cong and Wei 2012; Cong and Wei 2010); second measure is the implementation of carbon tax as a taxation policy instrument based on price (Liu and Lu 2015)",12
The development of renewable energy sources is an effective policy measure to protect environmental efforts (Cong and Shen 2014; Cong 2013),7
"Equally, the implementation of environmental taxes will also support renewable and clean energy sources as they marginally increase traditional energy sources' prices",7
Several research initiatives have compared the impact of the implementation of environmental taxes and traditional regulatory policies such as renewable energy portfolio standard and feed-in tariffs to promote renewable energy (Romagnoli et al,7
"To sustain higher economic growth, industrial units feed on fossil fuels and natural resources that directly release harmful pollutants into the natural environment",8
"This conflict about climate policy creates dilemma that whether or not emerging states should achieve economic growth at the expense of the environment, such issue needs to be discussed in future research",8
Economic growth’s association with environmental sustainability has been extensively discussed by the economic literature (Mishan 1967; Meadows et al,8
"Additionally, several research initiatives have empirically analyzed the association between GDP and industrial development by using life satisfaction as a welfare proxy, which has suggested that economic growth at the cost of the environment has not contributed toward social welfare (Easterlin et al",8
"Despite this, economic growth remains part of economic initiatives around the world",8
"To reconcile environmental challenges and achieve economic prosperity, politicians, economists, and global organizations such as World Bank, IMF and OECD are advancing the concept of “green growth” to promote the use of natural resources in a sustainable manner (Bank 2012) as Jackson (2011) argued that industrial growth models are becoming socially undesirable and environmentally unsustainable",8
"These alterations are not limited to negatively affecting climate but also are responsible for industrial wastage, land degradation, loss of biodiversity, and vulnerability of economic cycles (Field et al",15
"One of the integral goals is to involve business corporations in integrating economic growth, business corporations, and sustainable development",8
"Furthermore, cocitation analysis of environmental degradation and tourism industry is also an exciting research project to further the economic literature.",15
"The research sheds light on the importance of identifying and aligning expectations on sustainability’s contribution to the water business development, getting business actors involved closely in the implementation and execution of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Business Alliance for Water & Climate Change",13
"Due its importance in stimulating social, economic and environmental development, private and public companies in the sector are increasingly playing an important role in water management and business development to different sectors, communities and countries, boosting innovations to reduce water risks in order to meet present and future water needs (Delvaux et al",6
"Indeed, many leading multinationals are actively engaged in seek a sustainable water business development by solving water management issues and current business models landscape",6
"Some years ago, EU Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC committed countries members to understand, integrate and manage all water management issues to be effective and sustainable",6
"Likewise, in 2015 the Business Alliance for Water & Climate Change (CEO Water Mandate -BAFWAC-) assist public and private companies in developing, implementing and disclosing their water sustainability policies and practices (Mandate and Network 2015)",13
"Kurland and Zell (2010) highlighted that the increase in numbers of articles focusing on industrial management may reflect greater awareness of water management which is, in fact, a network problem that one single organization cannot tackle alone",6
"In spite of its constructive effects on the GDP growth, particularly, because of the revolution in industrialization, it has been individually foremost helping to increase the pollution level (Carvalho et al",8
"According to the report of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the share of carbon emissions in the environment is high, with a penalty that is extensive, for instance, floods, droughts, extreme storm, increasing sea level, melting glaciers, and high temperature (UNFCCC, 2017)",13
"Besides, a hefty amount of the extraction of natural resources through industrialization, cultivation, deforestation, and mining also manipulates the atmosphere capacity",15
"It is observed that financial development, GDP growth, natural resources, and environmental worsening are not only productive for governments and policymakers to reduce the pollution level, but also promote the expansion in the cleaner energy diligence",8
"Some challengers found that the financial sector has an adverse effect on the environmental quality such as several authors observed that financial development mitigates carbon emissions by escalating real GDP growth and others found that financial development drives industrial-based activities by offering uncomplicated financing, which will ultimately upsurge overall ecological footprint level and environmental contamination (Sadorsky 2010)",8
"Global warming and high-temperature level is broadly incarcerated by ecological footprint by considering the influence of land utilization, deforestation level, and CO2 emissions on environmental variations",15
"This research is the first effort that scrutinizes the dynamic relationship between industrial production, natural resources, financial development, total reserves, renewable energy consumption, and ecological footprint in OECD countries",7
"On the other hand, in observance of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) targets, it is imperative to review the influence of industrialization, natural resources, financial development, total reserves, and renewable energy use on the natural competence of OECD countries",7
"Whereas concentrating on the climate action (SDGs 13) objective, spotlighting only on ambient air contaminants may not present an accurate picture, and as a result, the current research has to pay attention to the influencing of the isolated energy factors on the ecological footprint level",13
"Industrialization is prompted by economic development by the increment in the extraction of natural resources as well excessive use of such resources in agriculture, manufacturing, and mining which ultimately has negative effect on environment (Baloch et al., 2019)",8
The ECF has become emerging yardstick for measuring environmental degradation in the recent literature and being widely used (Destek et al 2018; Bello et al,15
"Green energy sources are plentiful and tenable in comparison of fossil fuels and their use raises the ECF (Owusu and Asumadu-Sarkodie, 2016; Apergis et al",7
The link between economic growth and environmental quality is also complex,8
"With regard to the role of financial growth in environmental degradation, there is conflicting evidence in both theoretical and empirical literature",15
"The findings of this empirical research suggested that foreign direct investment, globalization, and tourism all contribute in environmental degradation",15
"Renewable energy system enhanced national savings, whereas environmental quality was boost up by the growth of financial system and bioenergy",7
"Economic development, on the other hand, continues to foster the environmental quality (Salahuddin et al",8
"Renewable energy sources and financial growth were known as the main indicators for determining the level of sustainable development according to the countries studied in the report (Ulucak and Khan 2020; Ozturk, 2015)",7
"As a result, in order to manage ecological degradation, economic expansion and the use of renewable energy depend heavily on the development of human capital",7
Industrialization is a key element for the development but it creates negative impact on the environment as well and OECD countries pay a lot in terms of natural resource depletion and environmental degradation,15
"Among them, financial development, globalization, and energy consumption have recently got more attention for analyzing environmental quality (Yang et al., 2020)",7
"Firms can purchase capital at economical cost that increases the acquisition of equipment, machineries, and new production plants through developed financial sector which as a result speeds up the demand for energy consumption (Sadorsky, 2010)",7
"Additionally, industrialization is elevated by the advanced financial sector that enhances the toxic waste and increases the degradation of natural environmental along with the augmentation of risk diversification that increases energy source consumption and eventually reduces ecological quality (Acheampong, 2019; Omri et al, 2015; Sadorsky, 2011)",12
"Fernandes and Reddy (2020) deployed ARDL model, Johansen’s cointegration test, VECM, VAR, and Toda and Yamamoto causality test for the six OECD countries (China, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand) and excavated the nexus between utilization of energy and economic growth",8
"The range of financial development variable is between 0 and 1, but we convert it into 0–100 for our comfortability with other variables; total reserves are calculated as % of GDP and renewable energy use is measured by the percentage of total final energy use",7
"(2021), we apply the subsequent empirical model to investigate the effect of industrial production, natural resources, financial development, total reserves, and renewable energy consumption on the ecological footprint in OECD countries as follow: In Eq. 1, EFP denotes the ecological footprint, INDV indicates industrial production, REC indicates the renewable energy consumption, FD indicates the financial development, TR indicates the total reserve, and NR demonstrates the natural resources in OECD countries",7
"The coefficients of industrialization, natural resources, financial development, total reserves, and renewable energy use are expressed by β1, β2, β3, β4, and β5, respectively",7
"Therefore, we reject the null hypothesis (H0) of no cross-sectional dependency for ecological footprint, industrial production, natural resources, financial development, total reserves, and renewable energy consumption in OECD countries",7
"Both unit root test results demonstrate consistent and reliable conclusion that ecological footprint, renewable energy consumption, natural resources, and total reserve are stationary at first difference while industrial production and financial development are stationary at level and first difference",7
The examined results demonstrate that industrial production has a positive and significant impact on the environmental degradation in OECD countries,15
"In fuel and coal utilization and other non-renewable energy-related toxic wastes, the relation among natural resources, financial development, and the country-wise ecological footprint was scarcely addressed in OECD countries",7
"Increases in the ecological footprint that may be contentious, nonetheless, frequently accelerate domestic economic development",8
(2019) found a positively role of renewable energy in augmenting the ecological footprint for European countries,7
"Nevertheless, a common outlook extensively supported by the empirical and theoretical justification is that cleaner and renewable energy consumption is very helpful to curb the ecological consequence of human actions, counting the using of goods, land, and water utilization",7
"Therefore, the OECD countries nations should take action towards the accomplishment of sustainable development and environment targets in ecological footprint perspective in the course of the utilization of renewable energy resources adaptation",7
"With regard to the role of cleaner energy consumption on environmental pollution, findings coincide to the results of Destek and Sinha (2020) and Wang and Dong (2019)",7
The adverse coefficient sign of natural resources in OECD countries panel and corresponding countries is recognized to additional natural resources sustaining to diminish atmospheric toxic waste,12
"Prosperous natural resources curtail the requirement for the import of non-renewable energy resources; moreover, these findings are linked to reducing the unemployment of individual alternative resources of energy consumption such as natural gas, biogas, solar, hydro, and other renewable sources that emit less pollution as compared to non-renewable energy sources (Ulucak and Khan, 2020; Balsalobre-lorente et al., 2018)",7
"To make sure of the sustainable environment, extra use of natural resources should be given to the different kinds of cleaner and renewable energy and it should be completed cheap and cost-effective",7
"In this regard, escalating renewable energy extraction in the energy mix can play a vital role for sustainable development in the lessening of ecological footprint and diminishing atmospheric variations (Alola et al",7
"Governments of these nations can promote to protect ecological excellence by executing environmental strategies which drive the extraction of renewable and alternative energy, reinstate non-renewables with renewables, and increase the public–private awareness concerning the renewable energy resources",7
"In this sense, domestic and foreign policies regarding the increase the total reserves should be reformulated to curtail the unintended fiscal and monetary shocks and environmental degradation",15
"Therefore, these OECD countries can influence the definite utilization of alternative energies, for instance, wind power, hydro, and solar bioenergy",7
"The current research investigates the influence of industrial production, natural resources, total reserves, financial development, and renewable energy consumption on the ecological footprint OECD countries from 1995 to 2019 by employing one-step difference GMM, one-step system GMM, and two-step system GMM model, respectively",7
"Empirical evidence from the estimated findings explores that the chief driving forces causative a bulky environmental humiliation level for these countries is industrial production, natural resources, financial development, total reserves, and renewable energy use",7
"On contrarily, natural resources and renewable energy use can lead to protect the level of ecological footprint in the long run",7
"However, exploitation of natural resources and renewable energy consumption are other important factor that was marginally protecting the environment",7
"In addition, research and development (R&D) institutions are needed at private and administration levels to protect environmental quality in the course of modern technologies while promoting the utilization of cast-off industry waste as an energy source that escorts to diminish pollution levels",9
"On the other hand, in order to evade the harmful outcome of financial expansion on ecological footprint, policymakers in these countries should expand financial institutions and markets in a move that these finances should be owed for the venture in schemes that facilitate to establish green and renewable energy types of machinery",7
"This can be accomplished if Pigovian taxes and tariffs are functionally applied to the imports of dirty and traditional capital by providing various incentives on cleaner and modern types of machinery to these economies; by this means, local financiers are promoted to advance their resources in renewable energy-efficient technologies",7
Sustainable urban development has been a popular subject in urban studies and related disciplines,11
"Owing to the challenges faced by cities worldwide to accommodate the growing urban populations, it is becoming ever more important for innovative research on sustainable urban development to be performed to help cities achieve sustainability",11
"Goal 11 of the SDGs titled “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable,” which concerns sustainability issues in human settlements as a result of urbanization, has propelled over 150 countries to develop national policies for sustainable urban development (UN 2018b)",11
"As highlighted in the UN’s (2017) New Urban Agenda, economic, social, cultural, and environmental impacts are intensifying in cities due to the growing urban populations",11
"Therefore, efforts to ensure sustainable urban growth have to be enhanced to safeguard the wellbeing of urban residents and habitats both in the present and in the future",11
"The UN’s slogan for the New Urban Agenda, “Cities 2030, cities for all,” signifies that by the year 2030, cities should be environmentally, socially, economically, and culturally sustainable and inclusive with equal benefits and opportunities for all inhabitants, including the present and future generations, to live in sustainable environments and contribute toward the quality of life of all (UN-Habitat 2017)",11
"The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) by Saaty (1980) is a popular MCDM technique that has been employed in numerous urban sustainability research (e.g., Bunruamkaew and Murayam 2011; Chan and Lee 2019b; Ma et al",11
"Importance-performance analysis (IPA), a method introduced by Martilla and James (1977) to measure the importance and performance of attributes, has been combined with AHP for analyses in urban development studies (e.g., Akbar et al",11
"However, none has modified the AHP’s pairwise comparisons using importance scores from the IPA to measure urban sustainability",11
"Sustainable urban development has been a popular subject for research in urban studies and related disciplines, especially in recent years (Lee et al",11
"Therefore, it is becoming ever more imperative for research on sustainable urban development to be performed to help cities gauge their progress toward sustainability and implement sustainable development measures",11
"Many studies have established measures to assess urban sustainability, using either objective indicators (e.g., Al-Thani et al",11
"Objective indicators include measurements using official data, such as population density, employment rate, household income, pollution index, green area ratio, and so on, whereas subjective indicators involve perceptions or evaluations by people, such as the residents’ perceived performances of their cities and their satisfaction with the cities or aspects of the cities with regard to sustainable urban development",11
Researchers and policy makers have stressed the importance of public participation in decision making for sustainable urban development (Afacan 2015; Musa et al,11
"In Malaysia, for instance, the urban government practice a “people first” principle as they believe that in order to build sustainable cities, they must begin with the people (Federal Department of Town and Country Planning [FDTC] 2016)",11
"In Europe, the European Commission (EC) examines the quality of life in European cities every 3 years beginning 2004 for the purpose of urban development by surveying the cities’ residents (EC 2016)",11
Economy is a major sustainable development dimension that fuels urban growth,11
Urban residents’ financial health indicators such as cost of living and household income are part of the economic sustainability of cities (Lee et al,10
Housing affordability and adequacy are among the important gauges of urban sustainability mentioned in the SDGs’ Goal 11 and often studied in sustainable urban development literature and reports (Chan 2020; Koch and Ahmad 2018),11
"Good mobility and accessibility to places in the city, such as with well-connected roads and transport system, help residents to access such facilities easily (EC 2016; Kakar and Khan 2020)",11
"Health care facilities should be of good quality and sufficient to treat residents in need to ensure public health among the urban community, especially in times of pandemic",3
"There should be adequate retail sites and eateries to accommodate the residents’ needs for resources daily (Mouratidis 2017), along with continuous supply of clean water and electricity in the city (Chan and Lee 2019a)",6
"Criminal, vandalism, and drug and alcohol abuse cases should be prevented and controlled at all times (Andereck and Nyaupane 2011; Howley et al",3
"Also, there should be efficient waste management systems to ensure that solid wastes are collected regularly and minimized in the city (Chan and Lee 2019a; Hoang et al",12
Other important factors affecting the urban environment such as traffic congestions and crowdedness of people in the city should be also reduced and controlled (Chan and Lee 2019a; Lee et al,11
"According to target 11.4 of the SDGs’ Goal 11, efforts to conserve and protect cultural and natural heritage should be strengthened (UN 2015)",11
"Using the IP-AHP approach, cities’ sustainability performance along with the levels of importance of urban sustainability indicators can be gauged through the residents’ perspectives",11
"In line with the concept of utility/welfare maximization (Varian 2014), this approach could help governments to optimize the use of resources for urban development by allocating them in proportion to cities’ relative performance to ensure efficient and balanced developments of the cities in pursuit of sustainability",11
"Since the urban population in Southeast Asia is expected to grow in the coming years, it is important for developing countries in the region to ensure urban sustainability (Chan 2020)",11
"The city that performed the best in urban sustainability was Melaka City (0.344), followed very closely by Seberang Perai (0.341), while Kuala Lumpur had the lowest score (0.315)",11
Findings from the IP-AHP revealed that Melaka City and Seberang Perai performed better than Kuala Lumpur in sustainable urban development,11
Environmental impacts such as deforestation could increase carbon emissions in the city (Arshad et al,15
"Although the means of “convenience” belonged to Q4, which signified possible overkill, the factor should also be taken seriously as good mobility and accessibility to places in a city is a crucial element of urban sustainability (Afacan 2015; UN 2015)",11
"Melaka City is in fact a culturally rich city that is a UNESCO World Heritage site, as described earlier",11
"While this factor might not be that important to the residents, culture is still a necessary element of sustainable urban development (Senlier et al",11
"The cultural heritage of a city or place should be conserved for the continuation of the community’s long-standing identity, pride, and image (Lee and Xue 2020)",11
The application of the IP-AHP method in this research to assess urban sustainability for the purpose of welfare maximization further contributes to sustainable development and urban literature,11
Findings from the IP-AHP have also demonstrated the ability of the urban residents to provide meaningful information on the importance level of the sustainable urban development indicators as well as the performance of cities based on the indicators,11
"Beyond that, the indicators compiled in this paper can be adopted and applied in future urban development research",11
"On the practical side, this paper has established a method for the local authorities to measure and monitor the sustainability of cities, which can facilitate balanced and efficient implementations of sustainable urban development practices",11
"Future research may conduct a preliminary study, such as using the Delphi method, to identify more sustainable urban development indicators relevant to the topic being studied",11
PurposeErosion is one of the main soil degradation problems,15
"The study provides useful indications for better soil fertility management, in line with many of the goals of the 2030 Agenda For Sustainable Development",15
2007) which depend on soil quality,2
"Understanding the causes of soil degradation and restoring degraded ecosystems constitute key priorities for environmental agencies, land managers, and stakeholders worldwide (FAO 2015)",15
"Soil degradation, defined as lowering or loss of soil functions, due to human and natural factors, has become more and more serious worldwide in recent decades, and poses a threat to agricultural production and terrestrial ecosystems",15
"In particular, it is very important to protect soil quality and, if possible, to improve it, and to promote methods not using synthetic fertilizers to avoid the ecological risks associated with their use",2
Soil erosion is one of the threats in Europe (Stolte et al,15
2016) that can substantially decrease soil quality,2
A good level of microbiological activity is essential for maintaining soil quality,2
"For this reason, biochemical properties related to the biocycles of the elements (C, N, P and S) are used to diagnose soil quality, that is, for example, soil microbial biomass and its enzymatic activity and bacterium and fungus content (Nielsen and Winding 2002; Gomiero 2013)",2
"There is a need for farmers to stimulate soil biological activity in soils with low quality in order to improve crop growth, production and quality, and also soil fertility (El-Naggar et al",15
The method used for this improvement has to be in line with sustainable agriculture (Muller et al,2
Soil microorganisms are responsible for organic and inorganic matter recycling and play an important role in soil dynamic regeneration (Gömöryová et al,12
Analysis of soil microbial activity is necessary for identifying and quantifying the biological and ecological indicators of soil quality,2
The periods during which soil humidity is low result in starvation of the microbial biomass (Wolińska and Stępniewska 2012),2
"The application of seaweed to improve soil fertility is a traditional practice in many coastal regions, utilizing an inexpensive, abundant, and nutrient-rich resource (Nabti et al",15
"Seaweed biomass can be a useful amendment for crop production and soil quality improvement due to the provision of plant nutrients (e.g., N, P, K, Ca), and promotion of microbial activity, among other benefits (Possinger 2013)",2
"This method, which is in line with sustainable agriculture practice and some of the goals of the 2030 UN Agenda, could be easily applied by farmers",2
"Given that the change in soil microorganism enzymatic activity is more evident than other parameters, it can offer interesting data concerning soil degradation processes over a relatively short period of time",15
This study provides useful indications for a better soil fertility management.,15
"Moreover, energy efficiency and off-grid systems are a cost-effective strategy for a fast increase the number of people with energy access, as well as a way to fulfil the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals no",7
"In Mozambique, in 2020, despite the significant efforts made by national authorities, only 32% of the inhabitants have access to electricity services",7
"A characterization of Mozambique renewable energy potential per energy source, as well as the energy-efficient technology options in each sector, is carried out",7
"Additionally, several key actions to improve energy access and to promote energy efficiency in Mozambique are also addressed",7
"The International Energy Agency (IEA) defines energy access as “a household having reliable and affordable access to both clean cooking facilities and to electricity, which is enough to supply a basic bundle of energy services initially, and then an increasing level of electricity over time to reach the regional average” (Almeida et al., 2020)",7
"In order to improve the economic growth, it is essential to move from traditional agriculture and manufacturing to more efficient agricultural and industrial processes",8
"These structural changes usually have a significant influence in energy consumption levels, in energy carriers and also in energy-related technologies",7
"Socio-economic development usually tends to go hand-in-hand with the energy sector transformation, including the electrification of the economy",8
"This transformation creates a decline in the biomass consumption, but the energy consumption (due to the use of other energy carriers such as electricity and/or gas) and the per-capita energy use rises, as presented in Fig. 1",7
"Final energy use per capita and fuel mix in selected low-, middle- and high-income countries (Almeida et al., 2020) Worldwide, around 1.1 billion people lives without access to electricity and 84% of this people lives in rural and remote areas of emerging economies",7
"In sub-Saharan Africa, there are close to 600 million people living without access to energy (Almeida et al., 2019, 2020; Africa Development Forum & World Bank, 2019)",7
"Around the world, with the exception of sub-Saharan Africa, the population without energy access has decreased from 2000 to 2014 (Almeida et al., 2019; IEA, 2017a)",7
"During this period, in sub-Saharan Africa, the population growth rate was higher than the population that gained access to electricity, causing an increase in the number of people without energy access",7
"Only two countries in the sub-Saharan region (Mauritius and Seychelles) have near universal electricity coverage, and only in six nations, the household electricity access rate is 75% or higher (Africa Development Forum & World Bank, 2019)",7
Lack of access to electricity is endemic in Africa regardless of income as presented in Fig. 2,7
Energy access (left) and percentage of households with electricity (right),7
"Source: adapted from Africa Development Forum & World Bank, 2019 Despite all the important efforts, at regional and country levels, made in the last decade to improve the population energy access rates, only 43% of the population in sub-Saharan Africa has access to electricity",7
"As seen in many other emerging economies, the energy access is directly related with quality of life, which can be considerably improved by the access to energy services such as lighting, refrigeration, ventilation, water pumping and/or purification",7
"In the past, in remote areas, most people had no access to electricity",7
"Currently, other cleaner forms of electricity generation are available, with renewable energy systems, becoming more and more popular",7
These systems will allow millions of people to have access to energy services around the world until 2030,7
"Off-grid systems will allow to improve the rural population living standards by giving people access to several energy services, which include proper lighting for households, schools and hospitals; refrigeration units for storing perishable foods or medical products in health clinics; water systems (pumping and/or purification for irrigation and house consumption); information and communication technologies (ICT) to support schools’ educational programmes; improvement on households and commercial spaces thermal comfort through the use of fans and evaporative coolers; creation of small industries using equipment that uses electric motors (such as cereal milling, processing agricultural products, wood working, machine tools); etc",2
"Off-grid systems can be a powerful tool to help to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including the SDG7 — ensuring affordable, reliable, sustainable and innovative access to energy for all by 2030 (IEA, 2017a; IEA & I",7
"This paper will focus on Mozambique electric sector situation including its characterization, a description on the country transition to a low-carbon economy, an assessment on the renewable energy potential and expansion strategies",7
"Moreover, a special emphasis will be given to the role of energy efficiency (EE) in the demand side and renewable energies (namely through off-grid systems) in achieving the Government of Mozambique (GoM) goal of universal access to electricity by 2030",7
"EDM is responsible for electricity generation, transmission and distribution",7
"MIREME is responsible for national energy planning, policy formulation and overseeing the operation and development of the energy sector",7
One of the major objectives of GoM is to achieve the target of universal access to energy by 2030,7
"Source: (EDM – Eletricidade de Moçambique E.P., 2020b; Energia and de Moçambique - Estratégia de Desenvolvimento de Energias Novas e Renováveis, n.d. ; SADC - Southern African Development Community, n.d.; Energia and de Moçambique – Política de Energias novas e renováveis (Renewable energy policies 2020; ALER, 2016) FUNAE (Energy Fund or Fundo de Energia in Portuguese) is a public fund endowed with legal personality, administrative, financial and patrimonial autonomy",7
"Electricity is a key commodity for socio-economic development, including in emerging economies (Barry et al., 2011; IEA., 2018)",8
This increase in population will also be followed by an increase on the number of people obtaining access to electricity which will have a significant impact in electricity demand,7
"To respond to this growing demand, renewable energy namely off-grid systems will most certainly have an important role",7
"The electricity sector can also play an important social role, through either the national power grid expansion or off-grid systems, as well as job creation to respond to the growing demand in electricity throughout the next decades",8
"It is likely that over the next decade(s), installed solar PV capacity will exceed hydropower and natural gas and become the largest electricity source in Africa",7
"To fully understand Mozambique current situation regarding renewable energy (RE), it is important to analyse Fig. 5 and look at the “weight” of RE in the country total energy supply by source",7
"Source: (IEA, 2018a) The most used renewable energy sources are biofuels and wastes, which include fuel wood and agriculture wastes",7
"Since 1997, the year Cahora Bassa Hydro (HCB) plant resumed its operation, hydropower has gained more importance in the energy mix; in 2018, the total energy supply was around 11,000 ktoe",7
"HCB vast size means that hydroelectric generation dominates Mozambique energy sector, with 70% of the capacity mix in 2019",7
"However, natural gas and renewable energy occupy a growing share of Mozambique energy mix (EDM – Eletricidade de Moçambique E.P., 2020b)",7
"From Table 1, it is possible to observe that the total installed capacity in Mozambique is around 2780 MW, of which 2192 MW is from a hydroelectric source and 414 MW is from natural gas (International Energy Agency, 2018; República and de Moçambique - Resolução nº10, 2009; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Netherlands – Final energy report Mozambique, n.d.)",7
Mozambique energy consumption versus energy demand 2007–2027,7
"Source: (Integrated Master Plan Mozambique Power System Development Report, 2018) The limited access to electricity is one of the major challenges that Mozambique is currently facing",7
Providing 100% of electricity access (grid-connected and off-grid) to the population is a long-term ambition of the GoM,7
"Therefore, in remote locations where grid extension is prohibitively expensive, off-grid systems generally are the best tool to provide access to electricity services to a vast, low-density population that lives in Mozambique rural areas",7
"People can purchase solar energy components for domestic use (lighting, radio, mobile phone charging, etc.) at a starting price of about $50",7
Solar energy components sold in an informal market in Mozambique,7
"Efficient and sustainable use of all natural resources: land, agriculture, forestry, tourism, conservation areas, fisheries and mineral resources",15
"It is essential to carefully plan the development of these cities, through the creation of a sustainable urban development model that best meets the needs of the society and the environment",11
The use of these heavy pollutants has a wide repercussion for global warming and climate change,13
"Additionally, pollution will have a negative impact on food production due to extreme weather events (e.g",13
"renewable energies, clean cooking systems, electric vehicles) (Vegge et al., 2018), and it can be an important catalyser in the transformation of Mozambican energy sector",7
"Mozambique energy mix is mostly dominated by hydropower and biomass, both renewable forms of energy",7
"However, to make biomass a truly renewable form of energy, it is important that the country considers a strong reforestation plan allowing a sustainable use of this natural resource",15
"Replacing biomass by green electricity (produced from renewable energy sources, such as hydro, solar and wind) will allow to achieve significant reductions in emissions and reduce the population exposure to dangerous emissions",7
"Worldwide, the economy digitalization trends are really impressive, as data is growing at an exponential rate",9
"Figure 11 presents some examples of systems at use in Mozambique, where digitalization is extremely important",9
Examples of digitalization in the Mozambique electricity sector,9
"Source: adapted from IEA, 2017b Figure 12 presents the main advantages of digitalization for utilities",9
Main advantages of digitalization for utilities,9
"Source: adapted from IEA, 2018b In Mozambique considering the foreseen increase in population, the energy demand will also rapidly increase if no energy efficiency actions are considered",7
Digitalization will play an important role to monitor this increase in energy demand and at the same time implement actions to reduce it,9
"From the consumer side, a good example of digitalization is the pay as you go (PAYG) system, which is widely used by grid-connected and off-grid customers through the country, using a mobile phone for paying electricity bills",9
"Other example of digitalization in off-grid systems is the control and monitoring systems for minigrids that allow to detect problems, run troubleshooting procedures, etc",9
"Source: (Clube of Mozambique – Daily journal, 2021) The African continent is already facing the severe effects of climate change as well as associated problems such as humanitarian crises and growing socio-economic disparities",13
"Consequently, the promotion of public transportation and electric mobility is already identified by many countries as a priority in the mitigation of climate change effects (Galuszka et al., 2021; IEA, 2018b)",13
"Power grids need to invest in modernization; as previously mentioned, digitalization is a powerful tool that helps to achieve efficiency improvements and increase grid component lifespan",9
The challenges for the power grid can also be transformed in opportunities; if more renewable energy sources are integrated in the energy mix (e.g,7
"Affordable off-grid systems using solar PV and storage, coupled with intelligent load controls to balance supply and demand, can be used to balance the increasing demand that results from high population growth and at the same time increase Mozambique electricity access rates (Mimica et al., 2021)",7
Digitalization and off-grid systems can help to reduce this investment by making systems (grid-connected and off-grid) more efficient helping to achieve universal access,9
"Mozambique should lead as example in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) (SADC - Southern African Development Community, n.d.) by creating an innovative programme with the support of the government, Environmental and Energy Efficiency Fund, EDM, Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy (MIREME), FUNAE, etc",7
Mozambique is rich in natural resources and produces a large variety of agricultural products,2
"Approximately 10,000 villages, with potential for rural electrification, were georeferenced by the Renewable Energy Atlas (REA) (ALER, 2017), and several energy generation alternatives were considered, which include mini-hydro, PV, etc",7
Mozambique renewable energy potential,7
"The REA identifies 189 possible locations for grid-connected solar power plants, in the proximities of existing national power grid substations, with a total capacity of 599 MW",7
"The provinces of Maputo and Tete have the highest potential for grid-connected solar power plants, fundamentally due to the existence of adequate power grid infrastructures",7
"The country renewable energy strategy also includes targets for the installation of 100,000 solar water heaters until 2025, installation of 3.4 million square meters of solar water collectors in 2030 and 0.1 m2 of solar water heater collector area per individual living in Mozambique by 2030 (Energia and de Moçambique – Política de Energias novas e renováveis (Renewable energy policies)",7
"Its hydropower generation potential is estimated at roughly 19,000 MW (see Fig. 14), of which only 2100 MW has so far been developed",7
"speed, direction) are regularly conducted throughout the country to evaluate the wind power potential",7
"In this case, Mozambique resources are more limited than in other renewable energy sources (e.g",7
"Taking in consideration the abovementioned priority potential, Fig. 15 summarizes this potential per renewable energy source",7
Mozambique priority renewable energy potential,7
"Source: (ALER, 2017) The priority potential represents close to 33% of the available renewable energy potential in the country",7
"To achieve the GoM objectives, especially the universal access to electricity by 2030, it is essential to open the energy sector to foreign investment and foreign market players",7
"Attracting both of them will allow to increase the installed capacity of renewable energy systems (grid-connected and off-grid) beyond the mentioned priority potential, which will give Mozambique a faster transition to a low-carbon economy",7
"In Africa, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, the electricity affordability still is a major challenge and a barrier with regard to enable a secure access to electricity and/or modern energy services to populations",7
"In remote regions, the two largest problems are: The connection cost to the power grid or to a mini-grid, or the acquisition of a solar home system with associated appliances The cost of the electricity being consumed To make electricity access affordable, both these issues need to be addressed and the associated costs need to be adjusted according to the average income of families living in these regions",7
"spreading payments over time, pay-as-you-go systems, subsidising the equipment cost) to make the access to electricity and modern energy services affordable for deprived households",7
"As a result of the heavy weight of electricity in the family budget, electricity consumption rates per household (less than one seventh of the average consumption of households in developed countries) and electricity access in sub-Saharan Africa are among the lowest in the world (IEA, 2019)",7
"population income, energy resources, levels of energy access, economic and political stability, subsidies and taxes)",7
The use of subsidy policies as a way to support the development of the energy access rate is still a challenge in some countries in sub-Saharan Africa,7
"Energy-efficient technologies can sharply reduce the energy costs, as well as the required public energy subsidies, allowing to improve access to electricity and achieve the United Nations sustainable development goals",7
"One example of these platforms is the GET.invest (GET.invest, 2019), which is an European programme that mobilizes investments in decentralised renewable energy projects",7
"GET.invest was launched in early 2019, following its predecessor, the Africa-EU Renewable Energy Cooperation Programme (RECP)",7
"These multi-donor platform programmes provide support to private sector business and project developers, investors and regulators in building sustainable energy markets",7
"Additionally, these programmes directly address and contribute into the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, as well as mitigation of the effects of climate change",13
"for small areas around 50–100 km) isolated from the national power grid (working as small islands), to supply a small number of villages, with renewable energy (e.g",7
"It is estimated that by 2040, the photovoltaic modules’ levelized cost of energy (LCOE), which is the measure of a power source that allows comparison of different methods of electricity generation on a consistent basis, will drop another 66% (Almeida et al., 2019)",7
"The combination of these cost reduction strategies will accelerate the off-grid market implementation, as well as the energy access rate",7
These wastes are an abundant source of biomass that can be used for electricity generation through a clean process where emissions are monitored and controlled,7
Energy efficiency (EE) should be seen by Mozambique authorities as a tool to reduce the foreseen increase in energy demand over the next decades,7
"For example, the residential sector demand for electricity is directly connected with the population number, quality of life (monthly income) and the rate of electrification (energy access)",7
"If more people gain access to electricity and at the same get better living standards, with better or steadier jobs and higher wages, they will be able to provide their families with more comfort",7
"In the commercial and industrial sectors, if the country is able to reduce the unemployment rate, the production levels will increase giving companies higher turnovers that will increase the energy demand in all other sectors",8
"Foreseeing this future increase in energy demand in all sectors, the country national authorities need to prepare the electrical infrastructures (grid-connected and off-grid systems) as well as the transition to a low-carbon and sustainable energy mix",7
"Electrical infrastructures take time to implement, the cost-effectiveness of these systems usually have significant influence in the implementation time and EE might be the best tool to help the electrical sector to gain time and control the increase in peak demand until new renewable energy projects are in place",7
"Recently, Mozambique has launched a National Energy Efficiency Strategy and Action Plan",7
The BAUS (business-as-usual scenario) does not include the implementation of any energy efficiency measures,7
This provides a strong argument for program implementation due to the multiple benefits of energy efficiency actions,7
"The adoption of super energy-efficient technologies has as a major benefit in the substantial decrease of the investment cost of solar energy supply, including energy storage",7
The National Energy Efficiency Strategy and Action Plan emphasises that Mozambique has a huge potential to reduce its energy consumption and to improve the energy efficiency at all levels,7
"However, to take advantage of these opportunities for energy savings, there is a need to create an institutional and regulatory framework: MEEC (Mozambique Energy Efficiency Centre) — The creation of an institution focused on the development and implementation of energy efficiency in the country is essential to guarantee a successful programme implementation",7
Environmental and Energy Efficiency Fund — It is important to have a suitable funding mechanism to successfully implement the proposed energy efficiency actions,7
"This fund will get its budgetary capacity through a series of taxes (on inefficient equipment, carbon tax, etc.), government funding and external donors",12
Capacity building — The implementation of energy efficiency requires qualified and skilled professionals for these capacity building initiatives is essential to improve the human resources’ competences,7
"engineers, architects, maintenance technicians) is extremely important to improve these professionals’ knowledge level and expertise concerning energy efficiency",7
Integration of renewable energy systems — The integration of these systems will have an important role in driving buildings towards a nearly zero energy consumption,7
"These companies are able to bring into Mozambique expertise, capacity building for the local workforce and capital to invest in energy efficiency",7
"Source: adapted from MIREME, 2021 Energy efficiency is a critical response to the pressing nature of the climate change, economic development, energy security and energy access challenges that many countries are still facing, especially in sub-Saharan Africa",7
"In Mozambique, to overcome these challenges, a set of key actions are essential to enable energy efficiency and electric vehicles",7
"The country National Energy Efficiency Strategy and Action Plan (MIREME, 2021) has identified an extensive list of EE actions, which include: Creation of specific EE regulation (e.g",7
"energy efficiency bill, MEPS and energy labels) — This is an essential framework document that provides the statutory basis for promulgation of rules and regulations to promote energy efficiency in Mozambique",7
Institutional framework which includes the creation of Mozambique Energy Efficiency Centre (MEEC) and the Environmental and Energy Efficiency Fund — These institutions will be the main implementation drivers for EE in the country,7
The Environmental and Energy Efficiency Fund is a financial instrument capable of financing EE actions,7
Inclusion of energy efficiency in education at all levels — The Mozambican education system should include energy sustainability contents (e.g,7
"Staff training, professional certification and other capacity building programmes are essential to develop expertise in energy efficiency methods and good practices",7
"energy managers, qualified energy efficiency experts) constitutes an important signal of credibility",7
"By introducing an EE code into buildings regulation, the GoM will be defining legal requirements for buildings’ energy performance occupants’ health and comfort, allowing to address energy consumption for heating/cooling, lighting, thermal insulation, etc",7
IEC promotes off-grid electricity access with new standard,7
"Initiate the adoption and uptake of electric mobility — Worldwide, there is evidence that electric mobility is the way to achieve sustainable mobility",11
This tax should revert to the Environmental and Energy Efficiency Fund and finance EE projects,7
The electricity access rate is still very low in Mozambique (32% in 2020) and need to be increased at a faster rate in order to allow the achievement of the SDG7 and GoM objective of providing universal access by 2030,7
"Mozambique is blessed with a variety of renewable energy resources, which have the potential to provide all the country requirements",7
"The country has identified a significant potential for renewable energies (more than 23,000 GW in solar, hydroelectric, wind, biomass and geothermal)",7
"Off-grid energy access can be used as a tool to speed up the electrification rate in a cost-effective way, namely to remote areas",7
"Most of these people do not have access to electricity; in these cases, off-grid systems are the most cost-effective way to rapidly increase the electricity access rate and improve the living standards of these people",7
The transportation sector is now mostly based in oil derivatives and should also experience a fast transition to clean mobility,11
"The National Energy Efficiency Strategy and Action Plan (MIREME, 2021) addresses this sector and recommends the adoption of specific actions to promote a fast transition to cleaner forms of transportation",7
"Energy-efficient technologies can be used in the different sectors to provide least-cost electricity services in a large variety of end-uses with a very cost-effective savings potential, leading to a significant decrease the investments associated with increasing generation, transmission and distribution for energy access",7
"Moreover, EE and off-grid systems should be seen as powerful tools to reduce the number of people without energy access, as well as to fulfil the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals no",7
"Financing EE is still the largest barrier to implement energy efficiency, but in the case of Mozambique, the first step in EE needs to be done (Ahlborg & Hammar, 2014)",7
"To achieve these goals, the GoM needs to establish strategic collaborative partnerships with foreign investors, development agencies, multi-donor platforms and other institutions with the ability to mobilize funds to support rural electrification and EE",17
"The introduction of EE regulation (the energy efficiency bill, MEPS and energy labelling) is of the utmost importance to drive the market into a more efficiency path by removing low-efficiency equipment from the market and at the same time change consumer behaviour into informed energy-efficient purchases",7
The Mozambique Energy Efficiency Strategy and Action Plan (EESAP) is an extremely important document that clearly identifies the possible electricity consumption evolution scenarios for the next decade and outlines a significant list of energy efficiency actions to introduce and develop energy efficiency (for grid-connected and off-grid systems) and electric mobility in country,7
Energy efficiency multiple benefits for Mozambique,7
"The Medellin Declaration on Marine Litter in Life Cycle Assessment and Management was developed during the Conferencia Internacional de Análisis de Ciclo de Vida en Latinoamérica, which took place from 12–15 June in Medellin, Colombia",14
The Declaration calls for an improved handling of plastic resources and is meant to encourage researchers and relevant stakeholders to develop new methodologies to address marine litter better within Life Cycle Assessments.The declaration has been co-authored by various stakeholders present at the conference and has been revised in an online-consultation process until the 18th of July,14
"At the same time, we also acknowledge that currently life cycle assessment (LCA), as one of the most widely used environmental sustainability assessment tools, is not adequately addressing the impacts generated due to marine debris, plastics and microplastics",14
"In addition, we are also not aware of any life cycle assessments on products that include plastics and adequately address the challenge of marine litter",14
"Given the magnitude of the impacts caused by marine debris, plastics and microplastics in our oceans and as response to the public concern on these impacts echoed at the recent Ocean Conference, we are calling for: The generation of science-based data and information to support policy making and implementation of voluntary or mandatory regulations that support the principle of extended producer responsibility and thereby ensure the proper handling of plastics waste at the end of its life",14
The support for capacity building on the value of life cycle management for products that contain plastics to accelerate the necessary changes that prevent these plastics to become marine litter,14
"We also call for a definition of a number of key production processes, as well as the development of an inventory of the risk that plastic ends up into the sea due to inadequately functioning waste and wastewater management systems",6
"This typology should be regionalised by regions or countries, considering the regional differences in waste and wastewater management systems",6
The development of adequate impact assessment models that may support a separate life cycle impact assessment midpoint category for marine litter or be integrated into existing impact categories,14
Life Cycle Assessment case studies of products containing plastics that partially become marine litter to validate the developments foreseen,14
The consideration of the impacts of marine litter in the development of emerging methods in social life cycle assessment,14
"With this support, we are committed to creating the science-based tools that will guide and accelerate actions on an urgent basis, including by strengthening existing institutions and partnerships, to develop approaches of assessing marine debris, plastics and microplastics with better inventory data and improved impact assessment methods as an environmental impact category in life cycle assessment",14
"With this insight, we have a basis to further strengthen our efforts to promote extended producer responsibility in order to reduce marine debris, plastics and microplastics in the oceans",14
"Due to the existence of complexities of heterogeneities, hierarchy, discreteness, and interactions in municipal solid waste management (MSWM) systems such as Beijing, China, a series of socio-economic and eco-environmental problems may emerge or worsen and result in irredeemable damages in the following decades",12
"For instance, most of the public do not realize the occurrence and impacts of this problem and make all possible efforts to reduce the generation of solid wastes, while a few do not recognize the long-term significance of environmental protection",15
The processing efficiency and capacity of solid waste treatment facilities are relatively low,12
"The local management department lacks effective supervision and management of disposal of solid wastes in every process such as construction, sortation, recycling, collection, transportation, treatment, and pollution control",12
"In comparison with the causes stated above, the most critical one is that the current or historical management scheme is made based on a simplification of the complicated solid waste management system to a large extent",12
"It is merely feasible and reliable in consideration of facility usage efficiencies, economic costs, eco-environmental protection, and coordination of resources over large temporal and spatial scales",15
"If Beijing still lacks systematic municipal solid waste management (MSWM) in the following decade, a series of socio-economic and eco-environmental problems will emerge or worsen and result in irredeemable damages",12
MSWM is desired for improving solid waste management and mitigating potential problems in municipalities such as Beijing,12
"For instance, (i) a district in a municipality may be heterogeneous in solid waste generation rates and distances between communities and treatment facilities",12
"In particular, GIS was extensively applied to determine solid waste collection routes (Sener et al",12
"If incorrect guidance on MSWM remains in the future, the potential problems in socio-economic development and eco-environmental conservation due to provision of unreliable system management schemes may not be effectively resolved or even worsen",8
"To achieve this, a variety of related datasets are collected from provincial and local statistical yearbooks, population census statistics, the National Bureau of Statistics of China ( ), Global Administrative Areas ( ), World Soil Information ( ), and Natural Earth ( )",17
"Meanwhile, the GDP of Beijing ranks 13th while the per capita GDP ranks second among all provinces in China, and both are significantly monotonic with national economic development",8
"The annual growth rate of GDP in Beijing gradually decreased from 8.1% in 2011, through 7.7%, 7.7%, and 7.3% in 2012, 2013, and 2014, respectively, to 6.9% in 2015 as economic development slowed down in China extensively",8
It is likely that the annual GDP growth rate in Beijing will further gradually decrease to nearly 4% in 2025,8
"Location, administrative units, and population of Beijing Municipal solid waste (MSW) management in Beijing is also associated with natural conditions such as elevation, transportation, land use, soil, landform, and lithology as shown in Fig",12
"5b), 10 incineration or waste-to-energy (WTE) plants (Fig",12
"Part of them belong to the same integrated solid waste treatment plants, e.g., Shunyi Solid Waste Treatment Plant and Miyun Solid Waste Treatment Plant, which can enable landfilling, composting, and incineration of solid wastes at one location",12
"It is possible that, with the growth of the population and development of the local economy, the total processing capacity of existing facilities is exceeded by the solid waste generation amount in the following decade",12
"The two dominant influencing factors for MSW generation rates, i.e., population densities and per capita solid waste generation, are analyzed separately",12
"2011), the per capita solid waste generation rates in every district are obtained",12
"With the rapid growth of the economy and population in Beijing, the annual volume of solid waste disposal will increase from 8.892 million tons in the first period to 11.232 million tons in the second period with a growth of 26.3%",12
"As for the core zone, the growth of solid wastes will be insignificant due to, according to the development plan in Beijing, strict control of solid waste generation in this zone",12
"In addition, the amount of solid waste disposal will increase 25.8% in the buffer zone and 24.1% in the conservation zone",12
"The resources and consequences for solid waste treatment in Beijing, e.g., facility capacities, eco-environmental loads, transportation fluxes, capital and operational costs, and economic benefits, are open for all communities in 16 districts or four zones",12
"There are hierarchical competitions among districts or zones in Beijing in the allocation of solid waste treatment resources and consequences, which is further complicated by temporal and spatial heterogeneities in the MSWM system",12
"As for Beijing, capacity expansion or new construction of solid waste treatment facilities is mainly administrated by the municipal management department, while specific solid waste flow allocation among communities and facilities is determined by local management departments of districts or zones",12
"For example, a solid waste treatment plant is adjacent to districts A and B and has a limited daily processing capacity",12
"If most of the solid wastes from district A are transported to another plant, the transportation cost of district A would increase, leading to an increase of the total solid waste treatment cost in Beijing",12
The scheme can hardly be executed in some regions of which the public and local governments refuse to accept an unreasonable allocation of solid waste treatment resources and consequences over the whole municipality,12
"In consideration of the Overall Development Plan of Beijing and the Thirteenth Five-Year Plan of Beijing, three scenarios of solid waste treatment policies in Beijing are generated",12
"These scenarios are different with the ratio of three solid waste treatment technologies, i.e., landfill, composting, and incineration",12
"A critical problem of MSWM in Beijing is how to mitigate potential socio-economic and eco-environmental issues in the following decade resulting from ineffective management of solid waste treatment resources, processes, and consequences under multiple system complexities",12
"The principal system complexities comprise (i) multiplicities of subsystems, processes, components, constraining conditions, and planning periods in the MSWM system; (ii) spatial heterogeneities of solid waste generation, facility locations, and distances among facilities and communities; (iii) hierarchical competitions among development goals, resource availabilities, technical limits, and unknown schemes of different management objects; and (iv) discreteness of facility expansion options in adapting to insufficiency of solid waste treatment capacities under population and economic growths",12
The amounts of recyclables are not included in waste generation rates because data collected after waste recycling cannot reflect those amounts and recyclables can hardly be managed by the governmental MSWM system,12
"For example, it is assumed that solid waste is generated at the central point of every grid",12
"The boundary conditions of the MSWM system in Beijing, e.g., socio-economic development and eco-environmental loads, would not significantly change in the planning period",8
Improvement or correction of unreasonable management of the MSWM system in Beijing is enabled by reallocation of solid waste processing resources over 235 grids in 16 districts or 4 zones and during two 5-year planning periods,12
"As for any one of four zones or 16 districts, the optimal scheme is to minimize the individual total net cost under the expansion scheme of solid waste treatment facilities in Beijing in the two planning periods",12
"The other group is, for any zones or districts, how to allocate solid waste flows among grids, transfer stations, and all available treatment facilities including expanded and newly built ones in two planning periods",12
"The solid waste management department of Beijing can determine the first group of measures, but can hardly restrain solid waste flow allocation activities in individual zones or districts",12
"In contrast, for any zones or districts, the local solid waste management department is capable of deciding the second group of measures but is a lack of administrative power at facility expansion or construction schemes",12
"In detail, an objective function, i.e., equation (a), at the top layer of the DMIFHP model is used to reflect the expectation of the management department of Beijing, i.e., minimizing the total net costs composed of solid waste processing costs and benefits and facility expansion or construction costs",12
"(a) Goal of the MSWM department in Beijing: (b) Constraints of zonal optimization: (b1) Goal of the MSWM department in zone d:
 
\( Min\ {FL}_d=\Big[\sum_{t=1}^2\sum_{g=1}^{gd}\sum_{s=1}^{13}{WT}_{tdgs}\cdot {UTC}_t\cdot {DS}_{sdg}+\sum_{t=1}^2\sum_{g=1}^{gd}\sum_{s=1}^{13}{WT}_{tdgs}\cdot CS+\sum_{t=1}^2\sum_{g=1}^{gd}\sum_{l=1}^{27}{WTL}_{tdgl}\cdot {UTC}_t\cdot {DL}_{dgl} \)
 subject to (b2) Constraints of MSW treatment-amount requirements in zone d:
 (b3) Constraints of transfer-amount requirementsin zone d:
 (b4) Constraints of composting ratios in zone d:
 (b5) Constraints of incineration ratios in zone d:
 (b6) Constraints of composting-residue post-processing in zone d:
 (b7) Constraints of incineration-residue post-processing in zone d:
 (c) Constraints of mass balance: (d) Constraints of treatment facility capacity: (e) Constraints of facility expansion: (f) Constraints of non-negativity: where: 
t = indices for planning periods 1 and 2; 
d = indices for zones 1 to 4 corresponding to the core zone, the diffusion zone, the buffer zone, and the conservation zone, respectively 
G

d
 = indices for the numbers of grids in zone d where G
1 = 8, G
2 = 55, G
3 = 81, and G
4 = 91 
g = indices for the IDs of grids in a zone 
s = indices for transfer stations 1 to 13 corresponding to Datun Transfer Station, Majialou Transfer Station, Xiaowuji Transfer Station, Wuluju Transfer Station, Mentougou Transfer Station, Yamenkou Transfer Station, Datun2 Transfer Station, Fangshan Transfer Station, Tongzhou Transfer Station, Pinggu Transfer Station, Fangshan2 Transfer Station, Dating Transfer Station, and Changping Transfer Station, respectively 
l = indices for landfill facilities 1 to 27 corresponding to Asuwei Landfill, Anding Landfill, Beishenshu Landfill, Liulitun Landfill, Gaoantun Landfill, Jiaojiapo Landfill, Binyang Landfill, Qianruiying Landfill, Zhangjiakou Landfill, Banbidian Landfill, Xitianyang Landfill, Yonghezhuang Landfill, Dongnanzhao Landfill, Zhaitang Landfill, Yongning Landfill, Huairou Landfill, Shunyi Landfill, Shunyi Plant, Miyun Plant, Liangjiawu Landfill, Wangzhuo Landfill, Yanshan Landfill, Fangshan Plant, Pinggu Plant, Shanqu Landfill, Miyun Landfill, and Jiaojiapo2 Landfill, respectively 
i = indices for incineration facilities 1 to 10 corresponding to Changping Incinerator, Liulitun Incinerator, Gaoantun Incinerator, Nangong Incinerator, Dongcun Plant, Asuwei Incinerator, Shunyi Plant, Liulitun Plant, Fangshan Plant, and Pinggu Plant, respectively 
c = indices for composting facilities 1 to 13 corresponding to Nangong Composting, Shunyi Plant, Huairou Plant, Asuwei Plant, Nangong Chuyu Composting, Beitiantang Plant, Shunyi2 Plant, Miyun Plant, Gaoantun Chuyu Composting, Liulitun Chuyu Composting, Gaoantun Plant, Fangshan Plant, and Pinggu Plant, respectively 
WGR

tdg
 = amount of solid wastes generated in grid g in zone d in period t (104 tons/year) 
WCR

td
 = solid waste collection rate in zone d in period t (−) 
WT

tdgs
 = solid waste flows from grid g in zone d to transfer station s in period t (104 tons/year) 
DS

sdg
 = distance between transfer station s and grid g in zone d (km) 
UTC

t
 = unit solid waste transportation cost in period t (RMB/ton·km) 
EPT

s
 = pre-processing efficiency of transfer station s (−) 
CS = unit solid waste pre-processing cost at a transfer station (RMB/ton) 
WTSL

tsl
 = amount of solid wastes from transfer station s to landfill facility l in period t (104 tons/year) 
WTSI

tsi
 = amount of solid wastes from transfer station s to incineration facility i in period t (104 tons/year) 
WTSC

tsc
 = amount of solid wastes from transfer station s to composting facility c in period t (104 tons/year) 
DSL

sl
 = distance between transfer station s and landfill facility l (km) 
DSI

si
 = distance between transfer station s and incineration facility i (km) 
DSC

sc
 = distance between transfer station s and composting facility c (km) 
RRI

td
 = ratio of incinerated solid wastes in zone d in period t (−) 
RRC

td
 = ratio of composted solid wastes in zone d in period t (−) 
WTL

tdgl
 = amount of solid wastes from grid g in zone d to landfill facility l in period t (104 tons/year) 
WTI

tdgi
 = amount of solid wastes from grid g in zone d to incineration facility i in period t (104 tons/year) 
WTC

tdgc
 = amount of solid wastes from grid g in zone d to composting facility c in period t (104 tons/year) 
DL

dgl
 = distance between grid g in zone d and landfill facility l (km) 
DI

dgi
 = distance between grid g in zone d and incineration facility i (km) 
DC

dgc
 = distance between grid g in zone d and composting facility c (km) 
LTC

l
 = existing treatment capacity of landfill facility l (104 tons/year) 
ITC

i
 = existing treatment capacity of incineration facility i (104 tons/year) 
CTC

c
 = existing treatment capacity of composting facility c (104 tons/year) 
LEL = low-capacity expansion level of a landfill facility (104 tons) 
LEM = medium-capacity expansion level of a landfill facility (104 tons) 
LEH = high-capacity expansion level of a landfill facility (104 tons) 
CEL = unit capacity expansion cost of a landfill facility (RMB/ton) 
LL

tl
 = binary variable for indicating whether landfill facility l is expanded at the low level in period t (1 = positive, 0 = negative) 
LM

tl
 = binary variable for indicating whether landfill facility l is expanded at the medium level in period t (1 = positive, 0 = negative) 
LH

tl
 = binary variable for indicating whether landfill facility l is expanded at the high level in period t (1 = positive, 0 = negative) 
IEL = low-capacity expansion level of an incineration facility (104 tons) 
IEM = medium-capacity expansion level of an incineration facility (104 tons) 
IEH = high-capacity expansion level of an incineration facility (104 tons) 
CEI = unit capacity expansion cost of an incineration facility (RMB/ton) 
IL

ti
 = binary variable for indicating whether incineration facility i is expanded at the low level in period t (1 = positive, 0 = negative) 
IM

ti
 = binary variable for indicating whether incineration facility i is expanded at the medium level in period t (1 = positive, 0 = negative) 
IH

ti
 = binary variable for indicating whether incineration facility i is expanded at the high level in period t (1 = positive, 0 = negative) 
CEL = low-capacity expansion level of a composing facility (104 tons) 
CEM = medium-capacity expansion level of a composing facility (104 tons) 
CEH = high-capacity expansion level of a composing facility (104 tons) 
CEC = unit capacity expansion cost of a composing facility (RMB/ton) 
CL

tc
 = binary variable for indicating whether composing facility c is expanded at the low level in period t (1 = positive, 0 = negative) 
CM

tc
 = binary variable for indicating whether composing facility c is expanded at the medium level in period t (1 = positive, 0 = negative) 
CH

tc
 = binary variable for indicating whether composing facility c is expanded at the high level in period t (1 = positive, 0 = negative) 
LOC

tl
 = unit operation cost of landfill facility l in period t (RMB/ton) 
IOC

ti
 = unit operation cost of incineration facility i in period t (RMB/ton) 
COC

tc
 = unit operation cost of composting facility c in period t (RMB/ton) 
IOR

t
 = processing efficiency of an incineration facility in period t, i.e., ratio of the weight loss of solid wastes due to incineration (−) 
IB

t
 = unit benefit for an incineration facility in period t (RMB/ton) 
DIL

il
 = distance between landfill facility l and incineration facility i (km) 
RWI

tdil
 = amount of the residues from incineration of solid wastes from zone d by incinerator i to landfill facility l in period t (104 tons/year) 
COR

t
 = processing efficiency of a composting facility in period t, i.e., ratio of the weight loss of solid wastes due to composting (−) 
CB

t
 = unit benefit for a composting facility in period t (RMB/ton) 
DCL

cl
 = distance between landfill facility l and composting facility c (km) 
RWC

tdcl
 = amount of the residues from composting of solid wastes from zone d by composter c to landfill facility l in period t (104 tons/year)",12
The constraints of zonal optimization in the DMIFHP model are linear programming problems in which the decision variables of solid waste allocation are to be optimized given values of the decision variables of facility expansion,12
"(vii) The branch-and-bound algorithm (Land and Doig 1960) is employed again to solve the above mixed-integer linear programming model, generating the optimal values of λ, decision variables in the original model, and the corresponding minimal solid waste processing costs of four zones and Beijing",12
This chase for these goals is pertinent for sustainable economic growth and environmental sustainability,8
"To this end, the present study seeks to identify the factors determining the energy consumption function for 79 economies across the globe",7
"Every region exhibits a common narrative that economic growth, carbon emissions, and urbanization are the key factors determining the consumption function in most of the sample economies",8
"In the light of these findings, it is recommended that energy policy needs to be designed considering the significance of economic growth and environmental quality, and consequently it leads toward the achievement of the sustainable development goals",8
Energy consumptions facilitate the industrial activity and other primary factors of economic growth,8
"It has been believed that energy consumption is primarily determined by gross domestic product (GDP), while over the time, empirical studies unveiled various potential factors that determine the energy usage",7
Energy consumption function is the most debated topic among researcher that argues ambiguous results,7
"With the passage of time, researchers have been using trade openness, inward foreign direct investment (FDI), urbanization, population growth, financial development, globalization, industrialization, natural resources, foreign remittances, human capital index, economic complexity, carbon emission, relative energy prices and energy intensity, etc",7
as the factors determining energy consumption function (Shahbaz and Lean 2012; Wang 2014; Azam et al,7
"For reliable and efficient empirical results, further endeavors are required to explore common possible drivers of the energy consumption across the globe",7
There is a broad narrative that the importance of energy as a commodity in the country’s economic development and expansion cannot be overstated,8
"Energy production and consumption, like other economic growth variables, is a critical predictor of economic development (Chontanawat et al",8
"Clearly, the availability of cost-effective, accessible, and higher-quality energy inputs has had a significant role in promoting economic growth in both developing and developed countries (Stern 2019)",8
"As a result, the importance of biomass, particularly fuelwood, as a significant renewable energy source capable of contributing significantly, has grown since the 1973 oil shocks",7
"In contrast, some past research has revealed the negative impacts of excessive energy consumption, such that Neumayer (2003) found that the manufacturing sector is typically considered to be more polluting than the services sector",7
"Supposedly, perception growth, in combination with rapid urbanization, the increased demand of goods and services by an affluent middle class, and changing mode of production, has a severe negative impact on the nations’ economic growth prospects (UNESCAP 2008)",8
The forgoing discussion revealed the importance of energy usage and the need to identify the true determinants of energy consumption across the globe,7
"The data on energy consumption in different region and the world from 1971 to 2014Footnote 1 is used to plot the trend overtime, in Figs. 1 and 2",7
The energy consumption in different regions across the world has different increasing trends,7
"However, some plots have negative trends in some particular periods, but the overall series shows that energy consumption is increased in the sample time span",7
"Particularly, East Asia and Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and Arab States, and the World as a whole have significant positive trends in the energy consumption over time",7
"On the other hand, energy consumption in European countries has increasing trend from 1971 to 2006, but later it is decreased over time",7
"Lastly, the most fluctuated energy consumption magnitude exists in African countries, but overall, it also gains a bit of increase",7
"Overall, the trend of energy consumption in the world can be seen in Fig. 2",7
"Hence, the energy consumption throughout the world is increasing over time",7
Source: World Development Indicators (2021) Trends of energy consumption in various regions,7
 Source: World Development Indicators (2021) Trend of global energy consumption,7
"Thirdly, the determinants in the energy consumption function are similar in each country’s case, and the data is retrieved from a single reliable and most authentic source",7
"During the late 1970s, the connection between energy use and economic growth gained attraction",8
Kraft and Kraft (1978) discovered evidence to support the link between income and energy consumption in the USA,7
"Furthermore, Bekhet and Othman (2011) found a significant correlation between energy consumption and income",7
"In another study by Bekhet and Othman (2014), they observed a long-term connection between energy consumption and economic activity in Malaysia from 1971 to 2011",7
"A wide range of studies estimated energy consumption function based on different time span, regions, econometric techniques, and determinants",7
"Specifically, the income level is considered the most important determinant of energy consumption in the vast literature (Richmond and Kaufmann 2006)",7
"Moreover, there is common narrative in the developing countries that grow first and clean later, so the economic expansion may cause the huge carbon emissions which is directly associated with energy consumption",7
2020) are also found as strong factors of energy consumption function,7
"Further, the nexus between FDI and trade openness with energy consumption are also supported by various literatures theoretically",7
The link between the FDI and trade openness with energy consumption is also supported by empirical studies discussed in the next subsection,7
"Likewise, urbanization and CO2 emissions also determine the energy consumption; hence their link can be justified with some relevant theories like the theory of urban environmental transition, the theory of ecological modernization, and the theory of compact cities (Madlener and Sunak, 2011; Sharif et al",7
The aim of the modern society to pursue the developed status is to concentrate on energy-intensive manufacturing which directly increases the energy consumption,7
Urbanization also brings modernization in the agriculture with mechanization which heavily increases the energy consumption (Jones 1991),7
The nexus between the income and energy consumption is confirmed by the various empirical literature,7
"In this regard, Yu and Choi (1985) found causal relationship between GNP and energy consumption in the Philippines and South Korea",7
"On the other hand, the study found no causality between income and energy consumption in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines",7
"Contrary to the later argument, Asafu-Adjaye (2000) confirmed bidirectional causality between income and energy consumption in the Philippines and Taiwan",7
Joyeux and Ripple (2011) conducted the study of 56 developed and less developed economies and confirmed unidirectional causality from income to energy consumption,7
(2015) showed bidirectional causality between income and energy consumption in the case of Pakistan,7
Their finding also showed a significant relationship between emission of greenhouse gases and energy consumption,7
"Furthermore, trade liberalization boosts capitalization, which has a significant impact on energy consumption",7
"They argued that trade openness might not affect energy consumption directly, but it affects energy consumption through other indicators",7
Jena and Grote (2008) explained that trade openness and energy consumption has close link,7
Sadorsky (2012) found long run relationship between trade openness and energy consumption in South American economies from 1980 to 2007,7
A significant link in the environmental quality and energy consumption also existed which is backed by wide empirical studies,7
The results further unveiled a unidirectional causality from income and carbon emission to energy consumption in the period from 1975 to 2010,7
"Although economic growth needs more FDI inflow, this increases carbon emission that further degraded the environment quality (Omri et al",8
The causality flowing from CO2 to energy consumption was also confirmed by Soytas and Sari (2009),7
"As strong determinants of energy consumption, trade openness and carbon emission variables are taken as regressors in this study to avoid the omitted variable bias which might mislead the results for least squares estimator (Jargowsky, 2005)",7
The extant literature indicated that urbanization is also a vital determinant of energy consumption,7
"These structural transformations of economy, migration toward urban areas, increase the energy consumption which is confirmed by various empirical studies (Mishra et al",7
The shift of labor force from rural areas to urban areas significantly increased the energy consumption because energy is a normal good and urban population in contrary uses more energy (Sadorsky 2013),7
The growth rate in the urban population might also encourage economies of scale in the production process along with high energy consumption (Jones 1991),7
"The relationship of FDI and energy consumption is empirically analyzed by some prior studies; for example, Mielnik and Goldemberg (2002) observed that increase in FDI causes to lower the energy consumption for 20 less developed countries from 1987 to 1996",7
"(2013) found that GDP, financial development, and FDI inflows significantly fluctuate energy consumption in the case of India over 1975–2011, while results found are mix for the rest of SAARC countries",7
"(2014) observed that carbon emissions, FDI, and trade openness reduced the energy demand, while clean energy and GDP increase the energy use in the UAE over 1975Q1–2011Q4",7
"(2012) determined consumption function for economic growth, urbanization, and FDI inflows",8
"In the recent literature, some of the studies incorporated new factors and methods in the function of energy consumption which also play a significant role",7
"(2020) confirmed the significant effect of energy prices, energy productivity, eco-innovation, human capital, and income on energy consumption for OECD countries over 1990–2017",7
(2020) observed that economic complexity has a negative effect on energy consumption for Pakistan from 1972Q1 to 2018Q4,7
The study also outlines that renewable energy improves environmental quality over the study period,7
A summary of previous studies on the factors determining energy consumption are also reported in Table 1,7
"In order to explore significant factors of the energy consumption, we use the annual frequency data for sample countries under the time span of 1972 to 2015",7
"Net FDI inflow is a channel to transfer of technology, which contribute to a country’s energy consumption",7
"In a single direction, FDI is a strong determinant of economic growth which in turn affect economic growth",8
"(2021), we hypothesis the FDI as a strong factor in the energy consumption function",7
Urbanization also affects energy consumption and previous empirical evidence reveals that urbanization brings the structural transformation in the economy (Mishra et al,7
These transformations effect the energy consumption because the urban people are more energy consumption intensive (Sadorsky 2013),7
"Based on these facts, urbanization has a significant role in the energy consumption",7
The existing literature also confirms that trade openness affects energy consumption (Cole 2006; Canh et al,7
"Like FDI, trade openness also fluctuates the energy consumption",7
"There is a significant link in the environmental and energy consumption (Azlina & Mustapha, 2012)",7
"Similar to our hypothesis, Soytas and Sari (2009) unveiled unidirectional causality flowing from CO2 emission to energy consumption",7
"Hence, like other factors, CO2 is also considered a vital factor in the energy consumption function",7
"The estimation is solely based on the ordinary least square, for the results of energy consumption function",7
This technique applied by prominent studies to find the determinants of energy consumption function (Dalei 2016; Kotsila and Polychronidou 2021),7
"Moreover, R2 statistic is also employed, which states that how much predictors do explain the energy consumption",7
"Reminding the “Review of literature” section of this study, each variable selected in the models plays a vital role in explaining energy consumption",7
"Overall, the estimates of all regions show that economic growth has positive and statistically significant coefficients in almost all sample economies",8
"However, the estimate of few economies exhibits insignificant coefficient economic growth, but overall, it can be generalized as statistically significant and positive based on the more over less criteria",8
"Nonetheless, the explanation of the energy consumption by its predictors in the function is different across countries and regions but statistically significant",7
The second most influential variable in the energy consumption function is carbon emission,7
"Likewise, the estimates of each region have also consensus on the positive effect of carbon emissions on energy consumption",7
"Particularly, the empirical evidence in Tables 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 suggests that carbon emissions contain positive and statistically significant coefficients in the energy consumption function",7
This indicates that increase in the magnitude of carbon emissions positively fluctuate the energy consumption in the sample countries and regions,7
"Generally, in almost all sample countries, carbon emission is recorded as a strong determinant of energy consumption",7
The direction of the carbon emissions are also correct as expected because the carbon emissions are strongly connected with industrial activity in the country which in turn causes the energy consumption,7
"Furthermore, the rest of all variables have insignificant impact on energy consumption in almost all of the sample economies",7
"The results unveil that FDI, trade openness, and urbanization have statistical insignificant coefficients in terms of energy consumption",7
This shows that these are not a strong and significant factor in energy consumption function,7
The energy consumption function of these two economies exhibit that all of the included factors strongly and significantly determine energy consumption in respective countries,7
The explanation of energy consumption by regressors is different across countries but it is statistically significant and according to expectations of this study,7
"Likewise, the results of this study argue that carbon emissions have a positive and high significant impact on the energy consumption in overall sample economies",7
"The sign and significance of the carbon emissions coefficient is in line with previous empirical evidence which consider carbon emissions as a core determinant of energy consumption (Soytas and Sari, 2009)",7
"Although the rest of all variables are shown as strong determinants of energy consumption in the previous literature, the results reported for this study contradict this narrative",7
"Findings of the previous empirical evidence showed that FDI, trade openness, and urbanization are core factors which play a vital role in the energy consumption",7
This means that these variables have no relationship with energy consumption and no impact on the energy consumption regardless of their coefficient sign,7
The aim of this study is to model the energy consumption function and find significant determinants of energy consumption among all the factors illustrated by the relevant literature,7
"All variables, considered factors in energy consumption function including response variable, are transformed to growth rates to avoid estimation issues in the analysis",7
"On the contrary, the estimates find no impact in the case of net FDI and trade openness on energy consumption",7
The findings of this study strongly recommend that energy policy needs to be designed considering the importance of economic growth and environmental quality,8
This suggests that government administrators in the investigated economies need to promote more of its energy sector otherwise economic growth will be compromised,8
This is pertinent given the environmental cost of energy consumption especially non-renewable energy,7
Marine litter is recognized as a global marine environmental problem,14
Beach litter surveys are used to monitor litter pollution and can be used to determine the origins of litter which can be used for the improvement of waste management,12
"This research studied abundance, composition and sources of marine litter on the beach during one year period in four seasons in Vodenjak cove, central Croatian Adriatic",14
"Litter sources have not been identified for 43.77% of the total waste collected, while 34.38% of waste has been identified as originating from land-based sources such as poor waste management, tourism and recreational activities",12
"Marine litter is identified as “any persistent, manufactured or processed solid material discarded, disposed of or abandoned in the marine and coastal environment” (UNEP 2009)",14
Plastic litter items degrade into smaller pieces called microplastics which can enter marine food webs (do Sul and Costa 2014) by ingestion,14
Microplastic and marine litter can be found in all segments of the Adriatic marine environment such as biota (Anastasopoulou et al,14
"Some of the biggest contributors to marine pollution caused by litter are land-based sources such as household litter, local businesses, industry, tourism and recreational activities, fly tipping, unregulated waste disposal sites etc",14
Plastic litter represents a problem due to its persistence (Barnes et al,14
Studies show that marine litter pollution is increasing worldwide as well as in the Adriatic Sea (Mokos et al,14
The Adriatic-Ionian region recorded also 91% of plastic litter on beaches at the regional level (Vlachogianni et al,14
Marine Strategy Framework Directive 2008/56/EC (MSFD) (European Commission) represents a major tool for prevention of marine litter in European seas and for achieving a Good Environmental Status (GES) of the EU marine waters by 2020,14
Directive consists of eleven descriptors which indicate the status of the marine environment when GES has been achieved,14
"Descriptor 10 refers to marine litter: D10—“Properties and qualities of marine litter do not cause harm to the coastal and marine environment” (Annex I, MSFD)",14
"Therefore, to identify sources of marine litter regular monitoring of marine debris is vital",14
"Studies regarding litter on beaches refer to macro-litter (MSFD Technical Subgroup on Marine Litter 2013, Vlachogianni et al",14
"(2017) by classifying collected items into 8 major source categories: (1) shoreline, including poor waste management practices, tourism and recreational activities; (2) fisheries and aquaculture; (3) shipping; (4) fly-tipping; (5) sanitary and sewage-related; (6) medical related; (7) agriculture; (8) non-sourced",12
This classification is based on existing marine litter sources classification lists (UNEP/MAP 2011; Veiga et al,14
"(2017) shoreline, including poor waste management practices, tourism and recreational activities are classified as land-based litter source, fisheries and aquaculture and shipping as sea-based litter sources while sanitary and sewage related, fly-tipping, non-sourced items as mixed sources",12
Different litter items were associated to a certain source according to the ‘Masterlist’ of litter item categories and attribution of sources for litter surveyed in the different marine compartments (with regards to the beach compartment) of Annex V of the Marine Litter Assessment in the Adriatic and Ionian Seas (Vlachogianni et al,14
"The sources include shoreline, including poor waste management, tourism and recreational activities (ST); fishing & aquaculture (FA); sanitary and sewage-related litter (SS); fly-tipping (FT); shipping (SH); medical related (ME); agriculture (AG); non-sourced (NS) (Vlachogianni et al",12
"Tourism and recreation as well as poor waste management practices contributed with 34.38%, fisheries and aquaculture with 12.14%, sanitary and sewage-related items with 6.28%, shipping with 1.34%, fly-tipping with 1.18%, medical waste with 0.69%, and agriculture accounted for 0.22% of the total collected litter items (Fig. 5a)",12
Looking at the top 10 items it can be concluded that beach visitors and poor waste management contribute significantly to the litter problem,12
"(2015), waste management on land needs to be improved to decrease the amount of litter that ends up in the ocean",12
"It is concluded that although energy consumption has a vital importance in boosting growth and development of the economies but heavily focusing on non-renewable energy cause environmental problems therefore, it is suggested to promote renewable energy sector for efficient and environment friendly use of energy",7
The role and importance of energy in the process of economic development of an economy cannot be negated (Caglar 2020; Destek and Sinha 2020; Soytas and Sari 2003),8
The frequent fluctuation in the supply of energy creates serious problem for economies by slowing down the process of economic growth and development,8
The importance of oil resources which is non-renewable energy (NRE) resource gained height after the emergence of role of technology in traditional growth theories (Lee et al,7
"Thus, to flourish in the economic growth and development, countries all over the globe are attempting to improve the living standard of the people of the country by providing them job opportunities in industries; to accomplish this need of the society, increased demand for energy becomes vital (Chandran et al",8
"Therefore, availability of energy resources at home country has important role to play in growth and development process of the country. Due to fundamental requirement for growth process, the world is in immense need to explore alternative renewable (RE) resources because of scarcity of non-renewable energy (NRE) resources",7
The region being exposed to sun has great solar energy potential along with abundance of uranium deposits also (Kebede et al,7
"According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (2018) report, the world’s RE competence has increased substantially from 2016 to 2018 with 2.012 million megawatts to 2.179 million megawatts, respectively",7
"Thus, keeping in view the significant position of energy in boosting economic growth and development of the economies, the UN has established seventeenth sustainable development goals commonly known as SDGs",8
The purpose of including this goal in SDGs is not only to rescue existing energy resources but to have a clean infinite energy source by which the world can attain a better enhanced and more sustainable energy for its bright and smokeless future (WB 2019),7
"Based on the facts provided, it is important to know the answer to the question “How NRE and RE consumption reacts to economic growth?” To find the possible answer to this question, the researchers have segregated the whole sample into income and regional groups and then analyzed the gathered information",8
"Thus, the purpose of current study is to extend this research line and explore the impact of both NRE and RE consumption on economic growth in 99 countries as a whole and then on the income and region basis with the aim to determine the difference in impact of these energies on growth prospects of 4 income and 6 regional groups",8
The energy has been considered the heart of the economy’s growth that’s why researchers are looking for a best fit between energy and economic growth,8
Apergis and Payne (2010) analyzed the data for 20 OECD countries and revealed that RE consumption significantly increased their economic growth,8
"Empirical evidences from fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS) have confirmed that energy irrespective of its type has greater impact on industrial sector as compared to other sectors of the economy; however, change in output driven by the use of renewable energy is greater than other types",7
"Similarly, Rafindadi and Ozturk (2017) for developed economy, i.e., Germany, also validated the positive impact by reporting that German economic growth boosts by 0.2194% if RE consumption increases by 1%.However, in the literature, the long-run negative impact of renewable electricity consumption on growth for Turkey by using ARDL was discovered by Dogan (2015) and Ocal and Aslan (2013) by covering data of almost the same time spanning from 1990 to 2010, but found insignificant results",8
Akinlo (2008) using the same variables also supported above results to some extent since energy consumption has a considerable long-run impact on economic augmentation and growth in 4 out of 11 selected Sub-Saharan African nations,7
A multi-country study on six Central American economies by Apergis and Payne (2009) over the period 1980–2004 provided the evidence supportive of growth being positively affected by energy consumption,7
"The most recent work done by Destek and Sinha (2020) explored the relationship of RE and NRE consumption, trade openness, economic growth, and ecological footprint in OECD countries",8
"In the presence of RE and NRE consumption, they found a U-shaped association connecting economic growth and ecological footprint",8
"Previously, there was no evidence found regarding impact of NRE and RE consumption on economic growth in the presence of capital and labor",8
"Following the economic production theory, this study tried to explore the impact of RE and NRE consumption on economic growth by including the labor and capital in a recently widely used multivariate model",8
"RE and NRE represent renewable and non-renewable energy use, measured in terms of renewable energy consumption (% of total final energy consumption) and energy use (kg of oil equivalent per capita), respectively, while L and K used for labor and capital are also incorporated in model to control for biasness",7
"Similarly, in upper middle income countries, Gabon, Romania, and South Africa as well as Australia, Canada, Norway, and USA in high income group have high level of usage of NRE as contrast to the rest of the countries of the same groups.
 Non-renewable and renewable energy consumption in low, lower middle, upper middle, and high income countries The regional classification includes 6 groups, i.e., (i) Europe and Central Asia (ECA), (ii) East Asia and Pacific (EAP), (iii) Middle East and North Africa (MENA), (iv) Latin America and Caribbean (LAC), (v) North America (NA), and (vi) Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)",7
"The results in Table 2 revealed that there is a significant positive association between NRE consumption and economic growth, while there is significant negative association between RE consumption and economic growth",8
"Other variables capital and labor also have a considerable affirmative relationship with economic growth.
 To estimate the impact of NRE and RE on economic growth, an econometric model was employed",8
"From Table 3, it is clear that NRE, RE, capital, and labor have a significant encouraging impact on economic growth of the country",8
"The coefficient of NRE 0.174, 0.995, and 1.045 is found to be positive and significant in all three models indicating that variation in economic growth is more elastic",8
"The variation in economic growth due to NRE and RE, capital, and labor is 98%, 58%, and 61% as shown against adjusted R-square in panel, dynamic, and fully modified least square methods, respectively",8
"Regression results from fixed effects method are reported in Table 4.
 To find elasticity in the long run for both energy types with respect to economic growth in overall sample as well as in income and regional groups, we applied fixed effects method",8
"In low income and low middle income countries, the impact of NRE and RE consumption is either negative or statistically insignificant because the energy consumption in these countries is very low as compared to upper middle income and high income countries",7
"The results confirmed that impact of NRE on economic growth is found statistically quite optimistic in overall sample, upper middle income, and high income countries, while it is significantly depressing in low income countries",8
"The results for regional groups are shown in Table 5 below.
 It is also found that the impact of NRE on economic growth is empirically constructive for all regional groups except Sub-Saharan African countries",8
"Similarly, the impact of RE on economic growth is also statistically encouraging for all regional groups except Latin American and Caribbean and Sub-Saharan African countries",8
"Therefore, the impact of NRE and RE consumption on economic growth was not found as optimistic as considered",8
"For better and sustained economic growth, these countries must focus on RE consumption as well as on NRE",8
"By considering more on RE, they can contribute towards improvement of economic growth as well as controlling pollution",8
It is clear from the above results how important are the non-renewable and renewable energies for economic development of the economies,8
"So, there is a strong need of increasing and shifting towards safe and green sources of energies that is renewable energy resources",7
This study has examined the impact of both NRE and RE consumption on economic growth of panel of 99 countries with inclusion of basic economic production factors labor and capital to control for variable biasness,8
"The findings indicated that for overall sample, both energy types are contributing positively to these 99 world countries with non-renewable energy having a larger impact",7
The policy of easy accessibility of both energy types is suggested for them due to which consumption of energy will foster their economic growth,8
Non-renewable energy is a major contributor to growth in all sample countries which might be due to reason that fossil fuels (especially coal) are least expensive,7
"Since, China is the biggest renewable energy investor in the world, and other countries in high income group are also rich to afford renewable energy use",7
"Upper middle income and high income groups will be better off by promoting investment in renewable energy sectors because these resources are permanent and will ensure energy future, encourage growth, reduce dependence on limited energy sources, and will save them from complete depletion.",7
"In comparison, educated heads of the households increase the possibility of cleaner fuel adoption to 15%.Graphical  The seventeen specific goals under Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a clarion call for countries across all development levels to come into a global partnership for the population and the planet",17
"The 7th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG-7) ensures everyone can access clean, affordable, modern energy and services by 2030",7
"But the complexity and crucial part of this goal lie in the mentioned condition of “clean, affordable and modern energy” because the same energy sector also contributes about three-fourths of the global emissions",7
"World energy consumption is likely to rise from 524 quadrillions Btu in 2010 to 820 quadrillion Btu in 2040 (Aydin 2014, 2015)",7
"Household energy consumption in developing countries and low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) contributed to 10% of total primary energy demand globally in 2004, primarily for cooking purposes",7
"In Asian countries like Indonesia, the household sector utilised approximately 14.8% of the nationwide energy consumption in 2018 (Handbook of Energy and Economic Statistics of Indonesia 2018)",7
"On the other hand, for the USA, the industrial sector (32%) and the transportation sector (29%) top the total energy consumption levels, followed next by the household sector, which accounts for about 21% of total US energy consumption (Annual Energy Outlook 2022)",7
"And in Europe, the share of households (residential sector) in total energy consumption in the European Union in 2019 was 26.3% (Eurostat database 2021)",7
"To achieve the modern and clean energy objectives under SDG-7, electricity access has shown enormous progress as it rose to 90% globally in 2019, from only 83% in 2010 (United Nations 2021)",7
"Despite recent achievements in expanding Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) stoves access in rural areas, six hundred sixty million Indians have not entirely shifted to modern, clean cooking fuels",7
"Despite adequate policy interventions, such countries have failed to attain full sectoral energy transition by transforming household energy consumption patterns",7
The direction of causality found between energy use and economic growth has got enormous conflicting views in the field of research in energy economics since the energy crises of the 1970s,8
But what has been common knowledge is the immensely high correlation between living standards and energy consumption at lower energy-use levels for developing countries and a dissociated relationship at higher levels in developed nations (Arto et al,7
(2020) utilised weather data of a region to find if solar energy is feasible for institutional cooking,7
"Some of the critical questions are (1) will a household lessen its requirement for food or education to be able to consume clean cooking fuel? And (2) how will a family’s decision to assign its limited monthly expenses to various needs add to the dimension of fuel-choice determination within households? We aim to address if households voluntarily choose to continue using modern, cleaner cooking fuel sources while failing to afford the basic food requirements (and, therefore, the calorie intake)",7
We find that HDI as a measure of development could explain state-level fuel-choice behaviour differently for the rural population than standard economic growth measures like GDP,8
(2015) tried to estimate the drivers of fuel substitution in non-slum and slum dwellers of urban India and found the energy use pattern consistent with the ladder hypothesis,11
"Still, it has also indirectly led to observations of forest management (SDG-15) towards halt and reversal of land degradation",15
"(2010) inspected the inter-relationships between household fuel source, urbanisation and forest cover across states of India between 1990 and 2000s",15
This reduced fuelwood demand due to urbanisation might help increase the forest cover,15
"With more income, energy demand, including modern energy sources, becomes increasingly diverse",7
"(2008) Most energy studies overlook human behaviour’s influence at individual and societal levels.Footnote 3 Hence, such technical or economic approaches may either magnify or diminish the robustness of the results while addressing the household energy consumption patterns",7
There are certainly deep and constant biases in household decision-making that often manifest through activities or choices that these preconceived assumptions of rationality cannot explain (Kahneman 2003).Footnote 6 A study by Pachauri (2004) confirms that income levels are essential in determining the disparity in energy consumption patterns across Indian households,7
The study also focuses on the effect of household size and the age of the household head in explaining the inter-household energy consumption patterns,7
"We have combined traditionally used polluting fuels like coke and coal, firewood and chips, dung cake and charcoal under the “primitive fuel” category according to WHO Guidelines (2014) because of their harmful contribution to indoor household pollution.Footnote 8 The other common cooking fuels, namely Kerosene and LPG, are placed in the other two higher categories, as they are much more convenient, efficient and cleaner-burning than the previous category of fuels such as firewood, organic residues or plant–animal residues",7
"But the difference between the two groups was that while the poor households reduced their food expenses by the same proportion of their fuel expenditure, the more affluent families increased their food and fuel expenditure",1
(2011) that analyses cooking fuels used in the rural parts of India found that households with a Below Poverty Line (BPL) ration card and larger farmlands have a significant negative linkage with their use of clean cooking fuels,7
This indicates the difference between GSDP and HDI as a measure of economic development in adopting modern fuels at the state level across the rural and urban sub-population,8
"Social classifications based on “race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but as reciprocally constructing phenomena that shape complex social inequalities” (Collins 2015)",10
"At the same time, many poor households use advanced and modern fuels",1
"Our results validate the necessity of including gender into consideration while devising methods to encourage households to switch or transition from polluting fuels to modern, cleaner cooking fuel options",7
"Our research helps create clean energy policy in three dimensions: at the household, state and national levels",7
This also opens the prospect of comparative studies on the population of similarly placed nations to explore the possibility of testing and applying such clean cooking fuel policies focused on financially deprived women users,7
"Water bodies are increasingly contaminated by industrial and anthropogenic activities, climate change, and major environmental accidents",13
Global awareness has led the United Nations to develop an action plan to increase individuals’ access to clean water,6
"The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed by the 2030 Agenda include the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all, mobilizing several world organizations to serve these goals (United Nations, 2015)",6
"For example, metalloid arsenic is released at concentrations above 500 mg/L in effluents generated during the oxidizing pretreatment of refractory ores required for gold extraction (Coudert et al., 2020) and is correlated with different types of cancer, neurobehavioral abnormalities, diabetes, cardiovascular disorders, and fetal risks, in addition to its toxic effects on plants (Okereafor et al., 2020)",3
"In the last decade, two large-dimension disruptions have occurred in Brazil, causing human losses with serious impacts on the environment, public health, and society (Freitas et al., 2019), at indeterminate proportions",3
"One hundred thousand cubic meters of toxic waste was released, containing tons of copper, other heavy metals, and cyanide, reaching the Szamos and Tisza rivers in Hungarian territory, which are important tributaries of the Danube River (Soldán et al., 2001)",12
"Moreover, quick measures were taken to clean up the affected watercourses, such as the installation of a water treatment plant and frequent monitoring of well water quality (Vandenberg & Litke, 2018)",6
"Certain detected metals were not directly attributed to the tailings; the bottom sediments originating from previous mining and other environmental degradation activities in the region were dislocated by the high volume of mud released with the disruption of the dam and the resulting changes in hydro- and geochemistry (IBAMA, 2015)",15
"Several metals, such as Fe, Al, Mn, Zn, Cu, Pb, Cd, and U, exceeded the maximum water quality limits, whereas Cr, Ni, Cu, and Cd levels were above the limits in sediments (Vergilio et al., 2020)",6
"Additionally, metal accumulation (Fe > Al > Mn) was detected in the muscle tissue of fish exposed to Paraopeba River water and sediments (Vergilio et al., 2020), and an increase in malformations and mortality of zebrafish embryos was observed in samples collected 6–464 km from the dam rupture site, which is also related to pre-existing environmental degradation in the region (Thompson et al., 2020)",15
"At greater distances, the effects are sometimes unclear and similar to those observed before the dam rupture, such as the contamination of fish by lead, which was already a public health problem and now reaches concentrations 41% above harmless levels (Parente et al., 2021)",3
"However, these regions must continue to be monitored to evaluate the long-term effects and the maintenance of the drinking water supply after conventional treatments, since large flows of water coming with rain or long periods of drought can promote variations in the physicochemical and biological parameters of this river and its affluents already affected by anthropogenic activities (Pacheco et al., 2022)",6
"According to post-disaster management, Renova Foundation, after the Fundão Dam burst, techniques used to contain the tailings and stimulate the natural absorption process involved the application of biodegradable blankets prepared using coconut fiber",11
"The drinking water supply was seriously compromised, with impacts on vegetation and fauna, mainly fish populations, as the penetration of light in the rivers failed as the water became turbid",6
"Contaminants released in the Paraopeba River increase the growth of potentially toxic and pathogenic microorganisms that are likely to have negative effects on public health (Thompson et al., 2020)",3
"Some of the research analyzed in this study shows the direct water quality impact of the affected rivers not only near dam ruptures, but also at greater distances",6
"In addition to environmental, safety, and public health harm, secondary impacts should be considered in riverside communities on culture and tourism, as well as possible intimidation and violence (Morrill et al., 2022)",3
"There has been permanent damage to preservation areas, which may compromise access to natural resources by future generations, as proclaimed by the SDGs (Salvador et al., 2020)",1
This article seeks to examine the impacts of renewable and non-renewable energy on carbon dioxide emissions for 14 Middle East and North Africa economies using fully modified least-squares and vector error correction model techniques,7
"The fully modified least-squares estimates show that renewable energy enhances environmental quality, whereas non-renewable energy deteriorates it",7
We also find that the industry sector has the highest contribution to environmental degradation,15
The results of the vector error correction model technique show a two-way linkage between CO2 emissions and renewable energy and between CO2 emissions and non-renewable energy in both short and long runs,7
"To deal with these concerns, Zhai and Chang (2019) argue that a set of decisions must be made fairly, considering an interesting aspect of sustainability, such as mitigating climate change and environmental damage",13
"For that reason, the Paris Climate Change Agreement was signed in 2015 by 196 countries who have agreed to change their growth model by moving towards a more “ecologically sustainable” growth model (Bouyghrissi et al",13
"The conventional dependence on the use of non-renewable energy resources to meet the world’s energy demand has ultimately generated consensus among the worldwide economies for achieving both socio-economic and environmental sustainability, particularly through the efficient use of cleaner renewable energies (Murshed 2020)",7
"Recently, with the growing interest in achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs), scholars, policymakers, and international organizations have been interested more and more on the role of renewable energy as a pathway to low-carbon economies",7
(2020) argue that the transition from non-renewable energy to cleaner and environmentally friendly renewable energy use helps reverse worsening trends in greenhouse gas emissions,7
"(2017), also argue that increasing the share of renewables in the global energy mix must be aligned with policies aimed at decarbonizing the global atmosphere",7
"In light of the above discussion, the main objective of this study is to examine the role of renewable and non-renewable energy use in reducing CO2 emissions for 14 Middle East and African countries (2014)",7
"However, it has the highest CO2 emissions per dollar of production in the world and is ranked as the second greatest polluted region in the world, after South Asia (Omri, 2013); (ii) the region has developed rapidly in recent years the market for renewable energy with increased investment and an expanding pipeline of projects to take advantages of the abundance of energy resources renewable sources",7
"Despite the short- and long-run impacts of renewable and non-renewable energy, this study also extends previous studies on determinants of CO2 emissions by integrating different sectoral GDP (agriculture, industry, and services) to the environmental function to show the contribution of each sector on increasing emissions in the MENA region and to validate the presence of the EKC hypothesis at aggregate and disaggregated levels",7
"For instance, by using two non-linear parametric functional forms (Gamma and Weibull functions) as alternatives to the standard specification (polynomial function), Galeotti and Lanza (2005) examine the impact of economic growth on CO2 emissions for three groups of countries (OECD, non-OECD, and the two groups together) over the period 1960–1995",8
Their empirical results suggest that the EKC mechanism does not explain the economic growth-environment nexus in these countries,8
"(2020) study the linkage among energy, economic growth, and emissions for 51 countries of the “Belt & Road Initiative (BRI).” The results show that the EKC hypothesis validated between growth and the environment for BRI countries",8
The impact of renewable and non-renewable energy on CO2 emissions is a key subject in the environmental economics literature,7
"They show that both types of energy increase economic growth across countries, supporting the growth hypothesis",8
They also find that non-renewable energy sources increase emissions,7
"In the same spirit, in Saudi Arabia, Alkhathlan and Javid (2013) find that economic development and energy use cause emissions in the short and long runs",8
Energy use increases economic development only in the long run,8
"In the case of the USA, Twumasi (2017) also studies the linkage between CO2 emissions and renewable energy, and their results indicate that rising the production of renewable energy does not necessarily lead to lessen emissions",7
"In the case of Malaysia, Saudi (2019) analyzes the impacts of technological innovation, and renewable and non-renewable energies on the validity of the EKC model using the ARDL bound testing approach",8
"They find that renewable energy significantly reduces emissions; however, non-renewable energy increases CO2 emissions",7
"Similarly, investigates the effects of economic complexity, renewable and non-renewable energy on CO2 emissions, and ecological footprint in the USA",7
"(2021) examine the impacts of economic, energy, social, and trade structural changes on per capita CO2 emissions and they find that increasing the use of renewable energy helped to decrease CO2 emissions",7
"The variables included in the analysis are CO2 emissions per capita (in metric tons per capita), GDP per capita (constant 2010 US dollars), non-renewable energy consumption (in kg of oil equivalent per capita), renewable energy consumption (REC) defined as combustible renewable and waste % of total energy, foreign trade measured as the total of exports and imports as % of GDP, financial development measured as the ratio of money supply to GDP, per capita agricultural value added (YA) in constant 2010 US dollars, per capita industry value added (YI) in constant 2010 US dollars, and per capita services value added (YS) in constant 2010 US dollars",7
"From the information reported in Table 1, we can see that, over the sample time, the logarithm of CO2 emissions ranges from around − 0.84 to around 1.5 metric tons, logarithm of per capita GDP ranges from around 6.9 to around 11.2, logarithm of non-renewable energy consumption ranges from around 5.3 to around 10 kg of oil equivalent per capita, and logarithm of renewable energy consumption ranges from around − 4.8% to around 3.9%",7
"Furthermore, the pairwise correlations reported in Table 2 show that non-renewable energy consumption has the highest correlation with per capita CO2 emissions, while the lowest is for financial development",7
"The renewable energy consumption variable is negatively correlated with per capita CO2 emissions; however, non-renewable energy consumption is positively correlated with emissions, indicating that promoting renewables is able to mitigate the impact of non-renewable energy on CO2 emissions in MENA countries",7
"This study employs the FMOLS and VECM techniques to extract the effect of renewable energy and non-renewable energy, and aggregated and disaggregated sectoral outputs (agriculture, industry, services)",7
"The link between emissions, economic growth, real agriculture, real service, and the real industry is explained as follows: If α1 = α2 = 0, the hypothesis of EKC can be rejected; If α2 = 0 and α1 > 0, there is a linear relationship; If α1 > 0 and α2 < 0, there exists an inverted U-shaped",8
"The FMOLS estimates confirm that CO2 emissions tend to decrease with the increase of renewable energy consumption, ranging from − 0.0187 to − 0.0859%; however, non-renewable energy consumption increases CO2 emissions in all the estimated models, ranging from 0.763 to 0.84%",7
This result is in line with Shafiei and Salim (2014) who investigate the impact of disaggregated energy consumption on CO2 emissions for OECD countries and they show that renewable energy decreases CO2 emissions whereas non-renewable energy increases emissions,7
They suggest that policymakers in OECD countries should focus on clean energy deployment to make a substantial contribution to both curbing CO2 emissions and decreasing the use of non-renewable energy,7
The findings show that a 1% rise in economic growth corresponds to a 1.3079% increase in CO2 emissions,8
"This result confirms the findings of who investigate the determinant of CO2 emissions in Saudi Arabia and they show that economic growth is a key factor that influences CO2 emissions, suggesting that CO2 emissions may be decreased at the costs of economic growth or encouraging the use of environmentally friendly technologies",8
"This result is also confirmed by for 12 Western European countries, calling policymakers to make quick and relevant solutions to decrease CO2 emissions without reducing economic growth",8
"Since the GDP coefficient is positive and significant, while the GDP2 coefficient is negative and significant, the presence of an EKC is definitely confirmed by the results of model 1, indicating that CO2 emissions increase with economic development at the initial stages of development, but decrease after the economy surpasses a certain threshold",8
"In developed countries, trade openness reduces environmental degradation, while the opposite effect is observed in developing countries",15
"In model 1, we find that there is a two-way relationship between CO2 emissions and GDP per capita and between CO2 emissions and renewable energy in the short and long runs",7
"Likewise, there is a two-way association between non-renewable energy and CO2 emissions in the short and long runs",7
"Regarding model 2, there is a two-way causal relationship between agricultural value added and CO2 emissions and between renewable energy and CO2 emissions",7
"In addition, our results show a two-way relationship between non-renewable energy and CO2 emissions in the short and long runs",7
"In addition, renewable energy and agriculture value added have a two-way causal connection in the short and long terms, but no causal link between agriculture and non-renewable energy",7
"So, the production of agricultural goods in the MENA region depends on the use of renewable energy",7
Farmers and/or the government can get the required capital for the production and use of renewable energy by increasing agricultural value added,7
"This finding contradicts that of Ben Youssef et al., (2016), who showed that increasing agricultural value added lowers renewable energy use in Brazil",7
"As a result, there is a one-way link between agricultural and renewable energy usage",7
"In addition, a two-way relationship is found between non-renewable energy and CO2 emissions in both the short and long runs",7
"But in both the short and long terms, there is a one-way link between renewable energy and CO2 emissions",7
"Finally, for model 4, in both the short and long runs, we reveal a one-way link between renewable energy use and CO2 emissions",7
The findings also show that non-renewable energy and CO2 emissions have a bidirectional causal connection,7
"This inquiry examines the effects of renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, among other control variables, on CO2 emissions for 14 MENA countries",7
"Empirical results show that renewable energy decreases CO2 emissions, whereas non-renewable energy increases emissions",7
"However, at the sectoral level, this hypothesis has not been validated and the industry sector has the highest contribution to environmental degradation",15
"In addition, renewable energy contributes to improving environmental quality, whereas non-renewable energy deteriorates it",7
Granger’s causality results show a two-way linkage between renewable energy and CO2 emissions and between non-renewable energy and CO2 emissions in both short and long runs,7
"To reduce the aggregate and disaggregate effects of outputs on environmental degradation, policymakers in MENA countries must focus their actions on environmental policies of a green and inclusive economy that combine tools of environmental economics with those of the ecological economy",15
Private investors should participate more actively in the broad field of renewable energy by recognizing the barriers to increased investment in renewable energy and supporting more public–private partnerships (PPPs),7
"Through a presentation of the step-by-step implementation of the method at a 3-day workshop in the Paphos District of Cyprus, the DeCyDe-4 method is unfolded so as to showcase how a multi-disciplinary group of local stakeholders can co-create a Policy Tool, and identify and prioritize measures and solutions to marine litter",14
"The case study shows that DeCyDe-4 can support a varied group of stakeholders to negotiate a complex environmental problem such as marine litter, and to make informed, unbiased decisions, through a process that encourages active participation and dialogue, so that opposite opinions are heard, consensus is reached and ownership of the solutions is achieved.Graphic  The human population density in coastal areas worldwide is increasing exponentially, with 14 of the world’s 17 largest cities being located along coasts",14
"Marine litter -any persistent, manufactured or processed solid material discarded, disposed of or abandoned in the marine and coastal environment (UNEP 2009)—is a global problem",14
Plastics have been recognized as the most abundant and persistent form of marine litter globally,14
The effects of marine litter pollution on the environment are detrimental,14
"Ingested macroplastics (pieces of plastic larger than 5 mm), such as plastic bags, six-pack rings and fishing-related items, can cause blockages of the intestinal tract leading to starvation and reduced fitness (Ryan 1988; Bjorndal et al",2
Encounters between nearly 700 species of marine organism and mainly plastic marine litter have been reported (Gall and Thompson 2015),14
Recent years have seen increasingly intensified efforts to address the marine litter problem from all of its angles,14
"The European Commission, which first included marine litter as one of the descriptors for the good environmental status of European seas (European Parliament 2008), also published the EU Strategy for Plastics that will guide Europe away from the make-use-discard model for plastic (EU 2014, 2018)",14
"Similar success is hoped to be achieved with the Single-Use Plastics Directive, which will come into force in mid-2021 and will restrict and/or control the market for some of the most common plastic marine litter items (European Parliament 2019)",14
"At the international level, the Honolulu Strategy, formulated during the Fifth International Marine Debris Conference (5IMDC), marked the first global consensus on actions to be taken to address the marine litter issue (UNEP and NOAA 2011), incorporating a mixture of market-based instruments, regulations and legislation to reduce marine litter (Xanthos and Walker 2017)",14
"While international and national frameworks and regulations are undoubtedly important to solving the marine litter problem, the direct link of marine litter to land-based waste production and management (GESAMP 1991; UNEP 2016) and the global differences in sources and causes of marine litter pollution suggest that the implemented solutions should take into account local specificities and culture (Van Assche et al",14
"Consequently, in the case of marine litter management, and mainly marine litter prevention, a top-down approach risks to neglect the particularities of target areas and cultures, while a bottom-up approach of a highly participatory nature can ensure that any proposed solutions can be socially acceptable, thus increasing the possibility of decisions materializing into actions",14
This paper presents a model stakeholder engagement method for implementing a bottom-up approach to identify measures and tools to address the marine litter problem within a specific area,14
"Map showing Cyprus’s location in the Mediterranean and detailed inset of the study area, the District of Paphos, with annotations for the location of the City of Paphos and the Akamas Peninsula The 3-day workshop aimed to guide the participating stakeholders to the identification of measures that could be applied within the Paphos District to address the marine litter problem locally",14
"Over the 3 days of the workshop, participants implemented the DeCyDe-4 method and toolbox; a proprietary, participatory decision-support method/toolbox developed by the lead author",16
Understanding marine litter through a cascade solution-oriented process: First identification of possible measures/solutions,14
Participatory decision-making process to prioritize the solutions: Community-based policy tool and action plan,16
"In Day 1 participants gained an understanding of the marine litter problem from all its facets, through a series of presentations by experts",14
"This ensured that all the participants, regardless of their background and level of environmental concern, had an almost equal understanding of the sources and impacts of marine litter, and of the state of the marine litter problem in the wider Paphos District",14
Day 2 consisted of educating/training participating stakeholders on available solutions (legislative and other) to address marine litter through the presentation of state-of-the-art research and best practice examples from Europe and elsewhere,14
"Equipped with the necessary knowledge, on Day 3, participants were guided through the implementation of specific tools of DeCyDe-4 to identify the most effective, applicable and socially acceptable solutions to address marine litter within the wider Paphos area (including the Natura 2000 Akamas Peninsula)",14
The 1st day of the workshop involved introductory presentations by scientists and experts on the marine litter problem,14
"Terminology, concepts, sources and impacts of marine litter were presented so that the participants understood and became familiar with evidence-based facts about marine litter",14
"With the presentations completed, and with the participants having a shared understanding of the local situation and the general marine litter problem, a collective intelligence exercise was implemented where participants were engaged in the following sequence of activities: Identification of the root causes of marine litter in the Paphos/Akamas area, based on the information presented in Day 1, and the participants’ personal experience from working and residing within the area in question",14
"Selection of the most important root causes through a voting exercise that resulted in a list of root causes, ranked in terms of the participants’ perception of their contribution to the marine litter problem in the wider Paphos area",14
"With a focus on the top ranking root causes, identification of measures/solutions to address the root causes of marine litter in the area",14
"Ranking of the identified measures through a second round of voting, based on the participants’ perception of their potential to address the marine litter problem, locally",14
"The work implemented in Day 1 helped to put the participants in the mindset of linking solutions to specific causes of the marine litter problem, and to prepare the stakeholders for the proceedings of the following 2 days of the workshop",14
The principal aim of the 2nd day of the workshop was to present good practices for addressing marine litter to the participating stakeholders and to help them make more-informed decisions,14
"While Day 1 aimed to capture the participants’ ‘gut feeling’ with regard to measures that could be applied locally, Day 2 tested whether capacity could be built in participants through their exposure to more technical and documented measures to address marine litter",14
"The main international, European and national legislative framework directly or indirectly affecting marine litter was presented and insights were provided on available technical and soft measures that can successfully address various facets of the marine litter problem",14
"Similar to Day 1, a voting exercise resulted in a ranked list of measures, based on the participants’ perceptions on their potential to address marine litter",14
The measures were evaluated against the following three criteria: Effectiveness: how effective the measure will be in reducing marine litter,14
"The step-by-step process that was implemented in the 3-day workshop using the DeCyDe-4 method led to the understanding of the marine litter issue at the study area, and resulted in increasingly more “mature” measures to address the problem, leading to the development of a Policy Tool and Action Plan for combating marine litter on a community level, in the Pafos/Akamas area",14
One of the first outputs of the workshop was the identification of the perceived root causes of marine litter in Paphos in general and the protected Akamas peninsula in particular,14
"The resulting ranked list (Table 2) demonstrates that, although some root causes are specific to the area of study, most are actually more general, and concern waste management and legislation enforcement and/or effective controls at the national and even global level",12
A lack of environmental culture among the residents and businesses of the area was considered by the participants as the most important root cause of the marine litter problem,14
This is not a particularly surprising result since human behavior is at the center of the marine litter problem (Pahl and Wyles 2017; Pahl et al,14
"Nonetheless, the overall list of root causes suggests that there was an understanding among the participants of the main sources and causes of marine litter, especially in the Mediterranean, as a result of the introductory, educational presentations that were given",14
"While there is no empirical evidence to corroborate this assumption, this is in line with previous work where educational activities on marine litter resulted in increased understanding of the matter (Hartley et al",14
"The measures that were identified and ranked in Day 1 of the workshop (Table 3) are closely linked to the root causes that were identified by the stakeholders, and they include a combination of enforcement and control measures, such as the issue of fines to polluters and stricter controls of vessels, as well as softer measures that aim to promote environmental education and bridge the perceived gaps in waste management infrastructure",12
"The lack of more practical and technical measures is evident, but perhaps not surprising as at this point stakeholders had not yet been exposed to best practice examples to address marine litter",14
"Following the presentation of measures by the experts (Table 4), the revised list of measures produced by the stakeholders in Day 2 of the workshop (Table 5) included more internationally recognized solutions on marine litter, such as deposit refund schemes, extended producer responsibility schemes, and banning of single-use items",14
"A compilation of the separate evaluations, assuming that all the criteria have the same weight, results in the implementation of a deposit refund scheme as the most suitable measure to address marine litter in the Paphos/Akamas area, followed by the issue of dissuasive fines to polluters (Fig. 4)",14
"Marine litter is considered as an emergency, so it is likely that stakeholders were looking for solutions that will give immediate results",14
This combination of types of measures has been found effective in addressing the issue of marine litter and especially single-use plastics from land-based sources (Hastings and Potts 2013; Carman et al,14
"The ranking of the measures also points to a perceived resistance by industry and companies to take action against marine litter, as the two practices specifically targeting industry ranked last",14
"This paper has presented a novel, community-based method for engaging stakeholders in identifying solutions to the pressing marine litter problem",14
"The results provide a significant insight into the perceptions of the participating stakeholders with regard to how effective, applicable and socially acceptable measures to reduce marine litter can be, based on the specificities of the local area",14
"In effect, the ranked measures provide the local decision-makers with a prioritized list for implementation and should help address some of the marine litter pollution, especially from single-use plastics, identified on Cypriot beaches (Loizidou et al",14
"However, the workshop was designed to lead to area-specific solutions to address the marine litter problem",14
"The outcomes of the ARDL and DOLS depict that CO2 emissions, agriculture, energy use, and urbanization trigger economic growth",8
"Furthermore, there is evidence of a weak and positive correlation between economic growth and trade openness",8
These outcomes have far-reaching significance for economic growth and the selected variables in Indonesia,8
"The main root of climate change is human being’s operations on the earth’s surface, which leads to the destruction of the environment (Adebayo and Kirikkaleli 2021; Zafar et al",13
Climate change is a huge problem that has raised domestic and international alertness to mitigate the growing trend (Alola et al,13
The air pollutants also have access to clean water sources and wetlands that poison or damage marine life and pollute clean water,6
Economic growth has been described as causing the disastrous impact of pollution among several measures considered,8
"Several economic practices, both directed at and based on economic growth, contribute to pollutants’ emissions (Bekun and Agboola 2019; Khan et al",8
"Such economic activity from multiple sectors (agriculture, petroleum, energy mining, and manufacturing sector), as summed up in economic growth, are all triggers for pollution (Udemba 2020)",8
"Likewise, the literature on energy economics shows that the two major influences impacting the climate are economic growth and energy use",8
"This stance is reinforced by the optimistic association between fossil fuel consumption and economic growth, which implies that GDP growth contributes to higher energy utilization and higher CO2 emissions, respectively (Asongu et al",8
"If proper LCDIsFootnote 1 are not taken into account to make economic growth more eco-friendly, they will likely be in the same up-surging direction",8
No wonder this warning has encouraged the nation to peg its carbon reduction goal to 43% by 2030 whereas striving to produce GDP growth of 5.6 to 6.0% yearly over the next 25 years,8
The total energy consumption has increased by 3.1%/year since 2013 in Indonesia,7
"The share of coal is increasing (+15% points since 2012), largely at the expense of oil (Enerdata 2020).
 Total energy consumption in Indonesia in 2019 Over the years, numerous studies are done regarding the association between GDP and trade openness",7
"(2020), Raghutla (2020), and Hdom and Fuinhas (2020) and Alam and Sumon (2020) found significant linkage between trade openness and economic growth",8
"Recently, several scholars have assessed the association between urbanization and GDP growth",8
"However, their outcomes are mixed, making it difficult to explore urbanization’s exalt effect on economic growth",8
"(2021) established that urbanization increase economic growth, while some studies (Nathaniel and Bekun 2020; Kong et al",8
2020) found a negative connection between population and economic development,8
"Thus, the present research assesses the association between economic growth, energy usage, urbanization, agriculture, and CO2 emissions in Indonesia between 1965 and 2019",8
"The current research is distinct from the existing studies because it accounts for other economic growth determinants such as urbanization, agriculture, energy usage, CO2 emissions, and energy use",8
"It discusses specific energy use concerns (SDG-7), emphasizing green and sustainable energy use (SDGs-7 and 12) to meet the 2020 Agenda",7
"The present research is especially timely and deserving of inquiry, particularly in the current age in which responsible energy use and environmental protection are increasingly being targeted",15
This EKC is based merely on the trade-off between environmental degradation and economic performance,15
Most research on Indonesian emissions’ involvement has considered an environmental paradigm that often gives a different understanding of the nation’s emissions without any reference to its economic growth,8
Indonesia is anticipated to induce emissions through its economic growth operations as an emerging economy,8
"EC energy use, CO2 carbon emission; ⇨ (+), positive relationship; ⇨ (−), negative relationship; ⇨, one-way causality; ⇔, bidirectional causality; URB urbanization, TO trade openness, AGRIC agriculture, GDP economic growth, TY Toda-Yamamoto The study examines the impact of agriculture (AGRIC) and CO2 emissions (CO2) on economic growth (GDP) and also consider the role of urbanization (URB), trade openness (TO), and energy use in Indonesia utilizing data stretching between 1965 and 2019",8
"1 and 2, CO2, EC, TO, AGRIC, GDP, and URB represent CO2 emissions, energy use, trade openness, agriculture, economic growth, and urbanization",8
"Thus, CO2 is projected to lead to increased economic growth \( \left({\beta}_1=\frac{\delta GDP}{\delta {CO}_2}>0\right) \)",8
"It is anticipated that trade openness will exert a positive impact on economic growth, which infers that an upsurge in trade openness will increase GDP \( \left({\beta}_3=\frac{\delta GDP}{\delta TO}>0\right) \)",8
"This research’s primary motive is to explore the impact of trade openness, CO2 emissions, energy use, urbanization, and agriculture on economic growth in Indonesia",8
"The basic summary statistical properties that report the measure of central tendencies and dispersion outlined in Table 3 show that agriculture has the highest average, followed by urbanization, energy consumption, GDP, trade openness, and CO2",7
"Moreover, the outcomes of the Jarque-Bera (probability) show that all the series conform to normality with the exemption of both energy consumption and trade openness",7
There is evidence of a positive (elasticity) and significant interaction between GDP growth and CO2 emissions,8
This deduces that pollution is inducing GDP growth,8
This means that emissions cause economic growth,8
"This may be the case because, with less care for environmental sustainability, the host nation is focused on pursuing economic growth",8
This may be found where the use of unsustainable nonrenewable energy in Indonesia’s economic operations positively affects economic development while affecting the climate negatively,8
This infers that a 0.13% increase in GDP growth is due to a 1% increase in CO2 emissions,8
"Moreover, we see that urbanization influences Indonesia’s economic growth, which implies that a 1% increase in urbanization increases GDP growth by 3.40%",8
"Otherwise, the urban infrastructure might be overwhelmed and might impede economic growth in the long run",8
"This alludes to the fact that small and medium enterprises (SME) are a key driver of any economy, which will have a ripple effect on the pace of other macroeconomic indicators and economic development at large",8
There is a negative and insignificant interaction between trade openness and GDP growth in Indonesia,8
"Therefore, signifying that trade in Indonesia has an insignificant effect on economic growth, suggesting that the Indonesian economy’s openness to the outside world does not promote economic growth",8
"A positive and significant interaction between GDP growth and agriculture infers that holding other indicators constant, a 0.57% increase in GDP growth is associated with a 1% increase in agriculture",8
"The results show that energy use, CO2 emissions, agriculture, and urbanization exert a positive and significant impact on GDP growth which implies that all the regressors with the exemption of trade openness enhance economic growth",8
"These outcomes correspond with the results of the ARDL long run.
 In addition, the present research further utilizes the wavelet coherence (WTC) test to catch the causality and correlation between economic growth and the regressors",8
"(2014) for Pakistan; (iv) one-way causality from GDP to URB at a significance level of 1%, which infers that GDP can predict significant variation in URB, this illustrates that economic reform in Indonesia promotes urbanization, and this finding resonates with the findings of Rahman and Vu (2020) for Canada and Narayan (2016) for India; and (v) unidirectional causality from GDP to EC, which illustrates that GDP can predict EC, this finding aligns with the results of Akinlo (2008) for 11 sub-Saharan African countries and Aqeel and Butt (2001) for Pakistan.
 The present research adds to the existing studies by evaluating the impact of CO2 emissions and agriculture on economic growth and taking into consideration the effect of urbanization, energy use, and trade openness in Indonesia utilizing data spanning between 1965 and 2019",8
The outcomes show a mix (significant and insignificant) of interactions between economic growth and the regressors,8
"Furthermore, the outcomes of the ARDL long-run and short-run estimations show that agriculture and energy consumption promote the economic performance of Indonesia",7
These sectors (agricultural and petroleum sectors) are distinguished by the extreme usage of non-renewable energy sources in operations,7
"As expected, CO2 emissions and urbanization enhance economic growth of Indonesia",8
"Furthermore, we applied the novel wavelet test to capture the correlation and causal association between economic growth and the regressors",8
"The wavelet analysis findings revealed a positive correlation between GDP growth and the regressors with the exemption of trade openness, which has a weak connection with Indonesia’s economic growth",8
"Moreover, the results of the Fourier Toda-Yamamoto causality test provide intuition and credibility for the linkage between economic growth and urbanization, energy usage, trade openness, and CO2 emissions",8
The goal should be to ensure best practice by combining the three dimensions to minimize trade-offs between economic growth and the environment’s quality,8
"Renewable sources, including hydropower, ocean power, geothermal, wind power, and solar, should be considered cleaner and substituted for non-renewable energy in economic activities",7
"In summary, as a nation, Indonesia has more opportunities to maintain sustainable growth in both economic and environmental operations",8
This study’s outcome would positively impact neighboring countries willing to take the steps suggested in this paper to strengthen their sustainable growth,8
"Conclusively, this study has examined the nexus between energy use, urbanization, trade openness, and Indonesia’s economic growth using recent time series data",8
"In order to simultaneously achieve (i) an adequate removal of chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand at 5 days (BOD5) and suspended solids (ii) a low production of primary sludge, and (iii) a minimum energy consumption, a scientific review conducted by Ghunmi et al",7
"GW treatment is necessary to guarantee the protection of public health and environment but at the same time it must consider social acceptability and cultural aspects, user-friendliness, and economic sustainability (Morel and Diener 2006)",3
"Several studies have shown that MCA can represent an effective technique for addressing typically complex environmental problems with multiple goals, such as water supply, water treatment and waste management, both in industrialised and developing contests (Garfì et al",12
"The main aspects analysed for the evaluation of the most suitable processes were (i) health (GW containing high concentrations of pollutants and pathogenic microorganisms), (ii) social (avoid any disturbance to the population), (iii) environmental (pollution, reuse, generation of by-products, energy consumption), (iv) economic (construction and management costs), and (v) management (commitment and degree of knowledge necessary for adequate plant maintenance without compromising yields)",7
"Horizontal-flow CW were sized according to the method proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA 1993, 1999)",15
"(2018), three AF, containing different filter materials, were fed with WW from a large-scale municipal wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) with an organic loading rate of 252 gCOD m−3 day−1",6
"This scheme would allow to treat GW (i) at different scales, (ii) at low maintenance costs and energy consumption, (iii) using suitable vegetation and easily and locally available inert materials, and (iv) obtaining high advantages from an environmental point of view thanks to the possible reuse of purified effluents",7
Ending hunger and achieving food security is Goal 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals but will be difficult to achieve as many countries experience financial and political shocks,2
This study assesses changes in the status of food security in Latin America (LA) during the region’s recent economic recession (2014 to 2017),2
Food security status was measured by the Food Insecurity Experience Scale,2
Descriptive statistics were performed to analyze the changes in food security and logistic regression was applied to investigate associations between food security and socioeconomic and individual factors,2
Findings showed that LA suffered a significant decrease in food security (from 51% to 43%) and an increase in moderate (13% to 16%) and severe food insecurity (14% to 19%),2
"Although food security decreased in Chile and Uruguay, they still had the two highest prevalences of food security in 2017 (67% and 62%, respectively)",2
"As seen in other regions, food insecurity was strongly associated with poverty, low education, having three or more children in the household, lack of social support and poor wellbeing",2
"Women were more likely to report food insecurity, but the elderly (60+) were less likely",2
Findings highlight that economic and social policies are needed to tackle this progressive deterioration of food security and guarantee the right to food if LA is to achieve 2030 targets,2
This undernourishment indicator is defined as “the estimated proportion of the population that fails to meet their minimum dietary energy requirements for healthy life” (FAO and PAHO 2017),2
"This social political and economic improvement seen through declining undernourishment has been attributed to the many national government commitments in Latin America taken towards achieving food security, known as the stable access to adequate food, during a period of economic and political stability (FAO 2015; 2016)",2
"There have been similar signs of economic recession in other macroeconomic factors of the region which include increases in inflation, unemployment and poverty (World Bank 2018; ECLAC 2017)",8
"It is a cause for concern and a matter for research on how these declines may be affecting noted food security gains in the region, since researchers have shown that food security is strongly associated with the political and economic environment (FAO and PAHO 2017; Van Hal 2015; Brinkman et al",2
"In addition to economic factors, political instability affects food security, since the political environment directly affects the economy and government commitments and the types of policies employed in the area of food security (FAO et al",2
Economic and political shocks affect food security differently across the globe,2
"In 2008, increases in food prices associated with the Global Financial Crisis resulted in over 40 million new hungry people in 2008 and increased food insecurity (FI) in both developing and developed countries (Mittal 2009; Davis and Geiger 2017; Brinkman et al",2
"In the case of food security in the context of the SDGs, which build on many of the MDG targets, the 2nd Goal targets the achievement of “food security for all” (UN 2017)",2
"The plan of action for the region as it moves towards achieving the SDGs by 2030 should be informed by evidence-based research in order to assess how the region has fared in the area of food security since the crisis, and the magnitude of the deterioration if any",2
"In order to fill this research gap, this study assessed the changes in food security status in Latin America, looking at region and country levels during the region’s current economic recession (2014 to 2017) and exploring its association with socioeconomic and individual factors",2
"The concept of food security has evolved over time and so too, the tools that measure its various dimensions",2
"This understanding led to the development of indicators focused on food availability, such as the prevalence of undernourishment and household food expenditure (UN 1975)",2
"In the mid − 1970s, the concept further evolved when scholars and practitioners questioned the claim that availability of food at the national level ensured food access (Pinstrup-Andersen 2009)",2
"At the World Food Summit in 1996, the food security definition was broadened to include: “the physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food” (FAO 1996)",2
"Anthropometric indicators, such as the prevalence of child underweight, wasting and stunting, which have historically been used to evaluate food security status, measure nutritional status which is the outcome of food consumption and utilization (Pérez-Escamilla et al",2
It is important to mention that anthropometric indicators have been used historically to measure food security because they are seen as golden measures,2
"However, anthropometric measures are proxies for the food utilization dimension and not really a food security indicator, as many factors can interfere with outcomes of nutritional status (such as disease)",2
"Over time, it was recognized that quick and easy measures were needed to capture the “food access” dimension",2
"Access was considered the most important dimension of food security, since it acts as a “bridging dimension” between those of availability and utilization",2
This concept created the context within which experience-based food insecurity scales (EBFSS) emerged (Cafiero et al,2
"Ethnographic studies, starting in the 1970s showed that food insecurity, caused by the lack of financial resources, followed progressive stages",2
"Authors confirmed that experience-based tools such as the Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM) developed in the US were a relatively simple and inexpensive method, with high predictive validity and reliability (Cafiero et al",2
"Efforts to fine tune EBFSS resulted in many countries and regions developing their own scales based on the HFSSM, such as the Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale, the Mexican Food Security Scale and the Latin American and Caribbean Food Security Scale (Pérez-Escamilla et al",2
"These tools have been extensively validated nationally and regionally, leading to the recognition that EBFSS are the best measure to assess “resource-constraint food insecurity” (Pérez-Escamilla et al",2
"More recently, in an effort to provide comparative data on food security across the world, the FAO, through the project Voices of the Hungry, developed the eight-item international Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) (FAO 2016)",2
"As a result, the FIES was included in the annual Gallup World Poll (GWP) surveys to monitor food security in more than 140 countries (FAO 2016)",2
"In order to capture the changes in food security in Latin America during the current economic recession, a cross-sectional study was conducted based on data from the GWP",2
"Food security status, measured by the FIES, was the outcome (dependent) variable",2
"FIES is a psychometric scale that measures an individual’s food security status by asking direct questions on the experiences and behaviours associated with changes to quality and quantity of their diet, as well as hunger experiences, such as skipping meals and not eating for an entire day because of the lack of resources (FAO 2016)",2
Each positive answer receives one point and the total points for the eight questions are used to classify the food security status of respondents,2
Thresholds are based on the following categories: 0 “Food Secure”; 1 to 3 “Mild Food Insecurity”; 4 to 5 “Moderate Food Insecurity”; and 6 to 8 “Severe Food Insecurity” (FAO 2016),2
"In the case of Brazil, the food security status of respondents was measured using the first eight questions of the Brazilian Food Insecurity Scale (EBIA)",2
"These first questions of EBIA are almost the same as the FIES questions, with only three differences: 1) EBIA’s questions incorporate both questions for the individual respondent and the rest of the household since it is based on a household level analysis; 2) EBIA uses a reference period of three-months prior to the interview unlike FIES which uses a 12-month reference period; and, 3) EBIA’s food security thresholds for moderate and severe FI are also differently assessed from FIES",2
"In order to allow comparison of the Brazilian data (based on EBIA) with data from others LA countries (based on FIES), we used FIES thresholds to classify food security status of respondents in Brazil (FAO 2016)",2
"Descriptive analyses were used to assess the changes in food security status over the period, using z-tests to verify significant differences among proportions and linear-by-linear tests to examine associations between variables",2
"Based on the overall change in food security, the Latin America countries were organized into three groups: improving, stagnating and worsening",2
"Finally, a multiple logistic regression analysis was performed to verify associations between food security status and socioeconomic factors (independent variables)",2
Changes in the food security status in Latin America region are presented in Fig. 1,2
"There was a significant decline in food security from 2014 (51%) to 2017 (43%), along with significant increases in the two most extreme categories of food insecurity: moderate (13% to 16%) and severe food insecurity (14% to 19%)",2
Food security status in LA from 2014 to 2017,2
1Different superscript letters denote differences at the 0.05 level among years of each of the four measures of food security status Changes in the prevalence of food security for each Latin America country are shown in Table 3,2
"While Paraguay, El Salvador and Honduras showed an increase in food security, Argentina and Brazil had a 25% and 24% decrease in food security, respectively, over the same period",2
"Although the prevalence of food security remained stable in Costa Rica during this period, the country showed the region’s third highest prevalence (56%) of food security in 2017",2
Wellbeing and household income per capita had the greatest association with food security status (Table 4),2
"On the other hand, the elderly were more protected against food insecurity, as they were 33% more likely to be food secure",2
"After years of improvement in the fight against hunger (FAO 2015), this study, using population-representative data from 18 Latin America countries showed a significant decline in food security (51% to 43%) with increases in moderate food insecurity (13% to 16%) and severe food insecurity (14% to 19%) during the most recent economic recession (2014 to 2017)",2
"While it was expected that there would be worsening food security status in the region, there were some surprises: in some countries food security increased (Paraguay, El Salvador and Honduras) and in others food security or food insecurity remained stable (Costa Rica, Panama and Nicaragua)",2
"From 2014 to 2017, these countries showed stable and positive economic growth, with increases in remittances (IMF 2017; ENEP 2018)",8
"Paraguay showed the highest increase in food security from 2014 to 2016 (44% to 66%), an almost 22% increase",2
"During the same period, Paraguay realized pronounced reduction in social inequality, measured by the Gini Index (ranges between 0 and 1, with 1 being the maximum inequality), with an annual reduction rate of −2.4%",10
"This increase may be explained by sustained economic growth, around 4% a year, and its stable employment rates for almost 10 years (World Bank 2018, CEPAL 2018)",8
"El Salvador and Honduras also presented a significant reduction in inequality, although lower in magnitude, with a Gini Index reduction rate of −1.5% and − 0.1% per year, respectively in 2014 to 2016 (CEPAL 2018)",10
"During this same period, both countries experienced steady economic growth, with an annual average of 2.3% for El Salvador and 3.8% for Honduras",8
"Expectedly, the prevalence of food security increased by 33% in El Salvador (35% to 46%) and by 15% in Honduras (23% to 27%)",2
"In the stagnation category (Table 3), Costa Rica, Panama and Nicaragua showed no significant changes in the prevalence of food security",2
"This is also expected because these countries are part of the Mesoamerica region, in which economic growth remained stable over the selected period (IMF 2017)",8
"Across the region, the countries of Argentina, Brazil and Ecuador showed the highest declines in food security over the period under investigation",2
"These findings align with other studies in the literature, which show that economic downturn leads to deterioration in food security (Davis and Geiger 2017; Brinkman et al",2
"The peak of the coungtry’s economic shock was in 2002, when the GDP growth rate contracted by −10.8% in 2002 and unemployment reached almost 20% of the population (World Bank 2018; Thomas and Cachanosky 2016)",8
"Although a rapid period of economic recovery began after 2002, with increases in employment rate and economic growth, in 2011 the economy went into decline again, leading to a default on national public debt repayment in 2014 (World Bank 2018; Thomas and Cachanosky 2016)",8
"As a result of the 2014 payment crisis, inflation has accelerated in the country and unemployment is on the increase again (World Bank 2018; Thomas and Cachanosky 2016)",8
This prolonged and long-term economic instability may partially explain the 25.4% decline in food security in Argentina from 72.7% in 2014 to 47.3% in 2017 (Table 3),2
"The Brazilian economic and political instability has caused a worsening of many social indicators, such as income and unemployment, which reached 12% of the population in 2016 (Paula and Pires 2017; Gimenez 2017; Rossi and Mello 2017)",8
"In light of these economic shocks and increasing food prices, the Brazilian government responded with austerity measures and reduced the funding allocated to major social policies, such as the highly regarded food security support programs (Paula and Pires 2017; Rossi and Mello 2017)",2
"Ecuador experienced the third largest decline among LA countries in food security, with the prevalence of food security decreasing by 22.8% between 2014 and 2017 (Table 3)",2
"In Ecuador, the GDP growth rate decreased from 4.9% in 2013 to −1.6% in 2016 and some authors suggest that the dollarization regime, adopted by the country in 2000, has reduced the country’s ability to cope with external shocks (Paredes 2017; World Bank 2018)",8
"Still, in Colombia and Bolivia food security declined by 16.2% and 10.5%",2
Findings on determinants of food insecurity in the Latin American region over the period of study align with those expected,2
"This corroborates findings from previous studies, which indicated that political and financial crises disproportionately affected people’s food security through their effect on income and educational levels (FAO and PAHO 2017; Vilar-Compte et al",2
"While the impact of social support on food security access is only starting to be investigated, our findings give support to its importance",2
This was expected since Miller (2015) showed the association between functional and structural social support and food security in a study involving 107 countries,2
"She found that social support improved food security by facilitating the loan of money or food in cases of shocks, providing help to produce and prepare food, and also to form connections in finding employment (Miller 2015)",2
This is an area of research that could be used to inform the design of public health and wellbeing policies,3
"Surprisingly, our findings showed that increased age for those over 60 had a protective effect for food security in the Latin America region with the elderly being 33% less likely to be food insecure",2
This suggested that the elderly contribute to the economic stability of the household and overall food security of its members (Rosa et al,2
This association between food security and wellbeing has been explored in the past (Hadley and Crooks 2012),2
"Researchers explained that apprehension, stress, and anxiety caused by the lack of access or the worry about not having enough food, accompanied by the loss of social value attached to eating, also negatively affect mental health and wellbeing: this has been found to affect the emotional state of the food insecure and/or the currently food secure who are worrying about upcoming change in their living conditions (Hadley and Crooks 2012)",3
"More specifically, researchers found among adults associations between food insecurity and feelings of shame, isolation, low mood and poor sleep (Hadley and Crooks 2012; Bermúdez-Millán et al",2
"A negative association between food insecurity and wellbeing, as well as physical problems, was also found in a large sample involving 138 countries (Frongillo et al",2
"For these reasons, food-insecure people are more likely to use mental health care services (Tarasuk et al",3
"The causal mechanisms of the association of food insecurity with low education, poverty, lack of social support and poor wellbeing found in this study can be seen in both directions (Pérez-Escamilla et al",2
"In other words, these socioeconomic determinants can also result from food insecurity",2
"For example, a poor diet comprises children’s learning ability, and a lower level of education leads to poor job opportunities and lower income, which in turn reduces financial access to food",2
"In addition, food insecurity leads to lower productivity, which affects the performance of people at work and can result in job loss (Pérez-Escamilla et al",2
This study of changes in food security in the Latin American region makes an important contribution to the global discussion on devising food security policies and may contribute to efforts for building upon MDGs gains and forwarding the SDG agenda of ending hunger by 2030,2
"This research, by providing a rapid appraisal of food security changes during a period of political and economic instability, serves to highlight how quickly achievements in food security may be thwarted and the importance of ongoing monitoring",2
"Clearly, a key condition that must be met for improving the governance of food security is the capacity to measure and respond to individual food security issues directly and reliably",2
FIES measures the understudied access dimension of food security rather than macro-level country measures such as production/trade or proxy food utilization measures such as anthropometrics,2
"While there are no gold-standards in measuring multidimensional food security, FIES stands out as a unique, validated and internationally comparable tool",2
This study provides a working example on the use of FIES to provide data on national and also regional level food security in a timely manner,2
Such measures have been noted as having indicator properties likely to contribute towards improved food security governance for a number of reasons (Pérez-Escamilla et al,2
"Authors suggest that food security measures can improve policy development by facilitating clear, participatory and responsive planning, decision-making and implementation by policymakers at national and regional levels",2
"These real-time findings as generated in this study can be used to galvanize regional, national and community-level stakeholders to devise responses to quickly deteriorating gains in food security",2
"Second, authors suggest that measures like the FIES can help develop/oversee efficient, effective, transparent, and accountable institutions",16
"Third, measures like FIES and other EBFSSs can facilitate state actors being held accountable in upholding the rule of law through equity in resource allocation and service delivery",16
"This is of particular importance when regions and demographic sub-groups are at greater risk than others, to ensure that these vulnerable groups are identified so that they can be targeted and results of interventions assessed",1
"An important policy lesson from the LA region relevant to other developing regions, relates to the time in which a region’s longstanding food security gains have been undermined",2
Countries of the region have won global acclaim for political and economic commitments towards food security (Pérez-Escamilla et al,2
"In the case of Brazil, the country has been long noted for its successful food security policies",2
"These include the Zero Hunger Program, School Feeding Program, Popular Restaurants and Food Acquisition Program (Rocha 2016; Paula and Pires 2017; Rossi and Mello 2017)",2
"Most noteworthy is that these food security policies have been strengthened by a legal framework which has been copied across the region, and by developing countries across the world (Rocha 2016; Paula and Pires 2017; Rossi and Mello 2017; Pérez-Escamilla et al",2
An emerging research question from this study on the LA region could be related to the impact of various programs in the area of food security,2
"While many Brazilian food security programs persist because they are mandated by key legislation, declines in national budgetary allocations may explain the decrease in the prevalence of food security in Brazil during the recent political and financial crisis (Sousa et al",2
"Regarding study limitations, the sample did not cover the homeless and institutionalized, who may be the most vulnerable groups during economic downturns",1
"While these gains have been celebrated, there are concerns that, with recent economic and political crises, declines in food insecurity in the region may be pushed back",2
"In order to capture the changes in food security in Latin America during the current economic recession, this cross-sectional study used data from the Gallup World Poll from 18 LA countries (n = 65,146), from 2014 to 2017",2
"The study shows that, after years of improvement in the fight against hunger, there has been a significant decline in food security (51% to 43%) with increases in moderate (13% to 16%) and severe (14% to 19%) food insecurity over the period 2014 to 2017",2
"Although food security decreased in Chile and Uruguay over the past four years, they still had the highest prevalence of food security in 2017 (66.7% and 61.5%, respectively)",2
"As seen in other regions, food insecurity was strongly associated with poverty, low education, having three or more children in the household, lack of social support and poor wellbeing",2
"Women were more likely to report food insecurity, but the elderly (60+) were found to be more food secure.",2
This study aims to examine the asymmetric impact of financial institutions and information and communication technologies (ICT) trade on renewable energy demand in BRICS economies by using the cross-sectionally augmented nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model,7
"The asymmetric estimates of the financial institutions index confirm that a positive shock increases renewable energy consumption, and a negative shock reduces renewable energy consumption in BRICS economies",7
"Similarly, the long-run asymmetric estimates attached to ICT trade are positively significant, confirming that a positive shock increases renewable energy consumption and a negative shock hurts renewable energy consumption",7
"The results are asymmetric in nature, implying that negative and positive shocks have different effects on renewable energy consumption",7
"Therefore, policymakers should consider both negative and positive shocks in financial institutions and ICT trade while devising policies regarding environmental sustainability and renewable energy consumption",7
"Continuous energy provision is crucial for sustainable economic development, but it is not the only ingredient necessary to attain long-run and sustained economic growth",8
The last few decades have seen an unprecedented rise in renewable energy sources that have replaced the non-renewable energy sources in the total energy matrix (Sohail et al,7
"The benefits attached to the increased renewable energy production include a better environment, energy security, and less reliance on the volatile energy market (Aized et al",7
Energy is considered a crucial element in the wealth generation of society and leads a country toward the path of sustainable economic development (Usman et al,8
"On one side, the economic development of a country improves the living standards of society; on the other side, it hurts the environment due to the use of fossil fuels in the development process",8
"Therefore, in recent times, the most discussed idea at the international forum is how to improve energy efficiency",7
"In this context, renewable energy sources have become the most effective solution to improve energy efficiency, reduce energy poverty, and promote sustainable economic development (Caglar 2020; Sharif et al",7
"According to sustainable development goals (SDGs) 7, there should be worldwide access to modern, reliable, and affordable energy services by 2030",7
"By employing renewable energy sources, the BRICS economies will become capable to achieve the SDG-7 goal which is about clean and affordable energy, which will positively help in achieving a sustainable clean environment",7
"Thus, the objective of innovation in the energy sector can be obtained that may help in reducing the environmental pressure and enhances the demand of renewable energy",7
"Moreover, another group of researchers analyzed the impact of REC on environmental quality and highlighted the critical role of clean energy in mitigating CO2 and other greenhouse emissions (Ozturk and Acaravci 2010; Wolde-Rufael 2010; Yang et al",7
There are consensuses among the empirics that increasing reliance on clean energy sources instead of dirty energy sources causes energy efficiency to rise and greenhouse gas emissions to reduce and serve as a solution to tackle the menace of energy poverty in developing economies,7
"Financial inclusion makes various financial products and services (e.g., bank accounts, online transactions, debit and credit cards, and credit facilities for businesses and individuals, etc.) available at an affordable cost and consequently creates wealth effects for both consumers and producers (Ozili 2018; Li et al",8
Schumpeter (1912) states that well-functioning financial markets promote economic growth by recognizing and financing initiatives with the highest possible returns,8
Levine (1997) investigated the link between financial development and economic development and observed that a vibrant and dynamic financial system mobilizes the economic resources and directs them toward the most profitable ventures in the economy,8
"Therefore, most previous studies also found a positive impact of financial development on energy consumption (Sadorsky 2010; Islam et al",7
"On the other side, it is documented in the literature that digitalization increases the overall energy demand (Lange et al",9
"Therefore, finding the asymmetric factors that could reduce the barriers to renewable energy demand in BRICS economies without hindering their environmental quality is crucial",7
"Where, RECitis the REC which is determined by financial institutions development (FID), ICT trade openness (ICT.trade), GDP per capita (GDP), research and development (RD), inflation rate (inflation), and μitis the error term",9
"ICT trade enables renewable energy transition; thus, estimate of η2 is expected to be positive",7
(1) reflect the long-run effects of renewable energy,7
Renewable energy consumption is measured as percent of total energy consumption,7
"Besides these variables, GDP, R&D, and inflation are used as control variables",9
"(2022), we use inflation as a control variable in the renewable energy consumption model",7
They noted that the inflation rate significantly affects renewable energy in the long run,7
Research and development expenditures are taken as a percent of GDP,9
"After confirmation of the cointegration association among variables, we applied CS-ARDL and CS-NARDL approaches to figure out linear and nonlinear coefficient estimates of renewable energy demand",7
"Regarding control variables, findings display that the effect of GDP, R&D, and inflation is significant and positive on REC in the long run",9
"It reveals that an increase of 1% in GDP, research and development, and inflation increases REC by 0.829%, 0.667%, and 0.063%, respectively",9
Several studies have investigated the influence of financial sector development on energy consumption and confirmed the positive association (Al-Mulali and Sab 2012; Saini and Neog 2018; Raza et al,7
"The literature suggests that the development of the financial sector is mainly linked to the development of financial institutions, including banks, capital markets, and other financial institutions",8
"Moreover, the development of financial institutions also helps companies to cover the high initial cost of renewable energy projects",7
The well-functioning and vibrant financial institutions help improve energy efficiency via an upgraded financial instrument that pushes REC upward,7
"Furthermore, financial institutions provide financial support in the form of green insurance, green securities, and green credit, thus promoting renewable energy demand on a large scale",7
This implies that ICT trade is an efficient tool that helps in increasing the demand for renewable energy,7
ICT trade development helps in energy efficiency and energy savings in every segment of the economy,7
"Moreover, the progress of the ICT sector improves energy efficiency by managing energy resources more efficiently (Murshed 2020)",7
"Furthermore, ICT diffusion into the world energy sector may help to limit the world energy demand by 3.5–6.3% without affecting global economic development (Jacobsson and Bergek 2004)",8
"Another contribution of the ICT sector in promoting environmental sustainability is that it can complement the policies intended to upsurge the share of REC in total energy consumption, consequently leading to more efficient use of energy (Murshed et al",7
This notion relies on renewable energy sources being more energy-intensive than non-renewable energy sources,7
"Therefore, it is rightly stated that a rise in ICT trade can be attached to the implementation of renewable energy technologies in the energy structure of emerging and developing nations (Zhao et al",7
Research and development bring a positive increase in REC in the long run depicting that an increase of 1% in research and development increases REC by 0.775%,9
"However, GDP is positively associated with REC while inflation and research and development are insignificantly associated with REC in the short run",9
"GDP, research and development, and inflation significantly and positively increase REC in most of BRICS economies in the long run",9
A continuous supply of energy is crucial to nurturing long-term economic development,8
"As a result, the focus of the governments has shifted toward the generation of renewable energy sources that would provide clean, green, reliable, and enough energy to grease the wheel of the economy",7
The provision of clean and green energy does not help reduce the severe effects of energy poverty but improves environmental quality by controlling CO2 emissions,7
"In this regard, growing the share of renewable energy sources in the total energy mix of nations has become crucial for sustainable economic development alongside environmental sustainability",7
"This step will make the availability of financial services easy and provide financial support for the deployment of renewable energy plants at micro and macro levels, promoting REC",7
"Similarly, the policymakers should remove the hindrances in exports and imports of ICT products because that would help the economy use more communication resources instead of physical ones, resulting in improved energy efficiency and increased demand for renewable energy",7
The BRICS economies should invest in renewable energy projects that will help economies in achieving SDGs goal 7,7
"The available renewable energy infrastructure has become inadequate due to the increasing demand for renewable energy sources; thus, there is a need to utilize available financial resources for the development of renewable energy projects",7
Strong institutions can significantly contribute to strengthening the economic sector and energy sector,16
"Additionally, along with ICT trade, the role of globalization and export diversification should be incorporated in the analysis as globalization and export diversification can play important role in development of the renewable energy sector",7
(ii) Real income and trade openness reduce environmental degradation,15
(iv) Renewable energy reduces carbon emissions only in the short term and has no effect on environmental quality in the long term,7
This could be due to the ineffective deployment of renewable energy in ASEAN countries,7
"In this context, renewables, which do not pollute the environment, are beginning to be seen as a solution to environmental concerns and energy security",7
"The rising temperature has forced international organizations to take stronger steps, and in recent years, policymakers and academics have drawn more attention to issues related to climate change and CO2 emissions (Zameer et al",13
"GHGs, which maintain the earth’s temperature at a certain level so that living things can survive, are produced by intensive fossil fuels consumption and lead to problems of global warming and climate change (Armeanu et al",13
"Due to concerns about global warming and climate change, various international activities and agreements such as the 1972 Stockholm Conference, the 1987 Brundtland Report, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and the 2015 Paris Conference have been implemented to take action to eliminate pollution",13
It is important for the world to comply with the SDGs in the fight against global warming and climate change (Sharif et al,13
SDG-13 and SDG-7 are directly related to promoting renewable energy and reducing CO2 emissions,7
A number of rigorous steps have been taken to identify various measures aimed at reducing the negative impact of exhaustible and polluted energy sources by resorting to renewable energy (Steve et al,7
"Therefore, it is important to analyze the factors affecting these environmental problems to prevent global warming and climate change",13
"Given this importance, this study aims to analyze income, renewable energy consumption, FDI, tourism, and trade openness for potential impacts on CO2 emissions",7
"The production process, using a high proportion of fossil fuels for economic growth and development, has resulted in pollution over time",8
"Tourism, which is a rapidly growing sector, contributes to economic growth by enabling the development of urbanization and industrialization",8
Developing countries can tighten their environmental laws and prioritize economic growth to attract FDI,8
"In a sense, emerging countries may become pollution havens, and in this case, FDI may be a factor that triggers environmental degradation",15
This large population and economy can lead to environmental degradation,15
"In Thailand and the Philippines, the rate of increase in environmental degradation is relatively lower",15
The fact that CO2 emissions continue to increase in five of the six ASEAN countries shows that these countries are contributing to global warming and climate change,13
The ASEAN Community promotes a sustainable society that supports environmental protection in Vision 2025 (ASEAN 2015),15
Renewable energy share in the total energy mix in ASEAN countries (% of total),7
"These countries have increased the weight of fossil fuels for economic development, which has led to an increase in CO2 emissions",8
(i) Is current renewable energy sufficient to improve environmental conditions in ASEAN countries? (ii) Can an increase in income help reduce CO2 emissions? (iii) Do FDI and trade openness have a compounding impact on pollution? We explore the answers to these questions by accounting for the possible cross-sectional dependence (CSD) in the panel data and using the panel ARDL approach,7
"(ii) The study is the only attempt to analyze the effects of tourism, income, renewable energy, trade openness, and FDI on CO2 simultaneously for the ASEAN region",7
"Researchers investigate the effects of income and FDI on environmental degradation using the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and pollution haven hypothesis (PHH), respectively",15
Kuznets (1955) investigated the existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between per capita income and income inequality,10
"After the turning point indicated by the orange arrow, the acceleration of economic development contributes to the development of the knowledge-intensive service sector, increased environmental awareness, health spending and technology investment, and the implementation of better environmental regulations (Dinda 2004)",8
"Representation of the EKC The EKC hypothesis implies a nonlinear link between income and environmental degradation; in other words, income becomes an environmentally friendly element over time",15
The second subsection describes studies that examine the impact of renewable energy on CO2 emissions,7
These studies have generally proven that renewable energy is environmentally friendly (Balsalobre-Lorente et al,7
Some studies suggest that FDI increases environmental degradation; the PHH hypothesis is valid (Rahaman et al,15
"Details of the studies that examined the effects of renewable energy, FDI, and tourism on CO2 emissions are shown in Table 1",7
(2017) found that the EKC is invalid for CO2 emissions and emphasized the importance of renewable energy for environmental quality development,7
"There is also no consensus among the studies that examine the impact of FDI, tourism, and renewable energy on CO2 emissions",7
"In other words, the absence of a study in the literature to test the EKC hypothesis for ASEAN countries by considering the multicollinearity problem and the fact that the effects of renewable energy, FDI, income, and trade openness on CO2 emissions have not been tested simultaneously for this group of countries are important research gaps",7
"Using annual data for the period 1995–2018, we test the effects of FDI, GDP, renewable energy, and foreign trade on CO2 emissions with different panel data methods",7
"In other words, negative FDI implies that the investment value made by foreign investors in a year is less than the investment value withdrawn (UN 2007)",17
"Plots of variables for the case of ASEAN countries, (a) CO2 emissions per capita, (b) tourism (number of arrivals), (c) foreign direct investment (% of GDP), (d) real income per capita, (e) renewable energy, and (f) trade openness Singapore has the highest CO2 emissions, GDP, and TO during 1995–2018, and Vietnam has the highest renewable energy share among ASEAN countries",7
"Among these countries, the Philippines and Vietnam have the lowest real income, while Singapore uses the least renewable energy",7
"(2), CO2 is carbon dioxide emissions, i is each country in the panel, TOUR is tourism, FDI is foreign direct investment, GDP is gross domestic product, REC is renewable energy consumption, TO is trade openness, t is time period, α is constant term, and β1 to 5 show the coefficient of the explanatory variables",7
FDI increases environmental degradation,15
FDI can lead to environmental degradation by increasing the activities of pollution-intensive industries (Sapkota and Bastola 2017),15
"In the first phase of the development process, pollution increases because energy consumption from fossil fuels increases in the transition from the agricultural to the industrial sector, and environmental concerns are not important in this phase",7
"In this approach, environmental degradation can decrease over time if the long-run elasticity of income is lower than the short-run elasticity",15
(III) The technique effect of trade openness shows that developing countries reduce environmental degradation by importing green technologies,15
Renewable energy can help mitigate emissions,7
"Renewable energy is an important solution in the fight against global warming, as it has the function of reducing CO2 emissions (Shahnazi and Shabani 2021)",7
Countless scientists have recognized that clean and green renewable sources are a helpful factor in reducing greenhouse gas emissions (Vo et al,13
"Thus, our study examines the hypothesis that renewable energy can reduce CO2 emissions in ASEAN countries",7
"In the short run, a 1% increase in GDP increases environmental degradation by 1.27%, while in the long run, it decreases by 0.65%",15
The panel ARDL-PMG estimator shows that the FDI has an increasing effect on environmental degradation in the long run,15
The validity of the EKC hypothesis implies that environmental degradation that increases in the short run can be compensated by income growth in the long run,15
"ASEAN countries adopt such a strategy to attract more FDI, which increases environmental degradation",15
"As Guzel and Okumus (2020) stated, although FDI supports the economic growth of ASEAN countries, dirty investment should be prevented by legal regulations",8
"Tourism, on the other hand, increases environmental degradation in ASEAN countries",15
ASEAN countries should use their revenues from tourist flows for more environmentally friendly purposes and promote green tourism,8
"Governments should monitor the environmental degradation caused by tourists, and the damage to the ecosystem should be eliminated through environmental protection measures",15
"Contrary to expectations, renewable energy has no impact on CO2 emissions, implying that ASEAN countries are not using renewable resources effectively and appropriately",7
"Despite the abundant renewable resources in some of the ASEAN countries, these resources are consumed with low efficiency and some clean energy projects cannot be funded (Liu et al",7
"The other five ASEAN countries, on the other hand, focus on fossil fuel consumption and reduce the share of renewable energy in their total energy demand (see Fig",7
"(2015), Pata (2018), and Pata and Caglar (2021), who confirm the long-term ineffectiveness of renewable energy for environmental quality",7
"However, renewable energy sources are not effectively utilized in ASEAN countries",7
"Instead of focusing on renewable energy, a more accurate strategy could be to support income growth and steer society toward environmentally friendly goods and services that have access to high-income levels",7
Another strategy is to prevent pollution as much as possible by effectively recycling the waste generated by tourists,12
"In this context, ASEAN countries should support foreign trade policies that provide technologies that promote green innovation and clean energy practices",7
"In recent years, Singapore has successfully achieved its goals of economic growth, sustainable development, and high living standards",8
Singapore has implemented the Environmental Pollution Control Act of 1999 for environmental purposes and has committed in the Paris Agreement of 2015 to reduce its CO2 emissions by 36% from 2005 levels by 2030,13
Policymakers in other ASEAN countries can contribute to the environmental development of the ASEAN region by taking cues from Singapore’s successes in preventing environmental degradation and analyzing the applicability of these measures in their own countries in terms of business and foreign trade,15
"In this context, the determinants of pollution in countries whose CO2 emissions continue to increase are analyzed with empirical studies and researchers develop various strategies for decarbonization",13
"Moreover, the results of the study show that trade openness is effective in reducing CO2 emissions, while the effect of renewable energy is limited in the short term",7
The tourism sector significantly increases environmental degradation in the long term,15
"Overall, these findings show that economic growth and foreign trade are effective and useful environmental policy tools for ASEAN countries",8
Water resources development plans (WRDPs) is a key element of evaluation for sustainable water supply due to growing needs for adequate and reliable water resources in the human communities by different biodiversity,6
The water resources development plans were evaluated in a model applying two different approaches of crisp and fuzzy for zone number 4 of Makran coastal area and Bandar Abbas city where play significant role in the economic growth of the country,8
(2008) applied FTA technique for the risk assessment of the top event termed as “improper water quality in urban distribution networks”,6
"(2012) carried out the risk assessment of drinking water supply systems using Dynamic Fault Tree analysis in Gothenburg, Sweden",6
Taheriyoun and Moradinejad (2015) assessed the risk of Tehran West Town wastewater treatment plant applying FTA technique,6
"They studied social, economic, water quality and quantity, and ecological criteria for the Urmia Lake basin in Iran",6
"Yilmaz and Harmancioglu (2010) designed a water resource management model for decision -making based on sustainable development criteria with regard to biological, social, and economic aspects",6
(2016) employed Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approach to rank water resource management strategies in Shahroud region using sustainable development criteria,6
"
Public dissatisfaction of water scarcity:
 Eq",6
"
Public dissatisfaction with poor water quality of desalination plants in comparison to conventional sources:
 In some areas, the quality of surface water resources is better than the water quality provided by desalination plants",6
"
Water Quality failure of conventional sources due to high evaporation and sediment:
 Storing surface water in the area with high annual sediment and evaporation will reduce the water quality in the reservoirs",6
"
Increasing marine pollution:
 Sea is polluted by effluent of the DPs and other sources of contamination",14
"Where PBE5 denotes the failure probability of the basic event of “increased marine pollution”, GWmax is the highest amount of effluent in each scenario",14
"
Shortage in domestic water supply:
 The failure probability of this index can be calculated using the amount of supplied domestic water (ASDD) and the total amount of domestic demand (TADD) based on the following formula: 
Relative water stress:
 This index is derived from the ratio of the consumed volume of conventional resources to the total available water resources",6
"Order of importance of social indices are public dissatisfaction yielded from water shortage, low employment rate, and public dissatisfaction for poor water quality of desalination plants respectively",6
The BEs include public dissatisfaction as a result of poor water quality of desalination plants compared to conventional resources and public dissatisfaction due to water shortage and low employment rate,6
The events pertaining to failure of conventional resources due to poor water quality because of high evaporation and sediment in the reservoirs and low economic index are in the fourth and fifth ranks,6
"The quest for improved environmental quality through low-carbon emission has been explored in this study in the wake of the growing call for a transition to renewable energy use amidst widening trade relations between Turkey and the countries in the Caspian region including Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan",7
Empirical evidence from the dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) technique corroborated by the fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) technique shows that a percent rise in renewable energy consumption level significantly abates carbon emission among these countries by about 0.26% while growing globalization vis-à-vis a percent increase in openness to trade significantly hampers environmental quality via inducement of carbon emission level by 0.32%,7
"Besides, Erşen and Çelikpala (2019) have observed that getting an affordable and reliable flow of energy supply in a bid to ensure energy security is a major challenge to the Turkish economy",7
"Thus, countries in the Caspian region among other oil-rich countries have become the major strategic partners in Turkey’s bid to achieving energy security (Ediger and Durmaz 2016)",7
This is despite Turkey’s growing effort in recent times to increase energy efficiency by decoupling GHGs emissions through investment in renewable energy sourcesFootnote 1,7
"The nexus between globalization vis-à-vis trade openness proxy and carbon emission has shown substantially mixed results in the literature; however, the rise in renewable energy consumption is often found to be beneficial to the global quest for achieving low-carbon emission based on a larger proportion of the findings from extant studies (Shahbaz et al",7
"Meanwhile, the importance of the region in the global energy market deserves to be given adequate attention in the quest for a sustainable environment given the dynamics of trade and energy consumption in our globalized world",7
"Hence, this study explores the impacts of trade openness and transition to renewable energy use on the environmental quality of Turkey and the countries in the Caspian region, thus providing a contemporary insight into the environmental sustainability of the countries in this bloc",7
"Second, the carbon-income function is tested while incorporating renewable energy consumption and trade liberalization to explore the nature of trade between the investigated countries if dirty or clean",7
"Studies of this kind are worthwhile given the pertinent role of green trade, responsible energy consumption, and environmental sustainability across the globe",7
"For empirical analysis, this study critically examines three variables that are related to the subject matter of the study including the level of carbon emission among the countries, openness to trade, and the level of renewable energy use",7
"For trade openness (LnOPEN), the summation of total import and export as a fraction of individual countries’ gross domestic product (GDP) was utilized, and the total amount of renewable energy use (LnRGER) as a percentage of the total final energy consumption in each country between 1992 and 2016 was also obtained for the empirical analysis",7
"To further access the impact of income levels alongside the amount of renewable energy consumption on the environmental quality of the panel countries, the real per capita income levels for each country were also incorporated into the model specification in Eq",7
These hydrocarbon reserves in the region do not only impact the share of export in the trade sector of all countries in the study but also have direct impacts on the level of overall energy consumption among these countries,7
"Also, larger volumes of oil production are required to support targeted export growth and to sustain domestic energy consumption which is predominantly fossil fuel-based among these countries",7
"On the other hand, a percent rise in the level of renewable energy source use is expected to significantly abate carbon emission in these countries by about 0.26%, thus aiding environmental quality improvement for the countries in the panel study",7
"We report the outputs of the Pairwise Granger Causality test in Table 7.
 From Table 7, at a 5% significance level, renewable energy consumption is found to be Granger causing carbon emission level in the countries that are included in the panel study",7
"Also, there is a significant bidirectional causality from countries’ per capita income levels to renewable energy consumption and globalization vis-à-vis the level of openness to trade in the countries that are included in the panel study",7
Estimates from the dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) technique corroborated by the results of the fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) show that a rise in renewable energy consumption level significantly enhances environmental quality among the countries while growing globalization vis-à-vis increasing openness to trade significantly hampers environmental quality as it positively influences carbon emission level among the countries,7
"Based on the foregoing findings, deliberate efforts must be made to stimulate renewable energy use in a decisive bid toward enhancing environmental quality among the countries in the study",7
"It is soothing to know that these countries have started making some gradual efforts toward alternative green energy as the growth rate per annum of renewable energy generation between 2007 and 2017 was about 47.3% in Turkey, 8.8% in Russia, and 8.8% in Iran (British Petroleum (BP) 2019)",7
"However, the present level of investment in green energy is still substantially low given that all the countries in the present study still account for less than 2% of the total share of the global renewable energy generation in 2018 (British Petroleum, BP 2019)",7
"Furthermore, although our study confirms that trade openness worsens environmental quality for the panel country, nevertheless, this is not an indicator that anti-trade campaign policies should be encouraged among the countries since it is very clear from the causality results that trade openness is of critical importance to economic growth in the region as its granger causes income levels among the countries",8
"Lastly, while we strongly recommend that suitable emission standard should be set up for the region, we also recognize the need to put individual countries’ differences into consideration as the consequences of environmental degradation might vary across the countries in the panel study due to differences in the level of technology and environmental control capacities among other issues",15
The present study investigates and compliments the frontiers of knowledge on the EKC debate while accounting for the pertinent of trade liberalization and renewable energy for Turkey and the Caspian countries in a balanced panel setting,7
The practical employment of VPF model resulted in the remarkable improvement of soil fertility through an increment in the essential nutrient quantity,15
Analysis of such interrelated factors expressed a feedback causality mechanism occurring between the rent for natural resources and economic development (Bekun et al,8
biofertilizers has been done for restoration of the soil quality and solution of the nutritional problems of the crops (Emami et al,2
"In case of land degradation, there is an ongoing debate regarding the exact definition of the term but estimations are supporting 75% of the pedospheric region being deteriorated (Scholes et al",15
Currently exiting monoculture cropping systems makes use of toxic agro-chemicals annihilating soil quality in a direct manner and other environmental components indirectly,2
Eco-efficiency-triggered sustainable agriculture is often expressed as a system aimed at the production of food items through such practices that cause an augmentation in the ecological integrity and also maintain an economic viability,2
Sustainable agriculture is focused on the improvement of food demand fulfillment keeping in view the fact that there will be 2 billion more human beings to be fed by 2050 (European Commission 2012),2
"In addition to agriculture, the concept of sustainability has also been incorporated in other realms of scientific research aiming at the global-level efforts for achievement of SDGs (Shaheen and Ahmad 2019; Ahmad and Jaffri 2018a, b)",9
Humanity is faced with severe crises of food due to an increasing population resulting in food insecurity and malnutrition (Maeda et al,2
"Undernourishment is marked by a person’s inability of getting sufficient food to meet up the daily minimum dietetic energy requirements, for 1 year",2
Developing countries are extremely affected where 5.9 million children died due to malnutrition under the age of 5 (WHO 2015),2
"South Asia is considered among the top food-insecure region worldwide where 294.7 million are starving, accounting 35% of the world malnourished people out of which 10% faced severe food insecurity while 25% of adults faced moderate-to-severe hunger (Asghar and Muhammad 2013)",2
"Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) reported that Pakistan ranked at 11th position due to escalated number of food-deprived people, i.e., 48.9% population, and is at extreme risk by Food Security Risk Index (FSRI) (Aziz et al",2
"In the global food security index, Pakistan ranked at 75th position out of 105 countries (Aziz et al",2
"It is now indicated that food insecurity is the main national problem prevailing in Pakistan, having 60% food insecurity in Punjab, 63.5% in Baluchistan, and 72% in Sindh, respectively",2
"Compared with malaria, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), and tuberculosis (TB) combined, it is reported that more mortality is caused by hunger every year and is considered to be the top most health risk to human",3
"Due to lack of access to quality nutritious food, two thirds of the global population are deficient or lacking the vital mineral elements",2
"For coping with the problems of food insecurity, poverty, and environmental unsustainability, measures must be taken within the sector of agriculture",2
"When all these conditions get fulfilled, then the agriculture system is said to be a sustainable agriculture (Nakajima 2020; Williams et al",2
"The main purpose of integration is to increase productivity and sustainability, to enhance diversification, and to improve natural resource efficiency",12
"The soul of integrated farming lies in the idea of recycling as approximately 80 to 90% of essential micronutrients stayed in biomass, so the output of one component becomes the input for another under integration and hence, maximizes the production with minimum input cost",12
"In case of IFS, the most prevalent and beneficial system is the one integrating vegetables, poultry, and fish (VPF) comprising residues that are being consumed by the poultry birds, and the organic manure of poultry is directly fed into the fish pond which is consumed by fish as feed and aids in the production of phytoplankton and zooplankton (Ayoola 2011; Sithan and Lai 2011; Endebu et al",3
"Considering the favorability of the VPF model–based integrated agricultural approach, current investigation has for the first time employed VPF model at experimental level for maximum food production within minimum resources by efficient recycling and for comparison of the efficiency of this model with unitary framing practice (Fig. 1a)",12
"This study also accomplishes almost 14 out of 17 sustainable development goals particularly SDG 2 as the target of this goal is to achieve food security, improve nutrition, end hunger, and promote sustainable agriculture",2
"a Congruously designed vegetable–poultry–fish model for sustainable agriculture and environment, b VPF model practical employment expressing the congruousness of different components aimed at increased productivity and sustainability, and c schematic layout of the integrated VPF farm All the experimental procedures were conducted in the greenhouse of Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan, at 33.5864° N, 73.0645° E, during the period of March 1, 2018, to June 1, 2018",2
"For examining the amount of manure falling during 1 h, analysis was carried out and results showed that the hen discharged fresh manure of about 7.5 g per chicken per hour while the dry weight of manure was 1.3 g which was enough to feed 10 fishes without deteriorating water quality",6
"However, in the majority of the approaches adopted for boosting agricultural productivity, the goal is to intensify the already existing agenda, mostly neglecting the agro-ecological perspective (Altieri et al",2
"The roof is built up with the help of galvanized sheet which provides better insulation and is beneficial for its durability, longevity, light in weight, and energy efficiency properties",7
The grated nature of coop floor means that the poultry manure directly falls in the pond which can be directly eaten up by the fish or aids in the production of phytoplankton,3
Organic manure (poultry manure) is the best source which not only fertilizes the pond and aids in phytoplankton and zooplankton growth but also is eaten by fish as feed which has a positive result on fish physiology,3
3b is a good source of aerating pond which operates on solar energy which is a cheap renewable source of energy (Prasetyaningsari et al,7
"As, organic matter content is a chief contributor to soil fertility and quality because it has an ability to affect plant growth by direct or indirect means (Table 1)",15
"Therefore, the profitability of the VPF model is indicative of its possible adoption at the commercial scale to derive real benefit in terms of environmental protection and agricultural growth",15
Environmental degradation associated with agricultural production in terms of pedospheric contamination and alleviating biodiversity can be attributed to the unjust utilization of the current agro-based technologies and other methods that mimic naturally occurring functions of the ecosystems,15
This system was highly efficient due to its idea of recycling,12
"Developing countries, including Pakistan, require tremendous efforts to sustain economic growth",8
"However, to attain economic growth, these countries have to cope with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and other environmental problems",8
"These findings have policy implications in terms of environmental management and carbon neutrality, and they serve as a baseline for future research.Graphical  In the last few decades, demand for energy resources and other associated services to meet global societal and economic development needs has resulted in dramatic growth in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Ahmad et al",8
"Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most well-known contributor that considerably boosts greenhouse effects and contributes to climate change and global warming, accounting for nearly 75% of global GHG emissions (Crippa et al",13
Several studies have pointed out that the growth in CO2 emissions has been mainly driven by the combustion of fossil energy (two-thirds of global CO2 emissions) in support of human activities associated with economic growth and development (IPCC 2007; OECD 2011; Pao et al,8
"Particularly, trade liberalization and the greater openness of trade have heterogeneous effects on CO2 emissions and may considerably cause environmental degradation (Afridi et al",15
"As a result, since the 1990s, both scholars and policymakers have been paying close attention to the growing interconnections between economic expansion and environmental degradation (Javid and Sharif 2016)",15
The development of the environmental Kuznets curve by Grossman and Krueger (1991) prompted a large body of work on the environmental consequences of economic growth in various countries and regions around the world (Akbostancı et al,8
"From a policy perspective, the Agenda 2030 and the sustainable development goals (SDGs) recognize the links between energy demands (SDG7), economic progress (SDG8), and the mitigation and adaptation to GHG emissions and climate change (SDG13)",13
"That is, achieving the SDGs in developing countries especially the ability of these countries to sustainably produce and consume energy resources achieves economic growth and protects the natural environment (Cui 2016; Saidi and Hammami 2015)",8
"The existence of nonlinear relationships among variables is affected by social, economic, political, financial and technological progress",8
The findings of this study are envisaged to help policymakers in Pakistan to upkeep modern and pollution-free technologies like renewable energy and green portfolio investment,7
"Therefore, this study contributes to the prevailing literature by employing the NARDL model to link FDI and other variables to environmental degradation in Pakistan",15
"The secondary data obtained from BP Statistical Review of World Energy (2019) and World Development Indicators (WDI, 2019) was used for the current research to examine the nexus among carbon dioxide emission (kg per capita), per capita energy consumption, real GDP (Y) per capita (current US $), FDI (percent of GDP) and trade accessibility (percent of GDP) for time series annual data set spanning from 1971 to 2018 for Pakistan’s economy",7
"The primary purpose of this study is to examine the significant impact of energy consumption, real GDP (Y), FDI and TR on environmental quality (CO2 emission)",7
"Ct, Et, Yt, FDIt and TRt, which represents CO2 emission, energy consumption, per capita GDP, foreign direct investment and trade openness respectively",7
"The coefficient of R2 (0.9013) of the NARDL points out that energy consumption, per capita income, trade openness and foreign direct investment describe the speed of change to the environmental quality model equilibrium in a single equation, both in the long and short run",7
"In contrast, a decrease in energy consumption in the current year, as well as the previous 2 years of short run, is positively related to CO2 emissions, with coefficients of 1.7913, 3.6595 and 3.8487 at lags 0, 1 and 2, respectively",7
The increase in CO2 emissions as a result of any reduction in energy consumption suggests that energy may not be the sole factor responsible for CO2 emissions in Pakistan,7
"2018); additionally, forest and renewable energy have a negative and significant effect on CO2 emissions (Waheed et al",7
"From a policy point of view, the Pakistani government should minimize the consumption of energy or replace it with renewable energy to enhance the environment in the short run, which may have a significant impact on environmental quality in the long run.
 The long-run connection of CO2 emissions and GDP discloses that a positive shock to GDP is non-significant, whereas a negative shock to GDP is significant with a negative coefficient",7
"The negative shocks to energy consumption decrease the long-term increase in economic activities, which would ultimately reduce the long-term CO2 emissions, which could have a positive environmental effect",7
The asymmetric connection between CO2 emission and energy consumption demonstrates that a positive shock in CO2 emission may cause a positive shock in energy consumption,7
"However, a neutral asymmetric causal association was found between economic growth and CO2 emissions",8
The literature publicized that economic growth increases the emission of CO2(Shahbaz et al,8
"Emerging economies, including Pakistan, must make significant efforts to enhance the environment and save resources and energy in order to achieve sustainable economic growth",8
The symmetric and asymmetric causalities demonstrate that CO2 emissions and energy consumption have a very significant symmetric causation,7
"However, their asymmetric causality demonstrates that any positive shock in CO2 emissions may have a positive influence on energy consumption",7
"Furthermore, both symmetric and asymmetric relationships between CO2 emissions and economic growth were determined to be neutral",8
"Meanwhile, economic expansion and CO2 have a large symmetric causal relationship, implying that a one-point rise in per capita economic growth will increase emissions in the country",8
"By investigating the challenges of the country’s drive toward environmental sustainability, the present study offers a new perspective on the role of electricity consumption and economic growth in a carbon-income function setting",8
Empirical piece of evidence finds a statistically positive correlation between electricity consumption and economic growth as seen in the long-run regression,8
"Not deterred, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC),Footnote 1 the governing states of the world among other stakeholders have consistently been urged to show more commitment to the 2015 Paris Agreement.Footnote 2 Amidst this awareness and commitment, there has been a global increase in the pollutant emissions from the anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, primary particulates, acidifying gases, ozone precursor gases, and other environmental sources of pollution",13
"While induced energy consumption has been arguably attributed to the source of economic expansion and environmental challenge in previous years, the trend in globalization could as well not be ignored",7
"For instance, the increase from 230 Mt to 9.5 Gt CO2 emissions (2.5% growth) for China in 2018 is associated with a 5% increase in electricity generation from coal-power stations being utilized across the country (International Energy Agency, IEA 2019)",7
"It means that as much as there is a drive for global integration of the market amidst global energy consumption and causing persistent demand on the natural and atmospheric environment, pollutant emissions are inevitable (Saint Akadiri et al",7
"In the face of the above motivations and the uniqueness of China due to the historical shift in the Asian’s energy consumption dynamics, the current study underpins the role of globalization and electricity consumption in China within the context of environmental pollution",7
"In the wake of growing global concern on climate change, the perspective is the underpinning role of globalization in the context of environmental and pollutant emissions",13
"By extension, extant literature has widely examined the linkage between energy consumption and the environment, a position that has been strongly upheld by intergovernmental organizations such as the UNFCCC",7
(2011) examined the environmental and pollutant emission effects of electricity generation from the life-cycle energy consumption in China,7
"The investigation found that electricity generation intensified the GHG emissions in 2007 and that the intensity of GHG emissions will reduce by 2040 provided the country continues to implement the development of nuclear and renewable energy (such as its carbon capture and storage, CCS) programs",7
(2013) opined that the high volume of CO2 emissions in China over decades is since electricity generation is mostly from coal and its products,7
(2013) also found that coal products are the main source of fuel for thermal power generation and account for 90% of CO2 emissions from electricity generation,7
"The study further opined that CO2 emissions from electricity generation increased from 530.96 in 1991 to 2393.02 Mt in 2009, thus informing that the country’s economic activities are largely dependent on electricity generation",7
"To investigate long- and short-run relationships between economic growth (RGDP), electricity consumption (Elec), globalization index (Glo), and carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) in China, the abovementioned variables had their data sourced from the world bank indicators ( )",8
"The choices of variables under investigation are motivated based on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 7, 8, 13, and 17 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) 2019",13
Electricity consumption (Elec)—access to affordable electricity would help to increase substantially production of renewable energy,7
SDG 7 is crucial in achieving growth and preserving the environment,7
Economic growth (RGDP)—sustained economic growth is promoted by encouraging greater and higher levels of productivity plus innovation through technology,8
This will achieve full and productive employment for individuals willing and able to work (SDG 8),8
"Carbon dioxide emissions (CO2)—despite the daring consequences threatening the climate system which is a global phenomenon, adequate measures is needed to lessen climatic-related calamities using both political will and technological measures in the consumption and production of goods and services (SDG 13)",13
Globalization index (Glo)—ensure more interconnectedness through global partnership thereby fostering improved access to knowledge and technology which will birth innovation,17
This is important to attain sustainable growth and development (SGD17),8
"CO2, RGDP, Elec, and Glo are proxies used in the study for ecological degradation, economic growth, electricity consumption, and globalization respectively",8
"We apply the VAR (k + dmax) comprising of carbon dioxide emissions, electricity consumption, globalization index, and economic growth",8
"There is an obvious upward trend in terms of energy (electricity) consumption, carbon dioxide emission, globalization, and economic growth over the entire sampled period",8
This implies that more energy (electricity) consumption translates into increase economic growth (Kraft and Kraft 1978),8
"The dimensions of globalization are the social, political, and economic impact on economic growth",8
This is a call for environmental and energy economists to decouple economic growth from increasing CO2 emissions,8
Figure 1 shows that economic growth depicts the highest mean with carbon dioxide emission (CO2) with the lowest mean,8
"This implies that for the sample period, electricity consumption, globalization, CO2 emissions, and economic growth are integrated of order 1",8
This implies that the Chinese economy plays more attention to its economic growth on its growth path with less emphasis on the quality of the environment,8
Table 6 shows a one-way Granger causality between electricity consumption and economic growth in China,8
"That is, electricity consumption contemporaneous and past realizations of electricity data serve as a better and good indicator for economic growth over the investigated period",8
This implies that the Chinese economy is energy-dependent and measures to cut down or apply the energy conservative policies will hurt economic growth in no small measure,8
This position is further strengthened by the CO2 induced economic growth causality also observed,8
"Interestingly, from our empirical analysis is the fact that the wave of economies interconnectedness (globalization) spurs economic growth",8
"In this study, we present a new perspective on the energy (electricity) consumption-induced growth literature by empirically investigating the role of electricity consumption and economic growth in a carbon-income function setting",8
"This implies that globalization enhances the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, thereby minimizes the rate of environmental degradation in China both in the immediate and in the future; (b) that electricity consumption has positive and significant impact on pollutant emissions both in the short and long run; (c) that real income has positive and significant impact on pollutant emissions in the long run and insignificant in the short-run; and (d) lastly, there is an existence of a long-run dynamic causal nexus between the variables of interest in the case of China",15
"From the economic and policy standpoint, the fact that electricity consumption and economic growth increase carbon emission whereas globalization reduces carbon emissions calls for urgent intervention from the policymakers to develop and utilize a better mix of energy sources due to the economic and environmental effect of electricity consumption and economic growth from carbon dioxide emissions",8
Economic growth in itself involves more efficient use of inputs which is desirable,8
"However, policy implication for the Chinese economy is that more or sustained economic growth would require efficient electricity consumption (Kraft and Kraft 1978)",8
"Secondly, there is a need for policymakers to ascertain and switch electricity consumption from sources that increase carbon dioxide emissions to alternatives with lesser or no dire environmental consequences so that sustainability in the environment can be achieved in the long run even while maximizing economic growth",8
"Otherwise, the Chinese economy may persistently have to face the dare consequences of unpleasant global warming and climate change that would impact on both human and animals in the long run",13
Electricity consumption and real income are linked to environmental degradation (pollutant emissions),15
"Chinese economy uses energy (electricity) for production/consumption, hence economic activities, to enhance its economic growth; however, an increase in production/consumption, via economic activities, is achieved at the expense of a cleaner environment for both the immediate and future generation",8
"Accordingly, spotting the sectors which contribute the most to CO2 emissions and dampen economic growth have become one of the major concerns for policymakers around the globe",8
"Against this background, this paper examines the nexus between economic growth and CO2 emissions in three Baltic countries namely Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania",8
"Thus, the study basically checks the validity of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis by taking into account the role of energy consumption and financial development over the period of 1990–2018",7
This type of study is highly important for the region in order to comply with the commitments of the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations,13
"By boosting the CO2 emissions figures, again, the study also revealed that higher levels of energy consumption exhibit adverse environmental consequences",7
"Causality test results confirm bi-directional causality between economic growth and CO2 emissions, energy use and CO2 emissions, CO2 emissions and financial development, energy use and economic growth as well as between energy use and financial development",8
"Thus, climate change—an impact of global warming—has become a global threat to sustainable development (Destek and Sarkodie 2019)",13
"Thus, pollution is in a sense the ultimate price for economic development",8
"Conservation of energy helps mitigate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, but it might come at the cost of people’s living standard and economic growth (Ali et al",8
"Hence, it is very important to understand the effects of economic growth on the environment as reducing CO2 emissions to control global warming is not a simple issue (Allard et al",8
"Again, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) embraced the Paris Agreement (PA) to deal with the danger of climate change (United Nations 2015)",13
"Following their ratification of the PA, all three Baltic countries (namely, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) have also agreed to fight the global climate change threat which is mostly caused by GHGs like CO2, sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrous oxide (NO2) and methane (CH4)",13
"Thus, to fight global warming, these economies are obliged to pursue efforts to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and to keep the global temperature levels well below 2 °C (preferably up to 1.5 °C) above the pre-industrial level by the end of this century though they have their own national environmental protection and sustainability objectives",15
"In the literature, the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) framework is widely used to assess the effects of economic growth on environmental quality",8
This also suggests that economic growth may improve environmental conditions if appropriate and corrective measures are in place,8
"Nevertheless, energy is a potential catalyst for socio-economic development (Ali et al",8
This indicates that country-level determinants are important factors in explaining the environmental degradation scenarios,15
"Thus, attaining economic growth is the quickest and definite way to protect and improve the environment",8
"Accordingly, the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis—an inverted U-shaped relationship between GDP growth and CO2 emissions—was developedFootnote 5",8
The early studies of Selden and Song (1994) and Grossman and Krueger (1995) empirically supported the existence of EKC hypothesis between GDP growth and environmental quality,8
"Apart from them, many of the earlier studies have confirmed the existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between income and environmental degradation (i.e",15
(2021) found that economic growth and economic structure significantly affect carbon emissions positively and negatively respectively at the global level studying 147 countries,8
(2018) have not confirmed the inverted U-shaped relationship between income and environmental degradation,15
"For other environmental degradation measures, the results were different (e.g",15
"Likewise, many studies found that the initial U-shaped relationship would become N-shaped because there would be a new turning point at higher levels of growth resulting additional environmental degradation",15
(2015) concludes that FDI inflows and real GDP significantly affect energy consumption ,7
The early studies of Grossman and Krueger (1995) and Panayotou (1997) have found an N-shaped relationship between economic development and sulfur dioxide (SO2),8
"The early study of Acaravci and Ozturk (2010) investigated the causality and long-run relationship between electricity consumption and economic growth in 15 transition countries, but could not confirm such relationship",8
"Later, Sadorsky (2011) examined the impact of financial development on energy consumption in a sample of 9 Central and Eastern European frontier economies",7
The study found a positive and statistically significant relationship between financial development and energy consumption,7
(2012) analysed the impact of the energy consumption and CO2 emissions ratio on both energy consumption and CO2 emissions in the Baltic countries,7
"(2012) assessed policies targeting energy intensity decrease in Lithuania in terms of efficiency, effectiveness and efficacy and to select the best policies able to increase energy efficiency in activities that are maintained",7
"(2012) give an overview on the energy efficiency in the Baltic States, consumption of renewables and reduction of GHG emissions",7
"Their results indicate unresponsiveness of energy consumption to long-term equilibrium, while short-term relationship is bidirectional",7
They conclude that real gross fixed capital formation and labour force cause GDP growth,8
The study of Štreimikienė (2016) focuses on financial support from EU structural funds to sustainable energy development in Baltic States,7
"Štreimikienė and Balezentis (2016) use the Kaya identity—that relates the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to energy use, economic growth and population growth—to analyse the feasibility of implementing the so-called EU 20–20–20 targets in the Baltic StatesFootnote 7",8
They emphasized that policies to increase energy efficiency are the most important drivers of GHG emission reduction and achieving EU20–20–20 targets in Baltic States,7
"Furuoka (2017) supported the conservation hypothesis while examining the connection between electricity consumption (renewable and non-renewable) and economic development in three Baltic countries, suggesting that economic development causes the expansion of renewable electricity consumption, but not vice versa",8
"Among the recent studies, Bui (2020) looked for possible transmission channels that allow financial development to affect environmental quality (CO2 emissions) using a global sample of 100 countries from 1990 to 2012 and confirmed positive and direct effect of financial development on environmental degradation",15
Ma and Fu (2020) investigated the influence of overall financial development and its components on energy consumption using data from a panel of 120 countries,7
Results of their study indicate that the overall financial development significantly positively impacts energy consumption worldwide and that the financial development also positively impacts energy consumption in developing countries but with no obvious effect in developed countries,7
"The findings demonstrate that energy usage, gross fixed capital formation, government expenditure, financial development and trade openness positively and significantly impact the economic growth",8
"To analyse economic growth in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Miskinis et al",8
"(2021) discuss differences in development of the energy sector, among other main sectors, over the period 2000–2016",7
"Thus, it is evident from the above discussion that fewer studies have been conducted on the validity of the EKC hypothesis in the Baltic region than studies directed towards the nexus between financial development and energy consumption, or on the energy–growth nexus",7
"In the empirical analysis, this study employs annual data on per capita CO2 emissions, GDP per capita, energy consumption and financial development for the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) over the period 1990-2018",7
"dollar) and energy consumption (measured in kg of oil equivalent per capita) have been collected from the WDI database, while data on ‘private credit by deposit money banks and other financial institutions percent of GDP’ were sourced from the Financial Structure Database",7
"Therefore, the total capital can be described as a combination of CO2-emitting capital (Ke) and non-CO2-emitting capital (Kn): Thus, we can rewrite the CO2 emissions function as As mentioned above, we intend to describe environmental pollution as a function of real GDP, the square of real GDP, energy consumption and financial development in this study in order to investigate the validity of the EKC hypothesis in Baltic countriesFootnote 8",7
"CO2 refers to carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) emissions measured in metric tons per capita used as a proxy for environmental degradation, Y stands for gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (measured in millions of constant 2010 US dollars) to indicate income, and Y2 is the squared term of Y which is basically used to check the existence of the EKC",15
Checking the validity of the EKC will confirm whether  economic growth is at the cost of environmental quality or notFootnote 9,8
"Here, EC and FD stand for energy consumption (measured in kilogram of oil equivalent per capita) and financial development (measured by ‘private credit by deposit money banks and other financial institutions percent of GDP’) respectively",7
This increases the pace of economic growth (Frankel and Romer 1999) as well as the environmental performance dynamics,8
"Again, previous studies have shown that consumption of renewable and non-renewable energy may have a reducing or an increasing effect on environmental pollution",7
"For that reason, this study also includes energy consumption as an explanatory variable",7
"Here, the coefficient β0 measures the average environmental pressure when income has no influence on environmental degradation at all, while μit is the idiosyncratic error term",15
(2018) suggest that the EKC will adopt different shapes as followsFootnote 10: β1 = β2 = 0 ⇒ Either no link between environmental degradation and income or a flat pattern β1 > 0 and β2 = 0 ⇒ Environmental degradation increases with income monotonically β1 < 0 and β2 = 0 ⇒ Environmental degradation increases with income monotonically β1 > 0 and β2 < 0 ⇒ The classical inverted U-shaped EKC β1 < 0 and β2 > 0 ⇒ A U-shaped relation between environmental degradation and income Our a priori expectations on the estimated coefficients are as follows,15
"Consistent with the EKC hypothesis, the expected sign of β1 should be positive (greater than 0) because CO2 emission is positively related to economic growth of the country",8
"For example, we may compute the parameter of economic growth (γ1) as \({\gamma }_{1, AMG}= \frac{1}{N} \sum_{i=1}^{N}{\gamma }_{1,i}\)",8
"This segment of the findings resonates with the results obtained by, for example, Destek and Sinha (2020) for renewable and non-renewable energy consumption in the OECD countries",7
"Contrary to EKC hypothesis, a U-shaped EKC essentially tells us about reduced energy efficiency",7
"This can happen because of using outdated technologies, for instance, in the energy sector that greatly influence economic productivity",8
"This also demonstrates a situation where energy intensity increases per unit of economic outcome and, consequently, energy efficiency reduces (Sarkodie and Strezov 2019a, b)",7
But economic growth may lead the degradation to decrease at earlier process of its trend path till that threshold (Destek et al,8
"Thus, environmental degradation declines initially",15
"In AMG and CCEMG model estimations, the coefficients of the economic growth and squared economic growth variables which have negative and positive signs are required for a U-shaped relationship",8
This result also means that while clean and renewable energy technologies may promote a clean environment—which is not discussed in this study—fossil fuel energy technologies increase environmental pollution,7
"This type of results essentially supports the hypothesis that financial development leads to higher emission rates and, therefore, has clearly and significantly affected the environmental degradation of these countries",15
"That is, the country’s financial improvement may not have any clear impacts on environmental degradation",15
Both positive and negative linkages between financial development and environmental degradation have been noted in the literature,15
"The results, as shown in Table 11, demonstrate bidirectional causalities between CO2 emissions and economic growth, CO2 emissions and energy use, CO2 emissions and financial development, energy use and economic growth as well as between energy use and financial development",8
"The results, however, reveal a unidirectional causality between economic growth and financial development",8
The causal link between economic growth and energy use can be justified as follows,8
"The bidirectional causality between CO2 emissions and energy uses, economic growth and financial development, CO2 emissions and financial development and between energy use and economic growth are self-explanatory as one simply feeds the other",8
"A unidirectional causality from economic growth to financial development suggests that as the economy grows in terms of per capita, GDP financial development also improves, but not the vice versa",8
"Statistically significant Wald statistics accordingly confirm that there is causal relationship between economic growth and energy use, meaning that income indeed will have direct effect on energy use",8
"Hence, we may confirm the feedback hypothesis which suggests a bidirectional causal relationship between energy consumption and real GDPFootnote 12.
 Next, we conducted two robustness checks to verify the reliability of the results",7
The study accordingly verifies the EKC hypothesis for CO2 emissions using a linear function controlling for non-renewable energy use and financial development,7
This clearly means the role of economic growth in reducing CO2 emissions is generally insignificant in this part of the world,8
"In panel estimations, the study finds a U-shaped relationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions",8
Such U-shaped association essentially suggests that economic growth is not vital in reducing CO2 emissions in the Baltic countries,8
"Two separate heterogeneous panel causality tests were applied, and the results confirm bi-directional causality links between CO2 emissions and economic growth, CO2 emissions and energy use, CO2 emissions and financial development, energy use and economic growth and between energy use and financial development",8
The study also found unidirectional causality running from financial development to economic growth,8
"For instance, energy in Estonia, especially electricity production, is largely dependent on fossil fuels, whereas non-renewable energy sources provide almost half of the electricity used in Latvia",7
"In case of Lithuania, however, renewable energy constituted only around one-quarter of overall electricity generation",7
It is now widely accepted that the share of renewable energy is indeed a determining factor in reducing CO2 emissions,7
"Therefore, it is essential to try to expand renewable energy sources including, but not limited to, solar, wind, biofuel and geothermal energy",7
The non-existence of the EKC hypothesis indicates that environmental sustainability in the Baltic nations may not be provided with economic growth alone,8
The policymakers in the Baltic countries should focus more on shifting towards renewable energy-based solutions from their current fossil fuel-based solutions,7
But this must not happen at the cost of harming their existing economic growth pattern,8
"This way, these countries may internalize the negative externalities caused by the fossil fuel-based economic growth",8
"corruption, governance and trade openness) that help define the differences between countries or cluster of countries",16
Future research might also aim to determine the turning points associated with an EKC which can explain whether environmental degradation may have permanent effects on the economy,15
"Climate change, especially as reflected in heat waves, is a rising threat worldwide",13
"A population-based telephone survey was conducted in a representative sample of residents in Hong Kong to investigate ownership and use of domestic cooling devices, identify correlates, and examine their associations with risk perception of potential health impact of climate change",13
Our findings suggest that there are no signs showing people have taken more protective actions although half of respondents recognized climate change as a threat,13
Old people and those with chronic diseases are at high risk of adverse exposure to climate change and therefore should be equipped with appropriate measures to use cooling devices,13
"According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), heat waves are likely to occur with increasing frequency in some parts of the world as a result of climate change (IPCC 2012)",13
"Urban residents are more vulnerable to the health impacts of heat waves due to the existence of urban heat islands, in particular those individuals and communities living in poverty (IPCC 2018)",1
"In addition, risk for some vector-borne infectious diseases (for example, malaria and dengue fever) are also expected to elevate along with global warming",3
"In 2015, the United Nations, in Sustainable Development Goal 13 (SDG 13), called for urgent global action to combat climate change and its impacts by 2030 (UN General Assembly 2015)",13
The SDG 13 is intrinsically linked to all 16 of the other SDGs,13
"For instance, the SDG 3 (Health) commits all countries to strengthen their national capacities for early warning, risk reduction, and global health risks and to substantially reduce mortality from air, water, and soil pollution (UN General Assembly 2015)",3
"The Asia-Pacific region, as one of the most vulnerable regions to pollution impacts, needs to make more efforts against climate change",13
"A household survey in five cities in Canada revealed that most participants perceived the heat as a health risk and would take coping actions, such as staying in air-conditioned places and keeping well hydrated (Alberini et al",3
"More studies are therefore warranted to gain a better understanding on this issue, which will have implications for developing effective strategies to strengthen health communication and other public health measures to reduce the health impacts of heat waves",3
"Hong Kong is a developed coastal city in the Asia-Pacific region, characterized by high population density, high income inequality, and high average increases in urban ambient temperatures (Chan 2019)",10
Our previous population-based telephone survey revealed that Hong Kong residents perceived climate change as the first-order threat to their health among diverse natural and human-made hazards and disasters (Chan et al,13
"However, no study in Hong Kong examined the relationship between the risk perception level of climate change and protective behaviors, although a better understanding of their relationship would be helpful to develop interventions that reduce adverse health impacts",13
"This study aims to investigate the ownership and utilization of home cooling devices (consisting of electric fans and air conditioners) among the general Hong Kong population aged 15 and above, identify related sociodemographic and other characteristics, and examine the association of these variables with perception of climate change health impact",13
"A structured questionnaire was developed to collect the participants’ sociodemographic characteristics, ownership and use of cooling devices at home, perceived indoor temperature at which to turn on the cooling devices, and risk perception of the potential health impact of climate change",13
The telephone survey sampling process used in the risk perception of climate change health impact survey in Hong Kong Most participants had air conditioners (90.0%) or electric fans at home (90.3%) (Table 2),13
Risk perception of climate change health impact had no relationship with any indicator of perceived temperature (Table 4),13
"In addition, approximately three out of five participants perceived climate change as a high risk to health",13
"Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not find positive relationship between risk perception level of climate change health impact and cooling device ownership and use",13
"Given that most people without land-line phones are poor or disadvantaged (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department 2012), and the poor are the most vulnerable population to heat wave impacts, further studies should address them using appropriate recruitment methods (for example, home visits to those living in subdivided flats)",1
Old people and those with chronic diseases are at high risk of climate change health impact and therefore should be equipped with appropriate measures to access cooling devices,13
"Although more than half of the general population in Hong Kong recognized climate change as a threat to health, there are no signs in this study that show they have taken more protective actions",13
"The identified vulnerable populations should become the focus of reorganization and implementation of relevant public heath, medical, and social services",1
This study uses the difference in differences (DID) method to evaluate the mean causal effects of a treatment on an outcome of the determinants of scaling up green financing and climate change mitigation in the N-11 countries from 2005 to 2019,13
"The probit regression results give a different outcome, as rescon, FID, CO2, Human Development Index (HDI), and investment in the energy sector by the private sector that will likely have an impact on the green financing and climate change mitigation of the study countries",13
Either group experienced an improvement in green financing and climate change mitigation or a decrease,13
The scientific evidence from climate change is so conspicuous that the world needs to act now to avert disastrous consequences,13
"As a result, green finance is a cornerstone instrument to curb the existential threats of climate change",13
The central banks have long considered the issue of climate change–associated risks to financial system stability in recent times and financial regulators (Gagnon and Sack 2018),13
The COVID-19 has already reduced CO2 emissions but lowered economic growth with its commitment to economic hardships and human suffering,8
These interventions will achieve consistent 5.6% economic growth by 2024 and 6.0% by 2045,8
"As well as a reduction in the poverty rate of 9.8% of the total population of 2018 down to 4.2% and saved 40,000 lives as a result of improved air quality (Brodjonegoro et al",1
"Another booming economy is Vietnam, with a 6% GDP growth of about a decade now, which has RE targets 5% in 2020 and 11% in 2050 (Hezri and Hofmeister 2012)",8
"(2014), the N-11 countries have quite high energy intensity ratios, which makes it imperative for them to consider investing in energy efficiency and conservation and ultimately greening their economies",7
"While the rest of N-11 countries have similar traits regarding their economic structures, Nigeria is grappling with low energy access and expects to green its energy mix by one fifth in a decade to come (Sinha et al",7
"Another source of green finance is through green bonds, where the proceeds are used to finance green projects like renewable energy, other than a carbon pricing system (Baker 2018)",7
"Green finance and, for that matter, climate change consequences are no longer a niche issue facing the developed world",13
"Thus, this study seeks to analyze the factor that will determine the catalyzing of green finance by the N-11 and BRICS countries and their climate change mitigation strategies",13
Renewable energy consumption is used as a proxy for green finance,7
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: The next section presents an overview of the status of green and climate change mitigation on the N-11 countries and the BRICS,13
Green finance includes climate finance but is not limited to it,13
"It also refers to a wider range of other environmental objectives, for example, industrial pollution control, water sanitation, or biodiversity protection",15
The mitigation and adaptation finance pertain to climate change–related activities: financial mitigation flows refer to investments in projects and programs that contribute to reducing or avoiding greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) (Mohsin et al,13
"2019a, b), whereas adaptation financial flows refer to investments that contribute to reducing the vulnerability of goods and persons to the effects of climate change",13
"(2020) investigated the economic globalization of 30 OECD countries from 1975 to 2015 and concluded that as one of their recommendations, the need to increase the knowledge of how economic globalization to spur renewable energy development, not only for OECD countries but also for other developed and developing countries alike (Iram et al",7
"Across the world, countries are enacting policies to mitigate the risks brought by climate change and its environmental impacts",13
These include a suite of systems such as the issuance of green bonds to raise the needed green financing in fighting the exacerbating effects of climate change,13
The Next emerging countries (N-11) are facing climate change and its attendant problems,13
This finding is revealing and calls on developing countries to green their stock portfolios by demanding listed companies to institute favorable environmental policies and increase the share of renewables in their energy consumption,7
"(2020) studied the relationship between natural resources exports on economic growth and the level of financial deepening for selected N-11 for the period 1996–2016 and found that where financial deepening is over 45%, a unit increase in export brings about a 7% increase in economic growth",8
This will bring more than double the economic growth for the economies of these countries,8
"Hence, these countries must deepen their financial sectors by instituting mandatory policies to encourage the development of low-carbon financing derisking instruments to attract investments in emerging technologies (No and Padhan 2018) in a novel approach to determine the important factor N-11 countries face either economic growth or environmental quality, using panel data for the period 1971–2013",8
These measures will ameliorate the plights of the poor due to the exacerbated inequalities created by economic growth,8
"(2019) in their recent paper said, transitioning to a low-carbon economy and therefore, mitigating climate change impacts demand the adoption and utilization of carbon pricing and green bonds",13
"They said, where there are stiffer NDCs, more proceeds from bonds were allocated to renewable energy assets and projects with a 99% significance level",7
"Realizing the importance of climate finance, multilateral development banks (MDBs) have committed vast amounts of money into fighting this menace",13
The six MDBs have cumulatively allocated over 237 billion dollars to developing and emerging countries to fight climate change from 2011 to 2018,13
"Multilateral development banks (MDBs) have seen over 61% increases in climate finance ratio since 2013, from 18 to 29% (Tanner and Horn-Phathanothai 2019)",13
"In 2018, the MDBs committed $30,165 million to fight climate change, with a whopping US$ 21,439 million, representing 71% for investment loans and another 7% for policy-based financing with a total value of US$ 2195 million",13
"They further contended that the MDBs provided $7billion for green funding, and that of climate change mitigation is $4.4 billion per annum for these territories",13
"To determine the determinants of green financing for N11 countries and the mitigation of climate change, the difference in difference (DID) approach was applied to analyze the data from 2005 through 2019",13
"Equation (4) could be further simplified as given below: Yit represents outcomes of the rescon, GDP, FDI, pop, R&D, CO2, Human Development Index, inflation, technical corporation grant, R&D, investment in PP, and domestic credit to the private sector. δiTREATi represents countries that have been exposed to treatment at i, and δitPOSTt explains countries that have been exposed to the treatment after the treatment and β2 × 2tTREATi × POSTt+Uit is the interaction term for the treatment dummy of a group country and post-treatment dummy for a group of countries of the regression model",9
This part integrates the N-11 countries and BRIC that have been exposed to the treatment pre and after to find out the determinants of green finance and climate change mitigation. Uit is the serial unrelated country transitionary component of green investments in individual countries,13
"Under this scenario modeled above, individual countries that have low green finance and climate mitigation opportunities are likely to increase and adopt policies to spur them to increase their green finance and mitigate mitigation, after the treatment period, as a result of the demands of the Paris accord and environmental pressure group concerns",13
"Interestingly, research and development represent the number of people undertaking R&D in the countries is negative",9
This explains that R&D is negative and almost nonexistent in N-11 countries,9
"Expectedly, rescon that is renewable energy consumption in final energy consumption as aproxy of green investment has a lower mean score (Fig",7
Renewable energy The summary statistics for the treated and untreated group of countries is quite similar,7
"But one crucial point worthy of note is that even though the same observations, the means are quite different in terms of numbers; the treated countries showed significant improvement in their green financing and climate change mitigation strategies",13
"Of course, R&D is having a very low mean",9
"This explains that countries that are exposed to the treatment, as well as those that are not exposed to the treatment, have a high propensity to attract green finances and implement climate change policies aimed at curbing its impact and transition to a sustainable development trajectory",13
"In the same vein, research and development (R&D) is highly significant to attracting green financing to the treatment countries",9
Technological diffusion through R&D is critical to getting the right investments from multilateral development banks into the sector,9
The six MDBs cumulatively spent about $237 billion over the last 9 years on climate finance (Tanner and Horn-Phathanothai 2019),13
"Furthermore, they asserted that R&D is a driver of energy transformation system, making room for the modernization of grids and the integration of renewable resources of the energy matrix",9
"On the heels of this understanding, FDI is equally significant in attracting green finance to the energy sector and therefore helps to mitigate climate change effects",13
"The issue of climate change is caused by CO2 that has made the world look for ways to limit the existential threat to human existence through the formation of the Paris Agreement that seeks to limit global temperatures rising beyond 1.5 °C pre-industrial levels, through the use of market and non-market instruments",13
One of the ways to mitigating the CO2 emission levels is to through emission trading systems (ETS) whereby companies trade for CO2 allowance and as well as a tax system that taxes the externality caused by the CO2 emission,13
The Paris Agreement has equally placed on countries nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to endeavor to limit their CO2 emission levels voluntarily,13
"(2020) paints a glooming picture of the adverse effects of climate change on the world by concluding that at a business as usual approach, about 48% of the world’ s land, more than half of the world’s population, and 46% of global asset risk being flooded",13
"A Qu essential market-based approach is the China’s emission trading scheme that started off in 2017 and could significantly lower China’s emission levels through its NDCs, as a global number one emitter (China’ s emissions trading scheme 2020)",13
"A study on the N-11 countries revealed a long-term equilibrium correlation among the population, technological progress, and renewable consumption (Sinha et al",8
"Additionally, regression with a dummy variable controlling X indicates all the outcome variables, except Human Development, investment in the energy sector by the private sector, are significant in scaling up green finances and climate change mitigation strategies among the treated countries in the study (Baloch et al",13
"(2020) found FDI to be directly correlated with economic growth regarding emerging countries and opens a window of opportunities for these countries to access capital, emerging technologies, and knowledge needed for sustainable economic growth",8
Green bond insurance proceeds devoted to renewables energy and energy efficiency increased from $4.3billion to $97.8 billion between 2010 and 2017 (Tolliver et al,7
The matching order suggests that countries that are exposed to the treatment have a higher propensity to attract green finances and enforce laws to mitigate the effects of climate change,13
This implies countries that are exposed to the treatment have adverse effects on their green finance and climate change mitigation activities,13
The control group has so many variations among them regarding green financing and climate change mitigation,13
"Similarly, the BRIC countries have advanced in almost all aspects of economic development",8
"China is a global leader in installed capacity of renewables like hydropower, solar PV, and wind",7
China had a share of renewables in its energy mix of 14.3% in 2018 and on its way to exceed the 15% target in 2020 and accounted for 33% investment in renewables in 2018 (IRENA 2020) (Meidan 2020),7
"Tackling the issue of climate change in emerging and developing economies (EDME) comes with a unique challenge, given the fact that emission reduction is not a short-term priority for most of the developing world",13
"In this regard, the countries feel the need to continue emitting to deliver sound economic growth and promote inclusive development to their citizenry",8
"However, the remaining 60% will be allocated to water, land remediation, waste treatment, sewerage, etc",12
Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) estimates that another $14.6 trillion will be needed up to 2040 in investment in clean energy under a 2 °C scenario (Kaminker and Majowski 2018),7
"There has been a geographic shift of renewable investment to emerging and developing countries since 2015, making up 63% of renewable investment in the electricity sector in 2018 (International Renewable Energy Agency 2020)",7
"Despite this increase, several EMDE in East-Asia, South-East Asia, and Africa still have huge renewables untapped potential yet to be unexploited that need investment in new technologies and the reinventing of new business models and investment modalities like corporate purchasing of renewables and the emergence of green bond markets to spur on the energy transition (International Renewable Energy Agency 2020)",7
"Furthermore, some of the N-11 countries have advanced in terms of technology and R&D; Korea and Turkey could compete with the BRICS countries like Brazil and Russia in terms of mobile phone usage and other technology",9
"At the heart of this, SDG 7, where sustainable, affordable consumption of energy is central to this goal, about 1$ trillion is needed from all sources to realize the transformative idea of the SDGs",7
"For the N-11 countries to scale up finances in the green projects such as renewables, resilient infrastructures, and sustainable water, there is the need for governments to set up an inclusive financial system that integrates technology (fintech) and multiple financial systems to a country-specific condition, as well as deepen financial capital development by making it easy for countries to enlist and offer green financial instruments",6
This will boost efforts to creating a public partnership model to catalyze these investments from the private sector,17
"This study analyzed the green financing and climate change mitigation of N-11 countries as well as the BRICS countries, over the period from 2005 to 2019",13
"For us to evaluate whether these countries have any differences in their green financing commitments and climate change strategies between the two time periods, we employed the difference in differences approach by providing a counterfactual hypothesis and then proving it by treating these countries into different periods to ascertain the difference among them",13
The approach has revealed that the need for the N-11 countries and BRICS to formulate policies to address the systemic risks posed by climate change by catalyzing the necessary financing to mitigate these risks and impacts,13
"Moreover, certain factors would underpin these countries accessing green financing and climate change strategies",13
The economic performance of any of the N-11 countries is tied to how they can fight climate change and green their macroeconomic policies to mitigate these risks,13
These risks could come in the form of physical risks to infrastructure and environmental degradation,15
"The probit regression showed CO2, FDI, RESCON, HDI, and investments in the energy sector have a likely impact on the development of green financing and climate change mitigation strategies on these countries",13
"The N-11 countries have some of the most energy intensity ratios, culminating in the emission of CO2, causing global warming",7
"Blue Carbon Ecosystems (BCEs) help mitigate and adapt to climate change but their integration into policy, such as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), remains underdeveloped",13
The UNFCCC Paris Agreement commits signatories to ‘pursue efforts’ to limit the increase in global average temperature to 1.5 °C,13
Achieving this requires a rapid decarbonisation of the global economy,13
"However, decarbonisation alone will not be sufficient; IPCC scenarios for limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 °C also require the removal of increasing amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (IPCC 2013)",13
"This will rely in part on nature-based solutions (NbS) to conserve and expand natural carbon sinks, delivering climate change mitigation benefits along with co-benefits to society and biodiversity (IUCN 2020)",13
"Due to their efficiency in the capture and storage of carbon (relative to terrestrial ecosystems), mangroves, seagrass and tidal marshes—the so-called Blue Carbon Ecosystems (BCEs)—are amongst the most important habitats for climate change mitigation and adaptation (Macreadie et al",13
Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) represent the primary mechanism for meeting the global ambitions of the Paris Agreement,13
"Here, countries commit to nationally appropriate actions to mitigate against and adapt to climate change (Article 4.2 Paris Agreement; UNFCCC 2020)",13
"NDCs operate on a ratcheting five-year cycle, with each round of public submissions advancing in ambition relative to the previous round (Article 4.3 Paris Agreement)",13
"Hence, in theory, the NDC process offers a flexible and transparent mechanism to accelerate progress towards global climate change goals by allowing countries to focus on sensible national priorities, permitting leading nations to set stretching targets and exposing missed commitments and inadequate goals to public scrutiny",13
"In the first NDC submissions of 2015, 59 countries included coastal ecosystems in their adaptation responses whilst 28 included them as part of mitigation strategies (Herr and Landis 2016)",13
"The NDC Partnership (a global coalition of governments and institutions supporting the implementation of NDCs) had received 60 requests from 17 countries for support for NDC implementation plans related to ‘oceans and coasts’, ahead of the second round of submissions in 2020/21 (NDC Partnership 2019)",13
"Of these, 13 countries had already included coastal ecosystems in their previous NDC submissions; however, explicit mention of and concrete targets for BCEs remains limited (NDC Partnership 2019)",13
Due to delays caused by the Covid-19 pandemic it is possible that some of these opportunities could be realised in this second round of NDC submissions but will certainly be available during the next phase of 2025,13
2017; NDC Partnership 2020),13
"First, environmental justice requires that those most affected by climate change and most vulnerable to its impacts (both short and long-term) are central to responses to mitigate and adapt to those changes",13
Changes in governance regimes associated with BCEs can disproportionately affect the most vulnerable people for good or ill (Fortnam et al,1
"To be just and successful, the NDC consultation process must involve the local communities themselves in the planning and implementation stages",13
"For example, community participation may feature during implementation of projects, specifically with capacity building, the enhanced transparency framework (which reports on individual efforts of countries) and NDC submissions, which are due every five years",13
Blue NbS and the NDC ratchet mechanism with potential points in the NDC cycle for community engagement (adapted from UNFCCC Secretariat in Von Unger et al,13
"Here, the opportunity costs of forest protection (foregoing mostly illegal and small-scale cutting) are outweighed by carbon income, with the individuals most affected (such as cutters) compensated through new opportunities (for example to act as forest scouts)",15
Interventions that improve gender equity and biodiversity conservation together with mitigation actions are becoming more attractive than projects with a single purpose (Herr et al,15
"(2018) propose a useful six-step approach to manage power in Community-Based Climate Change Development projects (CB-CCD), which involves explicit attempts to avoid domination by one or more powerful groups and ways to ensure the vulnerable are empowered and can voice grievances (Table 1)",13
These environments often experience contested or absent tenure and overlapping jurisdictions between sectors such as forestry and fisheries,15
"Inadequate or insecure tenure and property rights are recognised as a longstanding barrier to community-based natural resource management (USAID 2006; Lockie 2013), especially for blue carbon programmes (Hejnowicz et al",1
"The allocation of tenure or property rights is often complicated on the coast, where ecosystems are typically common pool resources governed under different and overlapping sectors (Vanderklift et al",1
Some countries are now working towards including mangroves in forest definitions to be incorporated in NDC submissions,13
"Similarly, whilst Kenya’s NDC now has an explicit commitment to ‘conduct blue carbon readiness assessment for full integration of blue carbon/ocean carbon into NDCs’ (Tobiko et al",13
"If a country’s previous NDC has not referenced blue carbon, integration of blue carbon into the NDC should begin by checking any current relevant policies, followed by an assessment of the mitigation/adaptation potential of these nd how they can be promoted (Durham 2020)",13
"There was no reference to blue carbon, or indeed coastal or marine management for mitigation or adaptation, in Kenya’s first NDC submission in 2015, despite the country hosting two of the world’s few certified blue carbon projects (Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest), as well as having 455.9 km2 of mangroves (Kirui et al",13
"For example, the Kenyan National Mangrove Ecosystem Management Plan was developed in 2017, but implementation has been slow; the explicit endorsement of this plan in the new NDC will encourage operationalisation",13
"The opportunities for PES and other forms of new financing are noted, a full assessment of Blue Carbon to allow complete integration into the next NDC is anticipated and the document includes an explicit commitment to enhancing community governance in participatory resource management in coastal ecosystems Having assessed current blue carbon opportunities and the scope for expansion, countries can access opportunities to participate in bilateral and multilateral agreements that support increasing the ambition of a country’s NDC targets",13
(2021) combine estimates of vulnerability to deforestation with assumptions about carbon prices to conclude that ~ 20% of the world’s mangroves could be conserved through carbon finance,15
"In countries with large areas of mangrove and fast rates of loss, conserving these ‘financially viable’ sites could be important parts of NDC strategy; for example in Indonesia such sites could contribute ~ 1.8% of total NDCs",13
"Decision tree for blue carbon in NDC with current adaptation and mitigation options for countries, adapted from Durham et al",13
"The role that the VCM will play (alongside the compliance carbon market, in which legally mandated offsetting takes place) is changing with the development of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement",13
There are already hints that countries may want to prioritise NDC targets over independent carbon projects; Indonesia recently cancelled all ‘self-declared’ carbon projects in favour of directing carbon benefit towards national targets (Foresthints 2021),13
"Community-led BCE conservation and restoration projects contribute towards SDGs, biodiversity framework targets, climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction efforts, in addition to carbon goals (UNEP 2020a)",13
"If Paris Agreement goals are achieved, the relevance of current models of voluntary carbon offsetting will diminish as consumers change their lifestyles and threatened carbon-rich ecosystems are incorporated into and protected by strong national and international policy",13
"If blue carbon projects are to be developed at a scale to meet NDC targets, implementation costs must be reduced",13
"Involvement of government agencies in these national hubs will extend knowledge and resource sharing to encompass both NDC-level interventions and their associated policy implementation frameworks, and individual projects",13
"This can be solved through strengthening of national blue carbon monitoring initiatives, without considerable increase in funding requirements, by linking them to national forest monitoring and REDD + MRV actions",13
Conservative assumptions on sequestration along with flexibility in crediting (for example by recognising additional outcomes such as contributions to SDGs) should allow inclusion of seagrass and saltmarsh into both VCM standards and NDC processes (Shilland et al,13
"Growing international momentum promises ways of accelerating the conservation and restoration of BCEs, using climate change policy and other drivers",13
"ntimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a complex global health issue and will push twenty-four million people into extreme poverty by 2030, risking the sustainable development goals (SDGs) 2, 3, 6, 9, 12, and 17 if not addressed immediately",1
The emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and antibiotic-resistant genes in the water environment has become an important environmental health issue,3
The concern has been recognized among the top ten public health threats by the World Health Organization (WHO 2020),3
"AMR is defined as the microorganisms’ ability to resist the therapeutic agents used to treat them, exposure to which transforms them into “superbugs,” and thus makes antimicrobials ineffective in the treatment of infectious diseases caused by such superbugs (Gandra and Kotwani 2019)",3
"In interconnected ecosystems, human, animal (including food safety), and environment sectors are the key to the development and transmission of AMR",2
"A few studies showing presence of huge quantities of antibiotics in surface water, drinking water, pharmaceutical effluent and in the effluent of wastewater treatment plant is presented in Table 1",6
"2015) have indicated that wastewater treatment plants can be critical sources for releasing antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARBs) into the environment and can be catastrophic if treated inadequately, a common occurrence in LMICs",6
"2007; Larsson 2014).
 A study conducted in 7 European countries (Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Cyprus, Germany, Finland, and Norway) detected 17 antibiotics, i.e., ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin, enrofloxacin, orbifloxacin (Fluroquinoloes class of drugs are used to treat gram harmful abdominal infections, pyelonephritis, and as second-line treatment for typhoid fever as resistance is increasing); azithromycin, clarithromycin (Macrolides class of drugs used to treat typhoid, Rickettsial infections), sulfapyridine (used for skin infections); sulfamethoxazole, trimethoprim (used in the treatment of typhoid; pneumonia and diarrhea); nalidixic acid (used to treat urinary tract infections (UTIs)), pipemidic acid, oxolinic acid, cefalexin (antibiotic prophylaxis before surgeries, diabetic foot ), clindamycin (Clostridium difficile infections, skin and soft tissue infections, Pneumocystis carinii infections); metronidazole (diarrheas and UTIs), ampicillin (for Acinetobacter spp., susceptible typhoid strains, pre-surgery prophylaxis); and tetracycline (used to treat infections of the skin, urinary tract and sexually transmitted diseases), in the final effluent of wastewater treatment plant (Rodriguez-Mozaz et al",6
"In 2008, a manufacturing unit in China was ordered to suspend activities and install an appropriate waste treatment plant after reports that the factory had furtively disposed off its waste in a 50-ha pit",12
Varying levels of antibiotics that have been found in surface and waste water (between 0.01 and 1.0 μg/L) allow for interactions between environmental bacteria and contaminating bacteria from sewage and wastewater treatment plants and are the potential medium for transfer of novel antibiotic resistance mechanisms from environmental bacteria to human and animal commensals or pathogens (or vice versa) (Aslan et al,6
"Many studies showing presence of various classes of antibiotics present in surface water, drinking water, pharmaceutical effluent, and in the effluent of wastewater treatment plant are tabulated in Table 1",6
Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) have a key role in the spread of antibiotic resistance (Bouki et al,6
"Industry can also be encouraged to leverage technology of pollution control in procurement processes, and in benchmarking schemes for drug companies (Access to Medicines Foundation 2017; Bengtsson-Palme et al",3
"informal Interagency Task Team on Sustainable Procurement in the Health Sector (SPHS 2020) was established in May 2012 in Copenhagen, Denmark, for effectively engaging with suppliers and manufacturers to promote environmentally and socially responsible procurement of health commodities to save lives sustainably and protect the planet (United Nations (U.N.) Interagency Task Team on Sustainable Procurement in the Health Sector 2020)",12
"Among the high-income countries (HICs), the European Union (E.U.) has recently formulated a tailored risk assessment for medicinal products including antibiotics (EMA 2018)",3
"Further, the tailored risk assessment for antibiotics focuses on the effects of antibiotics on lower trophic levels including bacteria, algae, and aquatic invertebrates as they are sensitive for antibiotics (EMA 2018)",3
"The Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) through its technical arm, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), has drafted standards for PNEC values for antibiotic residue in industrial effluents (Leo 2020; Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate change 2020)",13
AMR is a threat to global public health and the economy with significant implications on the successful treatment of infections in humans and animals,3
"AMR is a cross-cutting public health issue encompassing the interface between humans, animals, and the environment and this is known as one-health involvement",3
"Over the past 10–15 years, developed countries have been rapidly moving towards a new ideology of economic development, which places environmental and social values and goals at the forefront",8
"Experts at the World Economic Forum named four environmental risks among the five global risks with the highest probability of realization in 2021: extreme weather, losses from climate events, destruction of human habitats, and loss of biodiversity",13
"The common good is usually maintained through government taxation/regulation or the transfer of private property rights (Schoenmaker, 2017, p",1
"This can then be translated into the sustainable finance typology to which the coalition adheres; (3) collective choice mechanisms: those affected by the rules and principles can participate in changing them; (4) monitoring: reporting on compliance with the rules and principles, as well as an independent assessment of the degree of their compliance; (5) sanctions and rewards: a system of penalties for participants’ violations of the rules and rewards for their compliance; (6) conflict resolution mechanism: quick access to inexpensive mechanisms for resolving conflicts between members or between members and officials",16
"Collective investor advocacy by the coalition to encourage governments to clarify their agendas, for example in relation to climate change mitigation (including the timing of regulations and taxes), could reduce political uncertainty about the future value of assets",13
"At the same time, supporters of sustainable development, first, are extremely strictly in favor of “a transparent democratic government, as well as other institutions of an open inclusive society, including the rule of law, universal respect for truth and independent media” (Henderson, 2021, p",16
"In a market economy, the government is responsible for public goods (nonexclusive and noncompetitive goods) and creates the conditions for economic growth",8
"At the same time, the introduction of environmental protection goals in the practice of Russian corporations in Russia can receive quite strong support at the political level",15
It seems that the demands of society for environmental protection and for the intensification of socially oriented measures correspond to these conditions,15
"However, we can assume the following composition of the coalition for sustainable finance in modern Russia: – green political movements that exert soft political pressure; – representatives of state power who seek to intercept the social agenda from the opposition; – state corporations looking for an opportunity to apply their resources in various aspects, including in terms of the economic and public effect;Footnote 5 – brown non-financial corporations, which are afraid of incurring significant losses related to the entry into force of the border corrective carbon tax of the EU; – other non-financial corporations that see an additional resource in attracting investments in global markets through the interest of responsible investors and in the form of using the investment resources of state corporations; – consultants and experts seeking to earn additional income on a fashionable topic; – Moscow Exchange, actively involved in the sustainable finance agenda through participation in international organizations (primarily, the World Federation of Exchanges) and discussion clubs; – Bank of Russia (subject to the intensification of efforts to promote the ideas of sustainable finance in Russia and their implementation in monetary policy)",12
"For example, only in October 2020, MTS announced that it had “started preparing an updated strategy for sustainable development and corporate social responsibility until 2025.”Footnote 6 Another part of Russian corporations, exporters of carbon-intensive products to the EU, took up the problem only in 2021, when it became clear that a carbon tax would be introduced in the very near future",12
"However, the debate on air transport and the influx of foreign investments and global energy demand on economic development remains questionable",8
"For this purpose, a novel approach to the effects of international tourism on economic growth is introduced for the Next-5 largest economies, namely (China, India, Indonesia, Turkey and the USA) between 1990 and 2018",8
"Empirical results reveal a positive connection between foreign direct investment and income levels, electricity production and income levels, as well as between urbanization and economic growth",8
"Moreover, the validation of the environmental Kuznets curve and the halo effect of foreign direct investment on the environmental degradation process provides a shred of more substantial evidence and fitting environmental instruments for policymakers",15
"The novel contribution of this study to the empirical literature is the unification in the same research of the TLGH and the EKC for the Next-5 largest economies, establishing recommendations for tourism, energy efficiency and environmental correction process",7
"It is, thus, a fundamental driving force of economic growth (Balsalobre-Lorente et al. 2020a, b; Tecel et al. 2020)",8
The tourism and service industry literature has drawn particular attention to the phenomenon where tourism drives economic development (Brida et al,8
The TLGH offers evidence of economic growth resulting from productive factor inputs and tourism channelled activities (Katircioglu 2009),8
"These economies are expected to be the largest ones, with over 70% of the global energy usage, reflecting their increased contribution to environmental degradation (IEA 2019) (Fig",15
"source: IMF (2017); World Economic Outlook, April 2017) Projections of world’s ten leading economies in 2030 (GDP PPP international dollars, trillion) ( Seeking to explore the empirical validation of TLGH, the linkage between economic growth and the tourism industry is examined while accounting for other macroeconomic indicators",8
"Therefore, a new battery of explanatory variables is proposed to explore the linkage between international tourism (air transport of passengers, hereinafter AT) and economic growth (gross domestic product per capita, hereinafter GDP)",8
This process resonates with the need for sustainable economic growth drivers (SDG-8),8
"The validation of the TLGH for Next-5 largest economies implies the necessity of articulating suitable policies to promote the advanced tourism industry, promoting clean energy technologies and high tech supplementary services",7
"This joint evidence will establish a wide range of recommendations in sustainable development, energy efficiency and environmental correction process, which has not been considered jointly in the previous empirical literature",7
"The relevance and the determinants of economic growth and development have been studied broadly in advanced and emerging economies, being tourism one of its determinants as supported by the TLGH",8
"The importance of tourism has grown exponentially given the multiple benefits tourism present due to employment opportunities and job creation, foreign exchange production, household income and government revenue through multiplier effects, the balance of payments improvements and growth in the number of tourism-promoted government policies (Brida et al. 2016a; Rasool et al. 2021)",8
"Although even before 2002, there were clear hints of interest in the relationship between tourism and economic growth, it was mainly after the first formal reference to the tourism-led growth hypothesis (Balaguer and Cantavella-Jordá 2002) when the empirical evidence started to increase considerably",8
"2020; Rasool et al. 2021), there are mainly four hypotheses when exploring the link between tourism and economic growth (Chatziantoniou et al",8
"2013): (a) two hypotheses based on the unidirectional causality between tourism and economic growth, either from tourism to economic growth (tourism-led economic growth hypothesis, TLGH) or from economic growth to tourism (economic-driven tourism growth hypothesis, EDTH); (b) one hypothesis supporting the existence of bi-directional causality (bi-directional causality hypothesis); and (c) another hypothesis defending no relationship at all (no causality hypothesis)",8
"While, TLGH defends that tourism, through a series of benefits, can promote economic growth via different routes (Schubert et al. 2011; Brida et al. 2016a; Shahzad et al",8
"For this kind of reciprocal tourism-economic growth relationship, policymakers are expected to simultaneously design agendas to promote both areas",8
"Moreover, some studies found no support to any of these hypotheses, defending the insignificant relationship between tourism and economic growth (Katircioglu 2009; Po and Huang 2008; Tang 2013)",8
"Adedoyin and Bekun (2020) explored the nexus between tourism, energy consumption, CO2 emissions and urbanization for seven tourism-dependent countries from 1995 to 2014 using a panel VAR approach complemented with panel causality analysis",7
"In conclusion, this study draws pertinent energy and tourism policy implications for sustainable tourism on the panel over their growth path without compromising for the green environment",12
"(2018) confirmed a direct connection between air transport and economic growth in Italy during 1997–2011, and Morazzo et al",8
Kalayci and Yanginlar (2016) found that air transportation impacts economic growth more than FDI,8
Air transport contributes to regional economic development and stability (Fleming and Ghobrial 1994; Mody and Wang 1997; Helling 1997; Banister and Berechman 2003; Hong et al. 2011; Mukkala and Tervo 2013 Kalayci1 and Yanginlar 2016),8
"Banister and Berechman (2003) draw a general perspective of the linkage between economic development and air transport logistics, showing that transportation infrastructure enhancements reduce harmful effects, increasing traffic volume",8
"In the same line, Hong et al. 2011) concluded that advanced air infrastructures provide more FDI, generating a significant economic development catalyst",8
"Çiftçioğlu and Sokhanvar (2021) investigated the relationship between tourism specialization, domestic investment rate and sustainable economic development",8
They confirm that further specialization in tourism was likely to promote economic growth in Macao and Malaysia,8
"Moreover, empirical studies recognize two main ways to connect FDI and economic growth (Banister and Berechman 2003; Adams 2009; Li et al. 2017; Rao et al. 2020)",8
"First, promoting local capital and enhancing efficiency through the transfer of new technologies can reduce the gap between economic growth and FDI",8
"So, the initial country’s conditions alter the connection between FDI and economic growth (Trevino and Upadhyava 2003; Ajayi 2006; Alfaro et al. 2004b, a)",8
FDI is more likely to promote economic development in open economies (Trevino and Upadhyaya 2003),8
This process will attract and absorb the benefits of complementing FDI flows and sustaining higher economic growth in the long run,8
"By contrast, some studies suggest that the negative impact of FDI on economic growth is the consequence of a powerful monopolistic industrial infrastructure that prevents local industry from growing (Bornschier and Chase-Dunn 1985; Rhagavan’s 2000; Ajayi 2006)",8
"Hence, it is necessary to consider the potentially pernicious effects FDI might have over host countries due to the climbed monopolization of local industries, totally reliant on FDI, generating unemployment and inequality",8
"So, it is expected that local investment would be stimulated by FDI, with positive externalities resulting from technology transfer and spillovers being related to the tourism industry (Carkovic and Levine 2002; Ajayi 2006; Banister and Berechman 2003)",17
"Other studies assume a positive impact of FDI on economic growth (Ndikumana and Verick 2008; Lumbila 2005), but others suggest a nonsignificant or a negative effect of FDI on economic growth (Akinlo 2004; Ayanwale 2007; De Mello 1999)",8
De Mello (1999) found that FDI exerted a harmful impact on economic growth for a selected panel of non-OECD countries due to reduced total factor productivity in host countries due to foreign business,8
"In the same line, Alfaro (2003) explored the impact of FDI on economic growth in the primary, manufacturing and services sectors, showing that FDI benefits vary significantly across industries",8
"While FDI in the primary sector tended to impact growth negatively, it appears favourable for the manufacturing industry and ambiguous in the service sector",9
They concluded that the overall level of capital investment does not affect economic growth when most of the capital is in the primary sector for Sub-Saharan African countries,8
"The ascending levels of FDI are not always accompanied by a similar level of economic growth in host countries, as a consequence of the presence of pernicious effects of foreign enterprises in local business (Bannò and Redondi 2014; Tang et al. 2007; Katircioglu 2011; Samimi et al. 2017; Tomohara 2017)",8
"(2020) validated this process, suggesting that air transport enhances economic growth under the TLGH scenario",8
"Kasarda and Green (2005) concluded that air transport, as a dynamizing industry of economic development, tends to lead to globalization processes and the consequences of FDI, while the tourism industry can relieve foreign exchange constraints, reducing the pernicious effects of FDI on economic growth (Nowak et al. 2007)",8
"In line with this evidence, air transport, as a proxy of international tourism, is expected to catalyse the technological transference and innovations processes of FDI, boosting the reception of goods and services leading in turn to economic growth, in line with previous empirical evidence (Borensztein et al. 1998; Alfaro et al. 2004b, a; Iamsiraroj 2016; Newman et al. 2015)",8
The analyses of these variables as channels of economic growth complement the study offering advanced research with relevant implications for selected Next-5 countries,8
"Liang and Yang (2019) concluded that urbanization promotes economic growth by accumulating physical capital, knowledge capital and human capital, in the case of China",8
"Adebayo (2021) showed that urbanization, globalization and energy usage trigger economic growth in Japan from 1970 to 2015",8
This contribution is supported by analysing the linkage between economic growth and carbon emissions to validate the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) for the selected Next-5 panel (see Appendix Table 1 for results),8
"Coincidentally, the investigated blocs are highly tourism destinations and thus necessitate the need to explore the role of international tourism arrival on their respective economic growth",8
"Hence, the empirical results will provide evidence of the positive effect of air transport as a proxy of international tourism on economic growth",8
"Additionally, beyond the empirical support as highlighted, the empirical motivation for this study stem forms the tourism-induced growth hypothesis (TLGH), where tourism is considered a catalyst for economic growth",8
That outlines the tradeoff between economic growth (tourism development) and the quality of the environment,8
"A holistic study of this phenomenon with key macroeconomic variables like FDI inflows and energy consumption is pertinent for policy construction for the Next-5 largest economies, which is the study’s motivation, which has not been well documented in the tourism-energy and growth literature",7
"This variable traditionally is included, in the empirical literature, as a fundamental driving force of economic growth, contributing to avoiding omitted variables",8
"Finally, this study also explores the role of urbanization (\({LURB}_{it}\)) on economic growth (Liu and Bae 2018) in selected panel",8
"This result suggests feedback between air transport and economic growth, establishing that economic growth and air transport have reciprocal effects",8
This evidence suggests that GDP is a good predictor for GDP growth in the Next-5 largest economies,8
"Besides, the empirical output also confirms a positive (β2> 0) linkage between energy use (LELCit) and economic growth",8
"The connection between FDI and economic growth presents a positive sign (β3 > 0), revealing that the foreign industry enhances the host economic systems (Li et al. 2017)",8
"Finally, the share of the urban population (LURBit) enhances economic growth (β4> 0)",8
"This study introduces empirical advances in the TLGH empirical literature, considering a new battery of variables that include not only the effect of air transport (as a proxy of international tourism) on economic growth (Fig. 2) for the selected Next-5 largest economies",8
"These results also confirm a direct impact of electricity output, FDI and urbanization on economic growth",8
"The empirical results support that the diversification level, and the absorptive capacity of local firms, can provide new business opportunities for connexions between host and foreign investors and a targeted FDI approach (Fig. 3)",17
"(2017)) Linkage between economic growth, FDI and tourism (transportation) ( Some studies (Banister and Berechman 2001; Adams 2009; Li et al. 2017) suggest that FDI contributes to the appearance of positive externalities, like the expanding labour and the expansion of related tourism industries, or the diversification process and the transition from primary to the manufacturing and services sector (UNCTAD 2007; 2008; Brida et al. 2016a; Dogan et al. 2017; Risso 2018; Etokakpan et al. 2019)",8
"In this sense, these economies’ capability to promote specific regulations for attracting advanced FDI will enhance host capacities to generate positive spillovers and economic growth",8
"This process will also reduce dirty inputs and slow down economic growth in the early stages of development (Balsalobre and Álvarez 2017; Balsalobre-Lorente et al. 2018; Shahbaz et al. 2019a, b)",8
The empirical results confirm the air transport sector’s inevitability advancement to reach a developed and sustainable tourism industry in selected Next-5 countries,12
"Additionally, electricity output, FDI and urbanization process directly impact economic growth",8
The positive effects of FDI on economic growth emerges from the type of FDI and positive externalities,8
Our empirical results confirm the advanced development phase in selected countries and how it enhances economic growth,8
"Moreover, the econometric results confirm that the urbanization process enhances economic growth",8
"This study also advances, in the empirical literature, testing the dampening effect between FDI and air transport over economic growth in the Next-5 largest economies",8
"For instance, these countries need to promote renewable energy sources and attract foreign high-tech businesses",7
"Furthermore, future studies should focus on the analysis of trade openness and sustainable growth",8
"Energy efficiency can support energy-intensive projects, like desalination, by substantially reducing the load on the energy system, preventing increased emissions and achieving a more resilient water system",7
"Moreover, additional energy requirements are foreseen with expanding water supply through desalination and wastewater treatment",6
Renewable Energy Technologies (RETs),7
This has the potential of supporting the water sector activities while increasing energy security,7
"Furthermore, as consequence of its water-scarce nature, Jordan faces increasing food insecurity and is being forced to import around 87% of its food [25]",2
We show how evaluating solutions to the water scarcity problem through a WEF Nexus lens provides deeper understanding of the intersectoral challenges and can support decision-making for a more sustainable future,6
"It combined methods from the FAO WEF methodology [29] and the Transboundary Basin Nexus Assessment (TBNA) methodology developed by the United Nations Economic Commission of Europe (UNECE) [9, 30]",6
"The model is based on the integration of three modelling frameworks: (1) the Water Evaluation and Planning system (WEAP) model to estimate water demands, supplies and allocation in order to assess the sustainability of the water system; (2) the MABIA model to estimate crop production based on the availability of water, and, (3) a GIS-based energy modelling tool to estimate the energy requirement for water pumping, water desalination and wastewater treatment (see Fig. 1)",6
"The energy component implements GIS-based methodologies to estimate energy requirements for groundwater and surface water pumping, new water desalination projects and major wastewater treatment plants",6
"Based on this, the Jordanian Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MWI) has developed a national WEAP model for Jordan (see Fig. 2) that considers the distribution and consumption of water resources through: Water demand: 94 water demand sites aggregated by governorate, including domestic, commercial, refugees, tourism, industrial and agriculture use",10
"Demand nodes are used to represent the water use of private households, refugees, commercial, and tourism",10
"Moreover, supply to domestic needs is transmitted from freshwater sources only, and the sanitation structure is reflected by connecting the demand sites to wastewater treatment plants, where outflows are reported as a function of the processing capacities of the plants",6
"Ali Sahli and Mohamed Jabloun) [37] has been commonly used to project crop and irrigation water requirements and estimate the effects of climate change on crops [38, 39]",13
"In addition, the model estimates electricity requirements for wastewater treatment and sea water desalination",6
"The main wastewater treatment plants were captured in the WEAP model (see Fig. 2), for which energy requirements were modelled based on the type of treatment technology and the number of treatment stages",6
"Similarly, energy requirements for water desalination were modelled according to specifications of the Aqaba desalination plant and preliminary estimations of the energy intensity of the Red-Dead desalination project, at 5 kWh/m3 and 3.31 kWh/m3 respectively [43]",7
"It assumes that domestic demands will increase over time, with refugees staying (but no new refugees coming), and agriculture and industry not growing over time",10
"Pumping energy efficiency, which considers the gradual improvement and modernization of the water network",7
Pumping energy efficiency is gradually increased starting from the individual efficiency of each pumping system (i.e,7
"from 2040 to 2050, see Table 1) (unmet demand works as a water scarcity indicator by measuring the gap in percentage of the water that is actually delivered against the water that is demanded)",6
"Historical climate is represented by the bars and Increased Evapotranspiration by the dashed line Moreover, the findings presented regarding unmet demands and aquifer drawdown, are in agreement with previous water resource management studies of individual basins of Jordan [31, 32, 35]",6
Effects of climate change in crops have also been studied previously in arid and semi-arid regions such as Jordan,13
Domestic water scarcity was shown to improve by implementing measures to reduce non-revenue water,6
Reduced non-recoverable losses means less water being discharged into the Zarqa River from the Samra wastewater treatment plant,6
"warmer future), a unmet demand in the municipality sector (the No Intervention and the Increased Water Productivity scenarios have the exactly the same values, making both lines to overlap); b Unmet demand in the agricultural sector; c Agricultural water productivity; d Total energy demand for groundwater pumping, water conveyance, wastewater treatment and sea water desalination Domestic water scarcity was alleviated by adding new water resources from the Dead Sea–Red Sea water desalination project",6
"This measure increased the availability of water, which had a direct effect on unmet demands",6
"Although Jordan counts with high solar energy potential, it has recently restricted new installations of intermittent renewable supply and instead opted for boosting generation with fossil fuels produced locally",7
"The current energy efficiency for pumping of the water system throughout Jordan is low, at around 50% in average",7
The improvement of energy efficiency would help to assess the effect that modernizing pumps and water networks may have in the energy system,7
"Reducing Non-Revenue water uses helps towards municipal water scarcity and shift to energy independence, but it has negligible effects on agricultural water scarcity and productivity",6
"Moreover, adding New water resources by implementing the Red sea–Dead sea desalination project has substantial improvements on municipal water scarcity, but it does it with a high cost on increased energy requirements",6
"If sustainable solutions are not considered into how to supply the large amount of extra energy needed, Jordan may face considerable consequences into its progress towards a cleaner energy mix",7
"On the other hand, Increasing agricultural water productivity seemed to be the solution best addressing all WEF sectors, as it improved agricultural water scarcity and productivity, substantially reduced energy requirements for groundwater pumping, and consistently reduced aquifer drawdown",6
"However, it did not had any effect on municipal water scarcity, which is one of the main priority challenges in Jordan",6
"Finally, energy efficiency can be seen as a major allied for sustainability development, as it can support the execution of high energy intense projects, while reducing stress on the energy system, and achieving a more resilient water system",7
"In the three other scenarios we evaluated how measures to reduce Non-revenue water, produce New water resources and Increase agricultural water productivity would reduce water scarcity, affect crop production, alleviate aquifer drawdown and impact the energy system",6
This would allow us to make a more robust estimation of the uncertainties related to climate change,13
"evaluating the use of renewable power generation technologies, as solar power, to support pumping requirements of the Jordan water system.",7
"This research analyzed the effect of agriculture (spring onion—Allium fistulosum, potato—Solanum tuberosum, and livestock farming) on water quality in páramo ecosystems",6
"A Hydrographic Unit upstream of the Jordan river catchment (Colombia) was selected and monitored in two different rainfall regimes, following the paired catchments and upstream-downstream approaches to compare water quality from natural and anthropic areas",6
"Paradoxically, mountain ecosystems are increasingly threatened due to rapid global development, climate change (Grêt-Regamey et al",13
"2020), including traditional small-scale farmers",9
"The causes of agricultural pollution include excessive agrochemical use, inadequate postharvest and animal waste management, and conventional irrigation systems (Moss 2008; Zia et al",12
"Despite this situation, water pollution from agriculture has not received enough attention (Evans et al",6
"2013), mainly due to its diffuse nature, characterized by the random location of discharges, and complex transport mechanisms that increase the challenge for water resource management (Giri and Qiu 2016; Ongley et al",6
"In high-mountain ecosystems, impacts from agriculture on water quality are critical",6
"In addition, due to the peculiar environmental conditions, these areas have particular dynamics that govern the transport and fate of agricultural contaminants, which must be addressed to understand better the complex relationship between land use and water quality (Melland et al",6
"In diverse geographical contexts, water quality monitoring in agricultural catchments has been crucial to identifying inadequate uses, causes, and pollution sources, assessing the fulfillment of regulations, validating or calibrating models, monitoring tendencies, and evaluating conservation practices’ effectiveness",6
"However, in developing countries, the lack of strategies for water quality monitoring in high-mountain regions is evident and a constraint to facing the challenges of science-based sustainable development (Riveros-Iregui et al",6
"2018) on water quality, finding direct relationships between these agricultural activities and loss of soil and nutrient runoff",6
"In Colombia, two studies concluded that crops in páramo catchments deteriorate water quality due to the high concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus in runoff (Otero et al",6
"Other studies in Colombia have addressed water quality deterioration in Lago de Tota catchment, a páramo that provides water to several settlements",6
"In addition, it has been demonstrated that different land uses in páramo (e.g., agriculture and carbon mining) could compromise water quality for direct human consumption and recreation (González-Martínez et al",6
"Even though these works evidence land-use effects on water quality in páramos, they only considered a few parameters for assessing the contribution of agriculture to surface water quality degradation in páramos and typically ignore their influence on ecosystem services",6
"The objectives of our study were (i) to analyze whether different agricultural contaminants (nutrients, organic matter, sediments, and pathogens) affect water quality and could compromise its use for different purposes such as human consumption, irrigation, livestock watering, and aquatic life ambient freshwater, and (ii) to assess the influence of the rainfall regime on the water quality of surface sources",6
Results from this study facilitate decision-making around solutions to harmonize agricultural activities of traditional small-scale farmers from the páramo with the preservation of hydrological services from this strategic ecosystem,9
Two methodological approaches for water quality monitoring were adopted: (i) upstream-downstream and (ii) paired catchments,6
These approaches allowed an exploratory analysis of the effect of land use on the water quality attribute of the water supply hydrological service provided by the páramo ecosystem,6
"They have been used by different authors in the study of the relationship between land-use and water quality in high-mountain regions, including páramo ecosystems (Abella and Martínez 2012; Carney et al",6
The upstream-downstream approach allowed analyzing the evolution of water quality along the water channel,6
"Thus, this allows attributing changes in water quality to specific causes, as long as land uses and management practices are identified inside and outside the area of interest (USDA-NRCS 2003)",6
"Under the traditional paired-catchment approach (Clausen and Spooner 1993), at least two catchments are studied (study and control) during two monitoring periods (calibration and treatment), in which water quality data are collected simultaneously in both catchments to assess the performance of management practices over water quality",6
"However, our study only addressed the calibration period aiming for an exploratory comparison of water quality in catchments with and without anthropic intervention",6
Other authors have used this adaptation of the traditional approach to analyze the effect of different land uses on water quality in other geographical contexts (Elledge and Thornton 2017; Hopmans and Bren 2007; Jokela and Casler 2011; Stallard 2011; Taniwaki et al,6
"Flow water measurement and water quality parameters (pH, electrical conductivity, and temperature) were measured in situ every 30 min",6
The analyzed water quality parameters were selected considering the primary contaminants related to agricultural activities (Evans et al,6
Two-way ANOVA was applied to water quality data to identify statistically significant differences in the values of each parameter between the sampling points and if the rainfall regime had a significant effect on these values,6
Charts were prepared to show results for the parameters with a statistically significant spatial or temporal variation to visualize water quality behavior along the channel,6
"Finally, to explore the effects of land use on the water quality attribute of the water supply hydrological service, results obtained for the sampling points in the area with anthropic influence were compared to water quality standards for (i) human consumption, (ii) irrigation, (iii) livestock watering, and (iv) aquatic life ambient freshwater",6
"Reference values include measurements in the natural SHU, water use standards for different countries (i.e., Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, and USA) (Ministerio del Ambiente 2015; Ministerio de la Protección Social and Ministerio de Ambiente 2007; Presidencia de la República 1984, 1995, 2017; USEPA 1986, 2018, no date), water quality guidelines for different purposes from literature search (AAFC 2000; Ayers and Westcot 1985; Bauder et al",6
"The impact of anthropic uses such as spring onion crops, potato crops, and livestock farming over water quality parameters grouped in five categories (nutrients, salts, organic matter, sediments, and pathogens) was assessed",6
"Likewise, results were compared with water quality standards for different purposes",6
Table 4 shows the results of each water quality parameter at the different sampling points and rainfall regimes,6
Water quality standards for different purposes are shown in Table 6,6
Inadequate irrigation and excessive use of fertilizers are among the most important causes of water quality degradation from agriculture,6
Water quality parameters related to nutrients and salts according to rainfall regimes,6
A study in an Andean high-mountain ecosystem without anthropic intervention reported 0.08 mg P/L (Ramírez et al,15
"In addition, besides the effect that land use has on the input of nitrogen and phosphorus to surface water, different environmental conditions in the catchment, such as the slope, could contribute to attenuating or increasing nutrient pollution sources",14
"2013) and with other water quality parameters such as alkalinity, hardness, and concentration of specific ions (FAO and IWMI 2018)",6
"pH, temperature, and water quality parameters related to organic matter and sediments according to rainfall regimes",6
"In catchments with anthropic intervention, the primary water pollution sources related to organic matter are associated with animal food and excreta or inadequately managed postharvest waste (FAO and IWMI 2018)",6
Results from this study suggest a negligible impact on water quality regarding these parameters (see Fig,6
"Agricultural activities increase soil erosion and sediment load to surface water sources due to the removal of the natural vegetal cover, which makes soils left bare and vulnerable to erosion",15
"Thus, this natural condition in the study area could attenuate water pollution due to sediments, consistent with the low total phosphorus inputs previously discussed",6
"Typically, sources of this bacterium include runoff from agricultural areas where manure is used as fertilizer, direct fecal deposition, infiltration from septic systems, and discharges from wastewater treatment plants (Garzio-Hadzick et al",6
"coli standard for human consumption (0 CFU/100 mL) (WHO 2017b), becoming a public health risk",3
Raindrop splash promotes soil erosion (He et al,15
"Table 7 provides a synthesis of potential surface water uses from the study area, considering water quality and some recommendations for water management according to purpose (see Table 6)",6
"In general, even though affectations to water quality due to land use were observed in the anthropic hydrographic unit, according to the parameters and standards considered in this study, the hydrological service of water supply for crop irrigation, livestock watering, and aquatic life ambient freshwater was not compromised",6
"These results indicate a health risk for local communities, typically taking water from surface sources and drinking it without treatment",3
"Although the nitrate concentration did not surpass water quality standards and regulations for different water uses, values close to recommended maximums for preserving aquatic life in high-mountain ecosystems were found at the outlet of the hydrographic unit",6
"Furthermore, coming from a relatively small drainage area, this considerable load of nitrates could compromise water quality to irrigate susceptible crops downstream",6
"Our results highlight the importance of management practices with the potential to protect water quality, such as restricting livestock grazing nearby water sources and implementing improvements to current fertilization and irrigation practices to reduce losses of nitrogen, potassium, and organic matter and the transport of pathogens from agricultural lands to water sources (Kannan and Anandhi 2020; Tahat et al",6
2021) could be a pivotal strategy to harmonize the livelihoods of traditional páramo communities with the preservation of the water supply ecosystem service,15
This study shows the need to set water quality continuous monitoring schemes that provide the information required for decision-making on the effect of anthropic activities such as agriculture in strategic mountain ecosystems such as páramos,6
"coli (63 to 2718 FCU/100 mL), which could compromise the water supply ecosystem service",15
"The anthropic influence on water quality was significantly amplified (p < 0.05) during the rainy season, as indicated by higher levels of total nitrogen, BOD5, and COD",6
"However, a nutrition transition is underway, characterized by shifts away from traditional diets in favour of imported and modern foods, contributing to some of the highest rates of obesity and Diabetes Type 2 Mellitus in the world",3
"Our results suggest a nutrition transition is underway, and strategies harnessing traditional knowledge of nutrient-dense, agrobiodiverse foods can help improve food and nutrition security",2
"To date, insufficient research exists examining the role between food production systems, agrobiodiversity and malnutrition in PSIDS (Haynes et al., 2018)",2
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) is focused on eliminating all forms of malnutrition through sustainable diets,2
"Sustainable diets are increasingly seen as a precondition for assuring food security (Berry et al., 2015; Canavan et al., 2017; Smith & Gregory, 2013)",2
"Transitioning foods systems characterized by a shift away from local and traditional foods towards globalised food systems is eliciting a rise in food and nutrition insecurity and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) across many PSIDS (Foley et al., 2011)",3
"Increasing reliance on imported and ultra-processed foods, which are typically nutrient-poor and calorie-dense, is a leading driver of malnutrition and contribute to NCDs (Hughes & Lawrence, 2005; Thow et al., 2011)",2
"Reliance on a smaller diversity of foods (diet homogenization) is creating conditions for poor diet quality and micronutrient inadequacies, as well as an increased susceptibility towards climate change (Sandifer et al., 2015)",13
Improved understanding of agrobiodiversity in PSIDS can help guide sustainable agricultural diversification and intensification strategies aimed at achieving SDG 2,2
"These changes are contributing to the rising rates of obesity and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as heart disease and diabetes, which are now the country’s leading causes of mortality (Ministry of Health and Medical Services, 2017)",3
"Most recent qualitative diet recalls show that diet diversity less than desirable, with consumption of nutritious food groups of fruits, vegetables and animal sourced foods low (Horsey et al., 2019)",2
"Government statistics indicate most Solomon Islanders currently consume fewer than five servings of fruit and vegetables per day (93.1%), and most adults are either overweight or obese (52.2%) (Solomon Islands National Statistics Office, 2015), contributing to the NCD epidemic of the Pacific Islands (The Lancet., 2019)",3
"The prevalence of undernourishment in Solomon Islands was steadily improving from 15% in 2001 to 10.6% in 2011; however, as of 2017, the percentage of undernourishment has risen to 12.3% (FAO-Stat, 2018)",2
"The percentage of children under five who are stunted has declined from 32.8% in 2007 to 31.6% in 2015, however wasting has increased during the same time period from 4.3% to 7.9%, and childhood obesity increased from 2.5% to 3.9% (FAO-Stat, 2018)",2
"The population of Solomon Islands is projected to double in the next three decades, adding urgency to ensuring Indigenous food systems are resilient and able to provide sustainable diets, and food and nutrition security (UNDESA, 2012)",2
"More studies are needed to examine how agrobiodiversity and dietary diversity link to improved nutrition, and can help prevent malnutrition in all its forms while promoting sustainable food systems for the future",2
"The women primarily responsible for cooking of selected households were measured for height, weight and body fat and administered quantitative nutrition surveys to assess nutrient intakes over non-consecutive days, annual household food security levels, and knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) around food and nutrition",2
"The nutrition survey consisted of three sections: Anthropometry, Multiple pass quantitative 24-h dietary intake recalls, household food insecurity experience surveys (FIES), and nutrition related knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP)",2
"As food insecurity is often a driver of malnutrition, nutritionists administered the household Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) (FAO, 2017)",2
This eight-question item scale is designed to determine the level of household food insecurity experienced throughout the year for each household,2
"These data were used in tandem with the qualitative food security data to triangulate the causes, timing and severity of food insecurity experienced by the villagers",2
The FIES is an indicator for SDG 2 (2.1.2),2
"Following FAO guidelines, a series of questions were asked assessing the participants’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) regarding nutrition (FAO, 2014) and adapted to also include food waste",12
"Post-harvest garden and household food waste was estimated by the primary cook of household, with primary foods and reasons for loss recorded",12
Quantitative food insecurity experience scale (FIES) measures include two categories: moderate and severe,2
"Qualitative and quantitative food security data were analysed through across method triangulation (Bekhet & Zauszniewski, 2012) combining mixed methods data to enhance the analysis and interpretation of findings",2
"The four diet diversity indicators used for comparison with body fat percentage were: dietary diversity score (DDS), food variety score (FVS), mean adequacy ratio (MAR), dietary species richness (DSR) Household food insecurity was seasonally variable, with villagers experiencing the highest self-reported rates during the lean months of May, June and July",2
"Top factors for food waste included cooking too much food (87%), over collection of foods (67%), did not use in time (63%), too much grown (57%), or forgot/did not want to use (23%)",12
Very little food waste was composted or returned to the gardens for nutrient recycling,12
"Another man agreed, adding, “Villagers are no longer as interested in local foods because they take time to cook, unlike processed foods [which] are easier to cook and require less firewood.” Local villagers were beginning to experience increased rates of NCDs such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes",3
"Garden productivity was perceived to be decreasing due to climate change, pests, increased land pressures, and decreased fallowing times",13
"Climate change related weather patterns were described by the villagers as becoming “more intense” and “more frequent”, adding increased stress to food production",13
Water quality and security was reported as a non-issue,6
"Evidence is clear that higher body fat percentages are linked to increased cardiovascular disease and other NCD risks (Lee et al., 2011)",3
"Rapidly increasing rates of overweight and obesity are critical concerns driving the NCD epidemic across the Pacific, and the current messages of consume less of foods higher in salt, sugar and fat and increase exercise alone are not working",3
"High body fat is a known risk factor for heart disease, hypertension, stroke, diabetes mellitus, and various forms of cancer (Nishida et al., 2010)",3
"Nutrition transition categories can be identified through 5 stages, of which Solomon Islands appears to be at stage 4 – characterized by decreasing physical activity and westernization of diets leads to increased NCD prevalence (Popkin & Gordon-Larsen, 2004)",3
"Diabetes prevalence has also been steadily increasing (UNICEF/WHO, 2019)",3
"FGD participants reported qualitatively that diets have been changing, moving away from traditional foods to more modern and western style foods – and simultaneously health status has deteriorated in regard to NCD prevalence",3
"Implications of imported processed foods should be further examined with considerations to convenience, affordability, nutrient contributions, and food security",2
A recent meta-analysis of 16 clinical trials concluded that coconut fat should not be viewed as healthy when consumed in large quantities in relation to cardiovascular disease risk,3
"NOVA 4 category ultra-processed foods are strongly associated with increased rates of NCDs including obesity, cardiovascular disease and cancers (Monteiro et al., 2019)",3
"They are often packaged and have undergone transformation and processing that extends their shelf life and decreases cost of production at scale, helping to improve access and close the energy gap in Solomon Islands, particularly in times of high food insecurity",2
Declining agricultural productivity and population growth were both raised as major concerns as threats to the health and livelihoods and food security of Indigenous rural Solomon Islanders,2
"Participants reported little nutrient recycling in the form of manure or food compost to home gardens, which is an exit point for nutrients within the local food system (Mohee et al., 2015; Roos et al., 2016)",12
"This builds upon the growing evidence that agrobiodiversity is essential for a sustainable food future (Zimmerer & Haan, 2017) and improved human nutrition and health, particularly in light of climate change (Zimmerer et al., 2019)",13
"In particular, leveraging a diverse range of neglected and underutilised species which are culturally significant, climate-resilient, and contain high levels of nutrients currently missing in local diets could prove particularly effective in improving diet quality and build residency towards climate change (Raneri et al., 2019)",13
"For example, promoting local alternatives to white rice such as golden kumara (beta-carotene rich) provide starchy dietary alternatives, which are less likely to contribute to NCD risk (McLennan & Ulijaszek, 2015)",3
"With the exception of dried ngali nuts, food preservation techniques were underutilised, posing a food security threat in times of poor harvests or during climatic events",2
"Strengthening the capacity of smallholder women farmers to store, preserve, and package local, nutrient-dense foods is likely to help households achieve better food security year-round (Dweba & Mearns, 2011) and potentially reduce dependence on processed and refined imported staple foods",2
"Promoting nutrition education, particularly if harnessing traditional knowledge, can help build adaptive capacity towards climate change (Granderson, 2017) and improve the nutrient density of food supplies",13
"These data can also guide policymakers, researchers, and farmers towards cultivate varieties rich in missing essential nutrients as a food-based approach to mitigating malnutrition (Nesbitt et al., 2010), as well an provide opportunities to update nutrition education materials used in this region to provide specific nutritional information regarding the local agrobiodiversity available",2
"Currently, there is little nationally or regionally representative data that examines Indigenous peoples’ local food systems, utilization of agrobiodiversity, diet quality, and food security",2
"The Pacific is extremely data poor, especially regarding food and nutrition security data",2
"More data will provide the necessary groundwork to improve policies, programmes, and educational interventions aimed at achieving zero hunger through the promotion of sustainable food systems",2
"Encouraging domestic production and consumption of agrobiodiversity also supports local economies and builds foods sovereignty, which is of increasing importance under the threat of global food system disruptions related to climate change",13
"There is a need for a coordinated nutrition strategy which incorporates the multiple dimensions of sustainable food systems, including nutritional adequacy, socio-cultural considerations, cost and economic opportunities, and environmental protection",15
"This paper makes a novel attempt to model the nonlinear association between renewable energy consumption and crude oil prices concerning four net oil-importing South Asian economies: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka",7
"Using annual data from 1990 to 2018, the long-run elasticity estimates confirm the nonlinear nexus and suggest that although rising crude oil prices do not facilitate renewable energy consumption initially, upon reaching a threshold level of crude oil price, further hikes in the oil prices are likely to elevate the renewable energy consumption figures",7
Identical nonlinearity is also confirmed in the context of the oil prices and renewable energy share in total final energy consumption volumes,7
"However, rising crude oil prices were not found to enhance the renewable electricity shares. Besides, the causality results implicated that movements in crude oil prices influenced the renewable energy transition process across the concerned South Asian economies",7
"Thus, these results, in a nutshell, impose critically important policy implications for attainment of energy security and environmental sustainability in South Asia, particularly via curbing the traditional imported crude oil-dependencies of these nations",7
Deteriorating environmental quality and aggravating climate change adversities worldwide have cumulatively sparked the consensus in aligning the global development policies with simultaneous safeguarding of the environmental attributes as well,13
"Therefore, it is pertinent for the world economy to undergo a transition from use of non-renewable to renewable energy resources, keeping environmental sustainability into cognizance (Murshed 2018)",7
"In the same vein, the sustainable development goals (SDG) agenda of the United Nations has also called out for worldwide commitments to augment renewable energy (RE) resources into the global energy-mixes for ensuring energy security and environmental sustainability across the planet",7
"The 7th of the seventeen SDG specifically stresses for substantially elevating the shares of renewables in the global energy consumption figures by the end of 2030 (Villavicencio Calzadilla and Mauger 2018). Therefore, the world economies have expressed their commitments with respect to the attainment the SDG within this stipulated time frame",7
The benefits of enhancing the volumes of renewable energy consumption (REC) within the economy can embody multidimensional forms,7
"For instance, incorporating RE technologies into the national energy policies worldwide is likely to complement the global energy security strategies which seem to be at risk due to the depletion of the global non-renewable energy (NRE) reserves (Valentine 2011)",7
"Besides, REC can also exhibit a pivotal role in curbing the intensities of greenhouse emissions, therefore, attributing to improvements in the environmental quality while slowing down the climate change phenomenon in tandem (Perry et al",13
"Boosting the consumption levels of RE has also been appropriately acknowledged in the 2015 Paris climate change conference to play a defining role in keeping the global temperature rise below the critical level of 2 °C per annum which is pertinent in combating the climate change adversities to a large extent.Footnote 1 Among the other positive impacts, REC is hypothesized to reduce the vulnerability of economies against the exogenous volatility of crude oil supplies (Rentschler 2013), stabilize energy prices (Shen et al",13
"Besides, the underdeveloped energy infrastructure within these nations is also proclaimed to be one of the major hindrances bottlenecking their prospects of undergoing the renewable energy transition (RET) phenomenon (Murshed 2020)",7
"Moreover, the relatively higher startup costs of setting up the RE power plants, solar in particular, have also accounted for high renewable electricity prices within the NOIC, thus, deterring the RET phenomenon further",7
"In comparison to the traditional oil-based power prices, the prices of electricity sourced from solar and wind energy in Britain are higher by more than two times (The Economist 2014)",7
"Moreover, the ideal locations of the renewable power plants are usually across regions far away from the cities which further inflate the associated power transmission and distribution costs",7
"According to a report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA 2019), the global weighted-average costs of solar power, between 2010 and 2018, have significantly declined to almost match the corresponding costs of generating electricity from the fossil fuels, oils in particular",7
"For instance, within South Asia and the Pacific, the LCOE produced using solar power declined the most from being around 350 US dollars per megawatt in 2010 to 69 US dollars per megawatt by the end of 2019 while the LCOE for natural gas-fired electricity remained fairly stagnated at around 72 US dollar per megawatt (Harder 2019, August 1)",7
"However, alongside substantial economic development of these economies with time, the barriers to RE adoption could be expected to reduce whereby the elasticity of REC concerning further hikes in crude oil prices could be anticipated to improve to facilitate the RET process",8
"In contrast, average electricity prices in Sri Lanka have recently exhibited declining trends (Climatoscope 2019) which can plausibly be attributed to the nation’s relatively less oil-dependency for electricity generation purposes among the selected South Asian NOIC",7
A particular reason behind this phenomenon could be attributed to the nation’s indigenous biomass energy resources accounting for a dominant share of the aggregate primary energy consumption figures (Nissanka and Konaris 2010),7
It is also evident from Table 1 that all these four nations have performed miserably in improving the RE shares in their respective total final energy consumption levels,7
"As far as the national fuel-mixes for electricity generation purposes are concerned, Fig. 4 in “Appendix” illustrates the trends in the renewable and non-renewable electricity outputs across the selected South Asian NOIC",7
Figure 1 depicts the correlative plots of RE shares in total energy consumption figures and real crude oil prices across the selected South Asian economies between 1990 and 2018,7
Source: Author’s own Correlative plots of renewable energy shares and crude oil prices,7
Source: Authors’ own The Substitution Effect of rising crude oil prices on energy consumption trends,7
"As a consequence, the share of NRE in aggregate energy consumption levels can be anticipated to rise along with the rise in crude oil prices",7
The corresponding results indicated that changes in crude oil prices accounted for almost 20% of the total variations in China’s RE share in aggregate final energy consumption figures,7
"Moreover, upon checking for the robustness of the findings using an alternate indicator of RE use within the Chinese economy, the findings revealed that oil prices explained almost one-fourth of the total variations in China’s volumes of non-hydroelectric power",7
"The regression results from the difference-GMM, system-GMM and the least squares dummy variable correlated estimators unanimously suggested that oil prices are statistically insignificant in explaining the changes in the shares of renewable in the total energy consumption figures of the European Union member countries",7
The results showed that oil prices exhibited a positive and statistically significant impact on the share of renewables in total energy production levels,7
"Among the other key variables controlling the econometric framework, RGDP abbreviates for the real gross domestic product which is included to account for the possible effects of economic growth on the facilitation of REC across the concerned economies",8
Economic growth can be anticipated to exert a positive impact on the REC figures via empowering the concerned nations to overcome the limitations restraining the RET phenomenon (Murshed 2020),8
"Also, RGDP is interacted with ROILP and included in the model to account for the joint impacts of economic growth and crude oil price shocks on the movements in the REC levels",8
It is pertinent to include carbon-dioxide emissions in modeling the trends in REC since rising apprehensions regarding the air-pollution induced climate change adversities are likely to facilitate the substitution effect between the consumption of fossil fuels and the renewable alternatives (Omri and Nguyen 2014),13
"The relevance of considering openness to trade for modeling the REC trends can be justified in the sense that a rise in the trade openness indices can be interpreted as a reduction in the trade barriers which can be anticipated to facilitate cross-border flows of renewable power, thus, boosting the REC levels (Murshed 2018)",17
"For the robustness check of the REC-crude oil price nexus, model (1) is re-estimated using two alternate indicators of REC, namely the share of renewables in total final energy consumption figures and the share of renewable electricity in aggregate electricity output levels",7
"The corresponding models can be specified as: where RES and RELEC stand for the shares of renewable energy and renewable electricity, respectively, in the total final energy consumption and aggregate electricity outputs",7
"Similarly, in the context of model (2), it can also be asserted that there are long-run associations between the shares of RE in aggregate final energy consumption figures and crude oil prices and all the other control variables for all the four South Asian economies",7
"However, a persistent small rise in crude oil prices, approaching toward the predicted threshold, along with economic development over time would induce the RET phenomenon in these economies which possibly could be due to the gradual phasing out of the imported-oil dependencies of these economies over time",8
This mechanism can be explained using the estimated economic growth elasticities of REC,8
The positive signs of the statistically significant elasticity parameters attached to lnRGDP suggest economic growth does exhibit favorable impacts to facilitate RET within the economies which could be playing a key role in reducing their imported-oil dependencies,8
"Moreover, the positive signs of the statistically significant elasticity parameters attached to the interaction term further advocate in favor of the joint favorable impacts of economic growth and rising crude oil prices concerning the facilitation REC within the four South Asian nations.Footnote 5 Furthermore, dependency on imported oils is also found to dampen the prospects of RET across South Asia",8
"On the other hand, the regression results also imply that liberalizing trade barriers generate favorable outcomes concerning the facilitation of the RET phenomenon within the selected economies",17
A specific reason behind this finding could be interpreted as lower trade barriers facilitating the cross-border flows of renewable power within the concerned economies whereby the levels of REC can justifiably be expected to go up,17
"As far as the shares of renewables in total final energy consumption figures are concerned, the elasticity estimates in the context of model (2), as reported in Table 4, also confirm the nonlinear association between renewable energy shares and real crude oil prices",7
The small magnitudes of the predicted elasticities imply that the share of renewables in aggregate final energy consumption figures is pretty inelastic to changes in crude oil prices,7
"However, beyond a certain threshold level of real crude oil price, a further increase in the crude oil prices by 1% enhances renewable energy shares on average by 0.01–0.07%, ceteris paribus",7
"On the other hand, rising carbon-dioxide emissions, despite accounting for higher REC levels, actually lead to lower shares of renewables in aggregate final energy consumption figures across the concerned South Asian countries",7
The negative trade openness-renewable energy share nexus in the context of middle-income economies was also highlighted in the study by Murshed (2020),7
"However, the negative signs of the elasticity parameters attached to both lnROILP and lnROILP2 explicitly point out the fact that rising crude oil prices do not stimulate the transition from non-renewable to renewable primary energy use for electricity generation purposes in the selected NOIC across South Asia",7
This is a pretty concerning finding in the context of energy security within these nations,7
The other key results in the context of model (3) reveal that higher economic growth elevates the share of renewable electricity within the selected South Asian economies,8
"As a result, rising carbon-dioxide emissions across these South Asian economies inhibit the overall prospects of transition from non-renewable to renewable electricity generation",7
"Moreover, findings from the causality analyses also reveal unidirectional causations stemming from real crude oil prices to the shares of RE and renewable electricity in total final energy consumption and aggregate electricity output levels, respectively",7
"Rising apprehensions in the context of energy insecurity and environmental degradation, on a global scale, in the future has sparked the need to undergo RET worldwide",15
"Among the other key findings, statistical evidence regarding a similar nonlinear association between crude oil prices and RE share in total final energy consumption figures was also ascertained",7
"Finally, the causality findings revealed that changes in the crude oil prices influence movements in REC and the shares of RE and renewable electricity in total final energy consumption and aggregate electricity outputs, respectively",7
"More importantly, keeping the immense potentials of cross-border RE trade within South Asia into cognizance, it is recommended to liberalize the corresponding trade barriers to facilitate the flows of renewable power into the four net oil-importing South Asian economies considered in this paper",17
"For instance, these economies can look forward to importing hydroelectric power from Nepal while importing geothermal energy from Bhutan",7
Carbon emissions and the aftermath of non-renewable energy consumption have been on the increase since the beginning of the twentieth century at the global level,7
"This, according to Grossman and Krueger (1995), would initially lead to an initial phase of environmental degradation, which is subsequently followed by the improvement phase as the average income increases on the environmental Kuznets curve",15
"Furthermore, Panayotou (1993) posited earlier that carbon emission would have three resultant effects: scale, structural, and technical effects stemming from economic growth, thus demonstrating and attesting to the inverted U-shaped Kuznets curve",8
"Previous studies regarding carbon emissions, a resulting consequence of non-renewable energy consumption, and the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis revolved mostly around international trade, technical progress, foreign direct investments, and incomes (Kaika and Zervas 2013; Yao et al",7
"More recently, the addition to the group of information on the energy literature has been on renewable energy consumption and cleaner energies going by the outcry of the effects of an earth-wide temperature boost brought about via carbon outflow (Yao et al",7
This has led to the renewable energy environmental Kuznets curve (RKC) proposition as a hypothesis that supersedes the conventional environmental Kuznets curve in that it accounts for renewable energy to show the U-shaped relationship that exists between the renewable energy consumption rate and per capita GDP,7
"This unconventional phenomenon, the RKC, asserts that more renewable energy consumption can help accelerate the conventional EKC to arrive faster at its turning point",7
This lends credence to the fact that the consumption of renewable and non-renewable energies will lead to a renewable environmental Kuznets curve that arrives faster at its turning point than an environmental Kuznets curve designated to non-renewable energy consumption,7
"This has led to the selection of a renewable energy consumption rate, an index to uncover the differences of renewable energy consumption while examining the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis side by side with the renewable energy environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis",7
"For example, the USA’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement will increase the EPU index, leading to a lower prioritization of carbon emission reduction as a goal Jiang et al",13
Research conclusions from previous studies lend credence to the fact that EPU is relevant to understanding the behavior of emissions in energy consumption even at the global level,7
"Starting with an earlier trajectory by the OECD in 2011, it was predicted that the share of energy consumption allotted to the OECD group from the world consumption was set to reduce from 35% in 1995 to about 32% by 2020",7
(2017) explored the determinants of environmental degradation in selected 44 sub-Saharan African countries using generalized method of moments techniques to explore the role of ICT modulates the effect of CO2 emissions on inclusive development,15
(2021) explored the nexus between environmental quality and economic growth while accounting for financial development and globalization for the case of South Africa,8
"The study revealed that a 1% increase in energy (coal) consumption increases environmental degradation by 1.077%, while a 1% increase in financial development decreases the environmental degradation by 0.973%",15
The study submits that policymakers and administrators in South Africa should advance policies that encourage energy consumers to shift toward renewable energy,7
"Furthermore, financial reforms should be implemented to reduce environmental degradation",15
"This study is in line with Adebayo and Odugbesan (2021) study that financial development, economic growth, and urbanization contribute to the pollution level in South Africa",8
"The study regression shows that economic growth, gross capital formation, and urbanization positively impact CO2 emissions",8
"The direction of causality reveals a one-way causality from urbanization to CO2 emissions, unidirectional causality from economic growth to CO2 emissions, and unidirectional causality from gross capital formation to CO2 emissions as reported by causality analysis",8
The study further illustrates the need for Mexican government officials to carefully craft energy environmental policies aimed at increasing economic growth without compromise for environmental quality,8
"Furthermore, regarding consumption-based carbon emissions determinants, Kirikkaleli and Adebayo (2021) for Indian identify that public-private partnership investment in energy and energy consumption also significantly causes consumption-based carbon dioxide emissions at different frequency levels in the Indian economy",7
(2018) examined the impact of renewable and non-renewable energy consumptions on growth using 29 OECD countries from 1990 to 2013,7
The study found that bidirectional causality existed between renewable and non-renewable energy consumption,7
"More recently, the empirical study of Ozcan and Ozturk (2019) investigated the different linkages that exist between the use of energy and economic growth by taking a sample of 35 OECD countries over the 2000 to 2014 period",8
The study’s key contribution to the body of knowledge was a more encompassing proxy to capture environmental degradation,15
"This ultimately affects the energy consumption variable of such an economy, which ultimately trickles down to other countries due to the interconnectedness that the world operates with",7
(2020) investigated the differential impact between investments in non-renewable and renewable energy enterprises,7
The study used data from 52 non-renewable energy enterprises and 116 renewable energy enterprises in China over the 2007Q1 to 2017Q4 timeline,7
The study found that non-renewable energy enterprise investments were significantly inhibited by economic policy uncertainty,7
"On the other hand, renewable energy investments were not significant even though they were inhibited by economic policy uncertainty",7
"The study also found that economic policy uncertainty specifically inhibited investment in the petroleum and coal enterprises, whereas economic policy uncertainty promoted investments in renewable energy enterprises like geothermal energy, solar energy, and other forms of renewable energy",7
"The study concluded that growth opportunities could offset the inhibitory effect associated with the economic policy uncertainty and that a strengthened financial constraint brings with it an uncertainty associated with economic policy in non-renewable energy enterprise, which would not be as significant as the renewable energy enterprise",7
One of the issues that commanded attention in the literature on economic uncertainty was the increased EPU value that came with the USA’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement of 2015 to mitigate climate change,13
"The importance attributed to environmental governance by the US government was reduced and reprioritized following this withdrawal, which negatively affected the implementation of a significant portion of previous environmental protection policies",15
This then became the testament on which the government’s determination to reduce carbon emissions as a goal became compromised,13
The ultimate implication of this move by the US government was that the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget had to be cut down in 2017,15
"On the one hand, energy consumption by the US economy was cut down, making way for a decrease in carbon emission",7
A study by Steinberg (2019) sought to explore the macroeconomic impact of the trade policy uncertainty resulting from the Brexit movement,17
"The present study is further motivated by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs 7, 8, and 13) crusade, which informed the choice of the variables for the econometric modeling, and subsequently, the following hypotheses have been constructed:
 H1: Do conventional energy consumption (fossil fuel induced) engenders sustainability in the environment in the OECD countries in line with (UN-SDGs 7 and 8)",7
"Conventionally, energy use has been identified as a key driver for increased economic growth over the years",8
This leads to the formation of the next hypothesis H2: Is there a positive or negative nexus between CO2 emissions and economic growth in the study areas (OECD countries),8
There has been extensive literature on the economic growth-pollution connection,8
This is in accordance with the fight of the UN-SDG 13 in mitigating climate change/pollution-related issues,13
"Data were extracted from the World Bank Development Indicator (WDI) and British Petroleum Database, which is given as CO2 emissions (CO2) measured in million tonnes of carbon dioxide (source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2019); primary energy consumption (ENU) measured in million tonnes oil equivalent (source: BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2019); real gross domestic product (RGDP), measured in constant 2010 US$ (source: WDI); and economic policy uncertaintyFootnote 1 (EPU), proxy: world uncertainty index (WUI) (source: Ahir et al",7
"The emission of energy consumption, real GDP, and GDP per capita indices exhibit an increasing effect between 1985 and 2017, with real GDP having the highest increasing value of 11.7159% and energy use contributing to the lowest at 1.8260%",7
"This is possible as more income is allotted to the individual, and such clean energy technologies became affordable",7
"Therefore, renewable energy or clean energy technology consumption increases and reduces the level of CO2 emissions.
 The error correction term (ECM) coefficient that presents the speed of adjustment for the case of disequilibrium in the present study case is negative as expected and low (0.1137) at the 1% significance level",7
"In contrast, renewable energy improves the quality of the environment",7
"Similarly, energy use, real GDP, and GDP per capita to environmental degradation within the region in the short run",15
"In addition, our study revealed that renewable energy source enhances the quality of the environment",7
"Hence, the government of the OECD countries should adopt the use of renewable energy sources in their activities as commercial or home use",7
"The outcome of energy-induced and economic policy uncertainty to pollution emission calls for a paradigm shift to renewables such as photovoltaic energy, hydroenergy, and wind energy, and for a promotion of renewable energy sources of electricity, grants, and taxes—holiday should be granted to investors",7
"Furthermore, to sustain the current momentum in OECD for sustainability target, there is a need to tighten commitment on environmental treaties like Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement",13
"Relevant instruments in the economic performance of Indonesia such as urbanization, foreign direct investment (FDI), and renewable energy source are all adopted for accurate estimations and analysis of this topic",7
"Findings from ARDL confirmed negative relationship between carbon emission and renewable energy source, FDI, and urbanization",7
"Also, a U-shape instead of inverted U-shaped EKC is found confirming the impeding implication of Indonesian economic growth to its environmental performance if not checkmate",8
"Also, FDI and renewable energy prove to be essential determinants of the country’s environment development; hence, FDI is seen transmitting to both energy sources (fossil fuels and renewables) in a one-way causal relationship",7
Renewable energy is as well seen having two ways causal relationship with both carbon emission and fossil fuels,7
"This result has equally exposed the significant position of the three instruments (urbanization, FDI, and renewable energy source) in Indonesian environment development",7
"A robust FDI regime has the propensity to engender higher-income generation, spur job creation opportunities (reduce unemployment), and enhance diversification",8
"For instance, Indonesia is regarded as one of the largest economies in Southeast Asia because of its vigorous fiscal management and sustained economic growth over the years",8
"Some of the policies are tax incentives for investment in major economic sectors, law enforcement, and business certainty, cuts in interest rate tax on exporters, and energy tariffs for industries",16
"The flow of FDIs to the USA indicated a decline mostly in the primary sector with 49%, making the foreign investors discrete with their capital to productive assets",17
FDI flows have influence economic growth in Indonesia positively,8
Many researches have proved its benefits on how foreign investment added value to both foreign investors and domestic (local) firms,17
Khaliq and Noy (2007) opined that increase in FDI improves the economic growth of Indonesia,8
"However, FDI impact on mining and quarrying reduces economic growth",8
"(2016), and Effendi and Soemantri (2003) asserted that not all sectors benefit from foreign investment which indicates that more attention should be given to sectors that contribute to economic growth",8
"However, other studies believe it does not affect economic growth (Kersan-Škabić and Zubin (2009)",8
"Indonesia has notable fossil fuel types which include oil, coal, and natural gas, and renewable energy resources",7
"However, it generates power from renewable energy (solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal of 788.00 MW of power)",7
"According to United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), individual countries are encouraged to work towards curtailing climate change by maintaining good environmental quality through carbon neutrality",13
"As noted before, Indonesia is positioned as among the best performing economies in Southeast Asia because of its vigorous fiscal management and sustained economic growth over the years",8
"Among the policies are tax incentives for investment in major economic sectors, law enforcement and business certainty, cuts in interest rate tax on exporters, and energy tariffs for industries",16
"As emerging country that is characterized with growth and investment potentials especially in the areas of gas, electricity, water, and transportation, there is likelihood of great utilization of energy sources which has potentials in impacting environment and climate change through greenhouse gas",13
"Against this backdrop, we select the macroeconomic and energy cum environment variables (real GDP per capita and its square, FDI, urbanization, fossil fuels, and renewable energy source) to test the sustainable development of the country with respect to environment",7
"This defines the objective of this study which is to investigate the possibility of Indonesia to mitigate carbon emission with the three policies (FDI, renewable energy, and urbanization) to enhance carbon neutrality of the country and also examine if there is any relationship between FDI, renewable energy, urbanization, and environmental quality",7
The objective is further divided into 3 different hypothetical questions as follows: (a) Is Indonesian renewable energy sector capable of mitigating its carbon emissions? (b) What is the implication of urban population increase in Indonesia towards its environmental performance? (c) Is FDI inducing or mitigating Indonesian carbon emissions? Answers to the above hypothesized questions will add to the energy-environmental literature,7
"For clear insight to this subject, authors aim to examine the empirical evidence of the impact of FDI inflows and renewable energy on the environmental quality of Indonesia by employing approaches (such as structural break; bound cointegration test and symmetric ARDL dynamics model)",7
The study indicated that all the variables contribute to environmental degradation in Turkey,15
It suggested that policies should be fixed on green investment inflow and encourage the use of renewable energy,7
(2018) applied the wavelet tool from 1982–2016 to analyze the impacts of FDI and economic growth on pollution,8
Their findings confirm that foreign investment positively impacts environmental degradation indicating that an increase in FDI increases emissions both in the short-run and long run in China,15
"Employing the autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) model, the study found that the inflow of FDI increases environmental degradation in Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines, whereas increase in foreign investment decreases environmental pollution in Indonesia and shows insignificant relation in Singapore",15
Bachri and Normelani (2020) evaluate the nexus of disposable income and environmental degradation on FDI in Indonesia utilized the ARDL and Granger causality test from 1960–2018,15
Renewable energy is an important source of energy,7
It is also important because it reduces the dependence on imported fuels and creates economic development and jobs in manufacturing and installation,8
"The problems or challenges that slow the development of renewable energy in Indonesia are policy uncertainty, financing barriers, low renewables manufacturing volume, and market barriers (Müller 2017)",7
"Sugiawan and Managi (2016) investigate the EKC and the impact of foreign direct investment, energy production from renewable energy sources, and on environmental pollution in Indonesia",7
"On the contrary, renewable energy has a significant and beneficial influence in the reduction of environmental pollution",7
This will in return enhance renewable energy consumption by providing incentives for more efficient and cleaner technologies which will as well enhance Indonesia’s electricity generation,7
"Their study suggests cost reduction and suitable control systems for hybrid energy system, and also maximizes the available renewable energy sources",7
"(2014) for China, and Sebri and Ben-Salha (2014) for BRICS confirm that increase in renewable energy use reduces the effect of CO2 emissions",7
"(2021) indicate that carbon emissions may be reduced by using renewable energy to achieve environmental quality, based on their findings from both symmetric and asymmetric models",7
"According to Usman and Makhdum (2021), increasing the usage of renewable energy reduces the ecological footprint, which benefits the environment in the long run",7
The study suggested that policymakers should support the use of renewable energy to accomplish sustainable development goals,7
"Also, Usman and Hammar (2021) stated that renewable energy utilization significantly enhances environmental quality",7
"Moreover, renewable energy, according to several studies, reduces pollutants in the environment (Bashir et al., 2021; Usman and Balsalobre-Lorente, 2022; Ridzuan et al. 2020; Huang et al., 2022)",7
Some researchers analyzed the impact of urbanization on economic growth and environmental sustainability,8
Government policies are needed for green technology to control pollution from industrial and residential areas,9
(2020) stated that the increase in urbanization and economic growth has increase the pollution in East Asia,8
The study encourages sustainable urbanization and the use of green resources to stimulate economic stability without impacting the environment negatively,11
"Summarily, impacts of the selected variables are hypothesized from the highlighted literature in this section as follows: H0: FDI impacts favorable on both economic growth and environment quality FDI has been studied with mixed findings",8
"Hence, FDI improves an economy’s production (Khaliq and Noy 2007; Sjöholm, 2017), FDI impact on mining and quarrying reduces economic growth (Katircioglu, 2009), and Ahmed et al",8
"However, other studies believe it does not affect economic growth (Kersan-Škabić and Zubin 2009)",8
The findings confirm that all the variables contribute to environmental degradation in Turkey,15
Their study suggested that policies should be fixed on green investment inflow and encourage the use of renewable energy,7
(2018) confirmed that foreign investment positively impacts environmental degradation via emissions both in the short run and long run in China,15
"(2007) found that the inflow of FDI increases environmental degradation in Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines, whereas increase in foreign investment decreases environmental pollution in Indonesia and shows insignificant relation in Singapore",15
"Sugiawan and Managi (2016) investigate the EKC and the impact of foreign direct investment, energy production from renewable energy sources, and on environmental pollution in Indonesia",7
"(2014) for China, Sebri and Ben-Salha (2014) for BRICS confirm that increase in renewable energy use reduces the effect of CO2 emissions",7
"Findings from (Anwar et al., 2021) confirm that the renewable energy consumption leads to a decrease in CO2 emissions across all the quantiles (10th to 90th)",7
(2021) confirm that renewable energy decreases emissions and mitigates environmental deterioration,7
H0: Urbanization impacts favorable on both economic growth and environment quality Some researchers analyzed the impact of urbanization on economic growth and environmental sustainability,8
Government policies are needed for green technology to control pollution from industrial and residential areas,9
(2020) stated the increase in urbanization and economic growth has increase pollution in East Asia,8
"Energy consumption urban population granger cause to CO2 emission in ASEAN-5 countries (Batool et al., 2021)",7
EKC hypothesis as developed by Simon Kuznets (1955) was intended to test the income inequality and was later adopted by some environment economies to test the effect of income (GDP) growth on weather development,10
It is assumed that the initial stage of economic growth will undermine the atmosphere condition till it gets to a certain point where the impact will turn to positive on environment,8
"Different shapes (U-shape, N-shape, and inverted U-shape) are expected to exist depending on the interaction of economic growth and environment",8
We adopt FDI in place of technology in this study because of its multifaceted position in both economic growth and environmental performance through direct and indirect effects,8
"Therefore, the expanded STIRPAT model with inclusion of all the instruments in this study is as follow: where \(l{CO}_{2}, lU.P, lY, {lY}^{2}, FDI, lFoss, lR.E, DUM1, DUM1, and e\) denote carbon dioxide emission, urban population, GDP per capita and its squared (constant, 2010), foreign direct investment (%GDP), non-renewable energy consumption as proxy by fossil fuels (i.e., summation of crude oil, natural gas, and coal in millions tonnes oil equivalent), renewable energy consumption (million tonnes of oil equivalent), dummy variables for structural break, and the error term",7
"The variables except environment indicators (carbon emission, fossil fuels, and renewable energy) are all sourced from the 2018 updated World Bank Development Indicators (WDI)",7
"Considering the objective of this study, that is, assessing carbon neutrality of Indonesia with the selected variables (renewable energy, FDI and urbanization), we adopted carbo dioxide emission (CO2) as the best indicator for measuring the environment",7
Carbon emission tends to be major contributor to the greenhouse gas emission with almost 76 percent of the gas Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Woodward et al,13
"Indonesia case is unique with FDI and renewable energy consumption showing evidence of mitigating carbon emission in most some studies (Udemba et al., 2019 for Indonesia)",7
"Following this, we modelled the cointegration according to the ARDL-bound testing with inclusion of both short-run and long-run estimates with error correction model (ECM) as follow: From Eq. 4, some of the properties and the instruments (carbon emissions, urban population, GDP per capita, squared GDP per capita, FDI, Foss, renewable energy, and Dum) have been defined from other Eqs. 1–3",7
"Among the events that caused shock to most of the economies of the world are the financial shocks of 1997/1998 and 2008/2010, and these dates are reflected in our structural break tests for economic growth and fossil fuels energy",8
"Test of stability of the model with Cumulative Sum of recursive residual Plot Test of stability of the model with cumulative sum squared of recursive residual plot From both short run and long run, we find negative and positive coefficients of LY and LY2 which established negative connection between economic growth (LY = GDP) and environment (LCO2) and positive relationship between squared economic growth (LY2 = GDP2) and environment (LCO2)",8
This confirms that CO2 emissions decline at initial level of economic growth and then reaches a turning point and increases with the higher level of economic growth,8
"While environmental and income policy is often non-existent for low-income countries, high-income countries have generally introduced varied policies to mitigate the growing environmental degradation",15
"In the case of squared real GDP, coefficient with a positive sign denotes carbon emission increasing as economic growth is increasing confirming a break-out of the initial decreasing relationship at the peak level of income (real GDP)",8
It could equally mean that technological innovation and clean energy mix (renewable energy sources) in economic operations in the cities is at increasing rate,7
"The short-run and long-run elasticity of carbon emission (L CO2) with respect to non-renewable energy source (fossil fuels) is 3.681, respectively",7
This suggests the negative implication of fossil fuel-based energy consumption on Indonesian environmental development,7
"Going further, we find negative relationships between renewable energy, FDI, and carbon emission",7
This suggests that both clean energy sources (renewable energy source) and FDI are mitigating the carbon emission increase in Indonesia,7
This shows that foreign investors in Indonesia are operating with consciousness of securing a good environment performance,17
"Statistically, both short-run and long-run elasticities of carbon emission with respect to renewable energy and FDI are − 22.90 and − 2.165, respectively",7
"That is, a percentage increase in renewable energy and FDI will decrease carbon emissions by 22.9 and 2.165 percent, respectively",7
The findings from both renewable energy and FDI for the case of Indonesia are really interesting and are capable of attaining some level of carbon neutrality in the country,7
"The entire findings from both ARDL short-run and long-run dynamics point towards carbon neutrality in Indonesia; hence, three instruments (urbanization, FDI, and renewable energy use) adopted in this study point towards their ability to mitigate carbon emission increase in the country",7
"Moreover, we find bi-directional causality between urbanization and carbon emission, between renewable energy and carbon emission, and between renewable energy and fossil fuels",7
"It gives credence to the above highlighted hypotheses with great exposition on the stance of urbanization, FDI, and renewable energy source in determination of Indonesian environment",7
"This study attempts to analyze the possibility of accessing carbon neutrality with the nexus of FDI, renewable energy, and urbanization in Indonesia",7
"The objective of the study is to investigate the possibility of Indonesia to mitigate carbon emission with the three policies (FDI, renewable energy, and urbanization) to enhance carbon neutrality of the country",7
"As emerging country that is characterized with growth and investment potentials especially in the areas of gas, electricity, water, and transportation, there is likelihood of great utilization of energy sources which has potentials in impacting environment and climate change through greenhouse gas",13
"Against this backdrop, we select the macroeconomic and energy cum environment variables (real GDP per capita, FDI, urbanization, fossil fuels, and renewable energy source) to test the sustainable development of the country with respect to environment",7
"Hence, negative relationship is established between carbon emission and renewable energy source, FDI, and urbanization",7
"Also, a U-shape instead of inverted U-shaped EKC is found confirming the impeding implication of Indonesian economic growth to its environmental performance if not checkmate",8
"Also, FDI and renewable energy prove to be essential determinants of the country’s environment development; hence, FDI is seen transmitting to both energy source (fossil fuels and renewables) in a one-way causal relationship, and renewable energy is as well seen having two ways causal relationship with both carbon emission and fossil fuels",7
"This result has equally exposed the significant position of the three instruments (urbanization, FDI, and renewable energy source) in Indonesian environment development, and this finding attests to the above findings from ARDL result",7
"Hence, focus should be geared towards sustainable performance of foreign investors",17
"FDI is found impacting positive to the environment development; however, regulatory policies towards safeguarding the quality of the environment from the side of foreign investors should be formulated, implemented, and monitored for maximum achievement and success",17
National policy should be framed towards energy transition as clean energy source (renewable sources) is seen having the greater percentage of mitigating the carbon emission in the country,7
Part of the national policies should include bringing the foreign investors to the agreement of adopting improved technologies and adopting cleaner energy sources for the safety of the environment,17
"In a nutshell, strong institutions are encouraged in other to achieve effective execution of the proposed policies",16
"Natura became the first cosmetics company in the world to launch refillable packages back in 1983 (MIS VP, R02, personal communication), to pioneer sustainable consumption with the launch of the Sou line in 2013 (Dalmarco et al",12
"However, social inclusion remains an underdeveloped area",10
"Moreover, the study demonstrates the significance of FA, GF, and GI in improving the EP of financial institutions and, ultimately, in ensuring the sustainable economic development of the country",8
"Besides, Fintech and GF have been identified by policymakers, particularly in emerging economies, as a necessity toward the achievement of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Nassiry 2019)",13
"However, it remains unclear how technological innovation and GF accelerate organizations’ achievement of environmental sustainability during the pandemic",8
The issue of economic growth and environmental sustainability has been persisting over the years and has called for the adoption of holistic strategies such as technological innovation to ensure sustainable development (Awawdeh et al,8
"During the pandemic, Fintech and GF promote the environmental sustainability of financial institutions by integrating eco-friendly innovations such as digital and mobile banking into their operations and financing series of pro-environmental initiatives, including renewable or alternative energy, waste management, and green industry development",12
Previous literature has established technological innovation as a significant determinant of EP (Awawdeh et al,8
(2022) recently discovered a significant positive influence of GF and CSR on innovative technology and corporate EP during the pandemic,9
"According to Peng and Zheng (2021), GF can boost energy efficiency by supporting the development of innovative energy technologies, which can help policymakers optimize energy structure and enhance sustainability",7
Recent literature has demonstrated that Fintech innovation largely supports green economic growth through green investment and lending (Zhou et al,8
"In contrast, an unfavorable effect of GF on GI was discovered in countries possessing higher levels of innovative technology or EP",9
"(2022), GF has been described in this article as the funding of different pro-environmental initiatives such as clean energy and technology to ensure better EP of banks",7
"(2020), GI is defined as technology advancements aimed at curtailing waste disposal, environmental deterioration, air pollution, energy consumption, and the burning of fossil fuels",7
"In today’s corporate sector, GI has been pivotal in preventing the negative consequences of climate change (Li et al",13
"The GF scale used different statements to measure GF (e.g., our bank focuses more on investment in pro-environmental projects like green energy, pollution prevention, and eco-friendly industry)",7
Extant literature has also established that financial institutions play a crucial role in the sustainable economic development of a country through their investment in various green projects (Chen et al,8
"Specifically, FA promotes firms’ pro-environmental activities through the incorporation of eco-friendly advanced technologies, such as digital and mobile banking and remote customer care services",3
"(2022), who discovered that technological innovation enhances EP significantly",8
"Generally, FA, GF, and GI significantly enhance EP during the pandemic by lowering carbon emissions, energy consumption, and paper usage and providing green training to staff",7
"These include the adoption of the latest and advanced innovations and investment in eco-friendly projects to avert environmental degradation, the promotion of pro-environmental attitudes among managers, and the implementation of green and innovative culture within the firm",15
"Also, the central bank and government of Bangladesh can promote GF and GI by introducing a reward system for banking institutions that utilize the latest eco-supportive technologies, such as AI, blockchain, internet, and phone banking, as well as prioritize investment in pro-ecological projects such as clean energy, pollution reduction, and carbon–neutral industry",7
"To fill this gap, we use data from a 2017 survey (n = 668) of low- and middle-income residents of Accra, Ghana, to characterize and compare the predictors of household-level food security using three established metrics: the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS); the Household Food Insecurity Access Prevalence (HFIAP); and the Food Consumption Score (FCS)",2
"Results from a suite of general linear models show that household assets, education, and demographic characteristics are significantly associated with food security outcomes according to HFIAS and HFIAP",2
"The poor correlation and weak model agreement between dietary recall such as FCS, and experience-based food security metrics, like HFIAS and HFIAP, highlight limitations of employing historically rural-centric food security measurement approaches within the urban context",2
"Given that Sub-Saharan Africa’s future is urban, our results add empirical evidence in support of the growing chorus of scholars advocating for comprehensive urban-oriented food security research and policy agendas across Sub-Saharan Africa",2
Most food security studies across the region have concentrated on rural areas and the few case studies that have examined urban food security in SSA have depended on metrics designed to study rural food security (Maxwell et al,2
But no studies have explored the relationship among established household-level food security metrics in the SSA urban context in a multivariate framework,2
"As such, how urban household demographic, socioeconomic, environmental, and spatial characteristics may vary across established household-level food security metrics is unknown",2
"Food security is a theoretical construct predicated on complex, multiscale spatiotemporal processes that encompass a broad range of human and environmental variables (Jones et al",2
"While orthodox methodologies break food security into manageable components, household-level food security measurement remains rooted in rural-centric conceptualizations of food security (Battersby 2013; Haysom and Tawodzera 2018)",2
"For example, in the 2017 State of Food and Agriculture Report, FAO advocates that growing demand from urban consumers can be a major force for rural inclusion and bolster rural food security but makes no mention of urban food security (FAO 2017)",2
"Such rural-centric paradigms not only fail to account for the food security needs among the growing number urban poor, but also ignore the fact that we currently lack tools specifically designed to measure food security in the urban context",2
This suggests that local price stability is a key component to urban food security,2
Urban food prices face greater exposure to external market forces and commodity price shocks can increase food insecurity among urban households while at the same time boosting prices and increasing food security among rural producers,2
"During the 2007/8 global commodity price shock urban households across SSA reported being less food secure, whereas food security among rural households improved (Verpoorten et al",2
"With urban household’s food security dependent on price, food security metric designed to capture caloric intake or dietary diversity among rural households may not accurately measure food security among urban households (Haysom and Tawodzera 2018)",2
Changes in diet and lifestyle historically associated with urbanization are burdening health systems by creating a dual burden of disease of both over- and undernourished poor households (Popkin et al,1
"Finally, the urban transition is also transmogrifying food retail systems, specifically leading to an increase in the number of supermarket retail outlets (Reardon et al",11
"It is unclear, however, how this shift in diets and food retailing affects food security among the urban poor, nor how if this shift is accurately captured by current food security metrics (Haysom and Tawodzera 2018; Battersby and Watson 2018)",2
"To this end, this paper has four aims: (i) we compare the food security status of households from nine low- and middle-income residential areas in Accra across three established food security metrics; (ii) we identify where households source food; (iii) we explore the household-level demographic, socioeconomic, environmental, and spatial predictors of urban food security; and (iv) we examine how these predictors vary across three indicators of household food security",2
"With an ever-increasing number of Africans poised to live in cities, and, given that many of these new residents will be poor, understanding who is food (in)secure in cities, where food (in)security exists, why diets may be changing, and how urban food security will affect broader food systems, is paramount for countries across SSA to accurately measure their progress toward achieving UN SDGs 2 and 11",2
"The most direct measurement of household-level food security that captures caloric and nutritional intake are either anthropometry measurements or detailed, multi-visit household expenditure or dietary recall logs (Jones et al",2
"Instead, household food security is generally assessed via proxy metrics derived from questions concerning one of three broad categories: (1) single-visit dietary recalls; (2) coping strategies; and (3) psychosocial and physical experience-based (Haysom and Tawodzera 2018)",2
"All three categories stem from a historical rural-centric bias and, if used individually fail to capture the multidimensionality of household food security",2
"Indeed, aggregate pairwise comparison of 8000–30,000 households from a wide range of developing countries showed that established dietary recall metrics have weak correlation with coping strategies and experience-based food security metrics (Vaitla et al",2
"As such, using a single metric focused on dietary diversity may show that a household is food secure in terms of diversity of food consumed, but does not capture a household’s ability to cope with food insecurity",2
"What is more, unless collected over time, all these metrics fail to capture any temporal changes in household food security",2
"The few existing household-level urban food security assessments are largely from Southern African cities and have measured food security according to two interrelated experience-based metrics, the household food insecurity access scale (HFIAS) and household food insecurity access prevalence (HFIAP)",2
"Nonetheless, all of these case studies suggest that low-income households regularly experience instances of food insecurity across a range of African cities",2
Surveys conducted by the African Food Security Network (AFSUN) in low-income areas of 11 Southern African cities found that household-level food insecurity measured by the HFIAP range from 56% to 98% of sampled households and that poverty significantly correlated with food insecurity (Frayne et al,2
"During the 2007/8 global commodity price spike, food insecurity measured among over 3000 randomly selected households in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, increased from 66.7% to 78.0% (Martin-Prevel et al",2
"2012), indicating that rising global commodity prices can affect local prices and increase household-level food insecurity in SSA cities",2
"The AFSUN dataset offers insights into dietary diversity, provisioning, socioeconomic, and demographic associations with levels of household food security characterized by HFIAP (Frayne et al",2
"But AFSUN’s published data does not compare how dietary diversity correlates with food security measured by HFIAP, nor does it employ multivariate statistical models to assess demographic, socioeconomic, dwelling, and spatial predictors household-level food security",2
"To date, only one case study from Sub-Saharan Africa has compared proxy measures of household food security in the urban context",2
"However, the Ouagadougou study, like the AFSUN dataset, did not assess how demographic, socioeconomic, environmental, and spatial characteristics relate across these measures of household-level food security",2
In this study we employ three measures of household food security: HFIAS; HFIAP; and the food consumption score (FCS),2
The HFIAS was designed to produce a simple single statistical tool to monitor and evaluate food security that has been empirically validated for both population and individual level estimates of food security (Jones et al,2
"Adopted from a set of questions used to estimate prevalence of food insecurity in the United States, HFIAS produces a numeric score derived from nine subjective yes/no questions (Coates et al",2
"The subjective questions gauge respondents’ behaviors and attitudes related to household food security, including anxiety related to household food insecurity, perceptions of insufficient quality or variety of food, and reduction of food intake and subsequent physical consequences",2
It is important to highlight that HFIAS and HFIAP are used to measure access to food as a dimension of food security,2
"But they are not intended to assess the causes of food insecurity, understanding coping strategies, cultural appropriateness, or nutritional knowledge or uptake",2
"A threshold is applied to determine if a household’s food security situation based on consumption is poor (FCS of 0–21), borderline (FCS between 21.5–35), or acceptable (FCS greater than 35) food security",2
"Child undernutrition levels have decreased at the national level, though rural areas still have higher rates of stunting and wasting compared to urban areas",2
"2012) and the official poverty rate, determined by the consumption threshold of US$1.83 per day, is quite low at 2.2% in 2012/13",1
"The 2017 Accra Urban Food Security Survey, collected over a three-week period in July/August, surveyed 677 households in 9 long-established, low- and middle-income residential areas throughout Accra",2
Residential areas were chosen based on UN Habitat slum maps (UN-Habitat n.d.) and vernacular neighborhood maps that showcase finer-scale (census enumeration area) socioeconomic characteristics provided by San Diego State University (Weeks et al,11
"Four models were generated using 668 complete cases to assess how household demographic, socioeconomic, environmental, and spatial characteristics relate to the three household food security metrics, as well as how such predictors may vary across the three food security metrics",2
"Results from a marginal effects model indicate the probability of a household switching from a given HFIAP food security category given a change in predictor variable, holding all else held equal",2
We employed a slum index to characterize a wide-range of dwelling characteristics found in highly spatially heterogeneity low- and middle-income residential areas of Accra (see Weeks et al,11
"The slum index is calculated by summing the number slum indicators a household is lacking and dividing it by five, whereby households with high slum index scores exhibit more slum-like conditions based on the household UN slum definition",11
"Over the previous month, these households experienced anxiety related to food insecurity or were unable to access sufficient or preferred foods",2
"Thus, our results indicate prevalent but low frequency of anxiety and experiences related to food insecurity among low- and middle-income households in Accra",2
"There is greater variance in HFIAS scores among more food insecure HFIAP categories (c) Across all three food security metrics, we find high spatial heterogeneity (Fig. 4)",2
"While cluster analysis was not performed due to the spatially discontinuous sampling between residential areas, no clear spatial pattern is visually evident in the point maps of all three measures of household-level food security",2
"Overall, residential areas can be characterized as having a wide range of household-level food security outcomes across all three household-level food security metrics",2
Spatial distribution of food security measured by the HFIAP for all sampled households (a),2
Household food security measured by the HFIAS (b) and FCS (c) also exhibited spatial heterogeneity as evident from zoomed in areas around Nima residential area of Accra,2
"Household demographic composition plays an important role in determining food security outcomes measured by HFIAS and HFIAP (Table 2, Table 3)",2
The HFIAS logit model suggests that larger households tend to have a greater likelihood of food insecurity,2
"The slum index has no significant effect across all four models, nor does the sex of the household head",11
"The lack of a significant relationship between household demographics, household composition, and slum conditions with FCS suggests that household diet and food consumption is sufficient across all households no matter the composition or quality of housing",11
"While the highest educational attainment of any member within a household is not a significant predictor of FCS, higher education significantly increases household food security measured by HFIAS and HFIAP (Table 2, Table 3)",2
Households that have members who attended or completed tertiary education (23.3% of our sample) have a greater likelihood of being in the food secure HFIAP category,4
"This is especially evident between households with no adult members who received schooling and those households with members who have some tertiary education, with the greatest effect size among severely food insecure households with no education in the HFIAP ordered logit marginal probabilities model",4
"A greater household asset index increases the likelihood of a household being food secure based on HFIAS and HFIAP (Table 2, Table 3), suggesting that household wealth is associated with household food security",2
"Furthermore, household labor does not appear to play a role in determining the level of household food security",2
Both the labor type and the share of the household engaged in employment does not significantly affect food security across all four models,2
Higher total monthly food expenditures also are associated with a higher FCS and with improved food security outcomes based on HFIAP,2
"We reason that household wealth may be the underlying driver here, suggesting that some households have the luxury of time to travel to more distant locations and thus have better food security outcomes",2
"Finally, increased daily expenditures on prepared food purchased away from home from street food vendors, fast food outlets, or restaurants is significantly correlated with higher FCS, but also a greater likelihood of food insecurity based on HFIAS and HFIAP models",2
"The majority do, however, experience regular inability to access “sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life to access food to achieve”, per FAO’s definition of food security (FAO 2008)",2
"With 70% of our sample characterized by HFIAP as mildly to severely food insecure, it is clear that households regularly worry about having enough food and, at times, cannot access sufficient food to meet their needs",2
"By this measure, our results agree with the handful of similar case studies from cities in SSA that have also shown high levels of food insecurity among low-income residents measured with HFAIS and HFIAP (Frayne et al",2
We did not survey households in informal settlements and less than 5 % of sampled household heads had lived in Accra for fewer than five years,11
"As such, severity of food insecurity measured by HFIAP is likely higher among Accra’s newest and poorest residents",2
"Furthermore, the extreme spatial heterogeneity of household food security measured by all three indicators—FCS, HFIAS, and HFIAP—reveal that low- or middle-income residential areas have a broad underlying distribution of household-level food security outcomes (Fig",2
Interventions should account for the distribution of food security situations within low- and middle-income residential areas,2
"As sampled households primarily rely on purchased food to meet their needs—fewer than 3% of households source food from farming, gardening, or fishing—the ability to afford food ultimately underpins household-level food security in our sample",2
"And while our results do not reveal the exact mechanisms in which these variables directly lead to higher or lower levels of experiences related to food security, higher educational levels, in case studies from around the world (e.g",2
"Thus, vis-à-vis educational attainment, greater wealth increases a household’s economic access to food, decreases anxiety related to procuring food, and may increase resiliency should prices increase",2
"Due to the poor correlation and model agreement between the HFIAS/HFIAP and FCS, we echo recent calls to develop multifaceted metrics specifically designed to measure food security in the urban context of SSA (Battersby and Watson 2018; Haysom and Tawodzera 2018)",2
"Given the association between educational attainment and household wealth and HFIAS and HFAIP outcomes, our results indicate that the HFAIS and HFIAP do accurately capture, at least in part, household-level urban food insecurity related to ability access food",2
"Should food prices increase, all else being equal, these households’ food security situation will likely worsen",2
These metrics do not provide insights into how sourcing of food nor seasonality may play a role in decision making related to food security in cities,2
One possible approach would be to capture multiple metrics that cover different aspects of household food security—e.g,2
"dietary diversity, experiences, coping, and poverty—for each household and combine them into a single food security index, such as the World Food Program’s Consolidated Approach to Reporting Indicators of Food Security (WFP 2015)",2
"But even metrics designed to specifically measure household-level food security in urban areas may not shed light on the broader urban food system, including infrastructure challenges, travel, food safety, and market governance (Haysom and Tawodzera 2018)",2
Our results further buttress the need for a greater understanding of how the food security challenges of the urban growing poor will cascade into broader food systems and affect governance (Battersby 2012; Seto and Ramankutty 2016; Haysom and Tawodzera 2018),2
"In spite of the growing importance of ensuring urban food security, development organizations are advocating for approaches geared toward enhancing rural livelihoods through off-farm employment as a means to stem the influx of migrants to cities while, at the same time, improving local agricultural output and sustainability (FAO 2017)",2
This rural-centric focus neglects to fully account for the food security challenges of the growing urban poor (Battersby 2013),2
Local governments do have options to shore up household urban food security,2
"As our results suggest that household wealth correlates with higher levels of food security, local governments can also strengthen household food security directly by reducing the economic burden of procuring food",2
Both informal and formal governance arrangements of food retailing influence household food purchases and food security (Blekking et al,2
Our paper showcases that tracking SDGs 2 and 11 requires employing consistent and accurate tools to measure food security in urban areas,2
"Sustainable cities in SSA will depend on ensuring that the ever-expanding urban poor are food secure, at all times",11
"Reports of widespread hunger stemming from the ongoing economic crisis in Venezuela, a country that is 88.2% urban, highlight the potential dire consequence of not ensuring stable economic access to food for all urban dwellers (FSIN 2018; UN DESA 2018)",2
"If the future of Sub-Saharan Africa lies primarily within cities, then to feed the future, policy and research agendas that focus on ensuring urban food security must be pursued.",2
"In recent years, more and more countries see irrigation using reclaimed water as an opportunity to secure and enhance agricultural production",6
Effluents from urban wastewater treatment plants usually contain a wide range of organic chemicals,6
"Water is regarded as one of today’s “crisis resources”, especially in regions with increasing water scarcity [3]",6
The Water Strategy of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development [5] described increased reuse of treated wastewater as a goal to reduce water scarcity and its harmful impact on humans,6
"In 2012, the European Union identified the unused potential of water reuse as one response to the problems of water scarcity and drought [6]",6
Israel covers more than 50% of its agricultural water demand with reclaimed water [12],6
"In water-scarce countries and regions, the recycling of wastewater provides one opportunity to substitute limited freshwater resources with reclaimed water for purposes that do not require drinking water quality",6
"Since these patterns are becoming more likely with climate change, interest has grown in water reuse opportunities—and not only in arid countries",13
"With a market share of around 30%, agriculture is the most common application of reclaimed water [4]",6
"Water shortages in agriculture can have far-reaching effects on food security, nutrition, livelihoods, and other socioeconomic aspects, but a reliable water supply can help to alleviate these pressures and uncertainties",2
"In Australia, the introduction of water reuse has facilitated an increase in agricultural production, despite the limited availability of freshwater resources [8]",6
"In Tunisia, where wastewater reuse is a well-established practice, reclaimed water for agricultural purposes consists of about 20% of wastewater effluents, promoted by the state in order to save freshwater for the drinking water supply and to protect receiving waters [22, 23]",6
"Irrigation with reclaimed water may also have benefits in terms of providing nutrients to crops, thus potentially reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers in agriculture [18]",6
"However, ensuring a balance between adequate wastewater treatment and adapting nutrient loads in reclaimed water to specific crop requirements and their seasonal variations can be challenging",6
"Urban wastewater treatment eliminates many chemicals only to a limited extent, depending on the treatment conditions [27], but also on input loads, mobility, and resistance to degradation",6
"However, they may pass through conventional wastewater treatment procedures according to a continuous delivery with the influent and/or insufficient retention times in wastewater treatment plants",6
"In addition, known and unknown metabolites are produced during wastewater treatment due to the activity of various microorganisms present in sewage sludge [35, 37]",6
"By using treated wastewater for irrigating arable land, organic micro-contaminants are introduced into soils and are potentially transferred to the groundwater",15
"In this study, however, the quantities and concentrations of micro-contaminants in groundwater were much lower compared to those in the reclaimed water, indicating that degradation in soil takes place, but is incomplete in the case of some compounds",6
"If pathogens are not fully eliminated in conventional wastewater treatment plants, they can enter natural resources and food chains, with major potential effects on the health of humans and animals (e.g",6
While conventional wastewater treatment plants reduce E,6
"Wastewater treatment plants are also considered hot spots for the dissemination and formation of antibiotic resistance [57, 61, 62, 63] that may be spread by water reuse",6
"Findings about the potential uptake of antibiotic-resistant genes and bacteria by crops due to irrigation with reclaimed water are still largely inconclusive [44, 65]",6
"Different risk management approaches have been introduced with, e.g., the Australian Guidelines for Water Recycling [66, 67], the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) approach, or the WHO’s Water Safety and Sanitation Safety Planning [68, 69]",12
"Initially established for public health protection in the water reuse system and the food chain, appropriate multiple barriers can also contribute to reducing the risks of organic micro-contaminants",3
"In terms of irrigation, the effectiveness of natural attenuation depends on the load and type of contamination in reclaimed water [35, 38, 39] and the particular soil conditions [77]",6
"Exposure to humans and animals can be reduced by limiting accessibility to fields irrigated with reclaimed water, or by preventing direct contact between the edible part of the plant and the reclaimed water [18]",6
Additional measures would include adequate signage of fields irrigated with reclaimed water as well as of pipes transporting reclaimed water [17],6
"Due to issues concerning the quality of reclaimed water, crops for raw consumption or particularly sensitive areas (e.g., karst) could be excluded from water reuse for irrigation",6
"Piña et al. [65] argued against the use of reclaimed water for the irrigation of leafy vegetables, as these crops were found to show high uptake and bioaccumulation of micro-contaminants and high translocation potential [48, 65]",6
"In Tunisia for example, the use of reclaimed water in the irrigation of food crops is prohibited, while Cyprus has banned the irrigation of leafy vegetables and bulbs consumed raw with reclaimed water [19, 88]",6
"However, despite the high consumption of caffeine, its high degradability in the environment results in very low concentrations [83], and its complete removal during soil passage [35] makes it less suitable for monitoring groundwater effects at sites irrigated with reclaimed water",6
An example for the inclusion of monitoring requirements for micro-contaminants in water reuse can be found in California’s Recycled Water Policy,6
Recent recommendations of the Science Advisory Panel for constituents of emerging concern [86] resulted in an amendment to the Water Quality Control Policy for Recycled Water [87] with regard to the monitoring of CECs combining a priority list and the use of bioanalytical assays,6
The chemical quality of reclaimed water is a key issue in safe agricultural irrigation,6
"The monitoring of suitable indicator substances and quality control should be established for reclaimed water, e.g., using effect-based methods as well as for the environmental matrices (soil, groundwater) at the irrigated sites",6
"Any evaluation of micro-contaminant removal during soil passage should cover a series of aspects, from the quality of the reclaimed water to the end uses of the groundwater, as well as the compound’s intrinsic properties and the particular properties of the soil",6
Wastewater reuse can also be problematic in areas where appropriate and well-maintained urban wastewater treatment is not feasible,6
"Wastewater treatment techniques should be adapted to remove organic micro-contaminants from wastewater, in particular PBT and PMT chemicals",6
The selection of adequate wastewater treatment techniques should take into account the specific microbial and chemical composition of the wastewater,6
This paper assesses the convergence of the EU-28 countries toward their common goal of 20% in the renewable energy share indicator by year 2020,7
"Two clubs of convergence are detected in the former case, each corresponding to different renewable energy source targets",7
"A probit model is also fitted with the aim of better understanding the determinants of club membership, which seemingly include real GDP per capita, expenditure on environmental protection, energy dependence, and nuclear capacity, with all of them having statistically significant effects",15
"The European Union (EU) has emphasized the crucial role of renewable energy sources (RES) in order to achieve the five dimensions of the Energy Union, namely security of energy supply (reducing dependence on fossil fuels and imported energy), market integration (by participating in markets on an equal footing with other energy sources), energy efficiency (reducing primary energy consumption and improving the energy performance of buildings), decarbonization (by reducing greenhouse emissions), and innovation (prioritizing research to further drive the energy transition)",7
"The progress in RES technologies also has a strong potential to boost Europe’s employment and economy, improve its air quality and industrial competitiveness (by reducing energy costs), and contribute to international development (by improving access of developing countries to affordable and clean energy sources)",7
"The European Union has been one of the pioneers in the field of generation of renewable energy, with a 12% RES target by 2010 declared as early as in year 1997",7
"Directive 2009/28/EC on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources (Renewable Energy Directive I, RED I) has been a central element in the EU’s energy policy, setting up an overall binding EU targetFootnote 1 of 20% RES in gross final energy consumption by 2020, in addition to binding national targets ranging between 10% (Malta) and 49% (Sweden) that reflect the various circumstances—e.g., differences in renewable energy potential and economic performance—and starting points in each country",7
The same Directive also requires the Member States to develop national action plans (so-called National Renewable Energy Action Plans—NREAPs) to stablish a roadmap for the development of RES and the creation of cooperation mechanisms between states to achieve the target in accordance with the cost-effectiveness principle,7
"Along the same line, the EU Directive 2018/2001 on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources (RED II) established a framework for meeting a binding EU target of at least 32% renewable energy in gross final energy consumption by 2030",7
"The role of renewable energies is also emphasized in the Energy System Integration Strategy (European Commission 2020a), and more recently in the context of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (European Commission 2020b), where clean and renewable energy sources will play an important part in the recovery plans in the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis",7
"Cohesion policy instruments—more specifically, the European Regional Development and Cohesion Funds—are the most important funding sources within the EU spending programs to promote renewable energy, with investments in sustainable energy (including energy efficiency, renewable energy, smart energy infrastructures, and low-carbon research and innovation) totaling around €30 billion",7
"The interest in convergence is also motivated by the global mitigation efforts of both governments and international organizations to stop climate change and global warming, which has become one of the main challenges for this century",13
"Many previous studies have addressed convergence analysis for various environmental magnitudes, most of them focusing on issues like carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions, ecological footprint, or energy productivity and consumption",7
This paper has as its distinctive features that convergence is analyzed from the standpoint of renewables (which have been less frequently studied in convergence studies and are a key factor to reduce emissions and bring the EU closer to its neutrality goal) and that the study is conducted at the EU level,13
"More precisely, this paper focuses on analyzing the potential presence of clubs of convergence in the RES share indicator (defined as the share of renewable energy in gross final energy consumption)",7
(v) Energy productivity: This indicator has been extensively analyzed,7
A thorough review of the literature on energy productivity convergence appears in Bhattacharya et al,7
(vi) Energy consumption: Ivanovski et al,7
(2018) analyzed convergence in per capita energy consumption at the sectoral level (with nine sectors being considered) across Australian regions,7
"Some recent papers have specifically focused on convergence in renewable energy consumption, among others, Reboredo (2015), Solarin et al",7
"2020) applies a system generalized method of moments methodology to the EU-14 group of countries, analyzing the contribution of renewable energy sources to primary energy consumption and finding evidence of both absolute and conditional convergence",7
"Kasman and Kasman (2020) also address convergence in per capita renewable energy consumption across EU-15 Member States, from both the stochastic convergence and the club convergence standpoints, detecting the presence of three clubs plus a divergent country (Denmark)",7
(2020) conclude that there exists a relationship between conventional and renewable per capita energy consumption convergence,7
"In addition to the overall RES share indicator, Eurostat also publishes the share of renewable energy disaggregated by the following three sectors:
 Transport (RES-T share), computed as “energy from renewable sources consumed in transport divided by the total amount of energy consumed in transport”Footnote 6 Heating and cooling (RES-H&C share), defined as “gross final consumption of energy from renewable sources for heating and cooling divided by gross final consumption of energy for heating and cooling” Electricity (RES-E share), which is calculated as “gross final consumption of electricity from renewable sources divided by gross final consumption of electricity” Our study focuses on the 2004–2018 period, with the raw series (instead of their logarithms)Footnote 7 being employed for the convergence analysis",7
"According to the RES share indicator, the use of renewable energy has been increasing continuously in the EU along the 2004–2018 period, with its share more than doubling since 2004, when renewables covered only 8.5% of gross final energy consumption",7
"Disaggregated by Member States, wide variations are observed in 2018 in the shares of renewable energy on final energy consumption: Sweden led with 54.7%, followed by Finland and Latvia with shares slightly above 40%; in the other end, we find Malta and the Netherlands, with shares below 8%",7
"When compared with their respective targets, twelve countries exhibit renewable energy shares above their 2020 targets, and eleven met or exceeded their RED I average indicative trajectory for 2017–2018, with the exceptions being France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, and Slovenia",7
The share of renewables increased in the three application areas,7
"In year 2018, overall for the EU, the share of renewables was highest in electricity generation (32%), followed by heating and cooling (20%) and transport (only 8%)",7
"However, in terms of consumption of renewable energy, heating and cooling was the biggest contributor in that year, followed by electricity and transport",7
"When the logt convergence test is applied (see Table 1, panel B), the null of convergence is not rejected, suggesting that the renewable energy efforts of the UE members are at least converging to their respective national targets as assigned by the UE Directive 2009/28/EC, although possibly not to a single fixed steady state",7
"Their values are averages for each country over the 2009–2018 period (a shorter range had to be considered in some cases due to limitations in data availability).
 Real GDP per capita (GDPCAP) is usually considered in literature as a relevant, positive indicator of renewable energy diffusion",7
"2018) have detected, for several geographical contexts and employing various methodologies, statistically significant evidence of a direct relationship between income (e.g., real GDP per capita) and renewable energy use (either per capita or in terms of its share in overall energy consumption)",7
The ratio of national expenditure on environmental protection to nominal GDP (ENVEXPGDP) tries to summarize the relative environmental effort carried out by each country along the study period,15
"Some studies (e.g., Marques and Fuinhas 2012) report a statistically significant, inverse relationship between energy import dependence and renewable energy consumption",7
"The inclusion of nuclear enrichment capacity (NUCLENRCAP) obeys a somewhat different rationale, as nuclear appears as a relevant energy source in several countries that might be employing it as a complementary tool to reduce carbon emissions",13
"Since 2004, the share of renewables in transport has increased fivefold, up from only 1.4%",7
"Around 20% of heating and cooling is generated from renewable energy (with solid biomass being the main source, followed by heat pumps, biogas, and solar thermal collectors), which has a crucial role and an enormous potential in the EU’s energy and climate policies",7
"Indeed, it is projected that about 40% of the 32% target share of renewable energy by 2030 will come from the H&C sectors",7
"The rest of the EU countries are classified in club 3, with their transition paths far away from 1.
 Transition paths in RES-HC The electricity sector has experienced a take-off in renewables in recent years, pushed up by a sharp growth in both solar photovoltaics and wind (fostered by the decline of electricity costs from these two sources) and a significant contribution of hydropower generation, with the result that RES-E more than doubled",7
This was the smallest contributor in year 2018 (in terms of consumption of renewable energy) and remains the only sector whose share of renewables is below the target defined by the Member States in their NREAPs,7
"In this regard, the EU has decided to minimize the use of food and feed-crop-based biofuels (a 7% cap on the portion of biofuels made from crops has been proposed, in order to avoid deforestation and stress on land resources) and to focus in the future on promoting advanced biofuels and other low-carbon fuels, such as renewable electricity, recycled carbon fuels, and renewable liquid and gaseous transport fuels of non-biological origin",15
"Regarding this, the probit analysis that complements the study may provide some helpful guidelines on those policies, as it suggests that club membership might be explained by a simple model including variables like real GDP per capita (having a U-shaped effect), relative economic effort in environmental protection, dependency on energy imports, and nuclear capacity",15
"In the case of nuclear capacity, this might be in accordance with the possibility that some countries may be taking advantage of that energy source as a help to reduce GHG emissions",13
"Overall, the results of probit modeling may suggest that policies should be oriented to increasing the efforts in environmental protection and reducing dependency",15
Consumers are increasingly conscious on the need for climate action and the environmental effects of their personal economic choices,13
"Results indicate that only electricity would exhibit convergence, possibly as a consequence of the vigorous growth in solar photovoltaics and wind (as a result of the drop in electricity costs from these two sources), supplemented by hydropower generation",7
"Certainly, several plans like the European Strategy for Low-Emission Mobility (which strongly focuses on road transport), the Seventh Environment Action Programme, the EU plans on Accelerating Clean Energy Innovation (which set up among their overarching goals positioning Europe as the global leader in renewables), and the European Green Deal constitute relevant milestones on the way to increasing use of renewables in the transport subsector, although these efforts must be sustained in the future",7
"Certainly, achieving technological leadership is central for the clean energy sector, but a permanent effort is also required to achieve competitive advantages in many areas, like batteries",7
"A favorable side effect of this exceptional situation has been that the renewable energy shares projected for year 2020 have generally risen, although some caution is required when interpreting those advances as it remains possible that some of those increases are temporary and may eventually be reduced as economic activity reverts to previous levels",7
Coordinating and implementing ecosystem restoration projects can be challenging when the professions involved have differing perceptions of ecological restoration and implementation in practice,15
"To overcome these barriers in complex restoration projects, we suggest analysing ecosystem restoration as a boundary object, a concept drawn from the field of science and technology studies",15
"Over the last decade, ecosystem restoration has been acknowledged in global and regional policy, and in science as a crucial activity to reverse the amount of degraded land and to ensure the continued provision of ecosystem services (e.g., Benayas et al",15
"Ecosystem restoration is not an obvious activity in terms of objectives, targets, or tools (Jørgensen 2015)",15
This study introduces the concept of boundary objects (Star and Griesemer 1989; Star 2010) to analyse the interface between science and policy as demonstrated in a large-scale landscape restoration project,15
"If we perceive ecosystem restoration as a boundary object, the different positions involved in a restoration project, such as restoration ecologists, technical engineers, contract entrepreneurs, bureaucrats and stakeholders in the local communities, need to be coordinated",15
"As a boundary object, ecosystem restoration planning and implementation should be “both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites",15
"Within this frame, ecosystem restoration fits with how other concepts, such as “stewardship” (Enqvist et al",15
Restoration ecologists might think their training as scientists gives them the “objective knowledge” best suited to decide what ecosystem restoration should entail,15
"Ecosystem restoration could play a similar role as a coordinating boundary object in a project, depending on the communicative and coordinating “power” of ecosystem restoration to enable this",15
"These theoretical perspectives offer analytical tools in assessing how different people perceive the goal of specific restoration projects and contribute to understanding of how people in different positions perceive ecosystem restoration in general, and in specific restoration projects, in as much as scientists, bureaucrats, and the public might have different views of what the end results of restoration should be (Casagrande 1997)",15
"Due its high natural and cultural values, the military area was surrounded by protected areas, into which the restoration would be incorporated",15
"The area is surrounded by nature-protected areas (dark green), and after restoration the majority of the military area is included in the expanded protected areas The Hjerkinn project gives us a case study with which we can illustrate the use of boundary objects in restoration",15
"Concurrent with the restoration project, the local municipalities developed a land-use plan that focused on local economic development under future management (Dovre Municipality 2012)",8
"The county governor of Oppland created a plan for environmental protection of the area, in accordance with the Parliament’s decision",15
"In a formal legal procedure, the Norwegian Government established a national park and a special landscape protection area in large parts of the previous military area in April 2018 (Royal Decree 2018)",15
"Interviews were conducted using a five-section interview guide: (1) presentation of the purpose of the interview, (2) background information of the informants, (3) the informant’s views on nature, (4) the informant’s views on and knowledge of ecosystem restoration, and (5) the informant’s role and participation in the restoration at Hjerkinn",15
"In our view, the idea of restoring nature at Hjerkinn seems to be a core element in the boundary object of “ecosystem restoration”, while we have identified differences in the perception of “nature” in this specific case",15
The positive perception of roads by some of the informants was mainly based on the perceived need for future use rather than cultural heritage,11
"The informants from nature and cultural heritage management were in the middle, because they may have legal authority to directly interfere in the process, but at the same time they are on the administrative fringe of the restoration project",11
"Ecosystem restoration as a boundary object has both a conceptual core, and related physical and organizational aspects",15
"This study used the concept of boundary objects to analyse ecosystem restoration in a specific case at Hjerkinn, in the Dovre Mountains in Norway",15
"A new dietary culture which endorses plant-based foods is required for the Anthropocene to arrest existential threats related to climate change, the use of land and other resources, and help shift Australians’ preferences away from high meat consumption",13
"This will contribute to better nutrition, food security and achievement of global sustainable development goals",2
"Whilst there is ample scientific evidence about the need to cut meat consumption in order to restore and maintain the health of the planet’s ecological systems, arrest land conversion for raising and feeding livestock and prevent further biodiversity loss, many policy makers and the broader public are finding it difficult to acknowledge the necessity to change people’s diets",15
"At the start of 2014, The Lancet – the world’s most prestigious medical journal, published a manifesto for planetary health [8] which was signed by 7390 scientists across the globe predominantly from the fields of medicine, public health, health care, ecology and environmental science",3
drew attention to the limits of the planet and the threats the constant pursuit of economic growth poses [16],8
Sustainable Development Goal 2 “No Hunger” directly relates to food security and elimination of malnutrition,2
"They relate to inefficiency in the allocation of resources between countries and across time as well as to contingencies, calamities, unintended consequences and unforeseen events, such as droughts, floods, contaminations, invasive species and diseases",15
"The 2018 country profile of Australia shows poor levels of performance for many sustainability indicators, including SDG 2 because of high prevalence of obesity and unsatisfactory management of nitrogen related to agricultural practices [21]",2
"The authors also conclude that the animal-based proteins are associate with significantly higher greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at the production stage than plant-based proteins because: (1) emissions from feed production generally exceed those of vegetable protein farming; (2) deforestation for agriculture is dominated by feed for livestock; (3) animals create additional emissions due to enteric fermentation, manure and aquaculture ponds; (4) slaughterhouses and emissions from processing further contribute through effluents; and (5) wastage is high for fresh animal products which easily spoil [27]",15
"Meat is also a major cause for biodiversity loss, increased rates of non-communicable diseases, including obesity and diabetes [29], as well as phosphorus depletion putting at risk future plant-based food production [30]",3
"According to Poore and Nemecek [27], such a shift will free up 76% of food’s land use, including 19% reduction in arable land, drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 49% and have many other planetary benefits",15
A weakness of the Font-i-Furnols and Gerrerro’s model [34] is that it does not explicitly identify considerations about the natural environment and climate change as contributing to consumers’ food choices,13
"This is not surprising given the fact that despite abundant scientific evidence (a detailed overview is presented in [35]), only recently has food been recognised as a significant contributor to climate change and as having multiple and multifaceted negative ecological impacts",13
"The IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1 .5°C above pre-industrial levels includes four illustrative pathways for mitigating GHG emissions, all of which explicitly separate agriculture, forestry and other land use from fossil fuels and industry [36]",15
"The first two pathways towards no or low overshoot above the 1 .5°C goal include technological innovation to reduce CO2 without relying on carbon capture and storage but require significant reduction in agriculture-related methane emissions, namely respectively by 24 and 48%, compared to 2010",8
"Given the increasing levels of obesity and non-communicable diseases in Australia, consumers need to be specifically aware about the health implications from high levels of meat intake",3
It is surprising that five years after the publishing of the new guidelines there is still very little awareness of the risks to human health associated with regular meat consumption,3
"Again, interventions that improve population knowledge are required and the sooner this happens, the les burden will be expected for the health system",3
"With Australia being the top meat consumer in the world, this will mean that the country’s environmental impact is going to increase even further and in addition, there will be more burden on its health system",3
"Concern about resource depletion, including water and land use, deforestation and depletion of phosphorus, received the highest weighting followed by pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions, water and soil contamination",15
"Food security and direct waste generation by the livestock received less weighting but overall, 81% of the participants associated the livestock industry with some serious environmental concerns on a global scale",2
"Although state actors are generally responsible for governing a public issue such as CCA and DRR integration, the reform of top-down governing modes in neoliberal societies has enlarged the range of potential actors to include non state actors from economic and social communities",11
"To achieve this goal, the article investigates the set of actors and their bridging arrangements that create and shape governance in CCA and DRR integration",11
Scholars may adopt the framework as a roadmap with which to corroborate the existence of a theoretical and empirical body of knowledge on governance of CCA and DRR integration,11
"Worldwide, climate change intensifies some of the hazards affecting social systems and weakens resilience in facing uncertainty and disasters (O’Brien et al",13
"Climate change is just one factor influencing certain hazards; it can contribute to disasters where vulnerability and exposure exist, but it is not necessarily the most prominent",13
"Nonclimatic factors such as globalization, earthquakes, injustice, lack of livelihood opportunities, overexploitation of resources, and epidemics converge to mostly affect people with limited access to resources for dealing with climate change-related challenges",13
"Awareness is required about the connection of climate change with other global issues (IPCC 2012, 2014; Birkmann and Mechler 2015; Kelman et al",13
"Two milestone reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Managing the Risk of Extreme Events to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (IPCC 2012) and the contribution of Working Group II to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (IPCC 2014) urge a risk perspective for assessing the different climate change-related threats (Birkmann and Mechler 2015)",13
"556), while DRR is “a policy goal or objective, and the strategic and instrumental measures employed for anticipating future disaster risk, reducing existing exposure, hazard, or vulnerability, and improving resilience” (IPCC 2012, p",11
"Both CCA and DRR aim: (1) to manage hydrometeorological hazards through vulnerability and exposure reduction, resilience increase, and risk transfer and sharing (IPCC 2012); (2) to reduce the impacts of climate-related disasters and associated risks; and (3) to promote proactive, holistic, and long-term approaches to disaster management (Thomalla et al",11
"However, CCA and DRR originated and are maintained in different communities of research and practice, use different approaches and conceptual frameworks, and tend to be planned, implemented, and funded by different government agencies and organizations (Birkmann and von Teichman 2010; Djalante and Thomalla 2012)",11
These differences create a “silo” mentality of separated and isolated paths among CCA and DRR communities (Gero et al,11
Attention is significantly increasing about the need for a coherent integration of CCA and DRR (Begum et al,11
"Accordingly, CCA is the aspect to be integrated into the core DRR operation",11
"CCA and DRR integration could provide benefits at all scales, minimize overlap and duplication of projects and programs (Nalau et al",11
"2015), and move beyond vulnerability and resilience towards a vision of DRR that ends separation between the two issues and promotes working together towards simultaneous and common goals (Kelman et al",11
International organizations have made efforts to promote CCA and DRR integration,11
"Recent IPCC’s reports (IPCC 2012, 2014) present current guidelines for CCA and DRR integration",11
"Three important policy processes for CCA and DRR integration culminate in 2015, so it may be a milestone year (Mysiak et al",11
"In March, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (SFDRR) updated the HFA and established a voluntary pathway for future DRR strategies (UNISDR 2015)",11
"Identifying priorities in SFDRR would have represented a significant step toward an effective DRR implementation, as well as an achievement for the implementation of other important policy appointments such as the sustainable development goals (SDG) and the new greenhouses gas (GHG) targets (Briceño 2015)",11
"Unfortunately, because the SFDRR positioned multihazard disaster risk management under a regime of responsibilities that is common to yet differentiated from those of climate organizations (such as UNFCCC), it continues to separate CCA and DRR communities, processes, and targets (Mysiak et al",11
The SFDRR also does not explain how to establish and maintain in practice cross-sectoral coherence and coordination between CCA and DRR (Kelman 2015),11
"To investigate CCA and DRR integration, governance has recently been considered as a major framework, although it still represents a confounding topic in the CCA and DRR literature (Gero et al",11
"This article contributes to this current body of knowledge: it reviews the field’s literature, highlights main actors and bridging arrangements, and provides a comprehensive picture of governance in CCA and DRR integration",11
Section 3 reviews the literature and retrieves the main actors and arrangements of governance in CCA and DRR integration,11
Section 4 summarizes the results of the review into a conceptual framework for governance in CCA and DRR integration and provides a discussion about limitations and opportunities,11
This section reviews literature about governance in CCA and DRR integration in order to highlight the main actors and related bridging arrangements that create and shape governance,11
"In CCA and DRR integration, state actors use their portfolio of assets and liabilities with which to manage legislation, resource allocation, planning and implementation, as well as goods and services provision, income redistribution, and economy stabilization in order to ensure the well-being and safety of citizens (IPCC 2012)",11
"However, climate change may put these functions at risk",13
Collaboration among multiple levels of government increases the effectiveness of CCA and DRR integration (Begum et al,11
"For example, in Australia the current architecture of the federal system provides limited space for tackling complex issues such as climate change and risks",13
"The National Climate Change Adaptation Framework (2007) was designed to support collaboration between federal, state, and local governments",13
"In Fiji, political tensions make governance a contested topic with considerable impact on CCA and DRR outcomes (Gero et al",11
"For example, the formal state and the traditional structures follow parallel paths, which limits collaboration and coordination in implementing CCA and DRR activities (Becker 2012)",11
Collaboration is also necessary among specific CCA and DRR organizations if common goals are to be targeted simultaneously (Birkmann and von Teichman 2010),11
"For example, in the Southern African Development Community region, limited collaboration among parallel CCA and DRR organizations caused the dispersion of CCA and DRR activities and a problematic resource allocation (Becker et al",11
"Similarly, in Indonesia, a reorientation of national government ministries and mandates is required due to major inconsistencies in CCA and DRR structures (Djalante and Thomalla 2012)",11
"Strategies, policies, and plans are among the principal ways the state promotes CCA and DRR",11
"However, strategies, policies, and plans should avoid separation and target common goals to increase effectiveness against climate- and climate change-related hazards (Porfiriev 2015)",13
"However, linking these strategies or plans to DRR needs to be improved",11
"Many of the least developing countries (LDCs) identified DRR as an urgent problem, but just 24 of 38 LDCs that submitted NAPAs to the UNFCCC have called for immediate action in DRR; only seven of the 24 have requested funding for capacity building and preparedness measures (Birkmann and Pardoe 2014)",11
"National sectorial strategies, policies, and plans have to include CCA and DRR in their goals (UNISDR 2009)",11
The Headline Climate Change Adaptation Strategy of Durban has addressed specific climate change-related vulnerabilities for several urban sectors by promoting the involvement of local communities in risk and vulnerability mapping (Dodman and Satterthwaite 2008; van Niekerk 2015),13
"In West Africa, projects for improving water and health management have established collaborative policies among climate change, water resources, and health management efforts that target adaptive strategies and cope with drought and flood risk (Cissé 2013)",13
Also CCA and DRR policies are important to improvement of the whole body of national policies,11
(2014) claim that the efforts towards a national policy structure in Timor-Leste would greatly benefit from establishing policies that target DRR by including CCA,11
Scientific organizations are necessary in CCA and DRR integration (IPCC 2012),11
"They support policies, research, and actions related to climate change and disasters, build cooperative networks with and among actors, and translate scientific evidence for a wider range of users (Thomalla et al",13
"Some market actors admit an increase in the intensity and frequency of climatic hazards, believing that climate change is real and has an anthropogenic component (for example, GHG)",13
However many people who deny the reality of climate change consider any climate variation to be part of natural climate cycles unlinked to human activities or the burning of fossil fuels (Johnson 2015),13
"The damage caused by climate change can be direct, such as damage to and loss of personnel, assets, and infrastructure, or indirect, such as access problems, disruption of supplies and labor, and changes in markets",13
"According to the IPCC (IPCC 2012), some of the most common self-regulation mechanisms in CCA and DRR integration are the various models employed in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the risk insurance mechanisms often found in the businesses model approach (BMA)",11
"For governance in CCA and DRR integration, the main types of CSR anticipated are: Philanthropic: donations and grants to organizations, groups, or beneficiaries working in CCA and DRR; Contractual: legal obligations entered into with other organizations or groups to carry out work for public benefit; sponsorship of other organizations or groups; Adversarial: responses to lobbying and public statements about the human and environmental impact of business activities undertaken to protect reputation and profitability; and Unilateral: noncommercial actions undertaken by business independently of other actors (Twigg 2001)",11
"For market actors, solving climate- and climate change-related problems is a desirable by-product not an inherent purpose (Twigg 2001)",13
Risk insurance mechanisms such as the BMA represent a climate-related risk transfer through which market actors pursue the alignment of CCA and DRR integration with operational and strategic goals (IPCC 2012),11
Risk insurance mechanisms estimate and price climate change-related risks with a good potential for absorbing the financial burden of disasters,13
"2009), and the Caribbean (Lashley and Warner 2013), a micro-insurance system has been provided for the financial coverage of climate-related risks that impact low-income households and small farmers",2
"The municipality facilitated the collection of payments, while the insurance company covered any disaster damage to each property according to its rateable value (GDCRR 2011)",11
"Climate change poses risks to resources, livelihood, and human settlements, and forces social actors to adapt to conditions of limited resources, identify problems and potential solutions collectively, and join in common actions (Allen 2006; Rojas Blanco 2006)",13
CBIs are nonstructural measures enacted by local communities to reach collective goals of CCA and DRR (Allen 2006; Rojas Blanco 2006),11
"For governance in CCA and DRR integration, CBIs provide opportunities for individuals and communities to gain practical problem-solving skills, strengthen social capital, target local scale issues, exploit local resources, increase community participation, and recognize context-specific factors that merit attention (Rojas Blanco 2006)",11
"In the Philippines, CBIs such as Community-Based Disaster Preparedness (CBDP) have been instrumental in formulating local CCA strategies, which also became linked to wider local development issues (Allen 2006)",11
"When connected to DRR, social innovation such as community-based adaptation experiences (Satterthwaite 2011) or initiatives that encourage low-carbon economy transition as developed in UK (Seyfang and Haxeltine 2012) might represent fruitful examples of CBIs pursuing adaptive goals",11
But the capacities of women in managing climate change-related risks and hazards are increasingly acknowledged worldwide,13
"In Honduras, Garifuna women led and organized community-based activities for the repair of houses, businesses, and public buildings after the Hurricane Mitch (1998), and targeted DRR and livelihood opportunities at the same time (IPCC 2012)",11
(2010) report the empowerment of women into community-based projects of CCA and DRR integration in Samoa,11
The natural hazards and disaster risk literature considers children and youth as vulnerable to climate change and related disasters (Mitchell and Borchard 2014; Cumiskey et al,13
Their agency remains significantly underestimated in DRR and often play a limited role in governance issues,11
"Their involvement led to positive social results useful for DRR, and diminished tensions and gang violence between neighborhoods (Pelling 2011)",11
Changes in extreme events and in climate change-related impacts influence directly or indirectly the disability status of individuals and communities,13
But continued efforts are still necessary for the empowerment of people with disabilities in CCA and DRR integration,11
Indigenous groups are vulnerable to climate change due to their location in areas at risk and their dependence on primary production and natural resources (IPCC 2012),13
Findings from Mercer’s 2010 fieldwork among indigenous communities in Papua New Guinea challenge the practical need for CCA and DRR integration among indigenous groups,11
She argues that these groups perceive climate change as just one of the underlying vulnerability factors that contribute to the increased impact of environmental hazards,13
"Indigenous knowledge provides valuable information about local climate change-related risks, for example in Vanuatu (Walshe and Nunn 2012), southern East Asia (Hiwasaki et al",13
Understanding indigenous knowledge makes it possible to identify traditional livelihood practices that potentially lead to climate change-related risks and hazards,13
"Rather than target CCA or DRR, indigenous groups identify the community’s needs, such as land use challenges and improvements, which automatically and simultaneously support CCA and DRR strategies (Kelman et al",11
Mercer (2010) questioned whether CCA and DRR integration just reinvents the wheel and whether the line dividing CCA and DRR is more theoretical than practical,11
This example offers a different perspective on the practical need of CCA and DRR integration,11
It also confirms that CCA and DRR strategies cannot be separated from their wider contextual issues,11
This initiative successfully coped with existing climate fluctuations and reduced climate change-related risks,13
Nongovernmental organizations are important actors in CCA and DRR integration (IPCC 2012),11
"In CCA and DRR integration, NGOs carry out fundraising for risk-sensitization campaigns, provide legal assistance, engage in alliance building and advocacy work, present requests by local communities to their government’s officials, and facilitate interaction with market actors (Dodman and Satterthwaite 2008)",11
The previous contents have considered main actors intervening in governance of CCA and DRR integration,11
"In CCA and DRR integration, PPPs have recently emerged due to a better understanding of increasing hazard vulnerabilities for market assets (Johannessen et al",11
"Meanwhile, risk insurance companies provide incentives for climate-related DRR in the public sector through programs that raise awareness and promote risk education, encourage pricing risk, create insurance programs, and directly finance DRR (Warner et al",11
"For example, in Africa, any tenders assigned by governments to the private sector for a quick response to climate-related risk challenges are fraught with political interference and corruption, and run the risk of resulting in jobs of questionable quality and limited local benefit (van Niekerk et al",16
Market actors have provided examples of PSPs for CCA and DRR integration,11
"Figure 1 summarizes findings from our literature review, and presents a conceptual governance framework for CCA and DRR integration",11
Length constraints did not allow including all the actors and arrangements potentially or actually involved in governance of CCA and DRR integration,11
A conceptual governance framework for CCA and DRR integration,11
The authors are aware that governance in CCA and DRR integration has a complex and porous nature,11
"Therefore, while the involvement of nonstate actors can lead to significant successful opportunities in governance of CCA and DRR integration, monitoring arbitrary and ambiguous exercises, potentially occurring and supporting influential positions, is necessary",11
The article discusses and conceptualizes CCA and DRR integration through a governance lens,11
"Governance in CCA and DRR integration is a varied and complex issue that involves a set of state, market, and social actors, and bridging arrangements such as PPPs, PSPs, and CM",11
Scholars may adopt the framework as a roadmap with which to corroborate the existence of a theoretical and empirical body of knowledge on governance of CCA and DRR integration,11
"According to the aforementioned contents, future comprehensive analysis of governance of CCA and DRR integration should continue to investigate actors and bridging arrangements, in both theoretical and empirical ways",11
"Eventually, answers to these questions would allow refining and improving the conceptual governance framework, and providing a more holistic picture of CCA and DRR integration.",11
The UNISDR Science and Technology Conference on the Implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 aimed to discuss and endorse plans that maximize science’s contribution to reducing disaster risks and losses in the coming 15 years and bring together the diversity of stakeholders producing and using disaster risk reduction (DRR) science and technology,11
This article describes the evolution of the role of science and technology in the policy process building up to the Sendai Framework adoption that resulted in an unprecedented emphasis on science in the text agreed on by 187 United Nations member states in March 2015 and endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly in June 2015,11
"The conference emphasized how partnerships and networks can advance multidisciplinary research and bring together science, policy, and practice; how disaster risk is understood, and how risks are assessed and early warning systems are designed; what data, standards, and innovative practices would be needed to measure and report on risk reduction; what research and capacity gaps exist and how difficulties in creating and using science for effective DRR can be overcome",11
The Science and Technology Conference achieved two main outcomes: (1) initiating the UNISDR Science and Technology Partnership for the implementation of the Sendai Framework; and (2) generating discussion and agreement regarding the content and endorsement process of the UNISDR Science and Technology Road Map to 2030,11
"The Sendai Framework includes unprecedented emphasis on the role of science in understanding and delivering risk reduction and is the result of a unique opening in the policy space bringing political will, the imperative for change, and the availability of scientific input together (UNISDR 2016i)",11
A turning point in the history of disaster risk reduction (DRR) was the intergovernmental commitment through the United Nations to foster disaster risk management (DRM) during the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (1990–1999),11
"At the first World Conference on Natural Disaster Reduction in 1994 the Yokohama Strategy and Plan of Action for a Safer World: Guidelines for Natural Disaster Prevention, Preparedness and Mitigation was adopted.Footnote 1,Footnote 2
 A number of disasters, including Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, galvanized the international community to take action on disasters in a more comprehensive manner that included preparedness and recovery, broadening disaster management beyond response",11
"Recognizing the importance of scientific and technical input for DRR policy and practice, the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) established a Scientific and Technical Committee in 2008 and issued in 2009 the first biannual Global Assessment Report (GAR)",11
"The Mid-Term Review concluded that the implementation of the Hyogo Framework over the first 5 years had generated significant international and national political momentum and action for DRR and highlighted where further work was necessary to achieve the expected outcome of “substantial reduction of disaster losses, in the lives and in the social, economic and environmental assets of communities and countries” (UNISDR 2011, p",11
"In the subsequent five-year period, there was increasing linkage with other policy areas including development, health, and climate change through the Global Platforms in 2011 and 2013 (WHO 2013)",13
"At the 2013 Global Platform, the wider importance of investment in DRR was demonstrated through an experimental simulation of long term macroeconomic impacts designed by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)",11
The exercise was featured in the 2013 Global Assessment Report and helped to demonstrate the link between DRR and development issues such as the SDGs (UNISDR 2013),11
"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in which UNISDR participated, through collaboration of their natural and social science working groups (I and II), generated the Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (IPCC SREX) (IPCC 2012)",13
"In the course of various national, regional, and international DRR meetings, the call for a stronger science element in DRR policy also received support through the Major Group on Science and Technology, organized by the International Council for Science (ICSU), and included many of the major science institutions of the world",11
"Synthesized some of the major challenges emerging at this time, supporting the need for additional science and technology input in the Sendai Framework",11
"Other fora where “science-met-policy” allowing the scientific community, including STAG, to voice the science and technology input and contribute to shaping DRR policy included (Aitsi-Selmi et al",11
"The Preparatory Committees for the post-2015 DRR Framework, open to governments and stakeholders (scientists, the private sector, civil society, intergovernmental organizations, and UN agencies), facilitated formal member state negotiations on the Sendai Framework",11
"Technical meetings such as the 2015 Tokyo Conference (outlined below) and thematic debates at the Global and Regional Platforms for DRR such as on the role of women and children in DRR, the health imperative for safer and resilient communities, and applying science and technology to policy and practice in DRR",11
"By the time the development of the successor to the Hyogo Framework was initiated, the need to widen the remit of DRR to activities beyond response to disasters had been identified",11
2010; HSI 2011) as well as the need for stronger cross-linking to other policy agendas such as climate change and sustainable development (Schipper and Pelling 2006),13
"The need for a more integrative DRR process that incorporates bottom-up and top-down actions, local scientific and technical knowledge, and a vast array of stakeholders was also clear (Gaillard and Mercer 2012)",11
"The conference delivered the results in the form of the Tokyo Statement and Tokyo Action Agenda to raise global awareness on the issue of DRR, and built recognition of and foundation for the contribution of science and technology that was eventually incorporated in the Sendai Framework",11
"UN member states recognized that a stronger dialogue and collaboration of policymakers, practitioners, and the science and technology community from all geographical regions, all disciplines, and all local, national, regional, and international levels will support better DRR by identifying knowledge gaps, co-designing and co-producing knowledge, and making science more readily available and accessible to support DRR decision making on the ground",11
"The Sendai Framework calls for better alignment of science and policy, ensuring DRR knowledge is “leveraged for the purpose of pre-disaster risk assessment, for prevention and mitigation and for the development and implementation of appropriate preparedness and effective response to disasters” (UNISDR 2015b, Paragraph 23)",11
"The Sendai Framework’s numerous references to science call for a stronger understanding of disaster risks and root causes, access to reliable data at the scales where action needs to be taken, development of risk assessments and maps, including at local levels, long-term multi-hazard and solution-oriented research, strengthening scientific capacity to assess risks (including vulnerability and exposure), and interpreting and using risk information, as well as cooperation between scientists, policymakers, and stakeholders to support the science-policy interface through evidenced-based decision making",11
"Answering the call, UNISDR, with support from STAG, committed to establishing a Science and Technology Partnership that aims to meet the scientific objectives of the Sendai Framework",11
"This requires mobilizing relevant institutions, networks, and initiatives from all levels and all regions to promote and improve dialogue and cooperation among scientific and technological communities, other relevant stakeholders, and policymakers in order to facilitate a science-policy interface for effective decision making in disaster risk management",11
"The UNISDR Science and Technology Conference on the Implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (henceforth referred to as the S&T Conference) was convened in Geneva in January 2016, bringing together a diversity of scientists, practitioners, and policymakers in DRR",11
The S&T Conference was one of the first large implementation conferences following the adoption of the Sendai Framework,11
The S&T Conference had two main outcomes: (1) to launch the UNISDR Science and Technology Partnership for the implementation of the Sendai Framework; and (2) to discuss and endorse the UNISDR Science and Technology Road Map,11
"The Science and Technology Road Map would define the aspirations and concrete commitments of the science and technology community over the 2015–2030 period to support the delivery of the science needed under each of the four Sendai Framework priority areas of action (particularly Priority 1: Understanding Risk), as well as ways to monitor progress and review needs",11
"The conference was designed to deliver a Road Map and Partnership, as well as commitments to concrete initiatives to support a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, evidence-based approach for DRR policy options and interaction with decision makers at all levels (UNISDR 2015e)",11
"These are: 
Assessment of the current state of data, scientific knowledge, and technical knowledge on disaster risks and resilience (what is known, what is needed, what are the uncertainties, and so on); 
Synthesis of scientific evidence in a timely, accessible, and policy-relevant manner; 
Scientific advice to decision makers through close collaboration and dialogue; 
Monitoring and review of new scientific information and progress towards DRR and resilience building; 
Communication and engagement among policymakers, stakeholders in all sectors and in the science and technology domains themselves to ensure useful knowledge is identified and needs are met, and scientists are better equipped to provide evidence and advice; 
Capacity development to ensure that all countries can produce, access, and effectively use scientific information",11
The main sessions were complemented with six side events on the dimensions of DRR that are of particular importance to the work of S&T,11
"The four conference work streams—particularly Work Streams 2 and 3—emerged to debate and articulate the scientific and technical activities required to deliver on Priority 1 of the Sendai Framework, including holistic, multi-hazard, impact-based, multidimensional risk assessment and the data needed to inform them",11
"Work Streams 1 and 4 addressed cross-cutting themes of working in partnership and strengthening the science-policy interface through capacity building, as well as aligning research and policy goals, including through highlighting important research gaps that need to be addressed to answer DRR policy needs (Table 1)",11
Examples are given of existing initiatives to illustrate potential solutions for DRR,11
"Work Stream 1 (UNISDR 2016a) sought to discuss how to promote cooperation of DRR activity at all levels (local, national, regional, and global) by mobilizing existing networks and integrating DRR into development processes, identify research and technology gaps, and set recommendations for research priority areas in DRR, with the need to address emerging disaster risks, including technological and biological hazards",11
"The guiding principle of the Sendai Framework is that effective DRR requires coordination and full engagement across scales and sectors to promote and support the availability and application of science and technology to decision making (UNISDR 2015b, Paragraph 19e)",11
"There is a clear recognition in the Sendai Framework that the existing national, regional, and global platforms for DRR have been mechanisms for coherence across agendas, and they have been important in mainstreaming DRR into other policies, and in monitoring and periodic reviews (UNISDR 2015b)",11
"The Sendai Framework identifies networks as having a key role in accomplishing many of its goals, including: engagement (Paragraph 19e), knowledge sharing (Paragraphs 25c and 25d), integration and partnership working (Paragraphs 28b and 28c), innovation (Paragraph 31c), risk assessment (Paragraph 36b), supporting research and community action (Paragraph 36b), providing a science-policy interface (Paragraph 36b,) and supporting thematic platforms (Paragraph 47c)",11
"Needs for the following were discussed: (1) the importance of communication and dissemination of information by these networks and platforms; (2) linkages between these networks (local, national, regional, and global levels), as well as processes and mechanisms for engagement; and (3) how to strengthen the S&T networks and link them to DRR platforms",11
"The governance of this expanding system of networks and organizations with an impact on DRR will need to be examined to ensure a constructive, effective, and integrated multilevel DRR governance system that promotes co-design of policies and implementation (Shi et al",11
"At the national level, many Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries are trying to integrate elements of anticipation in their risk management systems in terms of championing the integration of new knowledge and technology into DRR",11
"To achieve this, institutional capacity to learn from past disasters and integrate this into future preparedness policy is needed",16
"The Japan Academic Network for Disaster Reduction, for example, was established in cooperation with the Science Council of Japan in January 2016 as a network of 48 academic societies related to DRR",11
These hubs could act as bridges between levels and sectors and meet emergent policy needs required for effective response and to “Build Back Better.” The working group proposed recognized “national DRR science-policy councils/platforms” or a form of national focal points for science to support disaster risk management and meet the Sendai Framework recommendation for implementation,11
"Developing focal points of scientific advice, for example through more extensive arrangements such as government chief scientific advisors at the national level, alongside national platforms for DRR, were also thought to be useful steps to strengthen the science-policy-practice intersection",11
"Other examples of the variety of bodies and networks include Partners Enhancing Resilience for People Exposed to Risks (PeriPeri U),Footnote 9 ICSU regional branches,Footnote 10 the African Centre for Disaster Studies,Footnote 11 and the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center.Footnote 12 In Asia, the UNISDR Regional Platform has established its own group on Science and Technology as part of the ISDR-Asia PartnershipFootnote 13 to support the Sendai Framework",11
An example of this in the climate change arena is the research outputs of the IPCC evidence and recommendations for action (IPCC 2012),13
"One of the international networks addressing DRR is the International Council for Science11 (ICSU), a nongovernmental organization with a global membership of national scientific bodies (122 members, representing 142 countries) and international scientific unions (31 members) with regional offices as well",11
"The working group also recognized the importance of international platforms in supporting data sharing, technology transfer, shared risk assessment methods, and global translation of scientific evidence",17
"The Sendai Framework set as one of its seven global targets to “substantially increase the availability of and access to multi-hazard early warning systems and disaster risk information and assessments to the people by 2030” (UNISDR 2015b, Paragraph 18g)",11
"The Sendai Framework highlights that disaster risk is multifaceted, comprising “vulnerability, capacity, exposure of persons and assets, hazard characteristics and the environment” (UNISDR 2015b, Paragraph 23) and that knowledge of risk should inform all elements of the disaster management cycle",11
The capabilities discussed would provide the scientific basis for delivering Priority 1 of the Sendai Framework (Understanding Disaster Risk) and be the key enablers to achieve progress for Priority 2 (Strengthening Disaster Risk Governance to Manage Disaster Risk),11
"Working Group 1 (UNISDR 2016b) focused on how to improve methods, tools, data, and communication systems related to early warning and hazard monitoring, and in particular on how to align the risk research agenda with the needs of modern DRR",11
"A significant ambition of the Sendai Framework is the shift towards integrated (across sectors and scientific disciplines) and multi-hazard early warning systems linked with emergency communications mechanisms, social technologies, and hazard-monitoring telecommunications systems",11
"However, warning information needs to be appropriate to the timescale of the potential disaster, which can range from only minutes for a tsunami, to hours or days for extreme weather, and months to years for droughts or pandemics, and this is challenging (Foresight 2012)",13
"The Sendai Framework promotes a people-centered approach and the use of a participatory process in decision making that responds to the needs of users and is sensitive to social and cultural aspects, gender, and age",11
"To improve DRR, risk assessments should support better risk management, defined (UNISDR 2009, p",11
"26) as “the systematic approach and practice of managing uncertainty to minimize potential harm and loss.” Disaster risk management then follows as implementation of policies, processes, and actions to prevent new risk, reduce existing disaster risk, and manage residual risk, all of which contribute to the strengthening of resilience",11
"As the Sendai Framework explicitly covers biological and technological disasters alongside natural hazards, that is, takes an “all hazards” approach (UNISDR 2015b, Paragraph 24j), methods from other sectors will be useful in strengthening DRR science and methodologies",11
The Sendai Framework defines seven precise global targets that will require adequate data and information to support monitoring through quantitative and qualitative indicators,11
"Relevant recommendations in the Sendai Framework under Priority 1 include, at the national and local levels, promoting “the collection, analysis, management and use of relevant data and practical information and ensure its dissemination” (UNISDR 2015b, Paragraph 24a); promoting “real time access to reliable data, make use of space and in situ information, including geographic information systems (GIS)” (UNISDR 2015b, Paragraph 24f); and, at the global and regional levels, enhancing “the development and dissemination of science-based methodologies and tools to record and share disaster losses and relevant disaggregated data and statistics” (UNISDR 2015b, Paragraph 25a)",11
Analyses of the Hyogo Framework reporting mechanisms revealed a number of limitations of the Hyogo Framework Monitor as a tool for measuring and reporting progress in DRR (Ishigaki and Mochizuki 2014; UNISDR 2014),11
"Alongside the Sendai Framework recommendations, the OECD also encourages the development of standardized accounting frameworks for expenditure on DRR and disaster losses in order to evaluate the economic benefits from their disaster risk investments (OECD 2014)",11
A revision of the 2009 UNISDR terminology (UNISDR 2009) was recommended in the Sendai Framework through the establishment of an Intergovernmental Open Ended Working Group on Indicators and Terminology,11
The conference recognized that the Hyogo Framework contributed both directly and indirectly to stimulating science and technology applications related to DRR (UNISDR 2016e),11
"The Sendai Framework is an opportunity for renewed cooperation with standards organizations, such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and to align disaster risk standards with existing professional standards, some of which were listed in the concept note for this working group (UNISDR 2016e).Footnote 37 A role for national statistical offices (NSOs) and specialized technical agencies in ensuring capacity and capability may exist to collect and process data, but very few countries use NSOs for DRR purposes",11
The broadening of the scope of the Sendai Framework beyond natural hazards to a multi-hazard approach is a key opportunity for the DRR community in terms of data and knowledge management (UNISDR 2016f),11
"For example, multi-hazard disaster loss accounting for monitoring the Sendai Framework requires quantitative socioeconomic and physical data, as well as qualitative information that can support DRR governance (Shi et al",11
"DRR loss databases could be combined with exposure, hazards, and vulnerability databases and become risk modeling databases",11
"Working across disciplines, health professionals could be more actively engaged to enable the use of health outcomes (including mortality, injury, and mental health outcomes) (Murray 2014)",3
"However, the new scope was seen as an opportunity to foster dialogue across disciplines and sectors that inform multi-hazard DRR systems and find opportunities to align the various objectives and interests",11
"The Sendai Framework focuses on measuring disaster losses (including number of those dead, injured, and affected, as well as economic losses, and disruption)",11
The climate change community focuses on trends in losses and the anthropogenic causes of hazards and future impact scenarios,13
"Capitalizing on the wealth of existing scientific knowledge to improve the accessibility and uptake of research results for operational activities—particularly for a multidisciplinary, multi-sectoral, and international field like DRR—requires mechanisms for sharing innovations and enhancing uptake",11
"New initiatives, such as the European Commission Disaster Risk Management Knowledge CentreFootnote 38 (EC DRM-KC) or the Global Centre for Disaster Statistics at Tohoku UniversityFootnote 39 are examples",11
Innovating in conceptual ideas to strengthen the theoretical framework informing a holistic approach to risk could help in organizing information and the design of an integrated DRR database by making sense of direct and indirect loss data,11
"Despite an immense expansion of risk-related knowledge systems including special research programs and institutes, specialized journals, advanced technology and increased financial resources, converting research findings into concrete applications for DRR and management remains a challenge (Weichselgartner and Kasperson 2010)",11
"One of the Sendai Framework Priority 1 recommendations is “To promote and improve dialogue and cooperation among scientific and technological communities, other relevant stakeholders and policymakers in order to facilitate a science policy interface for effective decision making in disaster risk management” (UNISDR 2015b, Paragraph 24h)",11
"It also encourages the diversity of DRR stakeholders to “support the interface between policy and science for decision-making” (UNISDR 2015b, Paragraph 36b)",11
"The call reflects the emphasis throughout the negotiation process of the Sendai Framework on the need to integrate science and technology into decision making, as heard in statements from member states, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), and thematic Major Groups (UNISDR 2015b)",11
"Furthermore, the Sendai Framework promotes a multi-hazard approach that encompasses natural, biological, and technological hazards",11
Reconnecting science with policy and practice is considered by some to be among the first tasks in implementing the Sendai Framework (Pearson and Pelling 2015),11
This work stream discussed ways of overcoming these challenges to increase the relevance of science for decision makers and streamline DRR into all policies,11
"Specific opportunities for leveraging science were discussed, including aligning incentives in scientific and policy systems, and the points raised reflected more in-depth discussions in Work Streams 1, 2, and 3 on specific areas of DRR",11
"UNISDR publishes regular S&T reports through the STAG and, with these, a number of case studies from around the world and from different scientific disciplines have been made available to illustrate how science is used in DRR",11
"More than 50 case studies are available online and include Flood Risk Reduction in the Netherlands: The “Room for the River” projectFootnote 43; building resilience to earthquakes in ChileFootnote 44; and an earthquake early warning system for Japanese bullet trains.Footnote 45
 An example of successful intergovernmental evidence-translation, which is multidisciplinary and brings together different communities of policy and practice, is the IPCC SREX (IPCC 2012)",1
"For DRR, such a science-policy platform has yet to be established and the real challenge is to harmonize all related processes to avoid inefficiency and overlapping in such a mechanism",11
"There is an opportunity to learn lessons from existing international and regional initiatives to coordinate scientific efforts in DRR and interface with policy at a high level such as STAG, which facilitates contact with the scientific community as key to supporting DRR decision-making; and the recently launched European Commission Disaster Risk Management Knowledge Centre (EC DRM-KC)",11
The Disaster Management Center of the South Asia Association of Regional CooperationFootnote 46 (SAARC) is an example of a platform of influence for science within a group of countries that cover a large section of the world population in low- and middle-income countries,11
Crucial to implementing the Sendai Framework is the need to purposefully advance multidisciplinary DRR research in line with disaster risk capacity building for both decision makers and professionals/practitioners,11
"Such formal capacity-building processes can leverage existing global experience in disaster risk related training and education, especially efforts that are culturally coherent and contextually nuanced",4
The Sendai Framework makes extensive reference to the delivery of culturally sensitive and inclusive DRR related activities (UNISDR 2016i),11
A challenge exists in the substantial disparities in capacity development for science in the disaster risk management field globally,11
Education in DRR is at the heart of a sustainable capacity development system,11
Work on mainstreaming DRR in primary school curricula has already been mapped and guidelines developed and published,11
"However, further work is needed for greater quality assurance and using opportunities at the tertiary level to strengthen DRR as an important area of research and teaching",11
"Progress in DRR practice is significantly strengthened by informed, multidisciplinary, applied risk education at tertiary levels",11
Additional opportunities for strengthening capacity include increasing collaboration with the private sector and mechanisms for technology transfer,17
Past experience in disaster risk management capacity building underlines the importance of training the trainers at national and local levels,11
The Best Available Technique and Best Environmental Practice (used by the European OSPAR Commission)Footnote 47 are examples of conceptual tools that are multidisciplinary and aid in standardizing and improving practice in environmental protection,15
"While there have been substantial and enabling investments in climate science, neither science funding bodies nor educational foundations have made resources available for “risk and resilience science,” particularly in low- and middle-income countries where students cannot easily pursue DRR as a field of study or research",11
The Sendai Framework represents an opportunity to articulate the importance of resource investment in DRR as a growing field of research and practice globally,11
"Despite efforts on the part of research and practice communities to create new understanding and be at the cutting edge of science, the vast scope and highly diverse nature of relevant research concepts, theories, methodologies, and empirical findings make it difficult to take stock of DRR knowledge",11
"However, stock-taking is a critical step towards strengthening DRR as an area of scientific endeavor and translating emerging knowledge into more effective disaster plans, policies, and programs and to prevent duplication of effort",11
"Drawing on the reflections of other work streams, this working group aimed to identify research themes that require investment to strengthen the DRR research agenda and make progress on the implementation of the Sendai Framework (UNISDR 2016j)",11
"As Superstorm Sandy illustrated in the United States, hurricane impacts can be expected to become more severe as a consequence of climate change-induced sea level rise (Horton et al",13
"Focusing on all elements of disaster risk management (all four phases of the disaster cycle, that is, mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery) allows us to consider how a wide range of activities associated with technology, development, governance, risk management, risk communication, and local capacity influence how we think about and approach disaster risk",11
"For example, in the health sciences, an expansion of the understanding of health risk has occurred to include the upstream factors behind health outcomes including socioeconomic inequalities and unfair power structures (CSDH 2008)",3
"Similarly, in DRR, such paradigms view the roots of disaster as endogenous to the social order rather than external to it and ask us to consider how historic and current patterns of social organization, governance, and development create the contexts that contribute to the escalation of risks that eventually manifest as disasters (Mileti 1999; Wisner et al",11
"As discussed by Working Group 2, scientific training in the future should facilitate the development of scientific and technical skills that can integrate knowledge from different disciplines and produce holistic risk and impact information that addresses hazards, exposure, and vulnerability and capacity (UNISDR 2013)",4
The extent to which knowledge and solutions developed in specific societal contexts can be generalized to others is unclear in DRR,11
Related questions exist regarding the scalability and transferability of DRR strategies,11
It is critical to begin to unpack these complexities and their implications for DRR,11
New participatory approaches are needed in future DRR research,11
"The side events offered the opportunity for participants to provide input into the Road Map and strengthen its ownership across DRR communities, particularly young people",11
Funding for DRR research and how dissemination and access to research and knowledge could be improved through enhanced publishing practices were also addressed,11
The side events raised the possibility of setting up specific platforms for ongoing discussion throughout the implementation of the Sendai Framework,11
"The multiple levels of discrimination that women can face—in education, healthcare, employment, and control of property—are key underlying drivers that inevitably make women more vulnerable in and after crises (Cannon 2002)",10
"The Sendai Framework recognizes the importance of implementing comprehensive gender-inclusive DRR plans and provides guidance by promoting the inclusion of women and girls within mainstream DRR policy (UNISDR 2015c): “Women and their participation are critical to effectively managing disaster risk and designing, resourcing and implementing gender-sensitive disaster risk reduction policies, plans and programmes; and adequate capacity building measures need to be taken to empower women for preparedness as well as to build their capacity to secure alternate means of livelihood in post-disaster situations” (UNISDR 2015b, Paragraph 35a(i))",11
Specific mention of women and science in the Sendai Framework provides a unique opportunity to build on the role of science in promoting the education and inclusion of women in DRR policy,11
"The session participants recommended the establishment of a Women and Girls in DRR Science Platform, supported by the UNISDR, UNESCO, and UN Women",11
Existing networks championing gender-aware DRR practices will be utilized to facilitate this platform,11
"Stakeholders that are already engaged in gender-focused work include the Gender Disaster NetworkFootnote 48 (GDN), the UNESCO L’Oréal network,Footnote 49 ICSU from within the DRR field, and initiatives such as the Athena SWAN Charter,Footnote 50 which is committed to advancing women’s careers in science, technology, engineering, maths, and medicine (STEMM) employment in higher education",11
The Sendai Framework goes beyond the Hyogo Framework in the emphasis it has placed on the role of science and its dissemination (Pearson and Pelling 2015),11
"The side event participants recognized challenges for DRR publishing, including: Peer-review systems that are difficult to navigate; Accessing current research in order to shape research questions and data analysis strategies; Carrying out effective literature reviews across all 600 journals that regularly or occasionally cover DRR topics; Limiting monopolies of open-access publishing; Language and other publishing biases in the publications; Differences in research approaches and cultural practices; and Escalating publication costs in the face of diminishing research funds",11
"To improve DRR knowledge dissemination systems, joint efforts are being made to ensure that EU research contracts from 2020 on will include clauses to ensure publication standards and ethics are respected and that published research is reproducible",11
"Similarly, translating research that is already available into practical messages is a critical step in improving DRR",11
"The Sendai Framework stresses the importance of diverse perspectives in all DRR processes: “A gender, age, disability and cultural perspective should be integrated in all policies and practices, and women and youth leadership should be promoted” (UNISDR 2015b, Paragraph 19d)",11
"The Sendai Framework places importance on the role of young people as “agents of change” for DRR and heavily emphasizes the importance of science and technology as enablers for implementing and monitoring resilient programs (UNISDR 2015b, Paragraph 36a(ii))",11
"This platform will provide young scientists with a means to contribute to the implementation of the Science and Technology Road Map, enriching the implementation and monitoring of the Sendai Framework",11
The partnership can facilitate mentoring and sharing research and professional opportunities for young DRR scientists,11
The Sendai Framework pursues a moral aim to substantially reduce the disaster losses of lives and assets from both natural and human-made disasters worldwide,11
"Ethical reflections extend beyond issues of safety and public health, to address the impacts of policies and interventions on human dignity, justice, and social responsibility",3
A comprehensive approach to DRR must include policies for the ethical evaluation of scientific and technological applications that could have widespread and diverse impacts,11
This presents the need for a common set of ethical principles that are flexible and adaptable to various DRR contexts (UNISDR 2015b),11
"Numerous publications and reflections on bioethical issues in disaster response and prevention, including research conducted during disaster situations but also proposed principles for climate change mitigation and adaptation, are available",13
"To resolve these complex challenges, it was recommended that a DRR Ethics Platform should be established with a mandate to ensure that ethics is mainstreamed across DRR work",11
"The platform’s outputs will include proposing universal ethical guidelines, and publishing case studies on good and bad practices to promote the use of ethical principles in all aspects of DRR",11
"The Sendai Framework calls for the greater effectiveness of funding investments to support DRR innovation, identify research gaps, and prioritize research areas appropriately (UNISDR 2015b, Paragraph 25g)",11
The need to optimize national and international cooperation in relation to resourcing research and facilitating its uptake is mentioned throughout the Sendai Framework,11
"Variations in language, information access, expectations for scientific rigor, and work culture influence how research is resourced, conducted, and applied",16
"Discussions of this side event focused on how DRR funding mechanisms are operating, why they are siloed and conflicting in some cases, and how to coordinate them better to be mutually reinforcing",11
The conference aimed to achieve the following outcomes (UNISDR 2015d): Critically appraising and endorsing the UNISDR Science and Technology Road Map to promote and support the availability and application of science and technology to decision making in DRR for implementation of the Sendai Framework; Ensure that the requirements and needs of users of science are met in the UNISDR Science and Technology Road Map; Discuss research and capacity development agendas for the UNISDR Science and Technology Road Map in support of the implementation of the Sendai Framework; Discuss and agree on the work methods for the UNISDR Science and Technology Partnership to support the Science and Technology Road Map for the implementation of the Sendai Framework,11
"The Partnership will undertake key actions identified in the Science and Technology Road Map reflecting the six scientific functions: assessment, synthesis, science advice, monitoring and review, capacity development, and communication and engagement; Contribute concrete initiatives from the science and technology community and other stakeholders to support a comprehensive, multidisciplinary evidence-based approach to DRR policy options and interaction with decision makers at all levels; and Strengthen national science advisory capacities leveraging existing science networks and policy platforms",11
"The conference successfully launched the Science and Technology Partnership, and crystalized an agenda for the science and policy community to support the implementation of the Sendai Framework",11
"Using the expanding S&T evidence base to support capacity building and ensure that capacity development for disaster risk management is interdisciplinary, shared across international boundaries, and demand-driven",11
Leveraging science for DRR through innovative schemes that are long-term and provide opportunities to enhance the dialogue between decision makers and researchers through interdisciplinary and participatory networks to ensure integrated disaster risk governance,11
"Supporting integrated and holistic approaches to the use of S&T for DRR that reflect the wide scope of the Sendai Framework, which applies to disasters caused by natural or human-made hazards, as well as environmental, technological, and biological hazards",11
"Enhancing the role of social science in the multidisciplinary effort to understand behavior and decision making in DRR and the role of the wider societal context in disaster risk creation and reduction, and incorporating key markers of socioeconomic vulnerability",11
"Strengthening DRR science-policy and cross-sectoral dialogues to facilitate risk assessments, post-disaster reviews, data sharing, and decision making",11
"Other notable outcomes included the proposal to launch a Women in DRR Science platform supported by UN Women, UNISDR, and UNESCO; and the launch of the Young Scientists in DRR platform that is coordinated by the UN Major Group for Children and Youth",11
"(2013) and Arnell and Lloyd-Hughes (2014) developed advanced hydrological models to assess the global impacts of climate change, but their methods were not country-based and did not include vulnerability proxies",13
"Although policymakers recognize the necessity of improving flood resilience once a catastrophic flood has occurred, their attention is usually focused on other priority issues, such as economic development, before the disaster",8
"Of the 49 member states/regions of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Asia and the Pacific, three are excluded due to a general lack of available data (Afghanistan, Bhutan, Myanmar), and another three due to lack of specific data (Brunei, Gini Index; Hong Kong and Taiwan, ratio of water area, proportion of paved roadways, and others)",10
"To analyze the influences of economic development, which allows for investment in flood management, FRI and GDP per capita are compared, and the result is shown in Fig",8
"To examine the influences of economic development, FRI and GDP per capita of 146 countries were compared",8
Such interventions have been shown to improve nutrition behaviour in low income countries,2
"We also identify positive impacts on women’s empowerment and women’s output market participation, highlighting how integrated programs, even if modest in scope, can be drivers of social change",5
"This is important because interventions such as supplementation, food fortification and biofortification, although making a much-needed impact on abating micronutrient malnutrition, are not directly contributing to diversifying food systems and human diets, and a lack of diversity of these is an important underlying driver of malnutrition",2
"In doing so, the study addresses a broader question in economic development by assessing if a development intervention, which is modest in scope and duration and which is focused on nutrition-sensitive agriculture, has the potential to induce long-term behaviour change among women who are strongly constrained by local cultural gender norms - and, indeed, if these norms themselves can be changed in such a way",8
There is growing evidence that integrated home garden interventions are effective in increasing the consumption of nutritious food among poor rural households in developing countries (Olney et al,2
"The reduction in malnutrition, especially among children below five, has been large and has been explained by incremental changes in wealth accumulation and education (Headey et al",2
"Third, the study provides original causal evidence on some social impacts beyond the nutrition and agricultural spheres, underscoring the importance of integrated home garden interventions on women’s empowerment and decision-making within the household",5
"Furthermore, there is evidence showing that home garden interventions can help women gain recognition from their husbands and peers for their increased knowledge and skills, contributing to women’s empowerment (Schaetzel et al",5
"The sample of control households was selected from 8 upazillas and 9 unions that were purposively selected to have similar characteristics (in terms of agro-ecology, village size, agricultural land use and market access) as the intervention unions",2
Previous studies have shown that home garden interventions can make a positive contribution to gender equality (Patalagsa et al,5
Our measure of women’s empowerment is relatively simple compared to more advanced tools such as the women’s empowerment in agriculture index (Alkire et al,5
"However, we do not find strong notable differences in the consumption of these vegetables across the two groups at the long-term endline.
 Building on the intervention’s theory of change, we now investigate why we observe these long-term impacts, focusing on behavioural changes in gardening and nutrition-sensitive practices, knowledge, and women’s empowerment and decision-making",5
The t- and p-values are derived from the Welch two sample t-test We proceed to examine the impacts of the intervention on women’s empowerment in Fig. 3,5
"Panel (b) shows that women in the intervention group have a self-perceived level of empowerment that was 30% higher than women in the control group (p < 0.01).
 Kernel density distribution showing the difference in women’s decisions over the home garden (Panel a) and women’s empowerment index (Panel b) between control and intervention groups three years after the intervention",5
"13) as good nutrition not only contributes to the achievement of zero hunger (SDG2), but also to several of the other sustainable development goals such as healthy lives (SDG3) and ending poverty (SDG1)",2
"Integrated home garden interventions can therefore be an effective tool to addresses one of the root causes of malnutrition in low-income countries, thereby contributing to the achievement of several sustainable development goals, particularly zero hunger (SDG2)",2
Water consumption levels have increased in the agricultural sector to ensure food security,2
"Regular handwashing is one of the most important measures to prevent the epidemic, and this has an impact on water consumption",6
Non-conventional water resources could be an engine to ambitious plans to drive economic growth through megaprojects,8
"The pressure to ensure access to clean water, adequate food services, and good hygiene is most acute in Egypt, where more than 100 million people live in conditions of water scarcity",6
"In addition, many people are at increased risk of contracting COVID-19 due to their lack of basic handwashing facilities",6
"In 2020, the COVID-19 Policy Tracker has been launched by the Egyptian Ministry of Planning and Economic Development (MPED)",8
Egypt is strengthening public health and social measures by reducing the working hours for supermarkets and shops and limiting the number of employees in government offices,3
Mathematical models used to manage and control invasive species have been summarized (Büyüktahtakın and Haight 2018),15
"In Bangladesh, overuse of water during the COVID-19 pandemic due to handwashing with soap was observed (Sayeed et al",6
"According to MPED ( 2021), knowing that the first defense against the pandemic is washing hands, the GoE has facilitated access to clean water, deferred payments of both residential and commercial water bills, and allowed customers to pay for water and wastewater services smoothly using a smartphone application and online portal without the need for physical movement",6
"Keeping in mind that access to clean water has increased from 90.0 in 2015 to 97.0% in 2019, and access to sanitation from 50.0 in 2015 to 66.2% in 2019",6
Rates of extreme poverty are expected to have slowed down from 2019 to 2020 (with COVID) rather than a potential case without COVID,1
The key good health and wellbeing indicators are under-5 mortality rates (U5MR) and neonatal mortality rates (NMR),3
"U5MR and NMR have reached 19.2 and 7.5 less than 25 and 12 per 1,000 live births, respectively",3
"U5MR and NMR have dropped to 19.0 and 7.4 as opposed to 18.8 and 7.3 under a no COVID scenario, respectively.
 The history will judge the effectiveness of the response to COVID-19 pandemic to the benefit of the human family, by the degree to which the response is organized across all sectors, not by actions of isolated government actors",3
Regular handwashing is considered the most significant measure to prevent coronavirus,6
"Simultaneously, unemployment has left a growing number of families unable to pay their water bills",8
The assessments have indicated an increase in water use in the household sector and increased demand in the agricultural sector in light of food security concerns,2
"Egypt contains millions of refugees and poor persons, who are at greater risk because of the lack of water, hygiene, and food services in their overcrowded areas",10
"Egypt has initiated a variety of measures to reduce the vulnerability of refugees and poor persons, and those not associated with public services to COVID-19",10
"Egypt has initiated significant activities to speed up the digital transformation of water, hygiene, and food management",9
COVID-19 detection trials in wastewater and sludge as a tool for early screening of public health are a good example,3
Typology of climate change impacts on water resources management and agricultural systems in the Nile Delta has indicated rising sea levels and saline intrusion in the groundwater and the two distributaries of the Nile River,13
"Water balance for Egypt (15/16–18/2019) in billion m3/year and production of refined/non-refined water (16/2017–17/2018) are clarified in Table 3.
 Non-conventional water resources are feasible opportunities to deal with water scarcity, particularly in arid and semiarid areas",6
"In Egypt, non-conventional water resources include but are not limited to desalination, surface groundwater (in Nile valley and Delta), reuse of greywater, reuse of wastewater, recycling of agricultural drainage water, recycling of sewage water, and atmospheric moisture harvesting",12
"Focusing on sustainable water resources planning, non-conventional water resources were studied to evaluate surface-groundwater interactions (Eshtawi et al",6
Forecasted relative humidity and temperature were used to estimate cumulative dew yields based on future climate change scenarios (Tomaszkiewicz et al,13
"Although sustainable irrigation with saline reclaimed water as a non-conventional water resource did not affect fruit (mandarin) quality, it increased soil salinity and reduced both water productivity and crop yield (Nicolás et al",6
Unconventional water resources could be utilized to adapt to both drought and climate change (Morote et al,13
"Egypt’s water needs are growing rapidly because of the population increase, climate change, and development activities",13
"Twenty-five percent of the land is allocated to the Egyptian youth for ownership, 75% is allocated to investors, and 10% of the areas allocated to young people and small farmers is devoted to establish linked projects with agricultural activities for these areas or to serve the agricultural activity",2
"The rules and conditions for participating in the project from different categories (investors, small farmers, and young people), which contribute to the realization of the objectives of the project, have been formulated not only for agricultural development but also for the establishment of new urban communities, including agricultural manufacturing, animal and poultry production, aquaculture and logistics, and industrial areas for packing and packaging products and others, and the establishment of some rations and administrative areas that serve projects",2
"The new Egyptian Rural Development Company is the representative of the state and is responsible for the follow-up on everything related to the bidding process and the distribution of land on accepted bids and the collection of fees and premiums, as well as to overcome the obstacles that investors or small-scale farmers and young people may face",9
"Areas and prices of the first phase of the national project for the Development and Reclamation of one and a half million acres are shown in Table 5.
 The pandemic has negatively impacted economic growth",8
The Governmental Egyptian policies have been swiftly implemented to ensure both food security during global lockdowns and sustainability of the National Project for Agricultural Development and Reclamation,2
"This health crisis can help strengthen cooperation in the field of safe and sustainable management of water, hygiene, and food sectors in the world",6
"The main recommendations of the study are the following: continually collect experiences and expertise in the water, hygiene, and food sectors in the world during the response stages to the epidemic, as well as documenting best practices and integrating them into plans to ensure the sustainability of water, hygiene, and food services; and enable support for regional cooperation to contribute to enhancing the efficiency of the water, hygiene, and food sectors by disseminating best practices, innovations, and lessons learned for the water, hygiene, and food sectors services in Egypt; safe and sustainable management of water, hygiene, and food sectors should be emphasized due to the human perception and knowledge of the population and decision-makers in the future; and water, hygiene, and food professionals should find an opportunity to reconsider strategic plans and improve the path towards achieving the water-related Sustainable Development Goals.",6
"This paper explores the causal relationship between CO2 emissions, economic growth, available energy, and employment for a panel of eight South-Eastern European countries from 1995 to 2019",8
"The Industrial Revolution brought a new period of fast economic expansion among countries, giving rise to today’s well-known phenomena: global warming and climate change",13
"The decline of environmental quality has reached worrisome levels, raising global warming and climate change concerns",13
"As a result, understanding the causes of environmental deterioration and its relationship to economic growth has become increasingly important in recent years (Kasman & Duman, 2015)",8
"On the one hand, long before the pandemic, most European countries crossed ecological limits in terms of pollution, climate change, and biodiversity extinction rate (Rockström et al",13
"However, currently, there is little room for further greening initiatives in countries with high unemployment and inert economic development",8
"As a result, environmental degradation and socio-economic concerns are two main challenges of this century and the primary source of uncertainty for policymakers worldwide (Monasterolo et al",15
"Although the short-term decline in economic activity caused by the enforced confinement has drastically reduced energy use and hence CO2 emissions, the long-term consequences on energy consumption and CO2 emissions are not fully understood",7
It is critical to investigate such consequences since relevant findings will obtain critical information for policymakers to formulate post-pandemic economic recovery packages (Smith et al,8
"Although there is an urgent need to minimize CO2 emissions from energy usage, this should be achieved by preserving economic growth and prosperity (Paramati et al",8
"So, whether examined in the context of exporting or importing energy resources, energy security today is one of the most critical components of a country’s national security (Mara et al",7
"The SEE region’s top sources of air pollution are coal power plants, followed by air pollution from cities and urban areas",7
Most electricity is produced using domestic lignite and coal as well as hydropower,7
"The production of hydropower is risky when there is less water available, which can result in a disruption in the supply of electricity and increased costs (Rüttinger et al",7
"When analyzing the economic structure of all SEE countries by sector, a significant share of GDP creation belongs to the mining, manufacturing, agriculture, and forestry sectors",15
Another reason for choosing SEE countries is their considerable unexploited renewable energy potential,7
All the SEE countries are the signatures to the Paris Agreement—the world’s most important international treaty on climate change,13
"The United Nations Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP21) in Paris saw its adoption by 196 parties, and on November 4th, 2016, it came into effect",13
"Countries strive to reach the worldwide peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible to create a climate-neutral planet by the middle of the century (UNFCCC, 2022)",13
"This research examines the complex links between CO2 emissions, economic growth, available energy, and employment in eight SEE countries (Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia) using panel unit root tests, panel cointegration methods, and panel causality tests employing data from 1995 to 2019",8
"Poverty, unsolved political problems, unclear environmental protection legislation, brain drain, and other challenges are only some of the issues these countries are dealing with (Pavlović et al",15
"CO2 emissions have been rising due to energy-related human activities influenced by economic development (Sadorsky, 2010)",8
"One of the most important empirical linkages examined in environmental economics is the relationship between CO2 emissions and economic growth (Narayan & Narayan, 2010)",8
"Energy is a crucial driver for social and economic development, and its role in growth and development is pivotal in environmental economics research",8
"Although most of them considered energy consumption (Zaman & Abd-el Moemen, 2017; Cai et al",7
"2022), an increasing number of authors have emphasized the importance of energy security as critical in the context of frequent and sudden disturbances (Ang et al",7
"Due to the current complexities associated with global energy resources, energy security definitions have morphed to include a variety of dimensions, such as energy supply and demand security, pollution prevention, socio-economic aspects, security apparatus, information security, and cultural and health aspects (Ang et al",7
Traditional fossil-fuel-based energy sources are potent drivers of economic development (Ellabban et al,8
"Furthermore, concerns about oil price volatility and dependency on foreign energy sources are significant drivers in transitioning to renewable energy sources (Apergis & Payne, 2010)",7
Renewable energy offers jobs and is a core part of the transition to a low-carbon economy,7
Fragkos and Paroussos (2018) combine the employment factor method and general equilibrium analysis to analyze the net employment effects of the expected transformation of the EU energy industry toward renewable energy sources (RES),7
"(2009) found that investing in energy efficiency creates 2.5–4 times as many jobs as investing in oil and gas, whereas Wei et al",7
(2010) found that both RES and energy efficiency are more labor-intensive per unit of energy than fossil fuel supply sectors,7
"There is evidence that, in some situations, unions have been sluggish in recognizing climate change as a priority in their mission due to their desire to save jobs",13
The capitalist system promotes profit growth through technical progress and environmental degradation from a theoretical standpoint,15
"All this results in job losses, necessitating more production, the development of new jobs, and, eventually, the provision of additional finances to clean up the environment (Gould et al",8
"Effective labor market regulations may assist in a successful low-carbon transition by supporting structural labor market transformation toward clean energy industries, preventing adverse effects in the labor market",7
(2020) used the example of post-capitalist countries to demonstrate that progress in energy efficiency decreases CO2 emissions per capita,7
"If energy efficiency progress is not realized, GDP per capita increases CO2 emissions, so the wealthier the economy becomes, the more CO2 emissions per capita it produces",7
(2011) discovered that Greece’s GDP growth causes CO2 emissions,8
"(2018) found that population, GDP per capita, and energy intensity positively influence CO2 emissions in EU countries, implying that economic expansion enhanced pollution in the short run",7
"(2017) investigated the effects of market-based economic reforms on per capita CO2 emissions in transition economies in Europe and Central Asia, where environmental degradation was widespread prior to reforms",15
"According to their findings, the Kyoto Protocol had no substantial impact on reducing emissions levels, and the relationship between economic growth and emissions appears weak",8
The panel data regressions show that renewable energy and GDP per capita growth have a non-linear association,7
Non-linear correlations exist in alternative and nuclear energy and fossil fuel energy consumption,7
The Granger causality results backed up the conservation hypothesis for renewable energy in the short run,7
"Obradović and Lojanica (2017) used the cases of Greece and Bulgaria to investigate the causal relationships between energy use, CO2 emissions, and economic growth",8
The empirical data show a long-term causal relationship between energy and CO2 emissions and economic growth in both countries,8
"There is no connection between energy and economic growth in the short run, neither in Greece nor Bulgaria",8
"Carbon dioxide emissions and gross available energy are used as environmental proxies, whereas gross domestic product per capita and employment are used as proxies of economic development and well-being",8
"Carbon-based fuel combustion raises CO2 levels in the atmosphere, resulting in anthropogenic climate change, global warming, and rising sea levels",13
"Gross available energy is the total energy supply for all activities on the country’s territory, including energy transformations such as electricity generation from combustible fuels, distribution losses, and non-energy uses of fossil fuel outputs (Eurostat, 2021b)",7
"Because GDP incorporates price changes, it gives an accurate measurement of economic growth, which is why we chose it as an indicator of economic growth in our paper",8
"From a research perspective, it is important because economic growth is measured by the change in the volume of production or real incomes of the residents of a country",8
"Notably, GDP per capita and employment are economic indicators at the forefront of the sustainable development goals under SDG 8 “Decent Work and Economic Growth.” This goal aims to promote long-term, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth and full and productive employment, and decent work for all",8
"Additionally, CO2 emissions are a predominant greenhouse gas that needs to be mitigated and decreased under the SDG 13 “Climate Action,” stating that immediate action to address climate change and its consequences is needed",13
"Energy is also a topic addressed under the SDGs, as SDG 7 “Affordable and Clean Energy” aims to guarantee that everyone can access affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy (United Nations, 2021)",7
"It should be emphasized that North Macedonia has an enormous problem of informal employment, which significantly impacts the low values of the employment rate (World Bank, 2020)",8
"A long-run link between CO2 emissions, economic growth, available energy, and employment exists among the selected eight SEE countries",8
"The findings further suggest that 77.63% of the variation in economic growth, 23.52% of the variation in available energy, and 74.96% of the variation in employment can be explained by innovative shocks in these variables themselves",8
" Overall, our results align with Chaabouni and Saidi (2017) and Dogan and Aslan (2017), who demonstrated a bidirectional relationship between CO2 emissions and GDP growth for a panel of 51 countries and EU and candidate countries, respectively",8
(2021) proved a bidirectional causality between economic growth and CO2 emissions for EU countries based on a spatial modeling analysis from 1995 to 2014,8
(2021) also demonstrated a positive association of labor force with GDP growth for many European countries but a negative association in Romania,8
"Menegaki (2011) demonstrated the same bidirectional causality between GDP growth and CO2 emissions for a panel of 27 EU countries and unidirectional causality from energy to GDP growth, while Dong et al",8
"(2021) also align with our results, as they demonstrated a two-way causality between GDP growth and CO2 emissions in the EU and Western Balkans countries",8
Obradović and Lojanica (2017) indicated a long-term causal relationship between CO2 emissions and economic growth,8
"However, they found no connection between energy and economic growth in the short run, neither in Greece nor Bulgaria",8
"SEE countries have yet to fully realize their potential in energy production from renewable energy sources, and reliance on fossil fuels does not contribute to increased energy availability or employment but increases CO2 emissions",7
"These results can also be explained by low energy efficiency, as Li et al",7
"The research on the relationships between CO2 emissions, economic growth, available energy, and employment variables has resulted in different policy implications since it can guide regional policymakers in advancing sustainable development strategies",8
"Significant efforts should also be made to support the development of new strategic low-carbon sectors, such as new and renewable energy, as well as to adapt and improve the energy mix while simultaneously speeding up the reorganization and upgrading of traditional industries",7
"Because SEE infrastructure is obsolete, significant investments in the growth of the renewable energy sector, which will also create jobs, are required",7
Energy policies aimed at increasing renewable energy generation and use will reduce these economies’ reliance on energy-supplying countries while lowering CO2 emissions,7
"Because long-term success cannot be achieved by pursuing economic growth at the expense of the environment, SEE countries should employ subsidies and other measures to encourage “green” FDI into technology-intensive industries",8
"They should also impose or raise carbon taxes, enact new, sturdier rules, properly implement existing regulations, embrace the EU environmental standards for countries seeking to join, and shift to renewable energy sources",7
"In order to improve supply security, economic efficiency, and the increased use of renewable energy sources, a single energy system might be a good solution to consider",7
"These policies will require a mix of energy policy instruments (such as tax measures, financial and investment preferences, and appropriate training of new and retrained personnel) that will make energy consumption more efficient, productive, and environmentally friendly in all sectors of the economy",7
"If the outcome of such policies will be a reduction in energy consumption, the ensuing energy savings should be redirected toward solving social concerns",7
This shift will benefit the economy by providing more jobs while allowing companies to benefit from increased energy efficiency brought on by technology developments,7
"Therefore, these countries will be able to produce green jobs in this situation, and service-oriented businesses will be able to advance in spreading renewable energy solutions as time goes on",7
"As a result, countries will increase demand for renewable energy solutions and more jobs",7
"Given the current climate crisis, there is no better moment than now to implement a comprehensive set of policies to ensure a sustainable future",13
"Generally observed, understanding the relationship between economic growth, employment, energy availability, and the environmental impacts of economic activities is critical for developing policies that would lift people and countries out of poverty while avoiding irreparable environmental damage and depletion of energy resources",8
"Efforts should be made to promote the development of new low-carbon strategic sectors, such as new and renewable energy, and adapt and improve the energy mix",7
"Because SEE infrastructure is outdated, significant investments in the growth of the renewable energy sector are required, creating jobs",7
CO2 emissions will be reduced by energy policies that increase renewable energy generation and use,7
"By coordinating climate change mitigation efforts, SEE countries may progress toward a sustainable green path with more jobs",13
"Energy efficiency measures will necessitate a combination of energy policy instruments to make energy consumption more efficient, productive, and ecologically benign",7
"As a result, countries’ desire for renewable energy solutions will rise, creating more jobs",7
This study’s primary limitation is the non-availability of data with long enough time horizons for some indicators influencing CO2 emissions and economic growth,8
"Another direction for further research could be represented by testing the EKC curve for this panel of countries to see how different economic development stages could impact pollution in South-Eastern Europe, as some of these countries were less investigated in previous studies",8
It would also be interesting to study the impact of both non-renewable and renewable energy on carbon emissions for this group of countries separately.,7
"Farmers can then start to use their lands more intensively by producing more than one yield per year, given the availability of water sources and other inputs",6
The ongoing labor-intensive agriculture aggravates unemployment more than it boosts production and productivity,8
"Seasonal labor-intensive agriculture on subsistence farms has created seasonal labor unemployment, which results in low annual incomes for these families",8
"As discussed by Cohen [16], mechanization in Ethiopia started during the emperor’s regime as a response to the outbreak of famine in 1958",2
"As a result, subsistence farmers in the study area, and throughout Ethiopia, are producing agricultural products once per year",2
"In Ethiopia, increasing agricultural productivity is a major target to be addressed, as stated globally in the UN’s SDGs and locally in Ethiopia’s Growth and Transformation Plan II",2
"Empowering local youths to become involved in tractor rental services, training farmers about value-added agricultural products, and introducing labor-intensive agricultural product processing industries are some avenues for absorbing displaced labor",2
We discuss the critical role of motor vehicle particulates in Ghana and propose policy solutions for sustainable urban mobility,11
"Vehicle owners, drivers and driver unions are apprehensive of electric cars but would welcome a reliable, convenient and efficient mass transport system",11
The Environmental Protection Agency and Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority should be empowered to develop emissions performance standards and conduct real time monitoring of particulates with the assistance of the Motor Traffic and Transport Department of the Ghana Police Service,15
"Road transport is a major contributor of air pollution and climate change in general and contributes significantly to the emissions of greenhouse gases, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds [31, 39, 64, 76, 84]",13
Air pollution is a multi-dimensional problem with widespread externalities on climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),13
"Emissions from mobile sources, especially on-road vehicles, continue to rise [11, 75] and contribute significantly to climate change [41, 76]",13
"Climate change in turn affects long-range transport of environmental pollutants, chemical processing, and local meteorology which can impact airborne diseases, poor visibility and reduction in the aesthetic value of landscapes and infrastructure",13
"PM2.5 in particular has been blamed for the aetiology of diabetes among pregnant women and the elderly [9, 20, 33, 43, 56, 76, 83], and reduces the life expectancy of children [43] especially in developing countries [9]",3
"Recent studies in Ghana have identified particulate matter as major contributors of ambient air pollution from energy consumption and transportation [4, 12, 59, 66, 73, 84]",7
"The Ministry of Energy (MoE), Ministry of Transport (MoT), and the Ministry of Environment Science and Innovation (MESTI) through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have direct jurisdiction over the design and implementation of policies and governance structures for energy use, transportation and air pollution respectively in Ghana",15
"At the Ministerial level of MESTI and MoT, the development of resilient public transport networks including the Metro Mass Transit (MMT), the State Transport Company (STC), and the Aayalolo Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) are key strategies of a transport sustainability scheme for inter-city and intra-urban transit in Ghana",11
There are plans to introduce electric cars and high-speed bullet trains to reduce vehicular emissions and enhance the country’s progress towards achieving her Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in the broader context of climate change mitigation and adaptation,13
The National Medium-Term Development Framework (MTEF) aims at developing a sustainable transport system to position Ghana as a transportation hub within the West African sub-region [52],11
The Environmental and Sanitation Policy (ESP) of Ghana was designed on the tenets of environmental and economic sustainability to meet the exigent demands for climate change mitigation and adaptation,13
"Weak governance, lack of political will, institutional incapacity, limited funding and low awareness among the citizenry have debilitated the effective implementation of the policy",16
Ghana’s National Energy Policy seeks to reduce the reliance on non-renewable resources whilst simultaneously increasing the installation and utilization of renewable energy to meet the energy demand for all persons in Ghana,7
"On the back of the energy strategy, a Bioenergy Policy aimed at 20% infusion of biofuels into the country’s energy mix by year 2030 was implemented in 2010",7
"According to the Ghana Renewable Energy Master Plan, current biofuel integration remains at zero although 20,000 tonnes are projected to be produced by 2030 [25]",7
A key promoter of the initiative is its intention to reduce emissions and greenhouse gases from the transport sector,13
The Ghana Climate Change Policy was developed by the MESTI in 2012 as the nation’s climate action blueprint,13
The climate change policy is expected to provide direction for the achievement of a low carbon economy and sustainable equitable development through a robust climate-compatible economy,13
The Ghana National Climate Change Master Plan Action Programmes for 2015–2020 also developed by the MESTI recognizes the potential role of sustainable transportation and energy use as tools for achieving the national climate change targets in line with the NDCs,13
"Apart from the National Climate Change Policy, the National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy (NCCAS) and the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAS) have also been developed to help curb the dangers of climate change and climate variability",13
"Already, climate change is negatively affecting water supply, agriculture, energy production and human welfare",13
"Inadequate monitoring data, and poor institutional capacity of regulatory agencies is a major hinderance to the development of comprehensive national datasets on air quality and proper estimation of the impact of stale air on the environment and human health",16
Control of emissions of these pollutants is therefore essential for the assurance of public health safety and proper environmental hygiene,3
The elements of a sustainable transport system are depicted in Fig. 1,11
"The chart assesses the current state of energy consumption and emissions measurement in the transport sector and juxtaposes them with a green approach in which the overall aim is to achieve an integrated fuel, and motor vehicle emissions control regime",7
"Elemental integration of a sustainable transport and mobility systems The apparent lack of coordination of fuel standards on the one hand, and ambient air and vehicular emissions control on the other is a key defect in the pursuit of sustainable mobility systems in Ghana",11
A largely fossilized economy and inefficient energy consumption patterns lead to intense environmental pollution with attendant negative health impacts,7
Sustainable and preventable pollution options include green energy and transport policies that are sensitive to the environment and that which set standards for emissions performance monitoring,7
"There is an urgent need to upscale the inter-agency collaboration among the MoT, MESTI, EPA, DVLA, GSA, NPA, NRSC, and EC if the objectives of sustainable transport policy are to be achieved",11
Banister [5] avers that a key ingredient necessary for superimposing a sustainable mobility program over a traditional system is public acceptability,11
"Primary and secondary data was gathered from regulatory agencies including the Ministry of Transport (MoT), the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Driver and Vehicle Licencing Authority (DVLA), driver unions, mobile vehicle occupants, street hawkers, road side shops, and roadside residents through face-to-face semi-standardized interviews",15
"We sought to find out from respondents the current state of auto vehicle ownership and regulation in the country, emissions standards and monitoring, green auto energy use options in Ghana, sustainable mobility outlook and participatory role of vulnerable road users",11
" We present below a brief demographic profile as regards air pollution and a review of the current national policy frameworks that guide energy use, transportation, air pollution and climate change",13
"We obtained archived data from the Ministry of Transport, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Petroleum Authority, and the Ghana Energy Commission",15
Annual new vehicle registration in Ghana [1] Demand for transportation continuous to increase with growing economic development over the years,8
"The use of private vehicles in the urban centres continuous to rise due to an unreliable public mass transport system, and the influence of a growing middle-income class",11
"Fuel use between 2008 and 2017 [24] Energy consumption continuous to tilt towards fossil-based fuels, with over 50% of Ghana’s current energy mix sourced from petroleum resources [18]",7
Ghana is only second to Nigeria in terms of total national energy consumption in West Africa [54],7
"The petroleum resources are used to power vehicular fleets, power plants, industries and domestic backup power supply systems",7
"Probability of mortality from non-communicable diseases including cardio-vascular disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease, and cancer was 20.8%",3
Hotor [34] found traffic congestion as a key determinant in the choice of passenger transport,9
Drivers of vehicular use in Accra Personalized light-duty vehicle users showed less propensity to use electric cars than their peers on public transport systems,11
They claim the government is at liberty to introduce any reliable transport system provided they are not crowded out of business,11
"Whilst Government owned public transport services have not been sustainable over the years, the private sector continues to play a domineering role",11
"There is no specific policy in Ghana that recognises the integrated role of vehicular emissions, energy use, and climate change, and their impact on the environment and human health",13
"When inclusive finance crosses the threshold value (IFI = 0.2696), the impact of poverty on CO2 emissions will change from negative to positive gradually, which verifies the applicability of the “Poverty-CO2 Paradox” in China and provides an empirical basis for breaking the “Poverty-CO2 Paradox.” Consequently, deepening poverty reduction and pushing the region’s inclusive finance to the threshold level are proposed as effective ways to promote CO2 emission reduction",1
Ending poverty in all its forms everywhere (SDG1: No Poverty) and taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts (SDG13: Climate Action) are among the top priorities of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Baloch et al,13
"With the successful economic development based on the policy of “Reform and Opening,” China became the world’s second-largest economy in 2010",8
"Inclusive finance has been developing continuously in China since 2005, which helped China gain the achievement of eliminating absolute poverty in 2020",1
"The poverty population was cut down by 93 million, which covered above 70% of the global poverty reduction",1
"As the largest developing country, it is so interesting that both “CO2 emission reduction” and “poverty reduction” interlinked with “inclusive finance” were achieved successfully in the same period, which essentially attracted our attention",1
"Then, a growing debate was divided into the following three perspectives: the traditional view is that poverty is the cause of environmental degradation (WCED 1987; World Bank 1992; Ramphal 1992; Swinton and Quiroz 2003; Khalid 2019); the second view holds that poverty is not necessarily related to the environment or poverty is not always harmful to the environment (Omuta 1988; Holmberg and Thompson 1991; Duraiappah 1998; Ravnborg 2003; Zaman et al",15
"Considering the special background of “CO2 emission reduction,” “the development of inclusive finance,” and “poverty reduction” in China at the same time, this paper will carry out an empirical study on how inclusive finance affects the relationship between poverty-CO2 emissions",1
"The main research objectives are as follows: (1) to determine the long-term dynamic nexus among poverty, inclusive finance, and carbon emissions; (2) exploring the moderating impact of inclusive finance on the nonlinear relationship between poverty and CO2 emissions at the overall and heterogeneity levels; and (3) to propose recommendations to achieve a win–win solution between “No Poverty” and “Climate Action” in China",13
Our contributions are presented as the following points: (1) there is a novelty which is to introduce inclusive finance as an intermediate to further correlate with both poverty reduction and CO2 emissions,1
"This view is mainly as follows: poverty leads to environmental degradation in developing countries, while environmental degradation exacerbates poverty in turn, which forms a vicious circle",15
Scholars who support the poverty-environment trap have clarified that the natural environment was considered as a public good without property rights,1
"To survive, the poor often overuse resources in an unsustainable way, which leads to environmental degradation (Durning 1989; Jalil and Mahmud 2009; Masron and Subramaniam 2019)",15
Guha (1989) looked at the case of Amazon’s indigenous people against multinational corporations to express the calls of developing countries and regions for the realization of environmental justice; this case shows that the poor can be more concerned about pollution and environmental degradation than the rich,15
Kurtz (2003) drew the same conclusion: the poor pay more attention to environmental protection because they confront the environmental hazards caused by poverty every day,15
"Among them, the “Poverty-CO2 Paradox” is the most typical theory (Collins and Zheng 2015; Rizk and Slimane 2018), which believes that poverty reduction and CO2 emission reduction are contradictory but interrelated",1
Reducing poverty through economic growth will worsen the problem of CO2 emissions caused by production and consumption at the same time (Smith and Lewis 2011),8
"Now “Low Carbon Economy” is regarded as a future development model associated with low energy consumption and less pollution facing up with global warming, resource shortage, and environmental pollution was proposed in order to achieve more production, better living standards, more working opportunities, and less poverty",7
"In order to better understand the relationship between poverty and CO2 emissions, we can start with the economic growth-environment nexus and the poverty-environment nexus",8
The most typical method on the relationship between economic growth and environment is the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) proposed by Grossman and Krueger (1992),8
They believed that environmental pollution presents an “inverted U” curve characteristic of increasing first and then decreasing with economic growth,8
"With further in-depth research, the OECD proposed the application of the decoupling theory to the relationship between economic growth and carbon emissions in 2002",8
"Sadorsky (2010) took 22 emerging market countries as examples and found that financial development stimulated the purchasing of high-energy consumption products such as cars and houses, thus realizing an increase in CO2 emissions through the wealth effect",7
(2013) tested the financial development-CO2 emissions relationship using Malaysian time-series data and clarified that financial development eased the pressure on CO2 emissions through technological innovation,8
Nasreen and Anwar (2015) concluded that the relationship between financial development and CO2 emissions was closely related to the state of national economic development,8
"When economic development was at a low level, financial development would aggravate CO2 emissions",8
"When economic development was at a higher level, financial development would, on the contrary, inhibit CO2 emissions",8
"EG and EGs are economic growth and its square, respectively",8
"2020), this article selects population scale, economic growth and its square, technological level, industrial structure, inclusive finance, and financial openness as control variables",8
"In other words, although poverty hinders economic growth, impoverished people exert little pressure on the environment",8
"It seems that the linkage among poverty, economic growth, and the environment is irreconcilable",8
"That is, poverty alleviation tends to reduce CO2 emissions, which supports the evidence for the win–win relationship",1
The lack of funds from inclusive finance can downsize economic scale and reduce energy consumption,7
"As a result, environmental degradation and CO2 emissions are greatly minimized",15
"Based on this analysis, the low level of inclusive finance reduces the chance of access to funds for the poor, thus poverty reduction is not conducive to improving the environment",1
"In other words, poverty alleviation reduces CO2 emissions with a high level of inclusive finance",1
Another reasonable analysis is as follows from the perspective of financial inclusion,8
"This can not only reduce poverty but also upgrade the industrial structure, which can further reduce CO2 emissions",1
"Poverty reduction may not lead to a significant increase in consumption but will increase savings, which can reduce CO2 emissions to a certain extent (Lin et al",1
"Because the technological proxy index in this paper is the energy consumption per unit of output, the proxy index is complementary to the technological level",7
"This paper investigates the linkage among China’s poverty, inclusive finance, and CO2 emissions to achieve the goal of “No Poverty” and “Climate Action.” Based on the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2019, an ARDL model, a moderating effect model, and a dynamic panel threshold model were constructed",13
"(3) From the perspective of heterogeneity, poverty alleviation will lead to an increase of CO2 emissions when inclusive finance is at a low level (IFI ≤ 0.2696), and conversely, it reduces CO2 emissions",1
"Our findings support that China could achieve goal towards “No Poverty” and “Climate Action” simultaneously in the long run in the following ways: Develop inclusive finance vigorously, and promote all regions to reach the threshold level",13
"Combined with the estimated threshold in Table 9, poverty alleviation could bring about CO2 emission reduction when the development of inclusive finance is at a high level (IFI > 0.2696)",1
"Raise the threshold of subsistence allowances, and promote in-depth poverty reduction",1
"That is, we can take action to achieve “No Poverty” and “Climate Action” at the same time",13
This means poverty reduction should increase the standard of minimum living security and reduce the proportion of the population living at that level,1
"To make full use of poverty reduction in promoting CO2 emission reduction in the post-COVID-19 era, China should improve the threshold of subsistence allowances and reduce the proportion of people living under subsistence allowances",1
"So technological progress is the most powerful tool for promoting CO2 emission reduction, and full attention should thus be paid to its application in CO2 emission reduction",8
"Considering the source of technological progress, financial openness occupies a prominent position in the innovation of low-carbon environmental technologies",8
"This study was systematically conducted with China as the research object, which contributes the most to global poverty reduction and accounts for the largest proportion of global CO2 emissions",1
"IntroductionThe development agenda over the next 15 years will be framed by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), of which more than half relate either directly or indirectly to the agricultural sector, highlighting its importance in economic growth and development of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) (FAO 2015)",8
"2Conceptual Framework of pathways between agriculture and nutrition – Research Chain for Agriculture and NutritionFull size image The development agenda over the next 15 years will be framed by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), of which more than half relate either directly or indirectly to the agricultural sector, highlighting its importance in economic growth and development of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) (FAO 2015)",8
"Several other domains were also studied as determinants of nutrition in the abstracts, including (1) gender empowerment and intrahousehold dynamics, (2) consumption, (3) environment and climate change, (4) food environments, and (5) political and economic factors (9, 7, 7, 6, and 4 studies, respectively)",13
"
Theme 1: Value chain and market approaches in agri-health
 In recent years the agri-health community has employed value chain approaches to address global malnutrition",2
"Key concerns relate to how value chains can be optimised to improve nutrition, including how to minimise inefficiencies and risks",2
"Multiple value chains combine to shape food availability within food environments, providing both opportunities and constraints for policy levers to tackle malnutrition",2
"Having only few producer associations, with minimal government oversight, led to the dominance of informal value-chains and consequent food safety risks",2
"In similar study regions, Bart Minten found that the additional costs imposed on farming households from poor roads and market access, translated to worse welfare and food security",2
"Although animal-source foods have many nutritional benefits, food safety issues are still of concern",2
"However, there are potentially detrimental implications associated with food safety regulations; although the presence of aflatoxins in feed for dairy cattle in Kenya contributes to significant costs, Daniel Senerwa (in a study of five agro-ecological zones) estimated that if legislation were enforced, the economic losses would be considerable",2
"For example, the Ghana School Feeding Program (GSFP) procures local food from small-holder farmers, and aims to improve both child nutrition and school attendance (Gelli et al",2
Asnake Irenso’s analysis of food security predictors in Ethiopia highlighted the relevance of secure and stable food production in urban and rural areas,2
Hassan Ishaq Ibrahim examined the detrimental effects of post-harvest losses in agriculture on household food security of communities in Northern Nigeria,2
"Anteneh Girma explored the nutrition security impacts of rainwater harvesting technologies, finding that using rainwater harvesting improved the access and utilization components of a multidimensional food security indicator",2
"Sustainable diets are considered to be those with “low environmental impacts, which contribute to food and nutrition security and to healthy life for present and future generations” (FAO 2012)",2
"Gender and household dynamics approaches in agri-health
 Research investigating the relationship between women’s empowerment and nutrition is expanding, with gender empowerment increasingly being a core component of development interventions (van den Bold et al",5
"There is growing acknowledgement that nutritional analysis should be widened to a broader range of household members (particularly adolescents), and to incorporate qualitative research in order to understand the linkages among gender, intrahousehold dynamics and child nutrition",2
Women farmers are often custodians of knowledge on the climate resilience and nutrition of local crops,13
Florence Mtambanengwe described her project using elderly women’s know-how on production of resilient cereals and legumes for household nutrition security among smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe,2
"Hilde Bras reflected on whether women’s empowerment can improve the current inequalities in nutritional status among siblings in Ethiopia, due to birth order and/or gender",5
"Similarly, Elisabetta Aurino identified similar patterns in India among longitudinal cohort data of young and adolescent children, which showed higher dietary diversity among boys, and higher allocation of nutritious food groups",2
"
Erin Milner described the negative impact of household food insecurity on early child development, and Jessica Heckert suggested that empowerment and increased resource availability from integrated agriculture and nutrition programmes can help women implement optimal nutrition and health practices",2
The development of a new agri-health indicator of women’s empowerment in livestock-focused agriculture was discussed by Amy Webb Girard,5
Todd Rosenstock presented the Surveillance of Climate-Smart Agriculture for Nutrition (SCAN) project which aims to increase the spatial and temporal resolution of data,2
This session instructed researchers and policy analysts on the Food Security and Information Network’s (FSIN ) compiled food security and nutrition indicators,2
A specialist team from the International Food Research Policy Institute (IFPRI) led participants on the use of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI),5
"Finally, a specialist team from FAO led participants through mapping food security and nutrition policies for policy coherence in food systems",2
"In alignment with the goals of the ANH Academy Week, the Labs focused on linking agriculture and nutrition, and emphasised cross-cutting themes such as culture, gender, and climate change",13
The 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 agenda hinges on attaining a sustainable environment with the need to “take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”,13
"Overall, the effect of energy and globalization on carbon emissions is opposite while the consistency at the 75th quantile result indicates that countries with intense globalization are prone to environmental degradation",15
"The drive to maintain a sustainable environment necessitated the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 agenda, which is to “take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”",13
"Therefore, to address climate change, it becomes imperative to understand its contributing factors: one of which is carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions",13
These type of carbon emissions are known as “greenhouse” gases which should have been absorbed by space but are trapped by absorbing solar energy thereby heating the earth to cause global warming (National Geographic 2019),7
This trapping of heat is known as the “greenhouse effect” which exemplifies environmental degradation,15
"In other words, nonrenewable energy, economic growth, and globalization are the identified drivers of carbon emissions (Dogan and Aslan 2017; Shahbaz and Sinha 2018; Murshed and Dao 2020; Parker and Bhatti 2020; Adeleye et al",8
"Hence, with the danger posed by increasing emissions, most developing economies are primarily saddled with the seemingly impossible task of curbing emissions amidst achieving steady economic growth and unhindered energy supply",8
"On the link between emissions and globalization, climate change is precipitated by the enormous amount of carbon dioxide produced by the use of renewable and nonrenewable energy sources in a bid to produce goods and services for man’s use (Akadiri et al",13
"Climate change is a global phenomenon with its negative consequences affecting directly or indirectly every nation, depending on the level of development of a given nation",13
"To situate the discourse, this study also contributes to the actualization of the Paris Agreement, sometimes referred to as the Paris Accords or the Paris Climate Accords",13
"The Agreements was adopted by 196 parties in 2015 and borders on climate change mitigation, adaptation, and finance",13
Empirical support for climate change mitigation and environmental sustainability are diverse,13
"However, several studies suggest that environmental sustainability can be achieved with the reduction in the level of carbon emissions via energy efficiency (Murshed et al",7
"2022), renewable energy use (Murshed et al",7
"This study positions on South Asia based on four reasons: (1) pollution, (2) economic growth, (3) energy demand, and (4) members of an economic cooperation that focuses on trade",8
"From United Nations (2019), in contrast to Pakistan, the economic conditions in Bangladesh, Bhutan, and India are mostly positive with positive GDP growth projections",8
"Lastly, energy demand is higher in Asia and projected to double between 2018 and 2050, making it both the largest and the fastest-growing region in the world for energy consumption (EIA 2019)",7
"Carbon emission is the proxy for environmental degradation, and the quest for a sustainable environment led to investigations on the drivers of carbon emissions",15
"Several studies which will be highlighted in this section have explored different factors that aggravate environmental degradation with diverse outcomes partly due to the scope under coverage, the analytical technique, and the choice of control variables",15
This outcome is similar to Lin and Raza (2019) who find that energy intensity reduces carbon emissions in Pakistan for the period 1978 to 2017,7
"(2020) use the ARDL technique to show that in the long run, energy consumption and gross domestic product (GDP) intensify carbon emissions in Pakistan from 1972 to 2014",7
"From 1970 to 2017, Sarkodie and Strezov (2018) deploy the dynamic autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model to reveal that energy consumption is a positive predictor of carbon emissions in Australia",7
Sarkodie and Strezov (2018) conclude using FMOLS and DOLS that renewable energy stalls emissions in Australia from 1974 to 2013,7
"(2018) also use the ARDL approach to find that globalization, energy use, and economic growth exacerbate emissions in Japan from 1970 to 2014",8
"(2018) deploy the ARDL, VECM, and DOLS techniques to find that the principal determinants of carbon emissions from 1980 to 2013 are FDI, energy use, and economic growth",8
(2021) show that economic growth induces gas flaring activities in Nigeria,8
"From 1980 to 2020, Alam (2022) finds that trade and economic growth in Bahrain have negative relationship with environmental deterioration",8
"(2022) show that energy consumption and financial development are positive determinants of emissions in Oman from 1972 to 2019, while Hamid et al",7
"(2022b) reveal that foreign direct investment inflows, economic growth, and capital investments boost carbon dioxide emissions from 1980 to 2019",8
"Similarly, other time series studies found significant socio-economic indicators exacerbating environmental degradation",15
(2019) on the study of G7 countries from 1870 to 2014 use a non-parametric approach to show that emissions and research and development exhibit time-varying features,9
Nguyen and Kakinaka (2019) deployed panel cointegration techniques in 107 countries from 1990 to 2013 to show that renewable energy stalls carbon emissions in high-income countries,7
"From the analysis of high, middle, and lower-income countries, Azizalrahman and Hasyimi (2019) use the ARDL procedure to find that urbanization and energy consumption are the drivers of carbon emissions in high-income countries from 1973 to 2013",7
"(2018) find negative and significant relationship between globalization and energy demand, which is the main driver of carbon dioxide emissions; again the result shows unidirectional causality between globalization and energy consumption in China",7
"These empirical findings further reveal inadequate geographical spread of study focus covering South Asian region (see Jun et al. 2021), notwithstanding, the significance of the areas in relation to the effect of globalization and environmental degradation, with a population of over a billion people",15
"2020), renewable energy (REN) (Feng and Chen 2018; Balsalobre-Lorente et al",7
"Lastly, Sri Lanka, India, and Pakistan have the highest globalization index (GLB) of 49.4%, 45.6%, and 45.1%, respectively, which implies that globalization is driving economic growth in these countries but very weak in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, and Nepal",8
"From the pairwise correlation reported on the lowest panel of Table 2, all the variables with the exception of renewable energy indicate significant positive association with carbon missions",7
"Following our study objectives, we start with specifying a baseline model with carbon emissions expressed as a linear function of control variables which are per capita GDP, population growth, renewable energy, and regulatory quality: To achieve the first objective of investigating whether the energy-Kuznets curve is present, we include both the level and square of nonrenewable energy into Eq. (1): To realize the second objective on the evidence of globalization-Kuznets curve in South Asia, both the level and squared terms of the globalization index are incorporated into Eq. (1): To ascertain if the energy-Kuznets and globalization-Kuznets hypotheses hold despite the inclusion of all the variables under evaluation, Eqs",7
\(REN\) is the renewable energy,7
"Thus, the transfer of clean energy and better regulatory strategies from trade liberalization can improve a quality environment (Acheampong et al",7
The consistency at the 75th quantile result indicates that countries with high trade liberalization and foreign direct investment are prone to environmental degradation at development,15
"Restricting discussions to nonrenewable energy and globalization, the effect of nonrenewable energy consumption is positive and significant in Pakistan suggesting that an increase induces a rise in emissions by 0.00748% (Zafar et al",7
"Thus, the EKC holds in Pakistan with the turning point at 442.60 kg of oil equivalent per capita, suggesting that when the nonrenewable energy consumption reaches 442.60 kg of oil equivalent per capita, CO2 emissions decline",7
"At the initial level, the effect of nonrenewable energy consumption is negative and significant which indicates that the consumption indices less carbon emissions",7
This might be attributable to the use of energy efficient technologies coupled with strengthening their environmental policies at the earlier stages of development,7
(2020) for G7 countries that globalization stimulate environmental degradation,15
"Third, it provides sufficient evidence that intense globalization contributes to environmental degradation",15
This is because better and efficient regulatory strategies may warrant manufacturers to adopt green technology causing the abatement of carbon emissions,9
"More so, given that the bulk of carbon emissions are from the transportation sector, it becomes expedient for the government and private sector to prioritize investment and re-engineer the transport system so people can carpool rather than use their individual cars",11
"Since the environment is a public good, promoting green growth through clean innovation and quality environmental regulatory can help save resources and reduce environmental pollution",8
"Lastly, tackling climate change and ensuring a sustainable environment (SDG13) requires that de-carbonization measures be pursued to enable a healthy environment that will reduce health impacts due to energy-related air pollution (SDG3) by 2030",13
This is because the drive to pursue economic growth agendas will elicit more carbon emissions which will further degrade the environment,8
"Air pollution is one of the most important global sustainability and health challenges Urban Air Quality Management and Urban Transition Management are complementary, but practically separated approaches An explorative case study in the City of Aachen (Germany) is used to juxtapose both approaches Comparative transformative research in “urban air quality transition management” labs could help to integrate both approaches Legally facilitate experiments with “urban air quality transition management” Provide reliable financial resources (e.g",11
transition funds) and political support from all levels Pursue a long-term transition strategy that goes beyond limit value compliance Use air pollution for piloting urban transition management (e.g,11
"It stems from multiple anthropogenic sources such as agriculture, energy, industry or transport and causes harmful effects on the climate, eco-systems, built environment, cultural heritage, economy and particularly human health (cf",11
"Apart from that, more recently urban transition management (UTM) (Frantzeskaki et al",11
"2014) and urban transition planning (Wolfram 2018) are emerging approaches for governing sustainable urban change that may have something to offer for UAQM, but are not linked to it yet",11
"Given the situation that air quality policy still fails to achieve air quality levels that are sufficient to protect public health, the overall research question of this paper is, whether UAQM could be enhanced by UTM in order to meet air quality targets in future",3
how does it contribute to a transition process? 2) How could UAQM and UTM be combined in terms of an ‘urban air quality transition management’? The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: The next Conceptual approach section introduces the conceptual background of UTM as a means of urban transition planning and develops an approach for a juxtaposition with UAQM,11
"Examples include the shift from fossil fuel based to renewable energy, from internal combustion engine based (e.g",7
car) to low carbon transport as well as from industrialised agriculture to organic farming,2
radical innovations like renewable energy or alternative propulsion technologies),7
"But surprisingly, an explicit connection between sustainability transition research and air pollution and consequently UAQM is still lacking today - despite the fact that socio-technical systems can be associated with the respective sources of air pollution and that, for example, synergies with the promotion of urban low-carbon transitions or transitions to sustainable urban mobility are obvious",11
"Secondly, among these, particularly urban transition management (UTM) seems to have potential for UAQM, because it becomes more and more a transition governance tool for urban areas (Frantzeskaki et al",11
"2014) and, thirdly, it is closely related to urban planning (Wolfram 2018)",11
"In recent years, UTM and urban transition labs have become a synonym for the governance of urban sustainability transitions (Frantzeskaki et al",11
"Other early applications include initiatives and programmes focusing on new sustainable functions of roofs, new approaches to long-term care in the healthcare sector in the Netherlands, as well as the transition of waste management in the Flemish Region (Belgium) to a more resource oriented policy",12
"Later, the Transition Management approach was also adapted and transferred to the urban context, often applied in so called urban transition labs, which build on the idea of urban living labs (Loorbach et al",11
Urban Transition Labs are defined as “[…] settings in which real life trajectories of sustainable development in cities are deployed and at the same time carefully observed; in a co-creative collaboration between actors and researchers (transdisciplinary research)” (Nevens et al,11
"Examples for the former are the “climate arena” in Ghent (Belgium) that works towards climate neutrality, the elaboration of a local climate plan in Montreuil (France) as well as activities in Aberdeen (UK) to address social and financial vulnerabilities arising in the transition away from an oil-dominated economy",13
"For Instance, the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU 2016) defined context specificities (“Eigenart”) as a core dimension of its normative compass for urban sustainability transformations along with sustaining the natural life-support systems and inclusion",11
"However, in both the analysis and practice of urban sustainability transition governance the question remains of how exactly the political-institutional contexts of cities and municipalities determine their roles and capabilities for achieving fundamental sustainable change",11
"2018) in which cities are embedded, and in particular to urban living labs or urban transition labs, respectively (Kronsell and Mukhtar-Landgren 2018)",11
"Rationalism, Incrementalism, Participation and Advocacy, Collaborative Planning, Strategic Planning, Multi-level- and Metropolitan Governance) and instruments of urban planning (i.e",11
"In order to deal with the heterogeneity of fully institutionalised urban planning approaches and the usually experimental transition management approach, he proposed “establishing a dialectic relation of coordinated independence between transition management and urban planning” (Wolfram 2018)",11
"In the following, these findings are taken as a starting point to go one step further by comparing and juxtaposing UTM with UAQM - a fully institutionalised field of urban environmental planning.
 Approach for Juxtaposing Urban Air Quality Management with Urban Transition Management",11
Figure 1 outlines the approach for juxtaposing Urban Air Quality Management (UQAM) with Urban Transition Management (UTM),11
It highlights that UAQM and UTAM are both process frameworks of urban planning and presents criteria and features that are used for their juxtaposition,11
"This is also done in order to ensure consistency with previous research, as well as for comparability with assessments of other urban planning approaches therein",11
The framework compares urban planning with transition management on the basis of their underlying key features,11
"In general, “[t]he EU’s clean air policy framework sets EU air quality standards, implements the EU’s international obligations in the field of air pollution, and integrates environmental protection requirements into other productive sectors” (EEA 2017)",15
The city administration is mainly represented by the Department for Environment and the Department for Urban Development and Urban Infrastructure (i.e,11
"n.d.), which included a package of measures that mainly aimed at a shift to sustainable transport modes, but also included some measures in the energy domain",11
"Paradoxically, public transport buses were identified as a major contributor to air pollution concentrations and thus were in focus of the 2015 revision",11
"Hence, the LEZ implementation mostly served as a legal enforcement instrument for retrofitting of buses, since most private cars were already in line with the relevant Euro Norms and got a green environmental badge",9
"Therefore, both provide more directed funding for urban air pollution abatement, which was previously lacking (i.e",11
"Hence, the following “most effective and fast to implement measures” (Bezirksregierung Köln 2018) are given priority: i) retrofitting of buses with SCRT-filtration; ii) better coordination and raising of parking fees to reduce parking space search traffic; iii) more ambitious emission standards for buses in the local transport masterplan; and finally, iv) software updates for manipulated cars and ‘switchover bonuses’ for replacing older diesel cars with newer models (provided by car manufacturers/on the national level)",9
Table 1 summarises the main findings gained to this point and is structured by the criteria and features of the analysis framework (urban planning is only added for information purposes here; for its comparison with transition management see Wolfram 2018),11
"the expert work group) and the mostly long-term oriented measures aiming at a shift to sustainable transport look rather similar to some elements of UTM (TM cycle as such; agenda, arena, experiments, monitoring and evaluation etc.)",11
"UAQM aims at effectively (and measurably) protecting public health on a legal basis of an EU Directive and ‘as soon as possible’, while transition management aims at long-term sustainable innovation, mostly by short-term and voluntary experimentation and social learning",3
RWTH Aachen) the opposition against the LEZ led to the “Aachen Way” as a kind of transition vision (UTM#1) for sustainable urban mobility,11
"Therefore the traffic development plan, which uses the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) approach (EU 2019), is a central measure but has failed so far, too",11
"For example, changes in promotion of biking from small bike lanes to plans for a major bike road network and biking highway, promotion of public transport from ‘clean’ diesel buses to electric buses and/or experimenting with autonomous buses, while car and bike sharing get both upscaled and ‘electrified’",11
"The same can be said with regard to the target of public health protection, because there seem to be no thresholds where for instance PM and NO2 do no harm (Barnes et al",3
These could have opened up even more space for the emergence and upscaling of sustainable transport niches,11
"Due to the described commonalities and differences, the case of air quality really supports the proposition of several authors to see urban planning and urban transition management as approaches that complement – but do not replace – one another (Nevens et al",11
"Third, UTM and particularly urban transition labs are in fact approaches of practice-based action research",11
"However, there is so far no (formal) UAQM process using an explicit transition management approach or urban transition lab as a setting",11
"In parallel, sustainability transition research and urban transition management (UTM) have emerged in Europe, too",11
"Another obvious limitation of this study is that air pollution is without a doubt a major urban sustainability challenge, but it is by no means the only one",11
"However, as cities worldwide are facing urgent problems with air pollution, the issue of air quality could well be used for piloting urban transition management in general",11
ess to electricity is vital for the social and economic development of a country,8
Growth in access to electricity in total numbers has slowed down in recent years,7
"Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 aims to achieve universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy by 2030 (IEA et al",7
"In 2020, however, 789 million people worldwide still lived without access to electricity (United Nations 2020)",7
"Mini-grids are capable of operating independently, either through a single or multiple generation sources (hybrid systems), and thus can provide electricity, particularly to underserved populations in rural areas (Louie 2018)",7
"Based on 5,544 investigated mini-grids in the course of the global mini-grids market report 2020, the generation source primarily used was solar power (see Fig. 1), which is indeed the most cost-effective and efficient renewable solution for developing countries (Eras et al",7
"Installed mini-grids by generation source (basis: 5,544 projects in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and small island nations incl",7
"Nevertheless, the increase in access to electricity (in total numbers) has decreased in recent years (IEA 2020; Corfee-Morlot et al",7
"Albeit investors focus on the investments return that result from a viable system management, the community desires a low or rather affordable tariff and reliable electricity supply",7
"This starts with a holistic, long-term electrification strategy, including an energy access plan, which should categorize different areas in a country in accordance with the possibility of being reached by the grid at reasonable costs",7
"As payback periods for mini-grids easily exceed several years, it is an essential task of the government to create a regulatory environment including agreements or subsidies, which are valid for ideally ten years or longer to mitigate risks for investors (Reber et al",7
"According to a World Bank Report, mini-grids were regularly abandoned once a village was connected to the national grid (Tenenbaum et al",7
"Hence, a regulatory framework that ensures investors that mini-grids are retained and continue to be used after the grid is extended needs to be implemented (Antonanzas et al",7
Changing domestic needs or innovations might affect expansion plans and eventually render mini-grids useless (Reber et al,7
An example for this is Tanzania’s online information portal exclusively for mini-grids (minigrids.go.tz),7
This is critical given that the need for hundreds of mini-grids over the next few years is prevailing in most emerging countries (SEforALL and BloombergNEF 2020),7
"A capacity carve-out is applied, since mini-grids with a capacity of less than one MW do not need a generation license at all (IRENA 2016a)",7
"In Rwanda, mini-grids with a capacity of less than 50 kW are exempt from licensing, while systems between 50 and 100 kW are subject to a simplified procedure (Come Zebra et al",7
"The unaffordability of access to electricity causes, in some cases, illegal usage by community residents, which leads to financial losses for the operator, not least due to the overload that occurs",7
"Apart from this, the government, in particular, has the obligation of safeguarding the economic viability of mini-grids, while ensuring that tariffs are not overly high for underserved communities—the tariff has to satisfy both the investor and the consumers (IRENA 2019)",7
The German Renewable Energy Act of 2002 serves as a precedent with regard to the installation of a support system for renewable energies,7
All end consumers of electricity must pay a renewable energy levy that depends on the number of renewable energy systems installed in a given year,7
This levy is set once a year and distributed to renewable energy operators to ensure that they remain competitive in the long term,7
"In the case of interconnected mini-grids, the tariff has to be jointly agreed upon by the developer, the distribution company and the community (IRENA 2019)",7
"Financing mini-grids is challenging, especially in developing countries",7
"Based on the rather limited demand, the sizes of rural mini-grids are rather small, ranging from 10 to 100 kW",7
Projects are restricted to solar hybrid mini-grids in off-grid regions (SEforALL and BloombergNEF 2020),7
The electricity generated from mini-grids remains expensive for clients from rural areas (SEforALL and BloombergNEF 2020),7
"While the simple coverage of energy demand was traditionally on top of the agenda, recent research has revealed that it is of utmost importance to combine these efforts with educational measures to advance socio-economic development",8
"In particular to name are positive impacts on health, education and gender equality (Bahaj et al",5
"Thus, building up local skills and ideally increasing entrepreneurial activities, tackle challenges that are related to unreliability of rural customers, which represents one of the biggest obstacles to mini-grids becoming economically viable without subsidies (Ngowi et al",7
"To mitigate this risk, Kenya for example, has adopted regulations specifically for PV systems that aim to standardize the quality of components and business practices in the solar energy sector (IRENA 2020)",7
"Thus, inferior systems installed due to a lack of technical standards would further hinder vital productive-use cases necessary for economic development in rural areas",8
"Although the majority of Namibia’s renewable electricity generation comes from hydropower resources, this paper focuses on two hybrid diesel-photovoltaic (PV) powered mini-grids",7
Wind and solar power generation currently accounts for 24 percent of the country's total energy generation (Bloomberg Finance L.P,7
"Despite good preconditions, oil that is imported from neighboring countries still accounts to the largest part of the overall energy supply, while solar power lags behind (see Fig. 2)",7
"Total energy supply by source, Namibia 1990–2018 (IEA 2021) In Namibia’s Vision 2030, the government declared to adopt sustainable energy policies with the intention of accelerating urban and rural development",7
"This appears to be a valid strategy, considering the above outlined potentials of solar energy in Namibia and the great dependence on imports of fossil fuels from neighboring countries (GIZ 2020; Electricity Control Board 2017a)",7
"Fostering current endeavors to increase the dissemination of solar energy supply through the uptake of off-grid solutions is therefore an essential step not only toward greater energy independence, but also toward lower national electricity prices",7
"Hence, it is often neither technically nor economically viable to provide access to modern energy services using the utility grid connection (Ministry of Mines and Energy 2017a)",7
"The settlement of Tsumkwe is 735 km away from Windhoek and 304 km from Grootfontein, the nearest town where community members have access to basic services",1
The group was precisely instructed to assess whether a hybrid mini-grid energy supply system using solar energy and diesel would be a feasible long-term electrification approach for Tsumkwe,7
"Based on good experience with a project at the Gobabeb Training and Research Centre, which ensured a reliable electricity supply through the same approach, it was decided to also use it for Tsumkwe",7
"The livelihood of Gam residents is divided into cattle farmers and government employees from different ministries such as the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry, police station, clinic, a primary and secondary schools",15
"Driven by concerns about climate change and the widening energy gap between supply and demand in Namibia, the Government of Namibia joined others in concerted efforts to attain the SDGs",13
"Thus, Gam was provided with access to electricity in 2014 through a stand-alone hybrid mini-grid consisting of a 292 kW (peak) solar PV generator, a 180 kW, 3-phase inverter/charger, a lead-acid battery bank and two diesel generators, which are used as a standby generator",7
It is essential to accelerate the deployment of presented off-grid solutions that provide rural areas such as Tsumkwe and Gam decentralized access to electricity,7
That mini-grids are indeed acknowledged as a valid option for energy generation by the government is highlighted in the Renewable Energy Policy (Ministry of Mines and Energy 2017b),7
"The OGEMP secondly misses the chance to give an overview of off-grid possibilities, such as mini-grids, in general",7
"Indeed, disclosure of domestic costs of mini-grids and corresponding rules for their construction could facilitate the involvement of stakeholders such as REDs and IPPs",7
"Energy4Impact and INSENSUS for SE4All established a ‘Green Mini-Grid Help Desk’, hosted by the African Development Banks and funded through the bank’s Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA)",7
This tool is designed to provide practical information on mini-grids policies and regulations for various African countries—including Namibia,7
"Technical assistance for third parties (e.g., IPPs) is provided by the Grid Codes for Namibian Solar Energy Technologies, specifying requirements for both distribution and transmission of electricity",7
"There is a continuing lack of guidelines, which are directed not only at private investors, but also at REDs by means of providing training material on the installation and maintenance of mini-grids",7
"The ECB makes recommendations to the MME concerning licenses for electricity generation distribution, trade, and transmission (Electricity Control Board 2019a)",7
"As a result, the prepaid payment solution for the mini-grids in Namibia has created a regular cash flow that is necessary for the operation of the mini-grids",7
Support and funding measures to enlarge solar energy diffusion have been implemented by the Namibian government,7
This is declared in both the National Renewable Energy Policy as well as in the Net Metering Rules,7
The Renewable Energy Policy addresses the issue by recognizing that “(…) some distribution utilities view net metering as a threat to their revenue (…)” and clarifies that corresponding regulations have been introduced (CORE International and Emcon Consulting 2006),7
"However, little funding is available for mini-grids (Ministry of Mines and Energy 2017b)",7
"As the mini-grids in Tsumkwe and Gam have been financed through funds, this section is not applicable to the systems",7
"Inglesi-Lotz and Diez del Corral Morales (2017), moreover, suggest that improved awareness in the society through education will result in more informed customers, who eventually make better energy purchasing and utilization decisions, which may, in turn, reduce the energy consumption levels (Inglesi-Lotz and Diez del Corral Morales 2017)",7
A considerable number of people were unaware of solar energy and what it entails,7
Solely business people and those who already installed small solar panels on their rooftop were sufficiently informed (Haingura et al,7
"In addition, educational campaigns were organized that concentrated explicitly on informing the community about the project itself, maintenance of the stoves/solar water heater and energy efficiency",7
"During the time when the mini-grids were owned by the RC, they were not operated as designed and not maintained at all (Zongwe et al",7
"Since the takeover was planned, NamPower and several REDs have been immensely reluctant to inherit the responsibility of operating and managing the mini-grids, due to the “lack of viability, relevant expertise, and regulatory uncertainty” (Stockmayer et al",7
"As a consequence, the mini-grids are still not effectively taken care of (Zongwe et al",7
"Consequently, education and training of operating personnel is essential to ensure the (techno-economic) lifespan of the equipment for better service",4
"Different owner experiences have led to various mini-grid operations, all of which have demonstrated the significance of regular monitoring of the mini-grids in conjunction with required and planned maintenance to ensure uninterrupted operation of the systems",7
"Furthermore, it has been illustrated in this paper how community involvement from the mini-grid planning phase through system design and operation is essential to ensure proper system sizing, appropriate rate and payment solutions and ultimately the long-term operation of mini-grids",7
Sufficient training in the context of entrepreneurial activities of Namibian communities could have led to a more profitable operation of the mini-grid through better use of daytime solar power and better use of energy-efficient equipment,7
"Therefore, the design of the guiding principles for off-grid installations under off-grid policies will play a crucial role in the future development of new mini-grids in other remote areas of Namibia",7
"This will contribute to Namibia's efforts to reduce the number of non-electrified regions in the country, thus advancing toward SDG 7",7
While it is clear that off-grid electrification is essential to achieve SDG 7—affordable and clean energy for all—the realization is still challenging,7
"The communities of Tsumkwe and Gam served as representative examples to elaborate the key challenges for off-grid electrification, which is essential for providing access to affordable and reliable electricity for remote areas",7
"Improving the deficiencies outlined in this paper, thus creating an environment in which off-grid systems can thrive, will not only have a positive impact on social and socioeconomic progress in rural areas, but will also contribute to the overall economic development of respective countries.",8
"Improvements are noted in relation to possible coherence and alignment with other components of the Post-2015 Agenda, especially as regards climate change and urban disasters as well as the higher visibility of civil society and women, and also regarding the specificity of targets and monitoring of governments’ successes",13
"I turn my attention now to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Reduction (SFDRR), child of Kobe (parentage unknownFootnote 2), after five years of implementation",11
Europe was dealing with a million immigrants and refugees from these and other conflicts and from countries where livelihoods had collapsed,10
Unreflective use of the word “dividend” by the Sendai Framework’s proponents causes me to wonder if the global platform meeting that reviewed the progress of the SFDRR held in Geneva in 2019 was in the wrong Swiss city,11
Vulnerable people are made vulnerable by deeply rooted social processes,1
“Emergency management” and “disaster risk management” are yet narrower domains of conventional understanding and practice,11
"In principle, the Sendai Framework began with a head start",11
"In Beyond Kobe we began by asking about government institutions, political will, inclusion and recognition of a human right to avoidable harm in natural hazard events or a human right to disaster mitigation and reliefFootnote 8 for everyone (Wisner and Walker 2005a)",11
"Likewise, in 2010, the extremely weak and corrupt Haitian state was unable to assist the multitudes who suffered in the 2010 earthquake, and this fact was carried forward into deliberations preparing for the world conference in Sendai and the Sendai Framework itself (UNISDR 2011a, 2015)",11
"“Project-ism” is still the dominant mode of top-down DRR and plans, protocols and “log frame” choreography still blunt attempts to mesh with people’s skill and local knowledge to produce flexible, localized assistance",11
"Risk “creation” is used here in the sense of new or enhanced risk resulting from risk-blind investment by public or private entities, especially megaproject investments (for example, hydropower, mining, energy extraction, new ports, and satellite cities) that entail population displacement",7
It is important to distinguish between “construction of risk” that is a universal and transhistorical process in one form or another (Tierney 2014) and malfeasance and corruption by governments (Lewis and Kelman 2012),16
Sendai Framework,11
"During the first five years of the SFDRR, the pressure on governments to allow large scale investment in hydropower, mining, large scale agribusiness, new technology cities, and luxury housing development has increased",7
"In 2005, we asked whether the HFA would effectively integrate efforts to slow climate change and adapt to its effects with the work of agencies that had evolved since the 1950s to deal with natural hazards as discrete, intense emergencies, as opposed to slow-onset, pervasive and extensive risks",13
We noted that few countries were doing enough on climate change,13
Sendai Framework,11
Sendai Framework,11
"Surveying the world suggests that violence and internal displacement is at least as great now, as the Sendai Framework attempts to go to scale, as it was then (IDMC 2019a, b)",11
"Moreover, much of this growth is in informal settlements",11
"By 2015, UNISDR could report that 3400 cities had joined the campaign, 640 had used the “local government self-assessment tool/scorecard” and 334 had used the scorecard “as the basis for creating or adapting urban development plans and taking decisions” UNISDR (2015)",11
Sendai Framework,11
"The likelihood of creating new risks in the course of investment in cities and urban restructuring is known; the 2013 report of the Sendai Framework’s custodian, UNISDR, documented this risk-creation process.Footnote 10 Neither implementation of the SFDRR nor of the UN-Habitat’s New Urban Agenda (NUA)Footnote 11 shows evidence of increasing political will by governments to weed out investments that are blind to risk from those that are risk-informed",11
The only problem with this investors’ dream is that the development is likely to divert coastal storm surge waters into low income coastal settlements (Onuoha 2017).Footnote 13 An additional challenge to implementing the Sendai Framework in such an urban context is mistrust and alienation,11
"Given the SFDRR’s commitment to youth participation in DRR, such mistrust and alienation is a serious obstacle to implementation",11
"Likewise, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Meteorological Organization (WMO), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) had experience and portfolios of projects",10
The “way forward” questions Peter Walker and I put to those trying to implement the Hyogo Framework are still highly relevant to the implementation of the Sendai Framework,11
Sendai Framework,11
Such tensions have only increased during the Sendai Framework’s first five years as social unrest sweeps through many countries,11
"Beyond Kobe pointed out the danger that local initiatives and citizen participation can be captured and controlled by dominant political elites, who already had been quick to appropriate the language of “participation” and “people centered” planning, while giving up no control or resources to civil society",11
Sendai Framework,11
"In the era of the Sendai Framework, the risk of cooptation and manipulation of “participation” is greater",11
"The danger is that local participation becomes a low-cost way for the state, and the elites it represents, to off-load the duty of care and cost of social protection onto risk bearers themselves",1
Sendai Framework,11
"As I have stated several times, there is more than enough knowledge in the world to meet the Sendai Framework’s modest targets.Footnote 14 The hard part is to get the knowledge used in the right place and the right time",11
"For the rollout of the Sendai Framework, the question remains if the fixation on technology will be tempered by common-sense, “mud on the boots” appreciation of the life worlds, daily lives and situations, cultures, vernaculars and ways of thinking/communicating that constitute “the first mile” (Krueger et al",11
Sendai Framework,11
"Bundled now with a new set of human development goals (the SDGs), the SFDRR offers a chance simultaneously to reduce risk, adapt to climate change (CCA), and enlarge people’s capacities and incomes",13
"What’s not to like? What is easy about any of it when the new wine of SDGs, CCA, and DRR might end up funneled into the old wine skins of often corrupt and unaccountable government institutions? Hyogo Framework",11
Sendai Framework,11
Sendai Framework,11
"During SFDRR’s first five years, moves are underway to filter data by gender and age for damage assessments and for preparedness and risk reduction planning (Bradshaw and Fordham 2013; Seager 2014) and to monitor impacts of climate change policy for their possible negative effects on women and girls (Habtezion 2016)",13
Women have also gained recognition as skillful and capable leaders in DRR (UN Women 2019),11
Also insidious is the assumption that women’s labor in DRR is a free good that needs no support from the state,11
"This is a variation on the trap of “community resilience” as shorthand for the neo-liberal state’s shedding the duty of care and dispensing with social protection, while relying on individual responsibility and group self-help",1
Sendai Framework,11
"If, as I have been arguing, neither the Hyogo Framework nor the Sendai Framework encourages governments to think of disaster reduction in terms of human rights, or challenges governments to stand up to private investors concerning megaprojects that threaten to create new risk, more is required",11
The Sendai Framework breaks the pattern of the decade-long time scales for major UN initiatives,11
"So, the Sendai Framework will be reporting to humanity in 2030 in an air-conditioned conference center far from a coast",11
"UNDRR, as custodian of the SFDRR, should claim a role as the conscience of global energy transformation and watchdog of the comprehensive transformation that is required to take the worst hurt out of climate change as well as simultaneously achieving SFDRR’s own goals and those of the other initiatives comprising the Post-2015 Agenda",13
"UNDRR is the product of many years of collaboration and knowledge sharing as the UN system developed capacity to understand disaster risk, one health (human, plant and animal), human well-being, happiness and security, and, more recently, climate change",13
They have also exposed profiteering and land grabs justified by the imperatives of “risk reduction” and “the climate adaptation imperative” (Smucker et al,13
"If the Sendai Framework is serious, and if the whole Post-2015 Agenda is to accomplish anything, then governments must stop protecting narrow elite interests, listen to the crescendo of protest rising to their air-conditioned offices from the over-heated streets, and adopt a rights- and justice-based transformation that will allow the overthrow of special interests and the rapid transformations that are needed.",11
"Various governments consider organic farming as an option, or “Plan B”, to satisfy consumer and public expectations for sustainable food production chains.Particularly in Europe, significant public support is given to further develop Organic Agriculture",2
The scaling up of these “methods” is a promising approach to reconcile food production and environmental protection,15
"Various governments consider organic farming as an option, or “Plan B”, to satisfy consumer and public expectations for sustainable food production chains",2
"The principles of Organic Farming—subsumed by the organic agriculture movement under the terms of ecology, health, care and fair—are the lodestar and give guidance for a fruitful development",2
The scaling up of these “methods” is a promising approach to reconcile food production and environmental protection,15
"Organic agriculture combines tradition, innovation and science to benefit the shared environment and promote fair relationships and a good quality of life for all involved.” The journal Organic Agriculture takes IFOAM’s definition of organic agriculture stated above as the focus of its Aims and Scope, and consequently will accept papers which report studies that are carried out within organic farming systems, where the system uses the methods of Organic Agriculture based on the IFOAM principles ( -landmarks/principles-organic-agriculture) and strategy ( -policy-guarantee/organic-3.0-next-phase-organic-development)",2
"To address the challenges of developing sustainable food and farming systems, the journal seeks contributions covering the whole supply chain from farm to fork",2
"Springer, Cham, p xxix
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"Springer, Cham, pp 483–487Schilling J, Hertig E, Tramblay Y, Scheffran J (2020) Climate change vulnerability, water resources and social implications in North Africa",13
"The Mediterranean and surrounding areas are considered a biogeographic region directly impacted by climate change and associated hydrological hazards and other human-induced environmental risks (e.g., Döll 2009; García-Ruiz et al",13
"Furthermore, according to UN-Water (2021), climate change is expected to increase seasonal variability, creating a more erratic and uncertain water supply",13
"This will worsen problems in already water-stressed areas, potentially enlarging the geographical extent of water stress-prone areas",6
"In addition, the effects of climate variability led to the increase of water stress levels because the water demand grew",6
"In the context of the United Nations’ 2030 sustainability Agenda, an action plan to strengthen sustainable water development was adopted",6
"Thus, sustainable water resources management, water conservation and water services encompass technical-scientific aspects and issues of social equity and intra- and intergenerational justice (Di Capua 2021)",6
"Hydrogeoethics is an emergent transdisciplinary field in geosciences focused on ethical research and best practices related to responsible groundwater science and engineering, creating conditions for sustainable water resources management while respecting human needs and environmental dynamics (Abrunhosa et al",6
"The themed issue on “Hydrogeoethics in Sustainable Water Resources Management Facing Water Scarcity in Mediterranean and Surrounding Regions” includes selected contributions in hydrogeology, urban groundwater, rural hydrogeology, groundwater harvesting agroecosystems, environmental law, water resources, and water-related research and practice",6
"The articles published in this volume also illustrate hydrological systems under climate crisis, environmental and societal pressure",13
"The themed issue highlights key emerging research topics that reshape the current disciplinary boundaries in hydrogeology, groundwater science and engineering, environmental law, social sciences to support a balanced, sustainable water resources management under a geoethical perspective",6
"In fact, the fundamental issue centred on water quality as a human right and, in a broader overview, as vital to all ecosystems and nature (e.g., Gleick 1998; Falkenmark 2003; Llamas and Martínez-Cortina 2009; Groenfeldt and Schmidt 2013; Tortajada and Biswas 2017; Gleeson et al",6
"Thus, nature-based solutions for water are water management strategies inspired and supported by nature and mimic natural processes (Kabisch et al",6
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                UNEP (2020) The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021–2030",15
"Human driven climate change affects the ambient temperature and precipitation patterns globally and regionally, leading to frequent weather extremes (such as drought, flood, heat waves or waterlogging) and even degrading the fertility of soil",13
"Abiotic stresses in agroecosystems are the direct results of climate change, pollutants and salinity",13
Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC 2020) a joint consensus-based assessment comprising 16 partner organizations declared that weather extremes caused food insecurity for almost 34 million people in 25 countries in 2019 as compared to 29 million in 2018,2
These microbes have been found tolerant against multiple stresses signifying their diverse area of application and promoting agricultural productivity under environmental extremes,2
"Sustainable methods have to take lead for increasing agriculture productivity, ensure food security and conserve the soil quality",2
"Develop a long-term vision for better guidance of innovative actions in response to global challenges Make more substantial investments in prevention efforts supported by robust risk reduction strategies Encourage transdisciplinary development of risk maps to enhance the effectiveness of risk reduction strategies Ensure more frequent updating of building codes underpinning risk maps Enhancing urban resilience is a central strategy to face multiple global sustainability challenges Risk reduction related to natural hazards and climate impacts is a priority for enhancing resilience Risk maps integrating building codes support consistent agency towards enhancing resilience Transdisciplinary development of risk maps generates effective communication of resilience-enhancing actions Our planet is confronting numerous challenges particularly affecting the poorest and more vulnerable communities, the Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States",1
"Climate change, urban migration and concentration, and high levels of inequity have been identified as major global sustainability challenges (Briceño 2018)",13
"Climate change, for instance, is an important and growing threat to the infrastructure sector (UNEP 2006), to the global food systems and a significant “hunger-risk-multiplier” (FAO 2016, Porter et al",13
"Furthermore, increasingly unpredictable and extreme weather events related to climate change can force populations to migrate without a plan thus exacerbating inequalities and creating conditions for social unrest and conflict",13
"Furthermore, the possibility for events of similar magnitude exists in other parts of the world where extensive urban development has taken place on alluvial fans (e.g",11
"The converging goal of these three international agreements was to find ways to maintain or even increase levels of economic growth in a sustainable manner, hence without irreversibly damaging the planet and negatively affecting human livelihoods",8
"Boundary objects help creating spaces for innovation and participatory decision-making that contribute to build the relevance, credibility and legitimacy of co-developed options to multiple audiences (Cash et al",16
"responsible for food loss and waste), and properties (e.g",12
"For instance, immediate causes of a building collapse may be a landslide due to poor urban planning that allowed building in a highly vulnerable location and/or the lack of building codes and guidelines",11
"health, food security, better homes) and following risk reduction measures is not on the top of their list",2
New infrastructure should be better adapted to the probability of natural hazards and integrate climate-related hazards that are expected to intensify in frequency and/or intensity,13
(2010) proposed to include a regional “climate change adaptation factor” as a possible way to update building codes that internalize climate-related hazards,13
Building codes can also directly influence food security and nutrition,2
"Recent publications recognize that sub-optimal post-harvest facilities are main drivers of food loss and waste (Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition 2018, Vermeulen et al",12
"In Rwanda, for example, none of the post-harvest facilities evaluated by an International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) funded project were constructed following building codes or even designed considering emerging climate change challenges (Bendito and Twomlow 2014)",13
"contributing to food security and nutrition, carbon sequestration, and a greener environment while reducing heat, and filtering smog and dust) (Semaan and Pearc 2016), it is necessary to ensure that the additional forces exerted on the building are not enhancing vulnerability",2
"Such risk maps provide communities and governments with synthetic understanding of the spatial and temporal impacts of potential natural hazards and climate change impacts on people, food systems, infrastructure, and ecosystem services while highlighting areas of high, medium and low risk",13
"Such transdisciplinary risk maps are useful tools for increasing understanding of risk, raising awareness, and effectively guiding land use planning and zoning towards enhanced resilience, which is the common desired global outcome of the SDGs, SFDRR, and the Paris Agreement as shown in Fig. 1.",13
"Developed in the field of sustainable urbanisation, it is based on a wide set of sectors, disciplines, research frontiers, and their asymmetrical interconnections, as well as consultations among stakeholders in these areas, ranging from global policy and EU levels over national to regional and local actors including civil servants and politicians, researchers, commercial actors, civil society",11
The type of policy agenda discussed in this paper aims to guide and align both national and transnational research and innovation programming (funding) and policy for urban transformations,9
"To follow a dilemma-oriented approach means taking into account frictions involved in urban issues around sustainable urbanisation, i.e",11
"The dilemma-oriented approach promotes transdisciplinary research and innovation, and funding opportunities are needed to progress this move",9
It is crucial to be able to operationalise the integrated urban development principles in the New Leipzig Charter to be launched 2020,11
The JPIs are one type of response in the research and innovation funding landscape to the question on how to tackle the great societal challenges of our times as well as help member states coordinate their efforts and investments in these areas so as not to re-invent the wheel,9
McAdams and Debackere 2018)) to support urban transition pathways,11
"2007; 2020).
 The formal organigram describing the JPI Urban Europe governance structure The Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) Urban Europe recently updated its updated Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) (JPI Urban Europe 2015, 2019)",9
This updated agenda is set to stake out the directions of its urban research and innovation programming beyond 2020,9
"On the one hand, this stems from the fact that JPI Urban Europe (as with all the JPIs) is a new instrument and its programming is explorative, not to say innovative, in its own right in the context of research and innovation funding",9
"That is, while calling for challenge-driven research and innovation with a strong emphasis on transdisciplinary co-creative approaches in local urban settings, JPI Urban Europe itself has had to figure out how to have funding agencies work together and trust each other, how to partner with the EC, how to make the various events by and in collaboration with JPI Urban Europe more knowledge generating and active learning for all involved rather than simply a long row of statements and presentations",9
they are not mutually exclusive but do refer to different scopes and systemic perspectives: transitions concern ‘the processes and dynamics producing patterns of change’ in societal sub-systems while transformations denote a more overarching view on larger scale changes in societies and efforts to understand them ‘from emergent patterns of change’ and their ‘outcomes at a systemic level.’ JPI Urban Europe harbours a project portfolio directed towards shaping a critical mass in knowledge provision to urban transition pathways with the ultimate aim to support urban transformations (cf,11
"After all, the previous SRIA ran for 2020 and still had a lot to give, so to speak, when it comes to urban transition pathways and thematic priorities",11
The update was hence needed to specify how JPI Urban Europe should respond and support the achievement of the aims set out in these policies regarding sustainable urbanisation,11
"Furthermore, JPI Urban Europe also quickly realised that SRIA 2015 did not adequately address the issue of the contemporary fragmented landscape of urban research and innovation and policy (cf",9
2015) that required some reflection by an urban symposia series since it is a key issue in terms of understanding and supporting the variegated urban transition pathways to move towards urban transformations,11
"It was preceded by hectic work reflecting on the messy urban development dynamics in practice and on a wide set of consultations, ranging from global and EU level stakeholders over national and regional, to local, researcher, commercial, civil society stakeholder groups",11
"In 2017 the Governing Board had just developed a long-term strategy in more funding policy technical terms on the JPI Urban Europe vision, main achievements, and future goals concerning the societal challenge of sustainable urbanisation for 2020–2026 (JPI Urban Europe: Vision, main achievements and future goals 2020–2026, Unpublished)",11
"For realising urban transitions and enhancing impact of the investments, JPI UE needs to contribute to capacity building in urban planning, management, (regional, national, EU, and international) policy making and society at large",11
"2019) mainly by aiming to support the UN Agenda 2030 SDG 11 implementation.
 Timeline of the SRIA 2.0 formal development phases",11
"4).
 The AGORA Forum, Bucharest April 2019, where issues, concerns, challenges were iterated, hybridised, and re-combined into dilemmas for sustainable urbanisation",11
"the National Contact Points in JPI Urban Europe would bring the ‘memo’ to its urban research and innovation community and ask them for comments, ideas, input, etc",9
Broadly speaking it is to ‘connect the dots’ in the dense and diverse network of urban transition research and initiatives characterised above but also to support capacity building in the intentional absence of a ‘new paradigm’,11
"This landscape looks more like an archipelago – a group of islands operating independently, rather than an integrated system of action that generates a concerted effort to promote urban sustainability",11
"urban future narratives that generate very different urban development dynamics, partly also pursuing conflicting goals, any overarching paradigm seems impractical and may even be detrimental to the various transition pathways they drive",11
"Apart from the larger and, well, quite complicated types of calls in the research and innovation framework Horizon 2020 of the European Commission (and its successor framework Horizon Europe to be implemented 2021–2027), there are few transnational and perhaps also few national opportunities for truly transdisciplinary consortia",9
"Of course, urban research and innovation is already in many instances fully international in its debates and aims, depending on what issues and frontiers one looks at",9
"But city administrations and public officials therein, business as well as civil society actors – those many times labelled ‘practitioners’ (as if ‘theory’ was not a kind of knowledge practice?) – in urban development also signal interest in learning across borders",11
"Regarding learning across borders, this means that Urban Transformations is well positioned to, while promoting rigorous academic research, serve as a boundary spanner in a similar sense as how the SRIA 2.0 and JPI Urban Europe efforts strive to connect and shape conceptual infrastructures in-between the fragmented frontiers, issues, concerns, and urban imaginaries in the current urban research and innovation landscape.",9
"Int J Environ Res Public Health 18:3055Article 
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                World Health Organization (2020) Water, sanitation, hygiene, and waste management for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19",12
"The irreversible socio-economic changes brought by the pandemic have already disrupted the efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and even reversed the progress of some goals such as food security, inequality, health and education systems, economy, biodiversity, and environment conservation",2
It is important to research upon what went wrong because of which a novel virus ran through the globe and overwhelmed the health system in almost all the countries,3
"Yes, there are successes seen in vaccine development and health systems, but have we learnt about the root cause of such pandemics related to frequent arrival of zoonotic pathogens in human population? ‘Anthropocene epoch’ with human population touching 8 billion, and anthropogenic activities causing huge impact on natural ecosystems have resulted in a raging environmental pandemic on the planet since last few decades",3
"Additionally, unplanned urbanization, easy transportation, poorly managed “wet markets” or slaughterhouses, trade in bush meat, warmer environment due to climate change and unorganized livestock cultivation are important factors as well",13
This may revolutionize the vaccine development in future for other deadly diseases and novel pathogens,3
"Also, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) collaborating with vaccine giant-Moderna has developed tweaked version of vaccine specifically for variants",3
(2020) predict that preventing future zoonotic outbreaks like COVID-19 through reduced deforestation and restricted wildlife trade would be just 2% of the economic and mortality costs inflicted due to COVID-19 pandemic,15
The CHANS perspective also has helped generate important information for transforming the dynamics of the habitat of a global wildlife icon—giant pandas—from long-term loss to gradual recovery (Liu et al,15
"Subsequently, in 2016, the giant panda was removed from the endangered species list of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN (downgraded from endangered to vulnerable)",15
"In studies of urban sustainability, this is exemplified by the social, ecological, and technological systems approach used by the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (Markoff et al",11
"While the CHANS framework drew on the research traditions of many areas such as human ecology, social-ecological systems, and human-environmental systems, the concept of telecoupling substantially expanded the scope of the analysis and allowed links to traditions in the natural sciences (e.g., teleconnection in climate change and animal migration in ecology) and social sciences (e.g., trade in economics, world systems theory in sociology) that emphasized actions at a distance across the world",13
"More specifically, the supply chain agreements (Soy Moratorium and zero-deforestation beef agreement) protected much of the Amazon forest from being converted from native land to food production but pushed food production to the Cerrado region and resulted in a substantial increase of deforestation there (Dou et al",15
"The interrelated and daunting challenges that the world now is grappling with, including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, dysfunctional food distribution, and social inequality and injustices, require integrated approaches that are core to CHANS and expanded frameworks",13
"(1997), identifying their individual and collective role in laying the ground work for a global change research agenda on land and its human use through increased understanding of terrestrial ecosystem dynamics and global change, and furthering nascent interdisciplinary efforts within the global change science community to better understand the ‘human driving forces’ of change",15
"More than three quarters of the Earth’s terrestrial surface is currently managed to meet a combination of human needs via agriculture, forestry, and settlements, (Ellis 2015, Ramankutty et al",15
"(1994) and Brussaard (1997) are considered, particularly how they served to advance initial frameworks, methods, and ‘standards,’ building an understanding of terrestrial ecosystem dynamics and global change, and furthering nascent interdisciplinary efforts within the global change science community to better understand the ‘human driving forces’ of change",15
"And finally, the consideration of the articles’ legacy as carried forth through ongoing efforts in land system science, to better understand land systems as the ‘meeting ground’ for multiple claims on land (for biodiversity, carbon sequestration or food security among others), and asking, how is land system science poised to contribute to devising pathways to sustainability and to global environmental and human development policy priorities? Each of the articles in the Ambio anniversary collection on agriculture and land use changes employed the emerging systems approach to studying earth at the time",2
"In the pursuit of understanding land-use land cover change in relationship to global environmental change, the ‘cause to cover’ relationship between physical land transformation and its social drivers, though not a new concern, become firmly squared on building understanding of the deeply social human driving forces of land use change",15
"At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries—developed and developing—in a global partnership (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2015)",17
"Example: For the example of the plastic water bottle, the system boundaries reach from the plastics granulates to the bottles recycling phase",12
"The positive aspects of 100 new jobs created in an area with prior unemployment cannot, according to some viewpoints, compensate for the gender pay gaps identified",8
SARS-CoV-2 is a new virus that has led to the outbreak of a respiratory disease known as novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19),3
"Healthcare centers, especially hospitals, are environments that can be the site of outbreaks of infectious diseases such as COVID-19",3
"Therefore, if environmental and public health is not well monitored in these centers, staff and patients will face severe risks of viral and bacterial infections",3
"Although healthcare professionals and other front-line workers are working round the clock to combat COVID-19, public participation is also essential to rapidly control the pandemic worldwide",3
"To examine the measures that can be adopted at the time of a novel coronavirus outbreak to mitigate environmental contamination and impact on human health, the editors have edited a book, titled Environmental and Health Management of Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)",3
"Contributions come from virologists, microbiologists, public health professionals, environmental health managers, and policy makers",3
"Recycled water increases the resources of semi-arid regions (up to 10% of total resources), like in the Southeast of Spain",6
"Investment made in this sector and public policies make possible the implementation of recycling system, turning this limited resource into a social, political and economic interest, reaching levels of 99.5% purified and 97% reused in Murcia",12
Similar regions could import this management system and the concessionary model of reclaimed water,6
"In dry regions, these water management models make recycled water, rather than an alternative, a significant complement to local water resources",6
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that replaced the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) introduced new criteria to ensure the availability and the sustainable management of water and sanitation for humanity,6
"The arid and semi-arid regions of southeastern Spain feature water scarcity, which has given rise to the development and deployment of unconventional technologies to augment water supply",6
"And furthermore, there is political gain with recycled water: in the first place, Water Framework Directive (with respect to quality) will ensure that is complied with, and secondly, it means significant volumes to increase their own resources in semi-arid environments",6
Water scarcity is caused by low and irregular rainfall and high potential evapotranspiration in southeastern Spain,6
"This study presents a historical account of sewage purification applied in the water-deficit region of southeastern Spain, and recommends guidelines for the implementation of these processes to alleviate water scarcity in dry regions with structural water deficits",6
"It presents the use of recycled water in a semi-arid region like the Southeast of Spain, where it becomes a limited but local resource, with enormous social, political and economic interest",6
"Complying with the European Regulation of Water Quality and the management carried out politically and technically on the operation of the STP, significant volumes are recycled at no cost for subsequent users (costs are assumed by citizens through taxes)",6
"6, on water management: “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” (UN 2015)",6
The methodology followed consists of a bibliographic search to frame the background and status of recycled water at an international and regional level,6
"Subsequently, meetings were held with experts in charge of the management of recycling and sanitation, with later visits to various pilot plants where different systems of purification (biological treatment, tertiary treatment with UV disinfection, chlorine) were carried out, both in Murcia and in California",12
The methodology used in this article outlines the role of interviews with experts in sewage treatment and managers of irrigation communities that make use of reclaimed water for irrigation,6
"Questions were related to characteristics of the plant and the processes used, destination of the reclaimed water, infrastructures and investments made for its modernization",6
"The methodology of “panel of experts”, with open questions, allowed us to delve into the management models of purified water and the concession of reclaimed water",6
OCWD is a worldwide pioneer in sewage treatment and recycling water,12
"The largest consumer of reclaimed water is agriculture, although it is expected large coastal cities will become the predominant reusers of treated sewage for drinking water",6
"Water reuse meets many functions such as landscape watering, street washing, agriculture and forestry, fire fighting, cooling of thermal plants and industrial facilities, aquifer recharge, wetlands support, recreation and leisure (irrigation of golf courses, filling of recreational ponds, see, e.g., Mujeriego 1994)",15
"The Spanish Law on Waters of 1985 started a policy of improving water quality by reducing pollution, within the framework of sustainable and efficient use of natural resources",6
"The RD of Reuse establishes six types of water quality (A, B, C, D, E and F) according to their bacteriological characteristics, since a key main determinant of sewage regeneration is the level of disinfection",6
"In 2007, the Water Quality National Plan: sanitation and treatment (2007–2015) was approved, whose main objective was to achieve full compliance with Directive 91/271/EEC and the Water Framework Directive (60/2000/CE)",6
"This work’s review of sewage purification and reuse in the Murcia region (Spain) was based on data obtained both from the Segura Basin Water Commissioner, on the concessions of reclaimed water from 2007 to 2016, and the Autonomous Community of the Region of Murcia, regarding the financing of infrastructures for irrigable areas supplied by the water reuse system (WRS)",6
"Managers and users of reclaimed water concessions, such as the Irrigation Communities of Puerto Lumbreras and Arco Sur-Mar Menor, were interviewed",6
Sewage treatment has restored water quality in the Segura River -considered a few years ago one of the most polluted rivers in Europe- and is used for aquatic sports and recreation as it runs through the city of Murcia (McCann 2012),6
"Most of treated (reclaimed) sewage in the Segura basin is destined for agricultural use (89.37%), followed by recreational use (9.74%), such as the irrigation of golf courses (see Table 2), which suggests a significant presence of recycled water as a water resource for irrigation (in a region whose economy relies, in large measure, on the agricultural sector and is cataloged as the “Europe’s vegetable garden”)",6
"A list of these grants, amount and concession of reclaimed water can be seen in Table 3, with a total amount of € 10,605,295 in 8 years",6
It is the basin organism (CHS) that indicates the concession of recycled water in each STP,6
"The rest corresponds to discharges of recycled water into the public domain, pending concession for reuse",6
"The contribution of reclaimed water to the annual water consumption of irrigation districts such as the Irrigation Community (IC) of Puerto Lumbreras (Table 5) amounts to 25.35% of the water consumption, whereas reclaimed water contributes to almost 100% in the IC of Arco Sur-Mar Menor (Table 6)",6
Table 6 lists the volume of sewage treated at the Mar Menor Sur STP and the volume of the reclaimed water applied by the IC Arco Sur-Mar Menor,6
"Success in the use for irrigation was found in the possibility of mixing reclaimed water with other types of water, in order to enhance the mineralization before its use",6
Murcia holds a high level of recycling water to cope with situations of drought,12
"It is vital to develop sewage management systems capable of recycling or reusing sewage to augment water sources in arid regions, while avoiding adverse environmental impacts",12
The development and application of such reclaim and reuse systems are justified under the following conditions: There is water scarcity that combined with economic activities exert high stress on existing water resources (this motivates economic investment in depuration and reuse),6
"High technological development and economic, political, and social means promote research and innovation, and thus, obtain quality water for human consumption",9
"Recycled water is not an alternative to desalination, but a complement",6
Recycled water is considered a model of resources’ offer,6
"Research and findings are expected regarding the improvement of the purification systems and reduction of costs, but the volume of recycled water will scarcely increase in the Southeast of Spain, as it reaches an almost full reuse",6
"Other arid and semi-arid regions of the world can learn from the successful experience of water recycling models of OCWD, developing a campaign of reliable awareness to achieve water security; and from Southeast of Spain the management model, rather than the techniques and processes used",12
"The inclusion of a specific tax (purification canon) in domestic users’ water receipt allows to maintain and invest in all STPs and keep them functional, recycling water and turning it into a finite but local resource needed to alleviate the structural deficit and to deal with water shortages.",12
"Graduation model programmes deliver a package of support to poor households, including cash and asset transfers, training and coaching, and access to savings facilities",1
"Drawing on multiple-round evaluations of graduation projects in Burundi and Rwanda, this paper demonstrates statistically significant impacts on several food security indicators, including months of hunger, meals per day and dietary diversity",2
"Food insecurity is a persistent challenge, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where the estimated prevalence of undernourishment fell from 30% to 23% between 2002-04 and 2014–16, but the number of people who are undernourished increased from 204 million to 220 million – contrary to the trend in every other region (FAO, IFAD and WFP 2015: 8)",2
"Achieving the second Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 2) – “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture” is likely to be most challenging in sub-Saharan Africa.Footnote 1 Since the late 1990s social protection programmes, especially cash transfers, have proliferated across the world, including in sub-Saharan Africa (García and Moore 2012; World Bank 2015)",2
Social protection programmes alleviate poverty and enable vulnerable people to manage risk,1
There is also a persuasive body of evidence that they reduce hunger and food insecurity,2
"Conversely, “countries where progress has been insufficient or where hunger rates have deteriorated are often characterised by weak agricultural growth and inadequate social protection measures” (FAO, IFAD and WFP 2015: 14)",1
"Poorer households have a higher marginal propensity to consume incremental income, so social transfers tend to have bigger impacts on food consumption “at lower levels of baseline household food security” (Hidrobo et al",2
"Graduation programmes are more complex than mainstream social protection because they combine several instruments, cash transfers being only one",1
"Conceptual frameworks for nutrition outcomes identify multiple determinants of malnutrition, only one of which is inadequate food intake – other drivers include inadequate healthcare and sanitation facilities, poor hygiene and childcare practices, and under-educated mothers (Bhutta et al",2
"Graduation programmes have potential to influence several of these drivers, in addition to enhancing access to food",2
"In fact, ‘graduation model’ programmes have greater potential to improve food and nutrition security than is usually realised, through their income effects and non-income effects, as well as synergies among programme components",2
"The ‘graduation model’ was pioneered in Bangladesh in the early 2000s, through an innovative programme called ‘Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction – Targeting the Ultra-Poor’ (CFPR-TUP), which was devised and implemented by the non-governmental organisation BRAC",1
Each component of the graduation model has the potential to contribute to enhanced food security in participating households,2
Enhanced food security is also an explicit objective of graduation-oriented programmes in other countries,2
"For example, graduation from Ethiopia’s ‘Productive Safety Net Programme’ (PSNP), which targets chronically food insecure households, is defined as follows: “A household has graduated when, in the absence of receiving PSNP transfers, it can meet its food needs for all 12 months and is able to withstand modest shocks” (FSCB 2007: 1)",2
"An evaluation of the PSNP found that: “Across all households, the food gap – the number of months that the household is unable to satisfy its food needs – fell from 3.6 to 2.3 months” (Berhane et al",2
"Randomised control trials of graduation model pilot projects in six countries – Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, India, Pakistan and Peru – also found statistically significant improvements in several self-reported indicators of food security, including ‘household gets enough food’, ‘no children skipped meals’, and ‘everyone gets two meals every day’ (Banerjee et al",2
"Nonetheless, the evidence base on household food security impacts of graduation model programmes remains limited",2
"Our hypothesis was that households participating in the programmes in Burundi and Rwanda would register higher levels of food security than at baseline, in comparison to control group households, and that these improvements would be sustained even after programme support was terminated",2
"To test this hypothesis, seven indicators were monitored before, during and after programme implementation: three indicators of quantity of food consumption (months of hunger, meals per day, and food expenditure), three indicators of quality of food consumption (dietary diversity, consumption of meat and milk, and production of vegetables and fruit), and one subjective indicator of food security outcomes (perceived malnutrition)",2
"Apart from contributing empirical findings from two new countries to the nascent evidence base on this topic, this article builds on the existing literature in two important respects: (1) by comparing a wider range of food security indicators; and (2) by adding a fourth data-point (in Rwanda) 2 years after participants exited from the graduation programme, to assess the sustainability of programme impacts",2
"By contrast, Burundi is in protracted crisis and spends only a tiny proportion of GDP on social protection (ILO 2014)",1
It is interesting to note that Burundi and Rwanda had similar prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) rates and GHI scores in 1990 (Table 1),2
"Nonetheless, food insecurity persists as a serious development challenge in Rwanda as well as Burundi, and the graduation projects discussed in this paper targeted some of the poorest and most food insecure people in both countries",2
Local wealth classifications in Burundi and Rwanda include household characteristics that relate to food security,2
"They rely almost entirely on support from others, so their access to food derives from transfers and the market",2
"This article is based on findings from independent impact evaluations, conducted by the Centre for Social Protection at the UK Institute of Development Studies, of two graduation projects implemented by Concern Worldwide, in Burundi (Devereux and Sabates 2016) and Rwanda (Devereux et al",1
Household food security was one outcome of interest among many others in both projects,2
"This article extracts relevant findings on food security from each evaluation report, and compares findings across the Burundi and Rwanda contexts",2
"The package included cash transfers, savings facilities, health insurance, support for income-generating activities (IGAs), livelihood training and coaching",3
Concern also promoted kitchen gardens and encouraged participants to cultivate fruit and vegetables for improved household food security and nutrition,2
"In Burundi, 2000 poor households received cash transfers and training for 14 months in 2013–2014, followed by working capital for an approved livelihood activity in three instalments between 2014 and 2015",1
"Population density is high and many households are land poor (they have insufficient land to meet their subsistence needs) or functionally landless (the only land they have is that around their homestead), so they depend on casual labour for income and food security (McAlpine 2011; Humphrey 2012)",2
"A total of 2600 extremely poor households were selected for the programme in Cibitoke and Kirundo provinces, using community-based targeting",1
"One hypothesis tested was that Graduation Programme participants will improve their food security over time, relative to the control group",2
"Different indicators of food security were collected from cohort 1 and cohort 2 households, which means that findings are not comparable across cohorts, but allows a more diverse set of impacts to be reported",2
"These include: whether households increased their consumption of meat and milk, whether they started fruit and vegetable kitchen gardens, and whether they perceived that fewer children or other household members suffered from symptoms of malnutrition over time",2
"The 1996 World Food Summit defined food security as a situation when “all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO 1996)",2
"Food is a daily necessity for life, and definitions of food security rightly emphasise the time dimension – “at all times”",2
"Food deficits can occur over different durations: food insecurity can be long-term (chronic), cyclical (e.g",2
Chronic food insecurity refers to “a persistent inability on the part of the household to provision itself adequately with food” (FAO 2005),2
"Conversely, seasonal food insecurity refers to “a cyclical pattern of inadequate access to food (e.g",2
Food security can be measured in terms of the adequacy of the diet in terms of both quantity and quality,2
One self-reported indicator of chronic or seasonal food insecurity is the annual ‘hunger gap’ – the number of months in the past year that the household experienced hunger,2
"In self-provisioning farming communities – as in rural Burundi and Rwanda – seasonal food insecurity follows a predictable annual pattern, dictated by the agricultural calendar",2
"Meals consumed per day is a simple self-reported indicator of food insecurity that is well correlated with other indicators, such as dietary diversity (Devereux 2006)",2
"If household members are eating three meals a day this is considered the benchmark for household food security; while fewer than three meals a day, especially for children, suggests the household is unable to meet its consumption needs",2
"The main factor explaining this consistent evidence of reductions in hunger is probably the injection of resources into these chronically poor households, mostly in the form of monthly cash transfers, which financed more food purchases than the treatment households could otherwise have afforded",1
"Having established that the graduation projects in Burundi and Rwanda had positive impacts on access to food and the amount of food consumed, in this section we analyse their impacts on the quality of diets",2
Dietary diversity has proven to be a robust indicator of food security: “a 1 percent increase in dietary diversity is associated with a 1 percent increase in per capita consumption” (Hoddinott and Yohannes 2002: iii),2
"At baseline at least 10% of adults were consuming each of 1, 2 or 3 food groups, but at endline at least 10% of adults were consuming each of 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 food groups, signifying a substantial improvement in food security for the majority of Terintambwe participants",2
"Kitchen gardens were promoted by Concern Worldwide as a secondary component of the graduation programme, in order to diversify diets and improve household food security",2
Nutritional status is the most objective measure of food security outcomes,2
"However, malnutrition (child stunting and wasting, adult body mass index (BMI)) was not assessed in either the Burundi or Rwanda impact evaluations",2
"Instead, a subjective indicator of malnutrition was collected in Rwanda – perceived malnutrition",2
Respondents were asked for their perception of the prevalence of malnutrition in their households,2
"At baseline, more control group households reported perceived symptoms of malnutrition among their household members (42% vs 25%)",2
"After the first 12 months of programme implementation, perceived malnutrition halved in treatment households (from 25% to 12%) and fell by a smaller proportion among control group households (from 42% to 31%)",2
"This positive trend continued – at 36 months 2% of treatment households and 8% of control group respondents perceived any signs of malnutrition in their homes, and at 48 months the figures had fallen further, to just 1% and 7% respectively (Table 11)",2
"According to this self-reported indicator, therefore, the prevalence of malnutrition fell from one in four treated households to close to zero, after respondents joined the Graduation Programme in Rwanda",2
There was no statistically significant difference in trends on perceived malnutrition between programme participants and non-participants,2
"One possible explanation is that Rwanda has reformed and invested heavily in its health system, including providing affordable health insurance (mutuelle de santé) that has significantly expanded access to better quality health care (ILO 2014), and improved health status has contributed to improved nutrition status among the general population",3
social protection),1
"The programmes in Burundi and Rwanda significantly reduced chronic and seasonal food insecurity and improved the quality of diets in participating households, on all indicators monitored",2
This is because the graduation package offers several pathways to food security,2
"First, cash transfers and savings facilities boost purchasing power, and poor households spend significant proportions of any incremental income on food",1
"Third, when assets transferred are livestock they can also be sources of nutritious food (meat, milk or eggs)",2
"Fourth, much of the information delivered as behaviour change communication (BCC) relates directly to food and nutrition security, notably sessions that concern dietary diversity, breastfeeding and good hygiene practices",2
"At the conceptual level, different components of the graduation model address different pathways to food and nutrition security, and enable synergies between income and non-income effects",2
"Cash transfers and support to IGAs improve access to food by alleviating income constraints, but improvements in the quality of diets are also needed, and this is better achieved with BCC and kitchen gardens",2
"Similarly, BCC sessions deliver information about nutritious diets, while cash transfers finance purchase of nutritious food",2
"The biggest impacts on food security in both Burundi and Rwanda were recorded between the baseline and midline surveys, during the cash transfers phase when households received the largest amount of material support",2
"In follow-up surveys conducted 3–4 years after households joined the Rwanda programme and 1–2 years after they exited the programme, some food security outcomes were sustained but others had declined, while remaining higher than baseline level",2
"These findings reinforce evidence from other contexts that linking cash transfers to other services – so-called ‘cash plus’ initiatives – in particular to nutrition-related behaviour change communication (BCC), yields stronger and more sustained improvements in food security and nutrition outcomes than cash alone (Ahmed et al",2
"However, the evidence of falling impacts post-exit suggests that some forms of support need to be maintained or reinforced, for improvements in food and nutrition security to be sustained in the long run.",2
"Against this backdrop, this current study aims to check whether shocks to the levels of agricultural productivity, land utilization for crop production, and fertilizer consumption influence the carbon dioxide emission figures of Nepal over the 1965-2018 period",2
Global warming and its irreversible environmental adversities have motivated the global economies to tackle global warming through decarbonization of the world economy (Hamid et al,13
The concerns associated with global warming are extremely alarming because it stimulates climate change problems that jeopardize the entire global ecosystem (Ahmed et al,13
"Accordingly, the Paris Agreement was ratified by a majority of the world economies in commitment of adopting nationally determined emission-abatement policies for managing global warming concerns (Bandyopadhyay and Rej 2021; Wang and Su 2020; Khan et al",13
This international environmental pact has therefore necessitated the need for decoupling economic growth from environmental pollution (Wang and Zhang 2020; Wang and Han 2021),8
"Hence, the agriculture sector can be regarded as a vital driver of economic growth in Nepal",8
"These adverse effects include temperature rise in Nepal’s various agro-ecological regions, changes in rainfall patterns, and frequent extreme weather events such as severe droughts and floods, in particular",13
"In recent years, prolonged monsoon droughts, high winter temperatures, and non-seasonal heavy rainfall have collectively hampered the growth of agricultural output and enhanced the sufferings of the Nepalese communities that are predominantly reliant on agriculture (Paudel et al., 2017; Bista et al",2
"Firstly, in the context of SDG13, which calls for proactive adoption of climate change-combating policies, the findings from this study can be used to identify the agricultural activities that can help to decarbonize the economy of Nepal",13
"At the same time, this study is also relevant in the context of SDG2 which requires ensuring food security to end all forms of hunger",2
"Thus, the policy suggestions in which this current study has to offer can be expected to help Nepal achieve food security by ensuring agricultural sustainability",2
CO2 is the leading greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming and it is thought to be the main factor stimulator of global climate change (Rej et al,13
"Consequently, decarbonization should be the ultimate goal of all nations since overlooking the issue of surging CO2 emissions is assumed to impose catastrophic impacts (Wang et al",13
"On the other hand, given the need for agricultural production to meet the food demand of an expanding population, the significance of agricultural output generation and its corresponding impact on soil, air, water resources, and biodiversity must be addressed more than ever before",2
"Soil may play an important role in tackling climate change; it is the second-largest storehouse of carbon, has twice the carbon content of the atmosphere, three times the carbon content of plants, and is a substantial sink of CO2 in the atmosphere (Lal 2015; García-González et al",13
"CO2 levels in the atmosphere are persistently rising, owing mainly to the use of fossil fuels, agricultural land expansion into grasslands, ecological degradation, and deforestation (Wang et al",15
It should be emphasized that agricultural production is closely related to CO2 emissions-induced climate change concerns (Rehman et al,13
"Consequently, such a population growth-led surge in food demand is putting huge pressures on the global agricultural output level",2
"Therefore, unless agricultural productivity is not enhanced, meeting the rising food demand can result in higher agriculture-based emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions",2
"For instance, respiration transforms solar energy into biomass, which is used to produce food, feed, and fiber",7
(2020a) employed the generalized method of moment estimator and found evidence of higher agricultural output resulting in higher CO2 emissions,2
"Besides, the results also indicated that agricultural output is detrimental to the environment only across the major grain-producing Chinese provinces but not in the non-major grain-producing ones",2
"(2020) adopted the fixed effects, random effects, fully modified ordinary least squares, and quantile regression methods and concluded that higher real agricultural output stimulates higher levels of per capita CO2 emissions; however, the results also showed that agricultural output is associated with lower liquid fuel-based CO2 emissions",2
"(2016), using data from 53 high-income, middle-income, and low-income nations and utilizing the panel mean group estimation techniques, also claimed higher agricultural output shares to be conducive for mitigating CO2 emissions",2
"Hence, these equivocal findings suggest that using an incomprehensive approach, relating to the assessment of the agriculture-environment nexus using the aggregate agricultural output figures, may not be able to capture the diverse dimensions of agricultural activities and not shed light on their possible heterogeneous impacts on the environment",2
(2021) recently identified that the rural population growth-induced food demand and rising per capita cultivated area are responsible for higher CO2 emissions whereby these factors were referred to inhibit the decoupling of economic growth from CO2 emissions,8
"This technique can help us decompose the explanatory variables (crops productivity, land used for the crops production, and fertilizer consumption) into positive (CRPR+e; LUCP+e; FECO+e ) and negative (CRPR−e; LUCP−e; FECO−e) components as shown below:
 By following the Eqs",2
"Hence, this outcome confirms the long-term association among CO2 emission, crops productivity, land use for crops production, and fertilizer consumption.
 The asymmetrical outcomes from the NARDL analysis for both the short- and long run are presented in Table 5",2
"Furthermore, the plot of CUSUM and its squares, presented in Fig. 3, confirm the stability of NARDL parameter estimates.
 The outcomes from the NARDL analysis Plots of CUSUM and its squares The agriculture sector is a major contributor to Nepal’s employment and economic growth levels",8
"However, in doing so, it must be ensured that such enhancement in crop productivity, through technological innovation, does not increase the energy demand within Nepal’s agriculture sector",8
"In this regard, it is essential for the government to invest in research and development for producing modern environmentally sustainable fertilizers that would simultaneously enhance crop yield and inhibit the agriculture sector-based emissions",9
"Besides, such research and development investments should also be utilized for the development of modern crops that would primarily require irrigation for growth and not rely on the use of harmful fertilizers",9
"For instance, Nepal is a hydropower-reliant South Asian country",7
"Since we established three club formations, the study recommends different environmental protection policies should be adopted for the countries in these convergence clubs",15
"In comparison to the pre-industrial era, the planet has now warmed up by almost 1 ℃, and it has also continued to suffer from deleterious weather conditions which include drought, melting icecap, sea-level rise, and flood, which have already begun to indicate the harmful effects of global warming (The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2018)",13
The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicates that the world will face far worse environmental catastrophes which could threaten humanity if global warming is kept unabated,13
Economic growth has been adjudged to continually pressurize biocapacity due to its impact on aggregate demand (Ahmad 2021),8
"Intuitively, urbanization (percentage of urban population to total population) leads to an increase in energy consumption, traffic congestion, and other human activities that threaten the environment (Nathaniel et al",7
"This is because the convergence of the EF of these regions indicates the possibility of making a future forecast of the level of environmental degradation in the countries from the historical data of the EF, thereby facilitating effective policy formulation",15
This might suggest that efforts toward improving the quality of the environment in SSA countries with a high level of environmental degradation are yielding good results,15
"As part of the United Nations (2012) recommended global actions for the attainment of sustainable development, the strengthening of environmental protection against human anthropogenic activities is key, especially on the path of policymakers",15
"This action becomes even more important than ever, as the environment continues to suffer increased deterioration such that at least 80% of the globe is now in ecological deficit, as the human population’s EF continues to outstrip the biocapacity of the area at its disposal.Footnote 2 In formulating environmental protection policies, understanding the convergence patterns among countries of the world is very critical because countries that converge in environmental degradation can employ common environmental protection policies more efficiently to mitigate threats to human survival arising from environmental degradation",15
"Therefore, exploring the convergence of environmental degradation across the globe is of great significance for the formulation of appropriate environmental protection policies for the different countries of the world",15
"As such, to efficiently reduce the global EF, different environmental protection policies should be adopted for different convergence clubs",15
"For countries in the club, the application of more rigorous environmental protection regulations is advocated, with an increased strengthening of their institutional mechanisms",15
"Though the environmental protection actions stipulated in these agreements can improve the situation in all countries, the stage of development of a country often influences the feasibility or otherwise of implementing them",15
"For example, it has been found that compared to poor countries, richer economies are more favorably disposed to invest in renewable energy (Moutinho et al",7
Tax incentives can also be extended to the numerous foreign investors in the natural resource sectors in exchange for adopting environment-friendly extraction approaches,17
"In an attempt to provide novel Big Data allied solutions in one or more aspects of water management sector, a substantial amount of research work has been carried out in recent years",6
"Various presently deployed applications, in the sub-fields of environment and water management are studied, and given an inclusive review",6
"While the role of Big Data analysis in various other fields has only recently been explored (Srinivasan 2018), it already plays a major role in improvising the human ability to connect the world with new technologies in every sector, which includes several opportunities to gain jobs and fabrication, deliver effective transport and energy services, and prepare for disaster and climate change control",13
"In a 2007 study by Jim Gray, a data scientist, he has exchanged his view on “data intensive science” and portrayed it as a new and the fourth paradigm of scientific research (Sun and Scanlon 2019)",9
"Till date, substantial work has been done in the field of environment and its sustainability in several fields, with tremendous work like “smart grid and ICT’s role in it” (Farhangi 2012), “Standard Methodologies for Energy Efficiency Assessment” (Bolla et al",7
"2012), and “Energy Efficiency for Wireless Relay Systems” (Choi et al",7
"Machine learning has tremendous number of applications right from smart homes, personal software assistants (like Siri, Google assistant, Alexa, etc.), weapon manufacturing, space exploration, agricultural activities, groundwater level prediction, disaster management, and much more",11
"The proper implementation of machine learning and Big Data play a key role in environment and water management, considering the amount of natural resources used, its quality, distribution, and proper disposal of utilized resources",6
"Machine learning is not a different field of study, but a step stone in every field, without which none of the manufacturing industries and power plants could function properly",7
"Thus, there is a need to make the wireless communication industry greener, as studies show that energy consumption will be the highest from wireless communication systems by 2030 (Lorincz et al",7
"Green Wireless Communication is a term that signifies wireless communication with environmentally sustainable materials or resources, less need of occupying land, and less electromagnetic pollution (all together) along with waste recycling and cost reduction",12
"The implementation of such techniques can drastically have great impact on sustainable development goals, research development, and energy consumption",7
"For achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and green ICT systems in the future, a combination of different concepts and technology in wired, wireless, and data centers would be necessary for improvement in energy consumption and for maintaining CO2 emissions in ICT system(s) at the lowest possible level (Lorincz et al",7
"With the help of the present new technologies and digitalization, it also seems to provide better benefits in water sector, healthcare, and hydrocarbons sector than before",9
The Internet Age has granted access to integrate that unused data into a single and meaningful way which allows water and wastewater treatment plant operators to understand and use it to optimize plant reliability and performance,6
"Furthermore, diving into the water management aspect of the environment with the rapidly developing world, huge impact can be seen on climate variations, overexploitation of resources, overpopulation, and unavailability of proper management of resources that eventually result in water crisis",6
Example: Amount of fresh water available in India can serve approximately 17% of the world’s population but there is no proper and efficient use of resources,12
"Machine learning is very useful in agricultural occupations and is also utilized in proper irrigation management and in efficient use of water supply by different techniques like thermal imagining, and Crop Water Stress Index (CWSI) (Goap et al",6
"Upon analyzing the presented information, it can be noted that a near-perfect and feasible management plan portrays the key role for the proper implementation of Big Data in terms of water management and its resources, no matter what tools and equipment are used for it",6
"ICT is a strategic enabler for finding innovative solutions to problems like water scarcities, wastage of water, and water management Sempere-Payá et al",6
"Thus, technology can drastically impact the problem of limited resources, economic growth, and management of environment, whose intensity can be measured by the following formula:
 Annual growth rate of the world population where I is the intensity/impact of technology in environment, P is the human population, A is the affluence factor, and T is the damaging effect of technology",8
ICT can be one of the major factors for better urban management and sustainable development,11
"3).
 Technological development in environmental risk management Big Data, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI) have great ability to make a huge impact on many aspects of society, environment, water management, and daily life",6
"Also, increase in energy efficiency (of ICT tools like wireless communications devices, calculated through the formulae given below) alone cannot contribute to sustainable development as ICT products and services also cause environmental impacts.
 where EE is the energy efficiency, SS is the number of spatial streams (in wireless communication), BW (Hz) is the bandwidth of signal, FR is the frequency reuse factor, D (m) is the distance among communicating devices, PC (W) is the circuit (static) power consumption, and PT (W) is the transmit (dynamic) power consumption",7
"Therefore, changes in environmental management by ICT are significant, but few aspects of them like high energy consumption and carbon footprint (calculated through formulae mentioned below) need to be tended to, i.e., maintain track of the situation keeping every aspect (positive like better efficiency and negative like high carbon footprint) in mind (Lucivero 2020).
 where CF is the carbon footprint, D is the distance traveled (of device (if any)), W is the weight/amount of the traveling device, and EF is the emission factor",7
"This issue, along with the influence of climate change, makes the weather phenomena unfavorable Sempere-Payá et al",13
Big Data can further help in understanding climate change trends that can affect the decisions on planning an adaptive and responsive water system,13
"Thus, the proper implementation of the suggested methodology with accurate execution can result in a more efficient and advantageous wastewater treatment (Ghernaout et al",6
Water is the most vital natural resource for living organisms which can lead to either good health or illness (depending on the water quality),6
The increasing level of water pollution in water reservoirs has now created the demand for more advanced methods in water quality monitoring systems,6
"Moreover, as it gives real-time data to the administration, they can identify the change in the parameter of water quality early, and provide enough time to implement activities that can reduce risk and damage",6
An effective employment of this procedure can surveil physical and chemical characteristics of a large area at lower cost and labor while monitoring water quality parameters accurately (Demetillo et al,6
This is due to compute-intensive needs of Big Data in water management sector,6
"The challenge to achieve these goals in water management with technology and Big Data is to improve the present machine learning and data mining algorithm, reduce complexity in computational methods, and utilize it in water resource management fields like flood water forecasting",6
"Moreover, overcoming the challenges mentioned earlier can meet the demands in the field of water conservancy industries and water management Ai and Yue (2014)",6
"As mentioned earlier, with increase in industrialization in the world, water quality has severely been affected due to which wastewater treatment and management have become an important field of research (where Big Data assists a lot)",6
"In the water management and treatment process, the wastewater separated after processing contains effluents like chemicals, pesticides, residential, commercial, and industrial wastes",6
"This water reaches wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) where Big Data and machine learning tools are used for analyzing the data to find the amount of consumption, harmful chemical identification, and monitoring of the amount of wastewater generation",6
"Furthermore, challenges in the working of wastewater treatment with Big Data include increase in industries generating all types of sensors (while making them more accurate), attaining a target of manufacturing sensors at low cost (while retailing at low cost), and making the transmission of such services to a widespread array of places",6
"Thus, Big Data has proven to be effective in merging large datasets in all types of fields and provides meaningful insights that help in addressing water management challenges (Romero et al",6
"This demand has increased due to many factors like population growth, economic development, industrialization, flood- and drought-affected areas, and water irrigation management",8
"The hypsometric study approach takes data from software systems like watershed, drinking water supply, irrigation, roads, dams, soil, urbanization, and agriculture and aims to deliver efficient decision and prediction making support for environmental, social, and future sustainable developments",6
Traditional data used in the field of transboundary water management has now been replaced by Big Data as in the past few years the pace of data generation has increased along with its varieties,6
"As a result, Big Data has become a famous topic of research in various fields such as water management, environmental science, climate changes, and remote sensing",6
The data collection in transboundary water management include tools like high-frequency detecting instruments from the earth’s marine surfaces and highly advanced sensor monitoring network systems in underground water surfaces,6
"In case of insufficient data, the management authorities are unable to manage complex problems leading to a decrease in the efficiency of governance of water management programs",6
This portrays the solid picture that valuable information provided by highly advanced technological instruments and sensors can radically help in better transboundary water management (Ibrahim 2020),6
"Moreover, without proper supply of clean water, it would a challenging task for farmers to grow crops, which would eventually affect several industries and factories",6
"Even sanitation and proper drainage systems cannot be maintained without clean water, which is the basic necessity of a civilized society",6
"Water resources and hydropower cloud GIS platform have been introduced to enhance the lifecycle of water resources and hydropower projects such as survey, planning, design, construction, and operation management",7
"Modern water resources and hydropower cloud GIS platform (which completely relies on Big Data study and other relational key technologies) came into picture due to the involvement of water resources and hydropower applications, which require mighty supportive structures instead of normal service applications",7
"Several services provided by the platform such as resource register service, spatial data service, and spatial information service help in listing geographic resources of hydropower in the web and provide web service network as well",7
"With all these services and network resources provided to the platform, the user is able to acquire all hydropower spatial data resources according to requirement",7
It can also aid in the reduction of electricity consumption of water pumps by using solar power,7
"Therefore, as seen from the applicability of WSUs and WIUs, water consumption can be reduced (especially in areas with water scarcity), and can be implemented on a large or small scale with low maintenance in an efficient manner (Gutierrez et al",6
"Besides, there are several other applications concerning Big Data and water management which are mentioned in Table 2, along with their technique, application, and limitations(s).
 Oil spills have been a major concern for marine lives and water management authorities for decades",6
"Moreover, this remote sensing technology, along with Big Data, benefits marine authorities and water management authorities to detect oil spills and enable them to make quick decisions to overcome the consequences of the spill (like water pollution and loss of marine life)",6
"The study portrayed the fact that successful implementation of such green sustainability brings tremendous advancements and benefits in fields (like energy efficiency, energy harvesting, and solutions to pollution-related issues) that have a great positive impact on the care of the environment (Estevez and Wu 2012)",7
"The current advancements in water management system focus on using Big Data and machine learnings to detect water loss, leaks, and water consumption per square kilometer",6
"Smart grid is a good paradigm which uses sensors for leak management, water quality, and monitoring of drought or flood management",6
"Despite its stark clear feasibility in sustainable water supply, several challenges limit its widespread implementation",6
"Due to this runoff(s), problems like land degradation and siltation of multi-purpose reservoirs arise",15
"An effective employment of Big Data in watershed management can maximize various benefits of water resources by minimizing environmental, ecological, and socio-economic costs",6
"Loss of lives and property due to the occurrences of natural disasters is a global challenge, and the sole purpose of disaster management is to tackle such disasters",11
"Big Data plays an important role in all the three phases by collecting necessary information on the factors causing disaster management with the help of seismograph networks, remote sensors, web service networks (using IoTs), and social media and smartphones in heterogeneous format",11
"Since policy makers and disaster management organizations are not familiar with computer-generated data and the role of Big Data is ignored at the time of decision-making process, it is in need of modifications",11
"Yet, as perceived from the aforementioned monitoring systems, Big Data along with ML and IoT can drastically help in modeling and the validation of efficient disaster management (Rahman et al",11
"Big Data equipped with ML/DL models now aids healthcare professionals to treat patients faster and more accurately; develop innovative new drugs, medicines, and treatments; reduce medical and diagnostic errors; predict adverse reactions; and lower the costs of healthcare for providers and patients (Sahoo et al",3
"Moreover, as far as the sustainability of primary resources is concerned, air and water monitoring sensors can be deployed for the detection of pollution and proper water management",6
Smart meters can be installed for real-time energy consumption and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags can be used for intelligent tracking purpose,7
"Furthermore, innovative storage infrastructures which can be used as heterogeneous storage resources, as well as efficient processing of Big Data, can be expected to reduce resource and energy consumption in data centers (Wu et al",7
"Correspondingly, there are several other listed applications concerning Big Data and environment which are cited in Table 3, along with their technique, application, and limitations(s).
 There is a colossal amount of applications pertaining to Big Data in water management along with several techniques that create a diversified range of technical approaches toward the primary goal of achieving efficient implementation of Big Data, although, when apprehended on a broader perspective, each application and methodology boils down to a set of shared procedures that satisfy the given goal",6
"2019), watershed management (Chakraborti 1993), and simple quality check sector (Romero et al",6
"2017), i.e., water management as a whole",6
Several ICT tools can be implemented with the use of AI and ML in every stage of improvement of the process(es) pertaining to environment and water management,6
"As the technology advances further and gets more efficient day by day, it enables the production of highly efficient water sensors that aid operators and authorities to understand the actual water demand in order to sustain lives and the environment",6
"This will, therefore, support the achievement of several goals such as proper resource management, smart city development, and environment and water management (EWM)",6
The low-risk value observed in protected river reaches as compared to unprotected areas is likely to be influenced by the abundant presence of intact riparian vegetation which mitigate the catchment stressors and minimal anthropogenic activity within protected areas,15
"The United Nations-Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)-6 deals with “clean water and sanitation,” targeting water quality improvement, equitable access, efficient use, protection, and restoration of water-associated ecosystems ( )",6
"The anthropogenic stressors, viz., land use change, habitat degradation, pollution, overexploitation of fishery resources, and invasive (non-native) fish species, affect the riverine habitats at different spatial and temporal scales (Vass et al",15
"The “protected areas” (PAs) are considered the cornerstone of biological conservation ( ), which maintain the functioning of key habitats and support existing biota",15
"2015) for conservation planning, spatial habitat prioritization, and ecosystem service assessment",15
This river is the largest tributary of Godavari River and is unique in many ways; it supports rich fish diversity and several endemic and threatened species have been reported (Sheikh 2014; Lal et al,15
"(2022a, 2022b) in river Pranhita highlighted for a detailed assessment of anthropogenic stressors, viz., the inflow of nutrients and sediments, river flow obstruction, solid waste disposal on river habitats, and fish assemblages, for their conservation and management at spatial scales",12
"This river runs up to a total length of 113 km, through undulating terrain with forest cover and rural areas",15
2022b) and by Central Water Commission ((CWC 2019) at Tekra Water Quality Monitoring Station (WQMS)) along the river Pranhita during the monsoon season was used to represent the sediment loading from its catchment area,6
"The present study considers 3 exposure criteria, viz., spatial overlap, temporal overlap, and stressor intensity, and 4 consequence criteria which reflect the habitat sensitivity, viz., change in area, change in water quality and trophic impact, and time needed for the recovery of habitat after the stressor exposure for the risk assessment",6
The criteria “change in water quality” and “trophic impact” (Wyatt et al,6
2017) were included to evaluate the degree of water quality alteration and the effect on life forms by a stressor,6
"The ecological risks of non-overlapping stressors, viz., river bank and riparian zone modification and population density of bordering villages (proxy for solid waste disposal) on the Pranhita riverine ecosystem were included in the present study, considering the influence zone of 200–1000 m",12
"The riparian zone supports the river ecosystem functions through bank stabilization, water quality maintenance by sediment/nutrient retention, and sustenance biodiversity (Décamps et al",6
The information on land use pattern of riparian area is essential for planning restoration and management activities to maintain the optimum water quality and habitat conditions to sustain the aquatic biodiversity (Gu and Liu 2010; Choudhary et al,6
The man-made structures on the river bank are known to impact the water quality and associated local biodiversity (Dutta et al,6
"Two among the four consequence criteria, viz., change in water quality and trophic impact, are specifically included in the study to assess the impact of selected anthropogenic stressors on Pranhita riverine ecosystem and its aquatic biota",6
The stressors selected had consequences on water quality and therefore its impact on fish species at various trophic levels was also inevitable (Table 3),6
"Hence, a maximum score was assigned for most of the stressors, such as riparian zone modification, sewage, solid waste dumping, sand mining, sediment loading, and nutrient runoff",12
"Likewise, maintaining the intactness of forest cover and riparian vegetation in the catchment reduces the impact of non-point source pollutants on riverine ecosystem health (Jontos 2004; Xu et al",15
"Furthermore, awareness of waste management and proper sewage treatment in villages with high-intensity exposure will help in moderating the impact of point source pollution",12
"However, the contribution of terrestrial PAs to safeguard freshwater biodiversity depends on their location and the appropriate management measures undertaken (Acreman et al",15
"However, this study acknowledges that activities that are associated with the ecosystem benefits are expected to affect the structure and function of the same habitats upon which their livelihood depend (Wyatt et al",15
 well established and developed financial system encourages savings and investment which stimulates economic growth,8
"Against this backdrop, this study aims to examine the interrelationships among economic growth, financial development and carbon dioxide emissions for Ghana over the period of 1971–2018",8
The results revealed that there is a bidirectional relationship between financial development and economic growth; and a unidirectional relationship from financial development to carbon dioxide emission,8
"However, carbon dioxide emission has a neutral effect on economic growth and financial development",8
"Economic growth exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with carbon dioxide emission, confirming the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis in Ghana",8
"In effect, it is important to maintain the quality of the environment while pursuing economic growth agenda; otherwise, environmental deterioration may jeopardise such agenda eventually (Adom et al",8
"Inspired by this argument, some studies empirically examined the nexus between economic growth and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission",8
Certain works sought to test whether there exists a one-way causality or feedback causality or no causal relationship between economic growth and carbon dioxide emission (Salahuddin et al,8
"In addition, the sustainable development goals (SDGs) or agenda 2030 agreed upon by world leaders has intensified the discussion on the economic growth and environment connection",8
The SDGs seeks to among others end poverty while protecting the earth for future generations,1
"Thus, the debate around some of the goals of the SDGs, for instance, goal 13 details that environmental pollution such as emission of greenhouse gases leads to global warming and climate change which affects economic activities of developing countries like Ghana",13
Some have therefore emphasized that sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries will suffer more from climate change effect since the economies in the subregion are very much dependent on the environment for their economic activities (Alhassan et al,13
"In addition, through credit availability, financial development facilitates technological innovation that ultimately ensures that production and consumption activities by firms and households are efficient thereby leading to cleaner environment (Kwakwa 2021; Tahir et al",8
"Indeed prior to the SDGs, there had been contestable notion regarding the financial development and economic growth connection since the early part of the twentieth century",8
There was the school of thought that said economic growth was responsible for financial development while another school of thought stood by the opposite,8
"As indicated earlier, financial development drives economic growth by making funds readily available for firms’ production (Schumpeter 1911; King and Levine 1993)",8
Economic growth on the other hand can stimulate financial development via households and firms demands for financial products/services (Ehigiamusoe 2021),8
Literature shows studies have examined the effect financial development has on economic growth (Ho and Iyke 2020; Adu et al,8
2021) and environmental degradation (Nwani 2021a; Kwakwa 2021; Ntow-Gyamfi et al,15
2021a) while others have explored the effect of economic growth on financial development (Adom 2019; Song et al,8
2021) and environmental degradation (Asiedu et al,15
"2015; Kwakwa 2021), regression analyses have concentrated on the carbon dioxide (CO2) emission effect of economic growth and the level of financial development",8
This also has left a gap regarding the empirical analysis of the effect that carbon emission may also have on economic growth and financial development,8
This is expected to hamper economic growth,8
"Reputation risk may arise “if banks are seen as associated with large-scale projects that are viewed as socially or environmentally damaging, such as dam projects.” On the other hand, Carse mooted that financial institutions can take advantage of the concern for environmental protection and grow by lending to firms that ought to embark on clean production and also issue green investment product to the general public",15
The implication of the conflicting results mentioned earlier and the little to no evidence regarding the effect that carbon dioxide emission has on economic growth and financial development is that developing countries like Ghana are not in a position to rely on the existing empirical studies to make an informed decision,8
Economic growth has also been impressive alongside higher carbon emissions over the years,8
"Since there is no certainty of the direction of the effect regarding the nexus among the variables (carbon dioxide mission, development of the financial sector and economic growth), using Ghana’s data to investigate the situation is crucial to guide policy formulation towards the promotion of growth, financial development and quality environment",8
"The study therefore assesses the interrelationship among carbon dioxide emission, financial development and economic growth in Ghana",8
The second is that it is among the few studies to have examined how economic growth and financial development affect each other,8
"Third, it is the first study to empirically test the direction of effect that carbon dioxide emission has on economic growth and financial development",8
"Fourth, this study simultaneously through three-stage least-squares regression analysis assesses the connection among carbon emission, financial development and economic growth",8
Achieving higher economic growth has become one of the leading priorities of every government (Kwakwa et al. 2021),8
This is because higher economic growth has the potential to transform the lives of the citizens of the country,8
Theories have been advanced to explain the differences in economic growth among countries (Dieebolt and Perrin 2016; Piętak 2014),8
Empirical analysis to ascertain growth differences has revealed a number of factors that determine economic growth,8
"For instance, education is essential for economic growth by building human capacity for production (Manca 2012); financial development provides firms with credit facilities (Schumpeter 1911); trade facilitates the transfer of technology (Asiedu et al",8
"However, among sub-Saharan African countries, Gabriel and David (2021) established that trade increases economic growth while Yanikkaya (2003) found the opposite",8
"While financial development was found to propel growth in emerging markets (Raghutla and Chittedi 2021), it was reported to reduce economic growth in Latin American countries (Gregorio and Guidotti 1995)",8
Discussions are made on the negative effect that environmental degradation such as carbon emissions has on economic activities (Di Falco et al,15
"However, regardless of the many factors that have been considered in the growth literature, the possible effect of carbon dioxide emission on economic growth has not been given much empirical attention",8
Focusing on how carbon dioxide emission affects the country’s economic growth will be helpful going into the future,8
The environmental degradation effect of greenhouse gases (GHGs) has been documented in the literature,15
The discussion on the determinants of carbon dioxide emission usually has started with income or economic growth,8
"Based on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis, an expansion in economic activities puts pressure on the environment through energy consumption which increases carbon dioxide emission",7
Financial development can increase carbon dioxide emission when cheaper access to credit increases energy consumption but decreases carbon dioxide emission when cheaper access to credit reduces energy consumption through the purchase of energy-efficient equipment,7
"Many economic factors including economic growth, trade openness and inflation have been mentioned to influence the level of financial development",8
An increase in economic growth is associated with demand for financial products thereby leading to an increase in financial development (Ehigiamusoe et al,8
"2014), trade openness through the attraction of foreign investors increases financial development (Cohen 2007)",17
"In the wake of combating global warming and climate change, Carse (2000) has indicated that financial institutions can benefit from this quest to reduce carbon emission by increasing their lending activities to firms that are into the production of green technologies",13
"There is a growing body of empirical literature on the drivers of economic growth, financial development and carbon dioxide emission; however, the evidence has been mixed in many cases",8
There is some evidence that economic growth affects both financial development and carbon dioxide emission,8
"Financial development is also reported to affect economic growth and carbon dioxide emission; likewise, carbon dioxide is touted to influence economic growth and financial development",8
"These findings therefore suggest there is an interrelationship among economic growth, financial development and carbon dioxide",8
"This study therefore analyses the interrelationship among economic growth, financial development and carbon dioxide emission which is seemingly lacking in the empirical literature",8
"The main aim of this study is to examine the interrelationship among economic growth, financial development and carbon dioxide emission in Ghana",8
"Due to the nature of the study, three different models will be specified: the economic growth model, financial development model and the carbon dioxide emission model",8
"Guided by the new growth theory (Beaudreau 2005; Romer 1990), which postulates that aggregate output (Y) is a function of capital stock (CAP), physical labour (HCD) and energy consumption (ENE), the functional relationship is expressed as: where t denotes time",7
"According to the new growth theory, investment in capital accumulation, schooling and health enhances future earnings and increases productivity of workers leading to higher economic growth (Becker 1962; Manca 2012)",8
Energy is argued to propel economic growth when used in production and transportation activities (Ouedraogo 2013; Apergis and Payne 2009; Hu et al,8
2021) and may affect economic growth,8
Carbon dioxide emission is projected to have a negative effect on economic activities because carbon emission is associated with global warming and climate change which affect the agricultural sector and other sectors that rely on the natural environment,13
This is expected to hamper economic growth,8
"In this study, financial development was used as a proxy for technological progress (A)",8
"A well-developed and functional financial system helps to transmit resources between lenders and borrowers, enabling the efficient allocation of resources which promotes economic growth (Schumpeter 1911; Levine et al",8
"(2001), one period lagged of economic growth (GDP_1) was added to the growth model to inspect the effect of previous economic growth on future growth",8
Incorporating the variables proposed to influence economic growth into Eq. (2) gives Eq. (3) expressed as: Log linearizing Eq. (3) yields,8
Another theoretical framework guiding this study is the demand-following hypothesis which postulates that economic growth promotes financial development as an increase in income encourages citizens to increase their demand for financial products and services which may increase growth in the financial sector (Baltagi et al,8
"Based on this theory, the baseline model is expressed as: where FID is financial development, β0 is the constant term, GDP represents economic growth and ϵt is the stochastic error term",8
There is a general consensus on the perceived relevance of trade openness to attract foreign investors in the host country (Cohen 2007),17
"To analyse the effect of environmental degradation on financial development, CO2 was included in the model",15
Efficient and developed financial systems enhance environmental quality by offering loans at lower interest to fund and adopt innovative green projects and technologies which is expected to reduce carbon emissions (Zakaria and Bibi 2019),13
"In contrast, financial development can increase carbon emission through its positive effects on economic growth",8
"Consequently, this study includes energy consumption to examine its role in Eq. (7)",7
"Hence, to achieve green growth, urbanization must be taken into account in formulating appropriate green growth policies",8
"Also, transforming all the variables into natural logarithm, Eq. (7) is modified and expressed as Eq. (8): As previously discussed, economic growth, financial development and carbon dioxide emissions are endogenous",8
"To disentangle direct and indirect channels, the three-way linkages among economic growth, financial development and carbon dioxide emission are empirically examined by adopting the following three simultaneous equations: Employing the OLS estimation techniques to estimate the elasticities of Eqs",8
"The endogenous variables CO2 emission is represented by carbon dioxide emissions in metric tons per capita, financial development by domestic credit to the private sector as a percentage of GDP, and economic growth (GDP) by real gross domestic product per capita at constant 2010 US$",8
"Furthermore, the average secondary school enrolment (% gross) is 42.57%, energy consumption is 340 kg of oil equivalent per capita and trade openness as a percentage of GDP is 55.86%",7
"It is evident from the results that the calculated F-statistics is higher than the upper bounds critical values when economic growth, financial development and carbon dioxide emission are used as the dependent variables",8
The second column of Table 5 presents the estimation results of the economic growth equation,8
The results reveal the development of the financial sector positively affect economic growth,8
"Specifically, a 10% increase in financial development promotes economic growth in the long run by 0.75%, ceteris paribus",8
This result supports the finance-led growth hypothesis which posits that an efficient and well-functioning financial system will promote economic growth via efficient allocation of resources from unproductive to productive sectors (Kandil et al,8
The positive effect of financial development on Ghana’s economic growth could be attributed to the liberalization and restructuring of the financial sector since the early 1990s,8
"Financial liberalization enhances monetary transmission mechanism, increases savings and investments, and spurs financial deepening which promotes economic growth through the provision of credit",8
It is therefore not surprising that financial development is recorded to have positive effect on economic growth,8
The positive relationship between gross secondary school enrolment and economic growth is an indication that improving human capital will promote economic growth in Ghana,8
"These results are in conformity to the neoclassical and endogenous growth models which posit that improvements in labour via education and health increases labour productivity and encourage innovativeness, which in turn promote economic growth",8
Provision of quality education and expansion of schools to increase enrolment have been a focus of past and present governments of the country,4
The outcome from this study is an indication the resources churned into the educational sector has been helpful in promoting economic growth,8
"As expected, the lagged value of economic growth has positive and significant sign implying that the previous economic growth increases future economic growth",8
Carbon emission is seen to have an insignificant effect on economic growth,8
It is possible to attribute this finding to the fact that the share of agriculture in Ghana’s economic growth has been reducing,8
"Therefore, the fact that the agricultural sector in the country (which suffers at the hands of climate change and global warming associated with carbon emission) is gradually reducing its dominance in the country could be the reason why this outcome is recorded",13
"In column 3, Table 5, which presents the results of the financial development equation, it is seen that economic growth positively affects financial development, showing that the growth-led financial development argument is confirmed in this study",8
"Specifically, a 10% increase in economic growth increases financial development by 6.89%, ceteris paribus",8
Ghana’s financial sector can be said to have benefitted from the recent pace of economic growth in the country,8
The demand for consumer durables in Ghana seems to increase with the level of economic growth (Kwakwa et al,8
The result confirms the finding of Adom (2019) who reported economic growth positively drives financial development in Ghana,8
"The results in column 4, Table 5 indicate that economic growth has a non-linear effect on carbon dioxide emission",8
"Thus, the early stage of economic development deteriorates the environment, but after a certain threshold level, further development enhances environmental quality",8
The result corroborates the conclusion made by Kwakwa and Alhassan (2018) that Ghana’s economic growth over the study period seems to protect the environment,8
"In Ghana, the rising middle class due to improved economic performance has increased the demand for energy-efficient and green technologies, which not only result in energy efficiency but also improve environmental quality by emitting fewer emissions into the environment",7
"Furthermore, a liberalized financial system can improve the quality of the environment by enhancing the stock of capital available for investment in green energy that is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions",7
"Although figures are not readily available, many banks in the country such as CalBank, Stanbic, Fidelity Bank, Absa Bank and Ecobank have committed themselves to support climate change combating programmes like the ECOFRIDGES by the United Nations Environment Programme, United for Efficiency (U4E) and SUNREF, a European Union green financing supported programme",13
Another variable that has a significant positive effect on carbon dioxide emission is energy consumption,7
"A 10% increase in energy consumption increases carbon dioxide emission by 3.30%, ceteris paribus",7
The environmental degrading effect of energy consumption is expected because increased energy usage emits more carbon dioxide,7
"Since fossil fuels constitute a significant share of energy consumption in Ghana, the higher consumption of energy for economic activities can result in higher carbon dioxide emissions",7
The positive effect of energy consumption on carbon dioxide emission is consistent with previous studies by Safi et al,7
"The outcome is an indication that urbanization is harmful to the environment in the long run, confirming the urban transition theory",11
"Moreover, the enormous waste generated during the production and consumption of goods is not managed sustainably, because sanitation infrastructure is not enough to meet the growing waste thereby degrading the environment",6
"This study examines the interrelationship among economic growth, financial development and carbon dioxide emissions for the case of Ghana for the period of 1971–2018",8
"Specifically, the study evaluates the impact of financial development on economic growth with emphasis on the role played by environmental quality in such relationship",8
Findings supported a bidirectional causal relationship between financial development and economic growth and unidirectional causal effect from financial development to carbon dioxide emissions,8
Results show a neutral effect of carbon dioxide emission on economic growth and financial development,8
"Likewise, the results also indicate that human capital and previous growth of gross domestic product promotes economic growth",8
"For the drivers of CO2 emission, the results established that while financial development decreases carbon dioxide emission, energy consumption and urbanization increase it",7
An important conclusion emanating from this study is that financial development proxied by the domestic credit to the private sector is critical for environmental quality and economic growth in Ghana,8
Firms and households should be equipped with environmental education to encourage the usage of clean energy and energy-efficient technology,7
Investment in renewable energy development through public–private partnership will go a long way to ensure ecological sustainability in the long run,7
"Since energy is found to increase carbon emission but has become part of society, the government should enhance its policy to encourage the development of renewable energy resources",7
"This will stimulate access to clean, reliable and affordable energy for carrying out economic activities",7
"The study further established that human capital development plays a key role in the growth process, suggesting that education policy that increases both the quality and quantity of the labour force will spur growth in Ghana",4
Ongoing plans for the country to increase its share of renewable energy in electricity production and total energy consumption should be pursued aggressively,7
"In addition, since economic growth has been found to benefit the financial sector, environment policymakers need to safeguard and ensure there is an improvement in the green growth of the economy",8
"Results from the study show that coal mining contributes to environmental degradation in South Africa, while its interaction with institutional quality mitigates the severity of this negative impact",15
"Furthermore, there is evidence that economic growth has a bidirectional causality with ecological footprint and coal mining, while institutional quality also Granger causes ecological footprint",8
One of the most challenging problems in modern times is the issue of growing environmental degradation (Cramer et al,15
"Therefore, the emphasis on sustainable development is associated with the need to accommodate ecological balance in the quest to enhance economic growth and meet the desires and aspirations of humanity through the effective and sustainable exploitation of natural resources",8
Sustainable production is a key element of the United Nations’ 17 SDGs (UN 2019),12
"As one of the top six coal-producing and coal-exporting countries in the world, coal has consistently been essential to South Africa’s economic development",8
"This is especially true for coal mining, which has a propensity to negatively affect the biodiversity and other factors essential to human survival such as the climate, water resources, soil, forestry, vegetation, and microbial ecosystems (Ali et al",15
These numbers highlight how important coal mining is to South Africa’s economic development,8
"According to the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC), environmental degeneration and per capita income should be inversely correlated, such that, during the early stages of economic development, an increase in per capita income worsens environmental deterioration until it reaches a certain point, beyond which an increase in per capita income promotes environmental sustainability (Grossman and Krueger 1991)",8
"Meanwhile, in view of the need to advance environmental sustainability and regarding the concern over climate change, the South African government pledged to channel efforts towards cutting down emissions by 34% in 2020 and 42% in 2025 and to cut the predominantly coal-powered electrical industry’s emissions by 90% (Devarajan et al",13
"For example, the energy efficiency initiative could be derailed in the face of weak regulations, thereby preventing the attainment of the desired environmental outcome, whereas if the regulatory quality is strong, the outcome could be different (Danish et al",7
"Furthermore, with reasonable degree of economic freedom, the development and introduction of clean energies could be encouraged (Bate and Montgomery 2005)",8
"What is more, in developing countries where environment-conserving institutions are inadequately funded, corruption-induced loopholes could be created for illegal activities, while the access to critical natural resources under the control of government officials could be abused",16
"Overall, corruption threatens the attainment of environmental sustainability by engendering a slackening of strict environmental regulations (Fredriksson et al",16
(2004) argues that strong adherence to the rule of law in implementing environmental regulations intensifies the stringency of the regulations,16
"He, however, argues that where there is corruption, relatively high rule of law could make erring firms to lobby corrupt environmental regulators for compromise",16
"This study is important for South Africa, where economic development has been followed by intensified coal mining to fulfil the country’s growing need for coal-powered energy and increase its foreign exchange revenues",8
"Moreover, only a small number of research that looked at the issue used carbon emissions, which offers a limited justification for environmental degradation",15
The study would also offer light on how institutions may support environmental sustainability in South Africa without compromising economic development and the country’s efforts to meet the SDGs by 2030,8
"The economic growth process in major coal-producing economies like Australia, China, India, Russia, and South Africa is greatly influenced by the production of coal",8
The possible effects of the toxic gases generated from coal mines on public health are more concerning,3
"Additionally, it was discovered that the water resources in several of the cases do not meet the requirements for freshwater stream water quality set by Australia and New Zealand",6
(2011) demonstrated how coal mining has degraded the water quality in three separate lakes because they have significant quantities of several metals that are unsafe for humans’ consumption and surpass acceptable limits,6
"Moreover, the negative impact of coal mining is undermining South Africa’s efforts to strengthen food security and accomplish SDG objective 2 of eradicating hunger",2
Bench Marks Foundation (2014) reported that the availability of land and access to clean water for agriculture and livestock cultivation in South Africa has been severely impacted by coal mining,6
"The study concluded that coal production and consumption activities such as surface mining, underground mining, and coal transport destroyed groundwater regimes and generated acid rain, made land unfit for other productive uses, and caused sound, air, and solid waste pollution challenges",12
"The study identified the negative impact as comprising ground deformation, air pollution, fire hazard, water pollution, and depletion of water resources",6
"In another study on the energy consumption-environmental quality nexus, Banday and Aneja (2019) investigated BRICS data spanning 1990–2017 through the bootstrap Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality test",7
"The results of the causality analysis from renewable and non-renewable energy to carbon emissions suggest convergence in the cases of India, Russia, and South Africa, while those of China and Brazil are insignificant",7
"Estimates from their analysis indicate that in the long run, GDP alleviates environmental degradation, while IQ contributes positively to environmental performance",15
"Moreover, in an investigation of the nature of the impact of the rule of law on carbon emissions in European economies, Castiglione et al",16
The research outcome demonstrated that both rule of law and regulatory quality impact environmental sustainability positively,16
They found that the predominant institutional framework and macroeconomic policies significantly influence the process of tropical deforestation,15
"The results are also in line with the finding by Bhattarai and Hammig (2004) who explored the income-deforestation nexus in the context of the EKC for 20 countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America between 1980 and 1995",15
Estimates from their analysis showed that rural population pressure is not as significant a factor in determining the preservation of forest resources as other research has claimed,15
"However, the governance level is identified as an essential factor in determining the conservation of forest resources",15
"Furthermore, in an investigation of 105 countries regarding the causal linkage between economic freedom and environmental pollution, Wood and Herzog (2014) reported that an inverse relationship exists between economic freedom and particulate matter concentrations",8
"Additionally, though the result is less robust, economic freedom also affects carbon emissions negatively",8
Their results indicate that increasing the level of economic freedom enhances environmental performance,8
"Estimates from the study indicate that the trio of rule of law, corruption control and political stability affects carbon emissions negatively",16
"A dataset of 1815 companies from 13 European companies was investigated in the study which found that business organizations with stronger care for the environment tend to be found in nations with better transparency, democracy, citizen participation, and government effectiveness",11
"We derived the composite IQ by computing the average of the following three IQ elements: corruption (range: 0–6), law and order (range: 0–6), and government stability (range: 0–12)",16
Economic growth is measured by real GDP per capita and drawn from the World Development Indicators (WDIs),8
"The result on the impact of GDP per capita also mirrors the extant literature which establish that economic growth increases environmental deterioration (Destek and Sarkodie 2019; Nathaniel 2020; Ulucak et al., 2020; Ahmed et al",8
"Intuitively, increased urbanization often leads to a surge in environment-debilitating activities such as higher energy consumption, increased traffic congestion and infrastructural development-driven constructions",7
"The result, however, contradicts the argument of Ulucak and Khan (2020) and Danish (2018) that urbanization promotes the use and diffusion of environment-friendly innovative technology, as well as economies of scale, and thereby promote environmental sustainability",9
"These estimates confirm the validity of the EKC for South Africa, which implies that the earlier stage in the economic growth process is associated with positive link between low GDP per capita and environmental degeneration, and that at a later stage, economic progress, indicated by higher GDP per capita promotes environmental sustainability (Grossman and Krueger 1991)",8
"CORR is negatively signed and significant, indicating that improvement in the control of corruption enhances environmental sustainability in line with Wang et al",16
"Its interaction with CM is equally negatively signed and significant, indicating that improvement in IQ, occasioned by reduction in corruption mitigates the negative impact of coal mining on the environment",16
"This result is analogous to that of Model (3), in that with less corruption, the severity of environmental consequences of coal mining is stymied",16
(2020) who found that corruption control mitigates the deleterious impacts of anthropogenic activities on the environment,16
Improvement in LAWO is associated with reduction in EF in line with Gani (2012) who reports that the rule of law contributes to a reduction in carbon emissions,16
"(2021) that in countries with strong adherence to the rule of law, negative impacts of anthropogenic activities on the environment are curtailed",16
"The perceived contribution of coal to environmental degeneration is so high that one of the notable outcomes of COP 26 international climate conference was an agreement by 190 countries to gradually phase out coal power, which would cut down planned new coal power plants by 76%, while more than 40 nations and several organizations endorsed the global ‘coal to clean power transition’ declaration.Footnote 7 Though coal mining plays an important role in boosting economic activity in South Africa, investigations on the effects of coal mining on the overall environmental attributes of the country have been sparse",7
"Moreover, GDP inhibits environmental degradation in line with Nathaniel (2020) and Ulucak et al",15
"This aligns with the finding of Nathaniel (2020), but it is inconsistent with the results of Danish (2018) and Ulucak and Khan (2020) who argued that URB enhances environmental sustainability through the spread of green technology and economies of scale",9
"These findings stress the criticality of strong institutions in driving the environmental sustainability objectives of South Africa, especially as regards their capacity to uphold the rule of law, curtail corruption and bring democracy’s benefits to the fore in the country",16
"Government policies should be directed towards incorporating more renewable energy sources, such as wind, geothermal, solar, biomass, and hydropower, into the nation’s energy mix",7
"For this reason, it is necessary to implement some form of pollution-control initiative, such as renewable energy production tax credits and renewable energy portfolio standard (Apergis and Payne 2011)",7
"Second, policymakers should enact policies that foster an enabling environment for increased climate finance in the country, while the institutional structure in the country should be strengthened towards enforcing the policies",13
One of the set objectives for COP 26 was the mobilization of at least $100 billion in climate finance annually,13
"Brazil is a significant producer and exporter and reaches impressive results, aiming for better environmentally responsible production",12
"Environmentally speaking, adapting the Brazilian coffee chain to climate change is also the focus of the national governance structured in the Deliberative Council on Coffee Policy (CDPC), which guides the application of Funcafé’s discretionary resources in research (Matos and Pizzol 2021)",13
"To overcome these issues, small farmers need to strengthen their relationships by organizing themselves into associations, thus reducing obstacles to assessing production impacts for a better environment for product certification (Bravo-Monroy et al",2
"(2013) noticed that to improve the results from agriculture in smallholders, some strategies turn to actions to strengthen associativity among small producers and between them with medium and large producers, including sellers",9
"The authors identified that scale, auxiliary sector, and Research & Development (R&D) proactivity are some of these elements",9
"This credit with environmental protection legislation, smallholder farmers, and demand for agricultural and raw products were identified as the main drivers of Brazil’s Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) changes (Gomes et al",15
"Nevertheless, his workforce needs training and education to increase the final product in quality and value",4
"The concerns about climate change and the studies for this problem have the poverty and education awareness as key factors for results from farmers’ production, regarding their adaptive capacity, which will lead them to succeed or fail in their production (Quiroga et al",13
"On the other hand, other authors present the negative impacts based on the factors such as a decline in respect for labor rights, coercive working conditions, discrimination, and lack of understanding of regulatory mechanisms (Cramer et al",10
The authors studied and established critical and optimal soil fertility properties for Arabica coffee crops by diagnosing the macronutrient contents in the leaf of coffee and relating them to those available in the soil,15
These results show that they need more information about responsible production,12
"The negative impacts (labor rights, coercive working conditions, discrimination, and lack of regulatory mechanisms) are that the cost per temporary worker/year varies from US$187.00 to US$1872",10
"While some authors see it as a problem related to the droughts and water crisis, a concern for the next generations (Perdoná et al",6
"On the other hand, some technologies/equipment are not suggested, considering their energy consumption, as the currently available technology for drying coffee (Alves et al",7
"Among the most prevalent pathologies that lead to pregnant women being classified as high risk are sickle cell anemias, systemic arterial hypertension, and diabetes mellitus (Brasil 2019)",3
"According to the Ministry of Health (Brasil 2019), the pregnant woman assisted by the Unified Health System in Brazil (SUS), in her first medical consultation, will be classified as habitual, intermediate, or high-risk pregnancy",3
"Metropolitan Region of Baixada Santista with the activities of contaminated areas, low-risk, and high-risk pregnancy Regarding the reproductive profile, most pregnant women had less than 4 pregnancies; the current pregnancy was unique and unplanned; the PN was started before 12 weeks of gestation, with 7 or more prenatal consultations; they were normotensive, with normal glycemia, had no syphilis, and no HIV nor urinary infection",3
"Hypertensive syndrome, diabetes mellitus (DM), or both (71%) predominated in high-risk pregnant women (p < 0.001)",3
"Today, women tend to become pregnant at an older age; this postponement of pregnancy causes age to increase the risk of chromosomal changes in the fetus; cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, such as hypertension, diabetes, and obesity; neoplasms; and fetal deaths (Brasil 2019)",3
"The pregnant women in this study considered the PN between excellent and good, but some of them had less than 7 consultations; this is a problem in these pregnant women, given that 71% of the cases had diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, or both, and this may have been one of the reasons that led to premature labor, which could have led pregnant women to have 7 consultations or less of PN",3
"Many factors lead to preterm delivery, among them we have maternal age, access to inadequate PN, gestational diabetes, and gestational hypertension (Brasil 2019); all those mentioned were found in this study",3
"(2019) report that there is a difference between the concepts of hypertensive pregnant women because they are generally premature and underweight, different from pregnant women with diabetes, where the conceptus is large for gestational age and can reach a more advanced gestational age",3
"As in hypertension, diabetes mellitus can occur before or during pregnancy",3
"The Brazilian Diabetes Society reports that genetic, biological, and environmental factors are listed among the genetic, biological, and environmental factors (Forti et al",3
"Regarding environmental factors and diabetes during pregnancy, studies have shown the association between exposure to environmental contaminants mainly in the 1st trimester of pregnancy (Zhang et al",3
"Although the SDGs have set a target by 2020 to achieve environmentally healthy management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their entire life cycle, according to agreed international frameworks, and significantly reduce their release to air, water, and soil to minimize their negative impacts on human health and the environment (Assembly 2015), what was observed in this research is that we still have much to go on",12
This paper analyzes the adoption of an off-grid hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) for a high-rise building owned by a public institution in Nigeria,7
"On the global stage, about 50% of the population live without electricity, and in most cases, the population with access to electricity depends on non-renewable fossil fuels",7
Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for over 620 million people without access to electricity (Weitz et al,7
Due to the fact that energy plays an important role in the economic growth of any country (Amin et al,8
This goal seeks to bring about a significant increase in the adoption of renewable energy in the global energy mix (Weitz et al,7
Goal 7a expects an increase in all renewable energy frameworks and technology investments by 2030 to enhance electricity availability to all communities across the world (IEA—International Energy Agency 2019),7
This will foster an improved economy and in turn result in poverty reduction and improved quality of living (Bugaje 2006),1
Utilities in many developed economies have integrated renewable energy sources in their energy mix to improve energy availability,7
"In Europe, for instance, several countries consider renewable energy as their first energy source for power generation (Brecha 2019)",7
"To attain the SGD 7 in Sub-Sahara Africa, stakeholders need to intensify the adoption of renewable energy systems",7
"Consequently, many commercial and administrative activities either lack access to electricity or experience a severe shortage in its supply",7
The overdependence on diesel generators can be attributed to a lack of awareness on various advantages and benefits of renewable energy sources,7
"The adoption of standalone HRES by the academic sector will reduce the huge energy demands placed on the weak national grid, thereby improving energy access to other sectors of the economy and fostering the quality of life of the citizens",7
Various studies have been conducted on the subject of hybrid renewable energy adoption,7
"(2019a, b) study was to optimize the sizing of an integrated renewable energy system (IRES) with the grid in a rural area in India",7
"Using iHOGA renewable energy software, DIgSILENT PowerFactory, and Matlab Simulink, Shezan (2021) designed an islanded wind-diesel-battery hybrid energy system and analyzed its technical and economic feasibility comparatively with that of a conventional power plant in Johor, Malaysia",7
"This rich review of the literature serves as the background on which this study is anchored.
 To provide reliable electricity to educational institutions in Nigeria, the government through the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) instituted the Energizing Education Programme (EEP) (Nigerian Rural Electrification Agency 2020)",7
"The programme deliverables are (i) delivery of an independent power plant, (ii) upgrading of street lighting, (iii) distribution of infrastructure within university campuses, and (iv) establishment of an innovative renewable energy training centre for each university",7
"The first phase is expected to supply 28.5 MW of power to 9 federal universities (Table 2) and 1 university teaching hospital, using solar hybrid and/or gas/diesel-fired captive power plants (Nigerian Rural Electrification Agency 2020)",7
"As a contribution to EEP in Nigeria, and extension of the literature on optimization of HRES, this study presents the following:
 A pre-feasibility case study that assesses the technical viability and environmental benefits that are inherent in renewable energy technologies",7
"With a renewed interest in providing sustainable energy, there has been an increasing interest in the adoption of off-grid hybrid renewable energy facilities in developing countries, due to its capacity to achieve a robust, reliable, flexible, and smart electrical grid system and providing power to remote communities",7
The adoption of such off-grid renewable energy facilities requires research efforts directed at comprehensive frameworks and strategies that will ensure the sustainability of the energy systems,7
"The rest of this section presents the mathematical expressions used in estimating the variables relevant to the energy system.
 Methodological approach Sunlight is a renewable energy source that could be practically exploited for the abundant supply of energy",7
"PV modules, also called solar panels, are formed when solar cells are physically and electrically coupled and placed into a frame (Akinyele et al",7
"The power generated by a wind turbine depends on several factors, including the length of the blades, the speed of the wind, and the wind turbine power coefficient (which describes how efficient the wind turbine converts the wind energy into rotational motion)",7
"2018).
 where Ce is the maximum power extraction efficiency of the wind generator
 In periods of higher loads, or when renewable energy sources cannot meet the demand, a backup generator serves as a standby",7
"The cyclic energy efficiency of a battery is critically important in choosing a battery, as a larger input source is required as a replacement if a loss of energy occurs",7
It is the ratio of the renewable energy delivered to the load to the sum of the renewable energy and other conventional sources of energy,7
"To support electricity-related services in the building, this study proposes the use of hybrid energy, harnessing renewable energy resources in the University’s environment",7
"The proposed HRES consists of five main components: generator, wind turbines, PV modules, batteries, and power conditioning units",7
"For this system (PV-diesel generator-battery), renewable energy will contribute 71% with no capacity shortage",7
This is because it has more renewable energy contribution,7
"Figure 9 shows that a direct relationship exists between the energy cost and diesel price.
 Total NPC and initial capital at varying pump price Energy cost at varying pump price The results of this study are comparable to that of similar studies around various part of the world which shows the techno-economic and environmental viability of hybrid renewable energy for powering academic institutions",7
"Based on the climate change action (SDG 13), lower values of CO2 emissions are required",13
"Furthermore, the results show that a maximum renewable energy of 72% can be obtained from the study site if a PV-wind-diesel generator-battery system is adopted",7
"Hence, the implementation of this study could be beneficial to many corporate organizations and public institutions worldwide as the techniques adopted herein could ensure sustainable costs in electricity generation and environmental safety",7
"Since the results of this study show that the choice of the best system out of the feasible energy system alternatives could change if more than one criterion is considered, stakeholders in the renewable energy industry can adopt the concepts of the framework proposed in this study for planning purposes, especially when sustainability is the focal point of their design",7
"The winning submission of its LinksSDGs Data Visualization Challenge is illustrative, mapping links between SDG 11 on sustainable cities and communities and the other 16 SDGs.Footnote 1
 Like other UN initiatives, including many multilateral environmental agreements, countries will need to collect social and natural science data through various censuses and surveys to track issues of compliance and effectiveness",11
"In this article, therefore, we ask: can visualization help scholars of global environmental politics and governance work with problems that are complex, linked, and cross-scalar—the critical characteristics of contemporary environmental problems?
 GEP/GEG scholarship addresses the ways in which the international community (broadly defined) seeks to govern global and transboundary environmental problems",4
"To illuminate the ways in which visualization can enhance environmental studies and sciences scholarship broadly and GEP/GEG scholarship more specifically, the rest of the article proceeds as follows: first, we describe what visualizations are broadly and how they have been used",4
"Second, we discuss the relevance of visualization as an analytical tool for GEP/GEG scholarship",4
"Many of these visualizations are appearing in journals that are more interdisciplinary and publish large amounts of collaborative research between natural and social sciences, such as Nature Climate Change or Global Environmental Change",13
"Although it took a while for his hypothesis to be accepted (over the dominant alternative, that cholera was a miasmic, or air-borne, disease), his map is still used as an example of how visualizations can generate hypotheses that ultimately demonstrate causality, and is considered a milestone in the early days of public health as a field",3
"Examples include Information Is Beautiful, Insightful Interaction, and Tableau Public’s “Viz of the Day,” all of which maintain active social media feeds.Footnote 12
 The power and reach of visualizations were clear at and before the Conference of the Parties (COP 21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris in December 2015",13
"It shows how close we are getting to the 2 °C threshold we want to avoid, and allows viewers to filter out the “noise” of natural variation in temperature and see the long-term trend.Footnote 15
 Despite such a rich history of visualization use across the natural and social sciences and policy community, when the term visualization is utilized in studies of global environmental politics, it is often employed literally, using images to capture large-scale environmental change, such as news images of climate change (e.g., Lester and Cottle 2009) or satellite images of protracted drought.Footnote 16 As a blog in the Huffington Post (Hsu 2014) underscored, some of the main advances in global environmental politics and practice have come about because of images of global environmental change and vulnerability",13
Social science and humanities scholarship often emphasizes the written form in traditional publications,4
"In terms of GEP-relevant scholarship, Paterson et al",4
(2013) have utilized network analysis to analyze ideological relationships among different types of speakers providing Congressional testimony on climate change (see also Corbera et al,13
"Scholars such as Hans Rosling have used visualizations—Gapminder in this case—to compare countries to see how declines in child mortality across the globe have led to reductions in total fertility—in short, highlighting the importance of better access to family planning (Hans Rosling: The River of Myths)",3
"For example, in studying public deliberations, an important element of the environmental policy process, Phadke (2010) looks at visual impacts of technologies in the environmental policy debate, in this case the siting of wind energy facilities",7
Other recent studies have examined how visualization technologies have been leveraged to communicate climate change science to the public as a mechanism to mobilize public action by using information and communication technology (see Wibeck et al,13
"We are interested here in waste management projects set up by developed country actors to receive carbon offsets, or credits, against emissions reductions targets mandated by the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC through its Clean Development Mechanism",12
"This first cut at visualizing hard-to-see linkages between climate governance and waste disposal technologies illuminates how visualization allows us to investigate the unintended consequences of widely used governance solutions for climate change, including negative and/or controversial local impacts",13
The CDM was created under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol as part of a suite of market mechanisms designed to facilitate global greenhouse gas emissions reduction,13
"While the CDM’s fate is in doubt following the 2015 Paris Agreement, transnational offsets (often run by private sector companies) remain a tool of global climate governance",13
"Of the 8068 projects registered with the CDM between 2004 and 2016, 1040 were specifically related to solid waste management and disposal.Footnote 29 They encompass a range of different technologies and processes (see Table 1)",12
"Second, waste-to-energy (W2E) incineration projects are one way to switch away from generating energy through burning fossil fuels",12
"Waste-to-energy incineration projects are contentious, but they also make up a significant proportion of energy provision globally",12
"Waste-related projects registered under the CDM, with investors from developed (Annex 1) parties, have emerged as sites of transnational political contention, particularly because of the growth of waste-to-energy incineration and landfill gas storage/flaring projects",12
"Second, and perhaps more straightforwardly, this data provides an important window into the development of waste management facilities in the global South and emerging economies, particularly investment in waste management projects by Northern entities",12
"By applying a visualization approach, this initial case study enables us to examine the nexus of waste and climate change governance—tying into current global environmental politics themes of linkages and cross-scalar dynamics",13
"Waste-related projects fall into four of the general categories of CDM activities: generating renewable energy, improving energy efficiency, GHG destruction, and GHG emissions avoidance (CDM 2016)",7
"These categories include a wide variety of activities, from constructing biogas facilities on large and small animal-rearing facilities to energy generation from incineration of MSW, hazardous waste, and old tires",12
"In addition, we coded waste management assistance programs (WMAPs) that were mentioned as a primary purpose in PDDs",12
"These include (1) Animal Waste, (2) Biomass, (3) Biogas, (4) Industrial Waste, (5) Landfill Gas, (6) Municipal Solid Waste, (7) Organic Waste, (8) Solid Organic Waste, and (9) Wastewater.Footnote 34
 In creating the visualizations, we drew 372 data points from the CDM database (out of 1040) to capture a broad snapshot of relevant projects throughout the CDM’s lifetime; specifically, data samples were taken in roughly equivalent numbers from the early, interim, and recent stages of the CDM’s lifespan.Footnote 35 As this article seeks to illuminate the power of visualization, we are confident that sampling more than one third of the database by time points allows us to undertake a thorough analysis of projects within a visualization exercise",12
"To show the evolution of waste management and disposal in developing countries, especially as financed from developed countries, we generated a range of visualizations, the most interesting (useful) of which we reproduce here.Footnote 36
 CERs vs",12
"Similarly, the maps show variation across hemispheres—with a concentration of Animal Waste Management Systems (AWMS) projects in South/Latin America and a broader variety of projects in Asia",12
"While this chart was developed with a particular interest in waste-to-energy projects, they turn out to be a smaller proportion of projects than expected",12
"The first big dip coincides with the fall in carbon prices after the 2008 financial crisis; here, we see that animal waste management projects for greenhouse gas mitigation drop off dramatically and methane capture projects begin to dominate",12
"As a way of demonstrating patterns and raising questions, this exercise suggests a range of ways forward in investigating connections between global offset financing and waste management in developing countries, including trends in types of projects over time, and spatial trends, including transnational host and partner country relationships, and changes in project locations and types over time",12
Visualizing CDM data illuminates how such visualizations may help expand GEP scholarship through identifying research questions and communicating broader trends to wider audiences,4
The visualizations presented here help us hone in on difficult-to-see linkages between climate governance and waste disposal technologies,13
"Thus, from the visualization data, we could explore further how waste projects track with CDM trends, and hypothesize more specifically about the role of project location, size, types of investors, and impacts of carbon price fluctuations on the distributional impacts of such climate change solutions",13
"Second, visualizing this data helps get at questions about the evolution of waste management and disposal in poor countries, especially as financed by developed country enterprises.Footnote 38 It provides insight into trends in waste management and disposal in developing countries over the past decade.Footnote 39 In addition, municipal solid waste generation is expected to continue to rise in some of the world’s developing countries, while falling in the global North",12
"The most important is climate change, caused by greenhouse gases emitted from production and use of fossil fuels",13
"Over the past 50 years, environmental education has increasingly embraced the need for curriculum on climate change, but these curricular efforts have not delved deeply enough into building student knowledge and analytical skills about energy systems and the imperative transition away from fossil fuels",13
"Climate change, however, poses catastrophic risks to modern culture and stems largely from production and use of fossil fuels, like coal",13
"First, it endorses and contributes to calls for reframing climate education to education about transition of energy systems from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources (Jorgenson et al",7
Early programs did not include climate change—scientific findings at that time merely speculated that it might happen (Weart 2013),13
"After the 1990s, climate change entered environmental education based on extensive reports from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)",13
"Recently, IPCC reported that climate change posed serious global threats to environmental stability and human wellbeing and required international cooperation to combat (IPCC 2021)",13
"However, simply using lower amounts of fossil fuels slowed, but did not stop, emissions and the progression of climate change",13
That required a transition in energy systems and meant switching from fossil fuels to other energy sources with zero or low emissions (decarbonization) and delivering energy services with electricity (electrification),13
"and global energy economies, their problems, and avenues for reconstructing them around the major sources of energy: coal, oil, gas, hydropower, nuclear, solar, biomass, wind, and geothermal Electrons to Renewable Energy Credits: An Introduction to Electricity and Electricity Policy—Reviewed the basic concepts of electrical generation and the evolution of electrical and energy policy in the United States, setting the stage for discussion of the transition from the centralized, grid-tied electrical system to a more renewably sourced, decentralized one The Promises and Pitfalls of Clean Energy—Based on the premise that decisions to invest in clean or renewable energy now and in the future depends on the types of policies in place to support that investment (such as feed-in-tariffs or production tax credits), the political and industrial will to move away from fossil fuels, and social pressures for greener economies",7
"In addition, those systems may serve as models for making all energy systems more sustainable Ecological and Social Sustainability—Adopted an interdisciplinary, systems-thinking approach to understand coupled natural/social systems as they related to global climate change",13
"Intertwined topics included the carbon cycle over geologic and modern time scales; scientific evidence for climate change, including the contributions of energy production and consumption; concepts of resilience and thresholds; the understanding and communication of uncertainty; and environmental justice Political ecology first emerged in the 1970s to help explain the connections among economics, politics, and nature",13
"Perkins (1997) used political ecology to explore the role of changing technology in the Green Revolution of the 1950s and 1960s—in that case, the technology included new fertilizers and high-yield crop varieties which led to increased agricultural output and food production around the world, but also decreased crop diversity and increased the dominance of large, highly mechanized farm operations and large agrochemical companies in the food supply chain",2
More recent work has relied on political ecology to better understand the power and politics of waste management (Cornea et al,12
2016) and of clean water access and wastewater disposal in urban and peri-urban environments in India (Karpouzoglou et al,6
2018); the role of “expert” knowledge in environmental impact statement development and the increased marginalization of artisanal and small-scale miners (Spiegel 2017); the role of government in supporting multinational corporation’s role in the deforestation associated with palm oil farming (Bennett et al,15
"2018); the imposition of property rights and power structures, and the accompanying processes of exclusion that accompany state-backed forest conservation projects in the Global South (Asiyanbi 2016); and infrastructure standards—the institutional efforts necessary to create standardized environments (such as canals) as a precondition for worldwide economic integration and maritime transportation (Carse and Lewis 2016)",1
"In the energy realm, political ecology has been used to explore the locus of political power associated with the spread of renewable energy projects in Europe (Dunlap 2020) and throughout the Global South (Ahlborg and Nightingale 2018; McCarthy and Thatcher 2019)",7
"We knew that energy systems required continual investments to function, but the challenges of high decarbonization and electrification indicated the need for more details",13
"Governor Greg Abbott (R, TX), for example, blamed the failure of his state’s electric grid on failure of Texas’ wind power",7
"More even-handed analyses of both events revealed a more complicated situation than politically motivated attacks (California ISO 2021; “KSAT Explains,” 2021; Sparber 2021), but the facts of grid collapses spotlight the fundamental importance of public and private emotional, intellectual, and financial investments in decarbonization and electrification",13
"Other events also pointed to the reality of entrenched interests fiercely resisting, obfuscating, and misleading about climate change and energy transition (For example, Dunlap and Brulle 2015; Stokes 2020)",13
Students as citizens must be literate enough about energy systems to understand the role of investments in decarbonization and electrification,13
"Social and economic inequalities will arise, and future citizens will decide the methods for addressing these consequences of transitioning to new energy systems",10
"To mitigate the worst risks of climate change, investments must, within a decade or two, increasingly develop energy sources (a) without carbon emissions and (b) with electrified energy services",13
"Decarbonization means stopping investments that support the development and use of fossil fuels, and electrification means investing in infrastructure and devices to supply energy services with electricity",13
"Without investment, no energy services exist; only investments directed to appropriate ends can accomplish decarbonization and electrification to mitigate climate change",13
Social investment for sustainable growth currently attracts considerable interest (Deeming and Smyth 2018),8
"By the mid-1900s, modern societies relied on nine primary energy sources: coal, oil, and natural gas (fossil fuels); uranium (nuclear power); and solar radiation, wind, falling water (hydropower), geothermal heat, and biomass (renewable energy sources)",7
"Renewable energy resources—especially solar radiation, wind, and hydropower—deliver services by transformation to electricity",7
These three renewable sources can supply large amounts of renewable energy (Delucchi and Jacobson 2011; Jacobson et al,7
"2015), and they are likely to comprise the bulk of renewable energy in the future",7
"Technology for converting solar radiation, wind, and hydropower to electricity is well developed, and further innovations will continue to improve conversion technologies",7
"Renewable electricity generation, however, is intermittent, which necessitates storage technologies to permit use of that electricity at any time",7
"As a result, new types of electric grids and new regulatory patterns to support them will be essential to achieve as close to 100% renewable energy as possible",7
"UPSTREAM investments make it possible to procure raw, primary energy sources, e.g., crude oil or a site rich in solar or wind energy",7
"Solar PV produces electricity directly from solar radiation, and wind, and falling water (hydropower) spin turbogenerators to produce electricity",7
"Over time, depletion of raw energy sources (e.g., exhaustion of an oil well), depreciation of infrastructure (e.g., power plants or devices using energy), and new technology require perpetual building and rebuilding",7
"Thus, INVESTMENT must continue in perpetuity for sustainable energy services",7
"Moving off the well-worn path requires an interruption of the cycle, a diversion of funds to research and development or to lobbying for regulatory modifications, and new subsidies or protections",9
"nuclear power industry with its extension of the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act, loan guarantees for up to 80% of the cost of new nuclear projects, production tax credits of up to $125 million per year, cost overrun support for the first six new reactors, and almost three billion dollars for research and development related activities (Energy Policy Act of 2005)",9
"Finally, Fig. 2 shows the most dangerous unwanted side effect of current energy systems based on fossil fuels, CLIMATE CHANGE",13
"For example, the oil industry invested $470 billion in 2019 to increase and maintain fuel oil supplies and an additional $23 billion went into maintaining and replacing oil-fired electric power plants",7
"Based on these estimates, the world has not yet begun channeling most of its annual investment dollars into renewable energy sources",7
"In addition, solar, wind, and hydropower deliver their energy services via transformation to electrical energy, so some investments in these sources must go to electrical infrastructure",7
"Since 2015, the percentage of funds going into renewable energy for electricity have remained about the same, around 15–16%",7
"In 2019, the total invested in renewable energy (except biofuels) for electricity and energy efficiency totaled $560 billion (30 percent of total invested)",7
Additional small investments also supported renewable energy by going to batteries and biofuels (International Energy Agency 2020),7
"Instead, the question is, “Will investors direct their efforts towards a transition to mitigate climate change, or will they continue along current pathways with most funds going to perpetuate uses of fossil fuels?” Regardless of the answers to this question, however, ERIC and its embedded EIC will continue to depict energy systems in the future",13
"In this assessment method, the fossil fuels all had fatal weaknesses, because their use intrinsically releases carbon dioxide and methane, the greenhouse gases most responsible for human-caused climate change",13
"Despite their long history of use and many benefits, further investments in these primary energy sources will inevitably threaten higher risks from climate change",13
"Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG 7) focuses on energy specifically, “Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all” (United Nations 2015, pp",7
SDG 7 addresses both promotion of renewable energy and environmental/social justice,7
"It calls for ending energy poverty, increasing the share of renewable energy in the world’s economy, and improving energy efficiency",7
SDG 7 also calls for international cooperation to promote these aspirations in less industrialized parts of the world,7
Climate change—its current damages and its projected future catastrophic risks—drove the proposed GND’s objectives: reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions by 40–60% by 2030 and net zero carbon emissions by 2050,13
"Renewable energy sources, energy efficiency, and other policies bolstered the “green” designation, but the GND also sought to ensure environmental and social justice",7
"Nevertheless, the GND turned debates about climate change towards a confrontation with socio-political-economic structures, a rhetorical reframing that may resonate better with citizens (Meyer 2019)",13
"Among other dependencies, the roadmap rests heavily on a substantial increase in investment in infrastructure supporting decarbonization and electrification while simultaneously decreasing investments aimed at production and use of fossil fuels",13
"Unfortunately, these debates remain clouded by arguments that risks of climate change are small, even though anthropogenic climate change is real and happening now (Stern et al",13
People across the USA have already had positive experiences with renewable energy resources and negative health and environmental experiences with fossil fuels,7
"Why, therefore, has there not been more movement on the energy transition? Are health and environmental effects not well recognized and understood? Compared to the benefits and low costs of fossil fuels, do health and environmental effects not seem bad, or bad enough? Has a sense of inability to change something so ingrained as fossil fuel energy led to giving up? Do higher (and still dropping) costs of renewable energy, sunk costs in fossil fuels and related infrastructure, inertia of habit, and inconvenience of change explain the slowness? Or do the pursuit of wealth and the attributes of modern living impede change from a fairly certain situation to one characterized by more uncertainty? All these factors and more contribute to resistance or slowness to changing investment patterns",7
"Nevertheless, we conclude that the evidence indicating severe risks from climate change (e.g., IPCC 2021) makes the case for reform of education about energy",13
"We propose ERIC as a framework showing (a) the centrality of investments in modern energy systems and (b) the linkages between energy services and atmospheric emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, the two most important greenhouse gases",7
"Currently, technical energy education tends to reside in engineering and the sciences instead of in environmental education: (a) the physics of energy, units and measurements, the laws of thermodynamics, energy systems, and renewable energy technologies (Belu et al",7
"How would we add the energy investment cycle into courses on environmental education, climate change, and energy? Fig. 2 can help",13
"In turn, solutions to climate change may include a necessity to reduce carbon emissions from uses of fossil fuels",13
"For example, how do interest rates and changes in them affect choices of resources or technologies? What do interest rates tell us about how we, as a society, value the present versus the future? How have policies that offer tax credits for investment or production affected the comparative costs of various options and thus investments in them? What have been the impacts on the growth of clean/renewable energy? Furthermore, how can students account for elements not traded in a marketplace when conducting their benefit/cost analyses? Upstream investment decisions Exploitation and development of all nine primary energy sources begins with control of a defined area of the earth’s surface, either dry or submerged under water",7
"Development of energy from solar, wind, and water (hydropower) require controlling the extraction of energy from above the surface of the area",7
"For example, installation of wind turbines for electricity with low carbon emissions also creates unwanted affects",7
How should environmental education portray conflict between efforts to mitigate climate change with maintenance of attractive visual landscapes (Aposstol et al,13
"2017)? Downstream investment decisions Substitution of solar, wind, and falling water (hydropower) for fossil fuels intrinsically requires electrification of devices downstream to use the energy",7
"airplanes, that is hard to electrify Investments in supporting industries and education At the end of 2020, about 3 million Americans worked in the clean energy sector (E2, 2021)",7
"Many people worked to produce, install, and maintain solar panels and wind turbines",7
"Jobs in that sector also included hydrogen and fuel cell development, electric vehicle design and manufacture, grid modernization, and energy efficiency upgrades",7
"In fact, in 2020, while 47% of jobs fell under the umbrella of repair and maintenance (of solar panels and wind turbines for example), 20% were in professional services, and 16% were in manufacturing",7
"Students would be encouraged to consider the destructive extraction of resources that feed nuclear, coal, and fossil fuel facilities as well as the inefficiencies of today’s commercial solar panels, hydroelectric plants, and combustion engines",7
"For example, consider the following types of questions that can be inserted into environmental education: What might be the cost of replacing existing infrastructure to accommodate change? What methods, policies, and questions arise from using subsidies, taxes, rebates, loans and grants, portfolio standards, and exemptions that encourage the use of one resource or technology over another? How do carbon taxes affect companies, communities, and individuals dependent on fossil fuels? Why did expiration of wind subsidies have such an impact on that industry? What do numbers tell us? Are they derived in ways that inspire confidence? For example, students need to gain skills in critical assessment of numbers about emissions of greenhouse gases and quantitative consequences for climate, waste products from production and use of energy, land use required for energy production, and risks (probabilities) of harm from climate change or production and use of energy from different primary energy sources (see, e.g., Porter’s Trust in Numbers 1995)",13
"What considerations defy reduction to numbers or to dollars? If these considerations are important and potentially generate conflicts, what avenues can lead to acceptable problem solving? How fast can transition happen once all dimensions of ERIC and investment become clear? Will the rate of transition be fast enough to prevent the worst, predicted ravages of climate change? Energy services, derived through multi-faceted energy systems, enabled modern societies, and engineers have made these systems invisible to most people",13
"If no problems arose from energy systems, such as climate change, invisibility would not matter",13
"Sadly, many problems exist, ranging from climate change to other forms of pollution to habitat destruction and destruction of vital ecosystem services",13
"Other energy problems have other consequences not discussed here, and ERIC will assist development of skills to see how such problems relate to modern energy systems",7
"In addition, energy poverty plagues many communities and areas; also, assets stranded by decarbonization and electrification will generate injustices needing amelioration",13
"gri-food supply chains (AFSCs) are one of the significant building blocks of agricultural production, and their sustainability aims are advanced by big data analytics (BDA) and the circular economy (CE)",12
"Furthermore, big data infrastructure was the most important sub-capability ahead of financial benefits, top management support, sustainability and resilience, and food waste reduction",12
"Circular AFSCs are the product of the transition to smart, sustainable and resilient supply chains, whose operations are underlain by the principles of the circular economy (CE)",12
"On this basis, circular AFSCs enhance the use of renewable, recyclable, or biodegradable materials by adopting the reduction, reuse, and recycling principles of CE (Kazancoglu et al",12
Circular AFSCs must be managed with digital technologies to improve productivity and address environmental effects (Kamilaris et al,8
"2017), social concerns, food waste, quality, and security requirements (Kamble et al",12
"2019), and helps partners develop circular strategies from farm to fork",2
"Therefore, the emergence of green technological innovations and BDA contributes to economic, environmental and social sustainability by increasing efficiency, promoting the use of renewable energy (Anwar et al",7
"Thus, the adoption of circular and smart farming based on data-driven competencies helps practitioners overcome the challenges related to productivity, food waste, quality, and security",12
"The performance of circular AFSCs can be measured through five indicators: (P1) increased productivity, (P2) improved food quality and safety, (P3) carbon emissions reduction, (P4) resource efficiency, and (P5) stakeholder development (Dubey et al",13
"The results showed that the CE-based BDA capabilities primarily increased productivity and then stakeholder development, resource efficiency, food quality and security, and carbon emissions reduction",13
"Big data infrastructure was the most important sub-criterion, whereas technical skills were the least important",4
"These capabilities also advanced social and environmental sustainability by improving stakeholder development, resource efficiency, food quality and security, and carbon emissions reduction",13
"(2019) and Gupta and George (2016), technical skills were found to be the least important BDA capability, even though these abilities help employees uncover hidden knowledge in big datasets (Rialti et al",4
"2017), including food quality, security, and emissions reduction",13
"Under this category, the involvement of small farmers in BDA initiatives was ranked as the most important sub-criterion, whereas government incentives were ranked as the least important",2
Circular AFSCs can more substantially benefit from BDA capabilities through the active engagement of small farmers in BDA (Kshetri 2014),2
"(2021b) averred that government support encourages the development of BDA capabilities, while Kshetri (2014) claimed that these incentives increase BDA investments, and facilitate access to data among small farmers, thereby improving their agricultural decision-making performance",2
"This strategy requires managers to orchestrate organisational resources, invest in sources of technological innovation and develop a CE-based data-driven culture that is aligned with the sustainability goals (Kristoffersen et al",8
"2022) and CE-based BDA capabilities, enabling them to maintain their economic, environmental, and social sustainability and minimise environmental degradation",15
The agricultural sector is the driving force of economic growth in developing countries (Aziz et al,8
"Developing countries, such as Turkey, have the opportunity to increase the pace at which their economies advance by implementing technological innovations, developing green energy (Anwar et al",7
"Moreover, the active involvement of small farmers in BDA initiatives paves the way for the expansion of social sustainability in rural areas, thereby increasing stakeholder development",2
"In this process, the innovative insights obtained from CE-based BDA capabilities can contribute to sustainable production and consumption and to the formulation of principal solutions to the sustainability challenges highlighted in the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs)",12
"The findings showed that the CE-based BDA capabilities significantly increased productivity, stakeholder development, resource efficiency, food quality and security, and carbon emissions reduction",13
The human capital-energy consumption interaction contributed to environmental quality improvement,7
"The industrialization path mainly comes with income growth, and more wealth, according to economic theory, would first lead to environmental degradation, as argued by the EKC hypothesis",15
2016; Majeed and Tauriq 2020) argue that economic growth does not continuously improve environmental quality,8
"It is then the association between human development, economic development, and environmental quality sustainability (Martin et al",8
"So, the experience of developing countries and, more specifically, the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) demonstrates that a rapid transition to renewable energies necessitates a higher level of education, urbanization, energy consumption awareness, and greater environmental risk demand for a healthy environment",7
"In recent decades, ASEAN countries have experienced rapid economic growth",8
"At the same time, rapid economic growth has increased primary energy usage, which has risen from 1451.3 billion US dollars in 1990 to 2092.4 billion US dollars in 2010 and 5178.5 billion US dollars in 2019 (WDI 2021)",8
"According to Mottet (2020), this population growth leads to strong urbanization and the need for technological innovation to meet the population’s energy needs",8
"Countries with low enrollment would see an increase in the usage of energy-intensive resources, resulting in increased environmental degradation (Hill and Magnani 2002)",15
"To the best of the researchers’ knowledge, this is the first research to examine the dynamic connections between energy consumption, human capital, urbanization, and CO2 emissions when implementing sustainable development processes in ASEAN countries",7
"Also, there is a dearth of literature on the effect of the interaction between energy consumption and human capital on carbon dioxide emissions",7
"This makes it possible to identify other determinants of energy consumption and, consequently, the elements triggering carbon dioxide emissions in the ASEAN countries",7
There are many empirical studies on the relationship between energy consumption and CO2 emissions,7
"Even though the literature is not unified upon a common point, whether the energy consumption increases CO2 emissions or not, a major strand of the literature has empirically assessed that energy consumption significantly increases CO2 emissions (Bhattacharya et al",7
"Contrary to this, some studies reject this positive relationship between energy consumption and CO2 emissions",7
The results found that energy consumption reduces CO2 emissions (Hanif 2018; Acheampong et al,7
Several studies employ different proxies for environmental degradation like CO2 emissions (Bhattacharya et al,15
"(2017) employed the framework of the generalized method of moment (sys-GMM) estimation technique and found adverse effects of energy consumption on CO2 emissions for 86 countries, while Danish et al",7
2020 employed the ARDL technique and found adverse effects of energy consumption on CO2 emissions for India,7
(2018) explored the impact of urbanization and economic development on CO2 emissions in China from 2005 to 2015,8
"According to the results, pollution levels rose due to urbanization and economic development",8
"However, different studies with different econometric methods and countries of investigation and periods displayed the same results, such as urbanization causes environmental degradation",15
"Furthermore, the study by Lv and Xu (2018) investigated the impact of urbanization and trade openness on environmental degradation in 55 middle-income economies",15
The PMG model revealed that trade openness exacerbated environmental degradation in the long run,15
"From 1980 to 2014, Yazdi and Dariani (2019) looked at the relationship between urbanization, economic development, and CO2 emissions in some Asian economies",8
"(2020) explored the relationship between economic growth, energy use, urbanization, and environmental damage for MINT economies over the 1980–2018 period",8
"(2020) examined the effects of urbanization, trade openness, growth, and industrialization on environmental degradation for 206 economies from 1960 to 2018",15
"The findings indicated that energy used, trade, growth, and industrialization increased environmental degradation",15
"Khan (2020) explored the influence of economic growth, trade, and human capital on pollution for 122 economies over the 1980–2014 period",8
"The study results showed that economic growth, trade, and population contributed to CO2 emissions while human capital contributed significantly to environmental quality",8
"Further, the moderating effect of economic growth helped to reduce CO2 emissions",8
"(2020) investigated the relationship between monetary policy, human capital, and environmental degradation in 14 Asian countries from 1990 to 2014",15
The study employed the panel fully-modified (PFM-LS) and the panel dynamic least square (PD-LS) techniques,17
It showed that human capital improved environmental quality while monetary policy and remittances contributed to environmental degradation,15
"(2021) examined the influence of energy use, financial development, and human capital on environmental degradation for the G20 economies over the 1986–2018 period",15
The Fixed Effect Ordinary Least Squares (FE-OLS) and the Driscoll–Kraay standard error approach (D–K) techniques showed that development growth and energy use increased environmental degradation,15
"The big question is, does human capital, energy consumption, and urbanization directly promote environmental quality? The theoretical framework of the study is based on the “stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence, and technology (STIRPAT)” model proposed by Dietz and Rosa (1997): where \(\alpha\) and \(e\) represent the intercept and the error terms \(I, P, A, T\) are respectively the environmental effect, population size, average affluence, and technological growth",7
The STIRPAT model explains human influences on environmental capital and shows that environmental degradation is driven by demographic and economic factors (Dimnwobi et al,15
"The research considers economic growth (GDP) and trade openness (TR) as control variables, which have a potential impact on carbon emissions",8
"(2019) and Adams and Acheampong (2019) to investigate the effects of energy use, human resources, and urbanization on environmental pollution: where CO2 stands for carbon dioxide emissions, HC is the human capital index, UR denotes urbanization, EC stands for energy consumption, GDP denotes gross domestic product, TR is trade openness, β1 up to β6 and \(\varepsilon\) are the parameter estimates and the error term, respectively, and subscripts i and t are cross-section and time dimensions, respectively",7
"The average economic growth rate in ASEAN is 8.004%, while the average rate of human capital growth is 4.095%",8
"Economic growth and CO2 emissions have the most robust relationship (0.979), indicating a strong connection between economic development and pollution in these countries",8
The result is due to the fact that selected nations are made up of a diverse group of countries with varying levels of economic growth,8
"The results of the FGLS analysis indicate that all the variables (energy use, human capital, urbanization, economic growth, and trade) are statistically significant",8
"In other words, a 1% increase in energy use, human capital, urbanization, economic growth, and trade openness lead to an average rise of CO2 emissions by 0.69%, 0.21%, 0.47%, 0.30%, and 0.08%, respectively, ceteris paribus",8
"Energy consumption significantly increases carbon emissions because dirty fossil fuel consumption is dominant in these countries, which are not environmentally friendly and degrade the environment in line with apriori expectations",7
"This also indicates that the industrial sector highly consumes fossil fuels, leading to environmental degradation",15
"Through the education level, human capital increases environmental degradation by 0.21% in the selected countries",15
"The result might be explained by the fact that human capital may use energy-intensive devices, such as PCs, laptops, and sheets of paper (causes of deforestation), which deteriorate the environment",15
"Furthermore, it demonstrates the importance of human capital in increasing environmental degradation",15
Education was thus not able to promote awareness about environmental degradation in ASEAN nations,15
"Economic growth increases CO2 emissions by 0.30%, showing that more output activities increase environmental pollution in ASEAN nations",8
"Hence, these economies must act together to control the human effects on the environment and put more pressure on human capital investment and advertisements about the impacts of human and economic activities, lifestyle on pollution, and climate change",13
This may help reduce carbon emissions in the region and provide a healthy environment,13
"The government of ASEAN nations should also adopt laws and treaties about waste management, infrastructures, and transportation services to provide urban populations with a healthy environment",12
"Using the spatial Durbin model, the present study investigates the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI), exports, and imports on emissions in 18 Latin American countries from 1970 to 2019, including economic growth and the financial market development (FMD) in the model",8
"Hence, Latin American economic growth has environmental consequences",8
Economic growth and trade are accompanied by environmental issues due to increasing fossil fuel consumption (Ali et al,8
One of the reasons environmental topics are worth studying is that sustainable consumption and production and trade are among the sustainable development goals (SDGs) (UNDP 2021),12
"So that, clearer and better policies can be designed for the region to contribute to the SGDs and the Paris Agreement by reducing GHGs emissions and limiting global warming (CEPAL 2020)",13
"It was argued that pollution, land use, soil quality, and other environmental factors impacted the overall regional landscape, indicating the importance of spatial analysis",2
"Though, Mahmood (2022b) applied spatial analysis to the relationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions in 10 South American economies but ignored the EKC testing",8
"Nevertheless, the above-mentioned studies ignored the spatial analyses and there is a lack of research on how spatial effects play a role in the scenario and the circumstances under which Latin American countries affect each other in terms of economic growth, trade, FDI inflows, and FMD? Therefore, there is a need for spatial analysis in testing the EKC hypothesis and the pollution haven hypothesis (PHH) in a maximum sample of geographically close economies of Latin America",8
"Applying spatial econometrics, the present study contributes to the literature by examining the effects of economic growth, FDI, FMD, exports, and imports on CO2 emissions in a sample of 18 Latin American countries from 1970 to 2019",8
"Thus, a nonlinear relationship was suggested between economic growth and emissions due to the scale, composition, and technique effects, which is called the EKC hypothesis (Panayotou 1993)",8
"The scale effect explains that economic growth requires energy to fuel economic activities at the first stage of development, which may raise fossil fuel usage (Ali et al",8
"Moreover, the industrial structure would also be shifted into cleaner production activities due to R&D activities",9
These R&D activities could have long-lasting effects on the environment (Zhang et al,9
"In addition, FMD would play a role in accelerating R&D activities to support cleaner technologies and production processes (Frankel and Romer 1999)",9
(2022) found that financial technologies helped in improving energy efficiency,7
"Like economic growth, trade would also increase the emissions through the scale effect and could decrease emissions through the technique and composition effects (Dou et al",8
The pollution halo hypothesis states that foreign investors use cleaner technologies compared to local producers and may improve the environment (Mert and Caglar 2020),17
"Moreover, economic growth had a positive effect on both CBC and TBC emissions",8
(2020) also corroborated the negative impact of exports and the positive impacts of imports and economic growth on CBC emissions,8
"The results showed that imports, exports, population size, and energy intensity increased CO2 emissions",7
"Alternatively, technological innovation reduced emissions by moving to more efficient energy sources and consumption patterns",8
"In that context, considering more sustainable technologies and innovative tools for energy efficiency can pave the way for CO2 emission reduction strategies",7
"However, energy efficiency decreased these adverse environmental effects",7
"Economic growth and human capital reduced, and exports increased emissions",8
Karahasan and Pinar (2022) investigated the spatial relationship between SO2 and economic growth in Turkish provinces and found a U-shaped relationship,8
"Moreover, a bi-directional causality was found between economic growth and CO2 emissions",8
"Further, renewable energy reduced CO2 emissions in both home and neighboring countries",7
"(2022) found that FMD, FDI, and renewable energy consumption (REC) reduced CO2 emissions in both domestic and neighboring countries",7
(2022) applied spatial econometrics on the effects of economic freedom and energy price on CO2 emissions in Europe,8
"However, energy technological progress reduced CO2 emissions",8
"Moreover, fossil fuel and economic growth increased emissions, and REC reduced emissions",8
"Román-Collado and Morales-Carrión (2018) corroborated that population, fossil fuels, energy intensity, and economic activities were major driving forces of CO2 emissions in 20 Latin American countries",7
(2020) investigated but could not validate the impact of public and private capital on energy intensity trends in 21 LAC countries,7
"Economic growth and fossil fuel electricity contributed to emissions, and REC reduced emissions",8
Mahmood (2022b) cared for the spatial analysis in a limited sample of 10 South American studies but ignored the EKC testing by investigating the monotonic effect of economic growth,8
"Therefore, the focus of this present research is to contribute to the literature gap of Latin American economies by investigating the spatial effects of economic growth, exports, imports, FDI, and FMD on CO2 emissions in 18 Latin American economies using a time sample of 1970–2019 to make the analysis more thorough and practical",8
Economic growth is a prominent contributor to pollution and could have a nonlinear relationship with emissions,8
"Therefore, economic growth has environmental consequences in Latin America, through emitting CO2",8
"So, the economic growth has a pleasant environmental effect in these 3 countries",8
"Therefore, the spillover effect of economic growth in most countries is negative on the CO2 emissions of neighboring countries",8
"On whole, economic growth shows a negative pressure on the home countries’ environment but pleasant spillovers in the neighboring countries",8
"The positive total effect of economic growth on CO2 emissions as per findings of the spatial analysis conveys that economic growth is negative for the overall environment of the Latin American countries, which is also found in some non-spatial studies on Latin America (Poudel et al",8
"Thus, the positive environmental spillovers in neighboring countries are reducing the overall negative environmental effect of economic growth in the whole Latin America region (4.393−2.047=2.346)",8
"This present research investigates the effects of FMD, economic growth, exports, imports, and FDI on CO2 emissions, considering spatial effects in 18 Latin American economies from 1970 to 2019",8
"Thus, economic growth has environmental consequences in the region as all countries are located at the first stage of the EKC",8
"Thus, these countries’ economic growth is at least pleasant for the home environment",8
The results show that the economic growth and exports of the region are pollution-oriented in total effects,8
"Hence, there is a need to check economic and trading activities to be responsible and sustainable as per SDGs and Paris agreement",13
"So that, the economic growth of Latin America should not have harmful net environmental effects on the region",8
"Moreover, these efforts would also reduce CO2 emissions, which would help in the reduction of the global temperature as per the Paris agreement",13
"hieving a long-term food security and preventing hunger include a better nutrition through sustainable systems of production, distribution, and consumption",2
"Nonetheless, the quest for an alternative to increasing global food supply to meet the growing demand has led to the use of poor agricultural practices that promote climate change",13
The Granger causality shows that the agricultural ecosystem in Ghana is sensitive to climate change vulnerability,13
Climate change has gained global interest within the past decades due to their long-term effect on humanity,13
Scientific studies suggest that the cumulative emissions of long-existing greenhouse gases are strongly related with the extent of global warming which by stabilizing global temperature via mitigating global greenhouse gas emissions will likely reduce the impact of climate change (Allen et al,13
"The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a “plan for action for people, planet, and prosperity.” The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 seeks to end hunger and achieve long-term food security, including better nutrition through sustainable systems of production, distribution, and consumption",2
"Thus, agriculture is a significant component to achieving the SDG 2 and improving quality of life",2
"According to IPCC report, agriculture, forestry, and other land use are the second contributing sector of global GHG (24 % of 49 Gt CO2-eq) after electricity and heat production sector (IPCC 2014)",15
"Agricultural practices have doubled the natural rate of terrestrial nitrogen (N) fixation over hundreds of years leading to increased atmospheric nitrous oxide (N2O), nitric oxide (NO), methane (CH4), carbon dioxide (CO2), and ammonia (NH3) concentrations which contribute immensely to global climate change (Li and Lin 2000; Sanford et al",13
"Farming practices like continuous cropping of food security crops like cassava, maize, and sorghum play a critical role in the exacerbation of emissions in Ghana (Asumadu-Sarkodie and Owusu 2016h)",2
Table 1 shows a compilation of scientific research on the impact of the agricultural ecosystem on greenhouse gas emissions,9
"Modern econometric methods like vector error correction model and autoregression distribution lag have been employed in several studies to examine the causal relationship between environmental pollution, energy consumption, and macroeconomic variables in different countries (Asumadu-Sarkodie and Owusu 2016a, b, c, f; Mohiuddin et al",7
"However, the assessment of carbon dioxide emissions from developing countries like Ghana has been ignored for so long a time due to their low impact towards global climate change",13
"It is estimated that 43 % of Ghana’s GDP, 50 % of its export earnings, and 70 % of its total employment depends on agriculture and forestry (FAO 2016)",15
"In addition, the study will serve as a reference tool for integrating climate change measures into national policies, strategies, and planning by the Government of Ghana",13
An elevated level of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere leads to climate change which results in increasing temperature and changing rainfall patterns affecting cereal production,13
"2013) suggest that biomass-burned crop residues lead to economic loss, health impacts, and are not sustainable due to its environmental impact like greenhouse gas emissions, disruption of the physical, chemical, and biological composition of soil quality, and its effect on crop yield",2
"2014) suggest that burning biomass of crop residues in the field has been proven to control the emergence of invasive weed species, insects, crop diseases, repairs damaged soil structure, improves soil water retention, improves soil fertility, increase the total organic carbon, increase the total soil nitrogen, improve soil-aggregated stability, etc",15
which directly affect agricultural productivity,2
Burning biomass of crop residues is one of the unsustainable farming practices in Ghana which has received public health concern as it underpins environmental and health problems like air pollution,3
It is evidential that an increase in value-added agricultural products and agricultural machinery like tractors and wheelers reduce the rate of carbon dioxide emissions,2
The majority of Ghana’s farming communities are located in rural areas with low harvest and post-harvest management systems which affect the carbon footprint as agricultural products deteriorate,2
Poor value addition to agricultural products has recently affected the food commodity market leading to an extreme food price volatility,2
"In the recent era, economic growth is not enough to represent sustainable development",8
The government should invest in the health system and conduct seminars on general health awareness,3
It also depends on the efficient use of resources and environmental performance (Rashidi et al,12
"Along with conventional inputs such as capital and labor, it incorporates trade, renewable energy, and tax revenue as inputs",7
2017) and promote the green energy sector through the expansion of renewable energy (Sebri & Salha 2014),7
Tax revenue leads to economic growth because tax revenue enables the government to undertake development plans (Arvin et al,8
"Health is an essential determinant of human capital, which is important for socio-economic development",8
"Good health shows multiple advantages like increases in productivity, better wages, and quality education",4
"The increase in life expectancy reflects the appropriate health status, which also stimulates economic growth (Ogundari & Awokuse 2018)",8
The availability of clean water is the primary concern because the world’s population will be 8.3–10.9 billion by 2050 (Reza et al,6
The reduction in GDP will be 2–4% by 2040 and 10% by 2100 due to climate change without an effective environmental policy in the developing economies (Bekhet & Othman 2018),13
"Policymakers encourage investment in renewable energy (i.e., hydropower, biomass, geothermal, solar, and wind), particularly solar and wind energy",7
Policymakers reported that renewable energy can improve environmental efficiency (Woo et al,7
"Due to the efforts of the International Energy Agency (IEA), the portion of renewable energy will be 39% by 2050 (Bhattacharya et al",7
Sanitation and wastewater management played a vital role in sustainable development (Ali et al,6
"Access to clean water, proper sanitation, safe waste disposal, and environment-friendly power generation provides environmental benefits (Udah & Bassey 2017)",6
"Capital, labor, sanitation, access to clean fuel, water availability, forest area, and renewable energy are treated as inputs to estimate environmental efficiency",7
Climate change in South Asian countries is responsible for the reduction in agricultural production,13
"Although the literature is available about the estimation of energy efficiency, environmental efficiency, and crop production efficiency, the literature is limited about the estimation of economic and social efficiency in developed and developing countries",7
(1983) first time used this approach for the measurement of energy efficiency in electricity generation plants,7
"In recent times, many studies used the DEA approach for the measurement of energy efficiency in several countries such as Canada (Hailu & Veeman 2001), Korea (Lee et al",7
"The energy efficiency in crops was explored in different studies such as vegetable organization (Lansink & Silva 2003), apple (Mousavi-Avval et al",7
"2017), economic growth (Al-Mulali et al",8
"2018a), renewable energy (Al-Mulali et al",7
(2021) showed a positive association between CO2 and economic growth in Pakistan,8
"(2021) declared an increase in CO2 due to GDP growth; however, the EKC hypothesis exists in the USA",8
(2022) confirmed a negative link between solar energy and CO2 in China,7
Political stability also leads to the consumption of clean energy in the long run,7
"Fotis & Polemis (2018) linked sustainable development, environment, and renewable energy in European Union members",7
(2018) described the impact of deforestation on sustainable development in Brazil,15
(2021c) assessed the consumers’ willingness to adopt solar energy in China,7
"Results confirmed that the intention factors such as perception about self-effectiveness, environmental concern, awareness of solar energy, and a belief in solar energy benefits positively influence consumers’ willingness to adopt solar energy",7
"The first output variable was GDP, which shows economic development and was selected based on literature (Shi et al",8
The share of renewable energy in the total energy mix is more in the SAARC countries,7
"Thus, the G-8 countries have higher CO2/capita and less renewable energy consumption",7
"It is interesting to note that the share of renewable energy shows an increasing and decreasing trend in the G-8 and SAARC countries, respectively (Fig. 8)",7
It implies that the SAARC countries should increase the health budget to improve public health,3
The forest cover is higher in the G-8 countries (37.05% of land) as compared to the SAARC countries (24.16% of land),15
The trend of GDP per capita (2000–2021) The trend of life expectancy (2000–2021) The trend of CO2 emission (2000–2021) The trend of gross fixed capital formation (2000–2021) The trend of tax revenue (2000–2021) The trend of trade openness (2000–2021) The trend of renewable energy (2000–2021) The trend of health expenditures (2000–2021) The trend of forest area (2000–2021) The trend of employment (2000–2021) The trend of physicians (2000–2021) The trend of access to clean fuel and technology (2000–2021) The trend of access to basic sanitation (2000–2021) The trend of access to basic drinking water (2000–2021) Country-wise economic efficiency explains the potential of input reduction to obtain the same level of output in the G-8 countries (Table 5) and the SAARC countries (Table 6),7
"The average economic efficiency is 0.682 in the G-8 countries, which implies that the G-8 countries can obtain the same output (GDP/capita) by using 31.8% fewer units of inputs (gross fixed capital formation, employment, tax revenue, trade, renewable energy)",7
"The average economic efficiency is 0.414 in the SAARC countries, which implies that the SAARC countries can obtain the same output (GDP) by using 58.6% fewer units of inputs (gross fixed capital formation, employment, tax revenue, trade, renewable energy)",7
"(2017a) reported the advantages of foreign exchange earnings to boost economic growth through the provision of employment and investment in tourism-related services (construction, food/beverage sectors, transportation, and accommodation)",8
Sustainable growth has become a top priority for countries (Godil et al,8
"2020); therefore, countries try to address environmental issues related to economic growth",8
"(2020a) mentioned the potential of tourism to increase global GDP; however, focusing on eco-tourism is essential to fetch economic benefits along with environmental benefits",8
(2017b) mentioned the positive impact of electricity use on economic growth,8
(2019) highlighted the need for innovation and green technology,9
"(2014) reported three policies to ensure green growth such as (a) investment transformation, (b) human wellbeing and social development, and (c) resource efficiency",8
(2019) highlight that green practices and green energy resources can mitigate the negative impacts on environmental and social sustainability,7
"Thus, it is recommended to adopt suitable policies to reduce emission levels, minimize waste, efficient utilization of resources, and incentive for clean technologies",9
It is recommended to generate electricity via renewable energy sources to solve energy-related environmental issues,7
It is essential to support investment in green technology and the government should encourage green practices in the production process to protect the environment,9
"(2022) reported the influence of urbanization, energy use, economic growth, and globalization on human development in G-7 economies",8
"(2020) reported that SAARC is a platform for South Asian countries that aim to increase welfare through an increase in quality of life, social development, and economic growth",8
"Therefore, human capital development is recommended to increase the living standard and healthy life",4
"It is required to improve the health system, especially in developing countries",3
"Investment in basic infrastructure (drinking water, sanitation, and clean energy) is essential to increase the living standard",7
The EKC concept implies that economic growth leads to environmental sustainability after reaching a particular income threshold (Suki et al,8
"2021), which implies the potential for green growth in these countries",8
"(2020) reported that SAARC countries are vulnerable to climate change, having about 20% of the global population",13
"(2019) mentioned the use of renewable energy in transportation, water and air cooling/heating, electricity generation, and rural energy services",7
(2021) reported that the share of renewables is about 20% in G-7 countries,7
"Therefore, economic growth is recommended to attain environmental sustainability",8
"In the recent era, only economic growth is not enough to represent sustainable development",8
"Third, it is recommended to generate electricity via renewable energy sources",7
"Sixth, human capital development is recommended to increase the living standard and healthy life",4
"Seventh, it is required to improve the health system; thus, the government should recruit physicians to guide the public about a healthy lifestyle",3
"Eighth, investment in basic infrastructure (drinking water, sanitation, and clean energy) is essential to increase living standards",7
"This paper empirically investigates the impact of overall sustainability reporting as well as its components (economic, environmental, and social sustainability reporting) on the cost of debt and equity capital for Malaysian oil and gas companies",12
Qualitative information was gathered for sustainability reporting and then converted into quantitative form by assigning weights according to the extent of reporting,12
Panel data analysis was employed using generalized least square (GLS) random effects regression to examine the relationship between sustainability reporting and cost of capital,12
"The findings indicate that overall sustainability reporting and one component, economic sustainability reporting, reduce both cost of debt and cost of equity",12
"However, environmental sustainability reporting reduces only the cost of debt but does not reduce the cost of equity",12
Social sustainability reporting shows no effect on the cost of debt or equity,12
"This study is the first to empirically investigate the relationship between overall sustainability reporting, including its three components, and the cost of both debt and equity capital",12
"Sustainability reporting not only helps companies to respond to the growing expectations of the relevant stakeholders but also improves environmental legitimacy, reduces information asymmetry, and increases brand value and compliance with labor laws, which ultimately improves corporate image and attracts new talent (Shad et al",12
"Furthermore, sustainability reporting can contribute significantly to increase firm value",12
"(2011) and Jo and Na (2012) posit that corporate sustainability reporting can have a positive impact on firm reputation, reduce the cost of equity capital, and increase profitability",12
"Hence, there is a need to understand how sustainability reporting affects the cost of debt and equity",12
"This research is an effort to answer this question by examining the relationship of overall sustainability reporting and its three components, namely economic, environmental, and social sustainability reporting, on the cost of debt and equity",12
Research on the impact of sustainability reporting on the cost of capital is scant with investigations of the components and on the cost of debt an unexplored area,12
"This research also contributes to the empirical literature on lowering the cost of capital through sustainability reporting, especially in the context of emerging economies, such as Malaysia",12
"Sustainability reporting practices are crucial to consider for lowering the cost of capital, which can foster investment and growth among oil and gas companies",12
"Therefore, this research aims to shed some light on how sustainability reporting can create value and focuses on the impact of sustainability reporting (economic, environmental, and social) on the cost of both debt and equity capital",12
The “Literature review and hypothesis development” section reviews the literature and develops hypotheses for the relationship between sustainability reporting and the cost of capital,12
"The “Methodology” section describes data collection and sample selection, how corporate sustainability reporting is quantified, measures used for the cost of capital, and control variables used in the analysis",12
"The emergence and popularity of sustainability reporting have been initiated in response to the rapid changes resulting from technology advancement, globalization, and pressure on organizations to change their mode of production to one that is less harmful to the environment and society (Orazalin et al",12
Sustainability reporting provides a platform for organizations to communicate with various stakeholders about strategic plans and initiatives,12
"The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI 2015) states that sustainability reporting is essential to an organization’s reporting process in providing input into the organization’s identification of its material issues, its strategic objectives, and the assessment of its ability to achieve those objectives and create value over time",12
"Sustainability reporting has attracted the attention of governments, corporations, research communities, regulatory bodies, and private investors globally (Olawumi and Chan 2018)",12
"According to Andreassen (2017), there is a growing interest in sustainability information disclosure by organizations worldwide especially in hazardous industries such as oil and gas",12
"Moreover, the GRI (2015) guidelines for sustainability reporting have placed the oil and gas industry on the sustainable development agenda",12
Sustainability information can provide a robust platform for describing how strategic issues are being handled through long-term planning and initiatives in oil and gas companies,12
"Sustainability reporting can provide internal and external stakeholders with information regarding vision and strategy for dealing with sustainability-related activities, such as implementation, action plans, and outcomes, which can be used to make investment and other decisions (Janus and Murphy 2013)",12
"Therefore, sustainability reporting can be critical for oil and gas companies to deal with business uncertainty, mitigate hazards, overcome current and future challenges, and comply with regulations",12
"Indeed, sustainability reporting plays a significant role in enhancing firm financial performance (Alshehhi et al",12
Numerous meta-analytic studies have suggested that sustainability reporting not only responds to increasing expectations of stakeholders but also enhances overall firm performance (Zahid and Ghazali 2017),12
"Prior studies on the impact of corporate sustainability reporting and on firm performance are dominated by traditional accounting-based measures, which are considered objective measures (Alshehhi et al",12
Cost of capital reflects financial soundness that in the long run influences firm performance (Xu et al,10
"Beyond investors, sustainability reporting has become a concern of regulators, rating agencies, and financial analysts who have gradually acknowledged the importance of evaluating corporate sustainability practices",12
"The risk premium demanded by the capital markets for corporate debt instruments, such as a bond or short-term debt notes, is influenced by ratings from credit rating agencies",8
"(2011) state that the benefits of sustainability reporting can be explained in four ways: reduction in direct costs (energy, materials, time loss, etc.), improved worker productivity (increased motivation, low absenteeism, reduced turnover), reduction of risk (easier access to credit, increased value of assets for investors, support by stakeholders, etc.), and improved firm competitiveness (Yu et al",12
"(2017) find that more corporate sustainability reporting in annual reports is related to a reduction in the cost of equity capital and surmise that increased reporting reduces information asymmetry, which reduces overall firm risk",12
Seventy percent of the surveyed managers stated that sustainability reporting improved revenue and operational efficiency with about 60% believing that strong sustainability performance lowers the company’s overall risks and reduces the cost of capital,12
"Therefore, we hypothesize as follows: Hypothesis 1: Overall sustainability reporting is negatively related to a firm’s cost of capital, that is, (a) cost of debt and (b) cost of equity",12
"Overall sustainability reporting is comprised of three components: economic, environmental, and social sustainability",12
"The following sections formulate the hypotheses that sustainability reporting for economic, environmental, and social sustainability reduces the cost of capital",12
"Sound economic sustainability reporting also improves the information available about the firm’s economic risk profile and uncertainty about future cash flows, thus reducing information asymmetries and leading to cost of capital reduction and value enhancement (Kuzey and Uyar 2017; Shad et al",12
"Therefore, the following hypothesis is presented: Hypothesis 2: Economic sustainability reporting is negatively related to a firm’s cost of capital, that is, (a) cost of debt and (b) cost of equity",12
Firms with sound environmental sustainability reporting should have lower systematic risk (beta) resulting in a lower cost of capital,12
"Based on the above arguments, we state the following testable hypothesis: Hypothesis 3: Environmental sustainability reporting is negatively related to a firm’s cost of capital, that is, (a) cost of debt and (b) cost of equity",12
The value-creation notion of sustainability reporting hypothesizes that firms with high social sustainability performance exhibit lower idiosyncratic or unsystematic risk (Alshehhi et al,12
"Thus, this study hypothesizes as follows: Hypothesis 4: Social sustainability reporting is negatively related to a firm’s cost of capital, that is, (a) cost of debt and (b) cost of equity",12
"(2019), the examination of sustainability reporting is relevant in this period as oil and gas companies worldwide were exposed to several financial issues and challenges",12
"Hence, this study collected sustainability reporting and cost of capital related data for the companies in our sample and constructed a panel of 410 (41 × 10) firm-year observations",12
"Quantitative data regarding sustainability reporting were collected manually from corporate annual reports, sustainability reports, and website disclosure of the sampled oil and gas companies",12
"Sustainability Reporting Guide and Toolkits (SRGT), a framework developed by Bursa Malaysia, provides reporting guidelines to assess the sustainability practices of the companies listed on Bursa Malaysia",12
"The advantage of SRGT is that for each sector, a separate framework of sustainability reporting is created that incorporates the social, economic, and environmental components of sustainability practices",12
"The individual dimensions of sustainability reporting include 19 items: economic (3), environmental (8), and social (8)",12
The list of indicators/items for oil and gas company sustainability reporting for each dimension is presented in Table 1,12
"We converted the qualitative information of sustainability reporting to quantitative form using a similar method as in Munshi and Dutta (2016), Ching et al",12
"The total sustainability reporting (TSRi) score for each component “i” is calculated as follows: Where X is 0, 1, or 2 for each indicator as described previously",12
"After calculating each individual component (TSRi), we constructed the overall sustainability reporting score by adding the scores of the three individual components",12
Omitting such variables could result in biased results for the relationship between sustainability reporting and firm performance (Karaman et al,12
"To observe the impact of the quality of sustainability reporting and its three components (economic, environmental, and social sustainability reporting) on the cost of capital, we develop a regression model",12
"Figure 1 presents the mean score of overall sustainability reporting practices and also for the economic, environmental, and social sustainability reporting components for the period from 2008 to 2017",12
The annual average value of sustainability reporting shows that the sampled companies are consistently improving their sustainability practices,12
"For instance, the economic sustainability reporting value indicates that companies constantly improve their sustainability reporting practices in terms of economic performance over the period from 46.4% in 2008 to 91.1% in 2017",12
"Similarly, the results of social sustainability reporting show a steady improvement over the period from 45.3% in 2008 to 74.4% in 2017",12
"The average mean values of the summation of economic, environmental, and social sustainability reporting also indicate consistent improvement in overall sustainability reporting from 45.6% in 2008 to 82.2% in 2017",12
Improved sustainability reporting practices in the Malaysian oil and gas industry may indicate that sustainability practices are an efficient tool to overcome financial and economic challenges and contribute to the transparency of the industry,12
"Overall, these results support the notion that reforms related to sustainability reporting practices in Malaysian sampled companies are gradually gaining momentum",12
"Economic, environmental, social, and overall sustainability reporting (2008–2017)",12
"The mean value of economic sustainability reporting is 74.33%, ranging from 0.00 to 94.8%",12
"Environmental sustainability reporting indicates a mean value of 66.79%, which ranges from 0.00 to 91.7%",12
"Similarly, the mean value of social sustainability reporting is 64.45%, and ranges from 0.00 to 92.9%, whereas the overall sustainability reporting mean score is 68.66% with a relatively wide range from 0.00 to 100%",12
"The maximum, minimum, and mean values of overall sustainability reporting and its three components show that majority of the firms in the sample were involved in sustainability practices",12
"Based on Fig. 1 above, the level of yearly sustainability reporting practices and its components show an increasing trend",12
"The results indicate that economic (EcoSR), environmental (EnvSR), social (SocSR), and overall sustainability reporting (SR) are significant and negatively correlated with the cost of debt (Cd)",12
"All the sustainability reporting variables are also significantly related to the cost of equity (Ce); however, the relation is negative only for the economic (EcoSR) variable and positive for the other three",12
"These findings suggest that companies issuing economic, environmental, and social sustainability reports acquire lower cost of debt, whereas only economic sustainability reporting leads to a lower cost of equity capital",12
"The results indicate that the correlation between overall sustainability reporting and the cost of debt is − 0.46, which is the highest among all sustainability reporting variables",12
"Considering the importance of sustainability reporting, this study investigates the relationship between sustainability practices (overall, economic, environmental, and social sustainability reporting) and the cost of debt and cost of equity of oil and gas companies",12
"GLS random effects regression analysis is used to examine the impact of overall sustainability reporting (SR) and its individual components, economic (EcoSR), environmental (EnvSR), and social (SocSR), on Cd and Ce with firm reputation (FRep), size (FSize), and profitability (PR) as control variables",12
"Referring to the hypotheses formulated in the “Literature review and hypothesis development” section, the regression results in panel A of Table 5 find that strong overall sustainability reporting as well as strong economic and environmental sustainability reporting results in reducing the cost of debt capital for oil and gas companies",12
"Panel B shows roughly similar results for the cost of equity capital, except that environmental sustainability reporting is not significant",12
"In summary, the results indicate that more robust overall sustainability reporting reduces the cost of debt and the cost of equity, which supports Hypothesis 1 (a) and (b)",12
"The relation between economic sustainability reporting and cost of debt and cost of equity is significantly negative, supporting Hypothesis 2 (a) and (b)",12
"Environmental sustainability reporting has a negative and significant relationship with the cost of debt (supporting Hypothesis 3 (a)), but an insignificant relationship with the cost of equity, which rejects Hypothesis 3 (b)",12
"The relationship between social sustainability reporting and the cost of debt and the cost of equity is not significant, rejecting Hypothesis 4 (a) and (b)",12
"(2018) and Zahid and Ghazali (2017) postulated that sustainability reporting is a value-adding activity, meaning that it is positively associated with the performance of the firm",12
"This paper examines whether overall sustainability reporting and its components (economic, environmental, and social sustainability reporting) impact the cost of debt and equity capital",12
"Using a sample of 41 publicly listed oil and gas companies in Malaysia for the period from 2008 to 2017, we find evidence that overall sustainability reporting plays a significant role in reducing the cost of both debt and equity capital",12
The results reveal that cost of capital is relatively lower for the firms that disclose more sustainability information,12
"In addition, we find that not all three components of sustainability reporting are related to the cost of debt and cost of equity",12
"Particularly, we find that greater economic sustainability reporting contributes to reducing the cost of both debt and equity capital, while more environmental sustainability reporting is only related to the lower cost of debt capital",12
"The main result of this paper is that corporate sustainability reporting reduces the cost of capital, which has practical implications",12
"Managers should be encouraged to increase their investment in social and environmental sustainability-related activities, such as supply chain (environmental), human rights, anti-corruption, and diversity (social), because these are not costs but investments that may reduce information asymmetries leading to lower costs of debt and equity that enhance overall firm performance",16
"Second, credit rating agencies should consider the potential of sustainability reporting to lower firm risk",12
"Specifically, this paper finds increased economic, environmental, and overall sustainability reporting can reduce the cost of debt",12
"Third, the results have implications for shareholders and equity analysts who traditionally consider increased sustainability reporting to be a cost that decreases firm value",12
We examined sustainability reporting practices for publicly listed oil and gas companies in Malaysia,12
"Oil and gas companies play a significant role in the Malaysian economy, but other industries, such as manufacturing, construction, and mining, are also very important for the economic growth of a country",8
"Hence, future researchers should focus on assessing sustainability reporting and its impact on the cost of capital of other sectors in Malaysia as well as in other countries",12
"Future research with a larger sample size would increase the statistical power of the analysis, reduce the probability of error, and identify new aspects of sustainability reporting practices and cost of capital reduction",12
"The study has considered only the level of sustainability reporting, not the quality of reporting",12
"Therefore, it is recommended to consider both the extent and quality of sustainability reporting for a better assessment and a more vivid picture of sustainability management practices",12
This study has investigated the impact of sustainability reporting on only cost of capital reduction,12
"In the modern era, an evolving financial sector is an imperative instrument of economic growth and enhances the financial system’s economic efficiency",8
"Furthermore, financial development eradicates the barriers to investment in companies by providing access to financial capital, and eventually, investors create new factories, capital installation, which consecutively increase energy consumption level and emit more waste, and carbon dioxide in the environment (Hafeez et al",7
"(2016b, c) explores that financial development can enhance investment in effective technologies and promotes renewable energy sources",7
Environmental degradation was commonly measured by carbon (CO2) emissions as a prime indicator (Yasmeen et al,15
"Recently, carbon footprint (greenhouse gas) is one of the inclusive instrument to quantify environmental degradation (Katircioglu and Taspinar 2017; Ganda 2019)",15
It will create additional energy demand which yields environmental degradation (Rauf et al,15
BRI member states have still concern about BRI’s energy and transportation projects and their link with environmental degradation,15
"The BRI will promote the economic growths of member states which creates the energy demand and hence, environmental degradation (Rauf et al",15
(2019) argued that financial development is directly linked with energy efficiency and quality of the environment,7
"Hence, the results of the study could provide us with a broader understanding of how financial development can be helpful to reduce environmental degradation",15
"After the introduction of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) concept by Grossman and Krueger (1995), various studies have been carried out to study environmental degradation and financial development, including time series and panel data",15
"It explores a positive linkage in financial development-environmental degradation nexus (Zhang 2011, Bekhet and Othman 2017; Jalil and Feridun 2011; Shahbaz et al",15
Financial development directly has a significant relationship with economic growth (Katircioglu et al,8
"In both developed and developing nations, FDI also has a significant impact on economic growth in the long run (Guris et al",8
Kapusuzoğlu (2014) suggested that there is unidirectional causality from CO2 emissions to economic growth in the multi-country analysis,8
"In contrast, the economic growth also triggers the carbon footprints to upsurge for the Malaysian economy (Ahmed et al",8
"On the contrary, financial development also deteriorates the environmental degradation (Katircioglu and Taspinar 2017; Saidi and Mbarek 2017; Shahbaz et al",15
"For instance, energy consumption and financial development have been indicated to impact the environmental quality and underlying environmental policies negatively (Saidi and Mbarek 2017; Shahbaz et al",7
"(2018), and Ozcan and Ari (2017), financial development enhances environmental degradation along with factors such as income, trade, population, energy use, and urbanization",15
"(2013) suggested that urbanization is creating various dynamics in the economy such as business, infrastructure, and social service developments respectively and, ultimately, the environmental degradation",15
"In industrial economies, financial development upsurges energy consumption which increases the ecological carbon footprints (Ahmed et al",7
"Furthermore, various studies also investigated the economic growth and environment nexus and found a positive linkage among them for China (Shahbaz et al",8
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that there was a negative linkage between economic growth and environment for Kenya (Bilgili et al,8
(2018) argue that trade enhances the environmental degradation at initial phases but it causes to decline environmental degradation in later phases of the economy,15
"The study infers that the carbon footprints and energy consumption have more variation, while the urban population is less volatile in BRI economies",7
"Hence, this present study incorporates carbon footprints to figure out the impact of financial development on environmental degradation",15
"Moreover, urbanization also creates dynamics in social sciences, business development, and infrastructure which yields to environmental degradation (Islam et al",15
"Due to financial development, the economy requires more energy consumption which is negatively linked to environmental quality (Saidi and Mbarek 2017; Shahbaz et al",7
"Lastly, FDI takes into account as a determinant of environmental degradation because FDI enables companies to expand prevailing resources and establish new plants that ultimately affect the environment (Neequaye and Oladi (2015)",15
"The CD test is applied to estimate the degree of the cross-sectional dependence among input variables: urban population, energy consumption, and financial development indicators, and output variables: carbon footprints within BRI panel",7
2009) that environmental degradation declines with an increase in financial development,15
"On the other side, the financial development will allow the population of BRI to access easy loan and access to luxuries which increases environmental degradation (Hafeez et al",15
"Therefore, the objectives and modalities of the financial sector should be aligned with the goals of the United Nations for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on climate",13
"In addition, energy consumption leads to cause a rise in carbon footprints",7
Another possibility is that more credit is available for investment projects and energy efficiency,7
Economic growth also enhances carbon footprints which are similar to the results of Ahmed et al,8
"Another reason is that economic growth stimulates economic activity by raising levels of investment and consumption level, which causes to increase carbon footprints",8
"(2016b, c) suggested that investment in effective technologies and renewable energy by financial development can improve the environment quality",7
These practices have the potential to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change with spatial and sequential diversity,13
"About 80% of the arable land is cultivated with mono-crops of a few species like rice, corn, wheat and soybean which seriously diminish the genetic diversity of global agriculture (Adams et al",15
Traditional agriculture has adaptive and mitigation ability towards these anthropogenic threats that can provide sustainable production and environmental safety (Watson 2019),12
Adaptation to these practices recuperates all components of the cultivation system towards climate change (Di Falco and Chavas 2008; Lin 2011),13
"The field/landscape-level adaptation is mostly obtained by agroforestry, livestock-integrated farming and diversification of landscape with the cultivation of different crops (Altieri and Nicholls 2017)",15
Organic input in the form of crop residue and farmyard manure (FYM) is an excellent alternative to restore soil fertility at affordable input cost (Vanlauwe et al,15
"Agroforestry and shifting cultivation practices are ecologically nutrient conservative in nature and largely practised by the tribals of Northeast India, Orissa and Maharashtra (Sinha 1997; Murthy et al",15
"Therefore, it needs to grow the production capacity by 60% until 2050 to feed this additional population that ultimately leads to serious concern on TAPs due to the habitat destruction, attacks of invasive species, increasing modern agricultural practices and change in lifestyle of people (Dweba and Mearns 2011)",15
The main objective of this review is to analyze the different indigenous agriculture practices of India in light of environmental sustainability and food security,2
It produces 30–50% consumable domestic food of the developing countries that supports food security at the local and national levels (Koohafkan and Altieri 2011),2
"Implementation of traditional practices enhances the sustainability of agriculture as ecological phenomena, whereas integrated livestock management strengthens the soil fertility and pest management through pest feeding birds like hen and duck",15
"Ancient society often cultivated several locally known landraces valued for a wide variety of traits (e.g., short duration to check delayed rains as the result of climate change)",13
"The food security is also increasing due to auto-consumption of local people, whereas high market demand for traditional crops strengthens the economic profitability (Haddad et al",2
Such practices have a high resilience towards climate change and capability to reduce pest attacks due to diversity in the crop fields (Lal 2009; Koohafkan and Altieri 2011),13
It is generally acknowledged that high productivity is the central theme of sustainable agriculture of worldwide cultivation (Godfray et al,2
Organic composting is a process of microbiological degradation and recycling of waste into FYM which is a non-polluting and environment-friendly method of waste management,12
"In California, the long-term addition of compost in the cultivation of various crop systems recovered the functioning of soil system by improving the soil fertility, moisture content, water-holding capacity and rhizospheric diversity (Drenovsky et al",15
"This enhancement was effective to check soil erosion and healthy production during drought conditions, whereas bulky microbial diversity upkeep production during flooded conditions",15
Long-term utilization of animal manure is effective to enhance the production along with soil fertility,15
Agroforestry practices diversify the cropping system at farm/landscape level in which tree-integrated cultivation is performed,15
Integration of crops and animal husbandry in agroforestry reduces soil erosion and potentially improves the soil moisture with water-holding capacity which likely enhances carbon sequestration and microbial diversity (Garrity 2004; Williams-Guillen et al,15
"The tree species of agroforestry system support the societal, economic and environmental requirements of the local people by supplying food, fuel and fodder",15
Tree-integrated farming has climate adaptive and mitigation potential that boosts CO2 sequestration along with crop productivity to sustaining food security,2
(2001) stated that accumulation of carbon in soil of agroforestry stored about 83.6 ton C/ha to the 30 cm depth,15
A 15-year-old field of agroforestry system showed a remarkable increase in carbon sequestration from 30 to 70% with the rate of 4.4–10 ton C ha−1 year−1 (Kim et al,15
"In tropical agroforestry practices, incorporation of tree and crops that biologically fix atmospheric nitrogen is common",15
"These integrated species fixed nitrogen along with GHG assimilation, while cultivated tree reduces the severity towards extreme weather such as storm, flood, hurricanes and pest attacks (Lin 2011; Matocha et al",13
"In India, the geographical coverage of agroforestry is 111,554 km2, which is nearly 3.39% of the total geographical area, covering irrigated and rainfed cultivation (FSI 2013)",15
are highly preferable species in agroforestry,15
"However, home gardening, aquaforestry and alder-based practices are also an ancient form of a traditional agroforestry system",15
India has assured to reduce the strength of CO2 emission of its GDP to 33–35% lower than 2005 by 2030 under the Paris Agreement,13
"When crop diversity is maintained, it helps to expand the soil nutrient balance and regulates natural defences against pest and extreme weather (Thrupp 2002; Scherr and McNeely 2008)",13
"In modern agriculture, intercrop/mixed cropping has played a significant role to enhance productivity in extreme weather and low input farming",13
"It is an ideal way to efficiently use the renewable resources of solar energy, water and soil nutrients",7
The diversified farm represents high production coupled with increasing soil fertility which originates as a result of interaction between different types of crop species (Rakshit et al,15
The rotation of different rooting crops with minimal tillage produces a large network of the root system with large micro-pores which increases the availability of water for the crops (Hobbs et al,6
"Home gardening is a form of agroforestry which is mostly reported from Himalaya, Northeast and Central India (Kumar and Nair 2004; Kala 2010; Saikia et al",15
"After cultivation and harvesting of the crops, grain storage is a significant activity for food security",2
"Sunflower, maize and fruit crops of agroforestry have more dread of animals attack as compared to pest",15
It is a very effective tool of protection from vertebrate in place of the use of deadly and hazardous pesticides,12
"In Indian contexts, Patent Act 1970 is the primitive national initiative for biodiversity conservation, whereas C.P",15
"Ramaswami Environmental Education Centre (CPREEC) which is a branch of Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF & CC) of Government of India and Environmental Information System (ENVIS) is the emerging organization for conservation and restoration of ecological heritage and sacred sites of the country",13
The inadequate market channelling and poor cope-up ability towards extreme weather condition make Indian agriculture more vulnerable to climate change,13
The researcher and policymaker need to integrate the best TAPs with conventional cultivation and construct a way for sustainable agriculture production (Thurston 1990),2
"The conservation of traditional agriculture not only is farming in local condition with local resources, but also strengthens the conservation of traditional knowledge, local varieties, animal welfare, the farming heritage of the community, use of renewable energy with soil and water purification for healthy human society",7
Realistic multi-disciplinary research efforts are needed to develop farming systems and select suitable crops because of future climate change,13
"The contribution of organic agriculture to help solve current problems linked to food security and environmental quality was discussed during the International Society of Organic Agricultural Research (ISOFAR) Symposium “Organic 3.0 is Innovation with Research”, held September 20–22, 2015, in conjunction with the first ISOFAR International Organic Expo, in Goesan County, Republic of Korea",2
"This paper is a result of their discussions and aims to give an overview of research conducted and required to strengthen organic agriculture in its ambitions to overcome agronomic challenges, contribute to food security and protect our common environment",2
Several findings from scientific research and practical application suggest that organic agriculture can help in tackling these future challenges (Arbenz et al,9
"However, resource efficiency, low-meat diets and reducing food waste are also essential factors that have to be be considered",12
The German Alliance for Agricultural Research (Hamm et al,2
"The International Society of Organic Agricultural Research (ISOFAR) discussed these strategies and the role of research during the ISOFAR Symposium “Organic 3.0 is Innovation with Research”, held in September 20–22, 2015, in conjunction with the first ISOFAR International Organic Expo in Goesan County, Republic of Korea",2
"Scientists discovered nitrogen-fixing bacteria (Hellriegel and Wilfarth 1888; Beijerinck 1901), leading to increased knowledge about biological aspects of soil fertility and the importance of soil fauna and soil organic matter",15
"Agricultural measures thought to be beneficial for soil fertility included the use of farmyard manure, fermentation or composting of farmyard manure, reduced or non-inversion tillage and the use of green manure",15
"Rusch was skeptical about the use of mineral fertilizers, and his main topics of interest were soil fertility, soil health and the formation of humus (Paulsen et al",15
"In Italy, Alfonso Draghetti (1888–1960), who worked at a public agricultural research station in Modena, published “Principi di Fisiologia dell’Azienda Agraria” (Physiological Principles of the Farm) in 1948, in which he discussed how biological principles support the theory that the farm functions as a whole (Draghetti 1948)",2
"Along with Francesco Garofalo, who founded the Associazione Suolo e Salute in Turin in 1969, and Ivo Totti (1914–1992), Draghetti is acknowledged as one of the fathers of organic farming research in Italy",2
"Besides private funding in the last three decades, public funds for organic agricultural research have become increasingly available especially in Europe",2
"However, there remains a gap between funds for organic and non-organic agricultural research",2
"Rahmann and Aksoy (2014) showed that in 2012, Germany spent about 87 million euros of public money for organic agricultural research (1.07 euros per capita)",2
"Thus, even in the country with the highest organic farming research funding rates, only 2% of the agricultural research funds were dedicated to organic, and the global average for organic research funding was only 0.04%",2
"In the following years, organic agricultural research in the EU was funded by national or pan-European schemes",2
"This is a significant increase from 1997, when the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF) published the report “Searching for the O-Word”",2
"In this report, OFRF searched through more than 30,000 agricultural research projects in the US Department of Agriculture’s research portfolio",2
"The report showed that only 34 projects qualified as “strong organic”, which is about 0.1% of the total agricultural research budget of US$24 billion",2
"Global climate change, for example, strongly influences the security of food supply and the loss of biodiversity",13
"Other than hunger, malnutrition, which refers to the inadequate intake of essential vitamins, minerals and other health promoting compounds, plays an important role",2
"In contrast to the problem of undernourishment, in 2013, 36.9% of men and 38.0% of women had a body mass index (BMI) of 25 or greater worldwide, with a BMI between 18.5 and 25 indicating optimal weight",2
"If the post-2000 trends continue, the global obesity rate (BMI >25) will rapidly reach 18% for men and 21% for women, and severe obesity (BMI >35) rates will reach 6% for men and 9% for women, respectively (Ezzati et al",2
"OECD and FAO (2014) estimate that food production must increase by 60% over the same period to meet this growth, if actions are not taken to change diets, and reduce food waste (Alexandratos and Bruinsma 2012)",12
"Pest and weed management in cultivation, improved utilization of organic matter sources and legumes, livestock-crop integration and improved harvest, storage and distribution structures would also improve food security (FAO 2013)",2
Changes in diets and especially the rapidly increasing consumption of meat following economic growth are likely to require higher production of food than the population increase alone,8
"Food loss and waste can be up to 50%, depending on the type of food and the region of production and consumption (Gustavsson et al",12
"According to recent estimations, around one quarter of the global food supply produced (614 kcal capita−1 day−1) is lost within the food supply chain from farm to fork",2
"Additionally, soil degradation and desertification are impacting production potential",15
FAO (2015a) estimates capital losses from environmental degradation (natural capital losses) at US$1.15 trillion (170% of production value) per year,15
"Worldwide, 25% of agricultural land is highly degraded, with erosion and salinization being the two most dominant forms of soil degradation (DeLong et al",15
The most extensive soil degradation appears in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (Lal 2009; Bindraban et al,15
"According to Sanchez and Suraminathan (2005), in Sub-Saharan Africa, about 75% of the total arable land (95 million ha) is highly degraded, and farmers lose 8 million tons of soil nutrients (equivalent to US$4 billion) annually",15
"(2015) deals with the problems of soil degradation in India, estimated to be occurring on 147 million ha of land",15
"Erosion, one of the dominant forms of soil degradation, removes or reduces the upper fertile layer of the soil",15
"Soil erosion is a special challenge for organic agriculture, since conventional ploughing and intensive soil tillage is often required to control weeds without herbicides",15
"These challenges contribute to the export of N and P into coastal oceans which leads to eutrophication, algal bloom, hypoxic conditions and biodiversity loss in coastal waters",15
Organic agriculture is not immune to the problems of soil degradation,15
"Raviv (2010) reported that the most important field of research in organic horticulture should be the identification of novel and efficient methods for weed control that have no negative effects on system sustainability, especially on soil quality parameters",2
"The author also showed that improved energy efficiency typical of organic cropping systems is often offset by increased tillage or other methods for weed control, e.g",7
(2009) concluded that the rate of biodiversity loss today is far beyond the planetary boundaries for a safe operating space for humanity,15
"Agriculture is considered a major driver of these problems, especially through habitat or land use change and nutrient loading",15
"It should be noted that the above-mentioned global figure of GHG emissions does not include inputs from land use change, forestry and activities that change the status of peat land",15
"When including these, agriculture, forestry and other land use accounted for 24% of global GHG emissions in 2010",15
"In humid temperate regions, higher temperatures and CO2 fertilization effects may benefit agriculture; however, the expected rise in the number of extreme weather events will restrict time windows for fieldwork operations and increase risks for agricultural production",13
"Nevertheless, humid temperate regions will be better off than semi-arid regions closer to equator, where the expected increased frequency of extremely warm periods and droughts will increase soil degradation and leave large areas unproductive",15
"Awareness of the social situation of farmers and farm workers, especially small-scale farmers in developing countries, is an important factor for stabilizing societies",9
"Ethical issues such as environmentally sound production, high animal welfare and fair working conditions are a key component in delivering truly sustainable food",8
"Small-scale farmers often face harsh working conditions, generate low income and have few social safeguards",9
The situation of small-scale farmers is closely inter-linked with the challenge of feeding the world,9
Small-scale farmers farm on average 2.4 ha in Sub-Saharan Africa and 1.8 ha in Southeast Asia (Deininger et al,9
"Furthermore, small-scale farmers sometimes have to compete in global markets",9
"Other mechanisms destructive for local sustainable economies are worldwide speculation with agricultural products, the expansion of free trade agreements, the land use competition between food, feed, fibre and fuel and land grabbing (IAASTD 2009)",2
"Concurrently, about 30% found environmental conservation to be in direct conflict with job creation (BMU and UBA 2013), and about 60% were only willing to take action in conserving the environment if their living standard would not be negatively influenced (BMU and UBA 2008)",8
"It remains an open question whether this increase may be balanced by the rapidly increasing interest in vegetarianism and reduced meat consumption in western countries (Quinn 2016), supported by climate change mitigation",13
"While sustainable yield improvement and stabilization of yields seem achievable for developing countries through applying organic agricultural methods, closing the yield gap between organic and conventional systems in developed countries could be seen as secondary to reducing food waste",12
"Furthermore, grassland-dominated feeding of ruminants relativizes the aspects of climate change impacts by ruminants",13
"In developing countries, on the other hand, there is a need for sustainable small-scale animal production systems, particularly systems that rely on livestock for nutrient recycling or as a backstop in times of economic uncertainty",12
"Livestock operations design is especially important in fragile environments, where animal grazing must be controlled and manure must be gathered for recycling where appropriate",12
"To produce sufficient amounts of food, nutrients are required for fertilization and maintenance of soil fertility",15
"Digesting organic materials, including crop residues and green manures, for energy production, provides an interesting opportunity for optimizing N supply in organic farming systems (Frøseth et al",2
This adds on to the need for improving recycling of nutrients and organic matter from field via fork and back again to agricultural production,12
Recent studies (Løes 2016) have shown that a majority of stakeholders from the organic sector are positive towards increased utilization of human excreta in organic farming,2
Precision farming tools should be adapted to organic farming needs to combine the “land sparing” vs “land sharing” concepts on the field scale,2
"Such systems are well adapted to organic vegetable growing, which may contribute to both food security and farmer revenue (Canali et al",2
Redesigning organic farming systems is necessary for Organic 3.0,2
"(2013), for example, argue that increased biodiversity is correlated almost proportionately with decreasing yields and therefore more agricultural land would be needed to produce sufficient food supply, which in the end might cause even more negative impacts on biodiversity",2
"2005), it is most appropriate to consider functional biodiversity as the part of total biodiversity composed of groups of elements (at the gene, species or habitat level) and their interactions able to provide the same agri-ecosystem service driven by within-group diversity (Moonen and Bàrberi 2008)",15
"Agricultural activities, also within organic agriculture, contribute to climate change, which has significant and usually negative implications for agricultural production",13
"Even subtle changes to the climate can have drastic effects on farming operations, and a general consequence of climate change is that extreme weather conditions appear more often (e.g",13
"Organic agriculture has the potential to mitigate and adapt to climate change along three main features: farming system design, cropland management and grassland and livestock management (Scialabba and Müller-Lindenlauf 2010; Huelsbergen and Rahmann 2013)",13
Adaptation is a key factor that will shape the future severity of climate change impacts on food production,13
The restoration of degraded land has mitigation potential by increasing soil carbon sequestration,15
"Strategies to restore degraded land are congruent with organic agricultural approaches such as crop rotations, use of cover crops and mulches, agroforestry, manuring and other application of organic amendments",15
Whether organic agriculture in developed countries should use high proportions of high-energy feedstuff to reduce emissions per product unit is still a subject of discussions (Scialabba and Müller-Lindenlauf 2010) since the production of such crops carries a significant carbon footprint,13
"Support of mixed-scale farms is of vital importance for Organic 3.0, because the “Eden narrative” (Oeld-Wieser and Darnhofer 2009) of small farmers, butchers and groceries working together in harmony does not always correspond with modern market structures",2
"On the other hand, judgements that small-scale farmers are morally superior and large-scale companies are less moral and are not reasonable",9
"Specifically, strong positive social relations between farmers and consumers and coordination between organic agriculture and policies that support the environment, living countrysides, tourism and cultural heritage in rural areas may be fruitful to achieve a longstanding growth of organic acreage",11
"Small-scale farmers can be supported and yields can be increased when local farmers are organized, active consumer support is mobilized, agronomy is supported by by technical advice and researchers and the general public maintain involvement (Blanc 2009)",9
Food safety is among the important reasons to buy organic food (Hemmerling et al,2
"One of the major challenges for the organic agri-food system is to change the fieldwork-driven Organic 2.0 groundwork to an Organic 3.0 methodology that uses information from a broad sector of conducted research, consumer interest and sustainable consumption as a driver of organic growth (weeding) (Kahl et al",12
"The FAO (2012) also addresses sustainable diets, but with a slightly different definition: “Sustainable Diets are those diets with low environmental impacts which contribute to food and nutrition security and to healthy life for present and future generations",2
"It cannot be treated in a one-dimensional manner, which is commonly the case in debates about the role of organic agriculture in food security",2
Longstanding solutions require that an increase in production and improvement of productivity should be accompanied by changes in lifestyles and ambitious campaigns against all forms of food waste,12
Research should be framed by investigating solutions to reduce the yield gap between organic and conventional systems while linking sustainable consumption to sustainable production,12
quantifying and monitoring of wild/endangered species on farms ) and risk-based certification procedures (Gambelli et al,15
Scale-up best organic farming practices: Best farming practices are necessary to fulfill the consumer and public demands while maintaining high efficiency when faced with limited resources,2
"We have to avoid food waste, reduce livestock production and utilize novel food sources",12
Ruminants that are able to digest fibres of non-arable land use will have an advantage in future organic food and feed systems,15
avoiding malnutrition with vegan diets),2
Landless food production: Organic farming currently requires improvement to healthy soil and prohibits soilless food production,2
Organic agri-food systems must be developed to become more resilient against extreme weather conditions and climate change,13
"Innovative organic agri-food systems must determine whether and how they can achieve these objectives while supporting clean water, air and healthy soils in addition to system resilience",6
"To educate people about food production, healthy diets and a sustainable lifestyle beyond food consumption is an overall need",12
The drivers of sustainable consumption must be identified so that they may be leveraged to encourage sustainable lifestyle adoption,12
There is a need for identifying the drivers of sustainable consumption and for contributing to enhanced sustainable lifestyles,12
The study and practice of urban forestry aims to understand how trees and their benefits are produced and maintained over time,15
Urban forestry (tree population management) and the related field of arboriculture (single-tree management) are less known outside of the forestry and horticulture disciplines in which these fields developed,15
"Because urban forests are best understood as social-ecological systems, urban forestry research using interdisciplinary methods and theory is beginning to become more common",15
"In this paper, we surveyed educators and leaders of urban forestry and/or arboriculture programs across the world to examine the interdisciplinary basis of these programs",15
We summarize here the responses of 116 institutions of higher education (85 within the United States) with urban forestry and/or arboriculture coursework,15
Seventy-four percent of institutions considered urban forestry/arboriculture to be interdisciplinary,15
"However, many major disciplines that have relevance to urban forestry/arboriculture are not rated as particularly important to the field, much less incorporated into curriculum (e.g., anthropology/sociology, economics, engineering, public policy/public affairs)",15
Our study serves as a foundation on which to begin strengthening the interdisciplinary ties of urban forestry and arboriculture,15
"The field of urban forestry is “a profession encompassing the planning, design, establishment, and management of trees and forest stands” in and around cities, towns, and communities (Elmendorf et al",15
Urban forestry and the related field of arboriculture (single-tree management) are relatively little known outside of the forestry and horticulture programs in which these fields were developed (Miller et al,15
"When considering complex dynamic socio-environmental systems (such as cities, including all their constantly changing subsystems with human, social, economic, and environmental components) and problems (such as the challenges of creating an environmentally sustainable world while meeting basic human needs), interdisciplinary approaches to scholarship and teaching are crucial to generating a complete and accurate understanding of the entire system or problem (Clark and Dickson 2003; Liu et al",4
"Within the SDG framework, one of the specific indicators with respect to education states that by 2030, the international community should “ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non- violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development” (SDG 4.7 from the Open Working Group proposal (OWG 2015))",4
Urban forestry and arboriculture curricula have been examined in previous research (Andresen and Williams 1975; McPherson 1984; Hildebrandt et al,15
"2011).Footnote 1 A decade ago, Elmendorf and colleagues (2005) surveyed educators in the field of urban forestry (inclusive of arboriculture) and found that topics more typically considered the purview of arboriculture (single-tree care) were considered more important than the broader topical areas that make up urban forestry (population management)",15
"They concluded that although conceptualizations of urban forestry and arboriculture as an interdisciplinary field are common and laudable, these interdisciplinary aspirations are less than realized, as many of the broadest topics (e.g., public relations and volunteer management) are considered either very unimportant or unimportant by less than half of survey respondents (Elmendorf et al",15
"Furthermore, interdisciplinary topics such as small business management, land use planning, and zoning/subdivision ordinances were inadequately incorporated into curriculum",9
"Urban forestry-related topics that might indicate more acknowledgement of arboriculture as “interdisciplinary,” such as tree inventories or law and legal issues, were less frequently included in syllabi (Wiseman et al",15
"In this study, we investigated institutions of higher education (and programs within these institutions) that contain curriculum or coursework related to urban forestry/arboriculture",15
"This study explicitly examined how interdisciplinary urban forestry/arboriculture curricula (whether single courses or entire degrees) are at institutions, and the importance and incorporation of various key concepts from other disciplines within urban forestry and/or arboriculture",15
"Specifically, we asked the following research questions: Do institutions of higher education with coursework in urban forestry and/or arboriculture consider these fields interdisciplinary? What is the perceived importance of other major disciplines to the field of urban forestry/arboriculture? To what extent are these other major disciplines incorporated into the current urban forestry and/or arboriculture curriculum? To what extent are key concepts from within the field of urban forestry/arboriculture and key concepts from other disciplines incorporated into the current curriculum? Do answers to these questions differ by program characteristics (location of program within the institution, formality of the program, degrees offered, etc.)? To examine the interdisciplinary nature of urban forestry and/or arboriculture curriculum (hereafter, “curriculum”), we designed and implemented an online questionnaire (Supplementary material) to ask individuals in positions most closely aligned with urban forestry and/or arboriculture educational programming (i.e., those who teach courses or are in leadership roles) in these programs across North America and the world",15
"We asked questions about the institution of higher education, the program in which coursework related to the field of urban forestry and/or arboriculture (hereafter, “the field”) resided, the degrees granted, and the importance and incorporation of other disciplines into current curriculum",15
"2011) and from tables of contents of the ISA Certified Arborist study guide (Lilly 2010), the Municipal Specialist Certification study guide (Matheny and Clark 2008), as well as textbooks from the field (e.g., the updated version of the classic urban forestry text by Miller (1988, 1997): Miller et al",15
"We split the final list of key concepts into three categories: urban forestry/arboriculture, natural sciences, and social sciences",15
"We conducted a targeted survey of individuals that teach courses and those in leadership roles (e.g., deans, program chairs, department heads) at institutions in the USA that may have coursework in urban forestry or arboriculture",15
Forest Service State and Private Forestry regional and sub-regional Urban Forestry Coordinators and the International Society of Arboriculture with information from institutional websites,15
"Of 237 respondents who clicked on the link to respond to the survey, 219 individuals indicated the presence of urban forestry or arboriculture coursework at their institution",15
"Of these 149, 128 individuals made it all the way through the questionnaire and provided answers to crucial questions about the importance and incorporation of other disciplines and key concepts into their institution’s urban forestry and/or arboriculture curriculum",15
"When summarizing viewpoints on the interdisciplinary of urban forestry and arboriculture, we use only these 128 individual survey responses",15
"The plurality (53 of 115; 46 %) of programs was located within colleges, schools, or departments (or similar) of agriculture, forestry, and/or natural resources (Fig. 1a)",15
"Most institutions offered only 1 or 2 courses related to urban forestry and/or arboriculture, but 18 % of institutions (19) offered 5 or more courses (Fig. 1b), with write-in responses as high as 23 for an institution offering an Associate’s Applied Science degree as an Urban Forestry Technician",15
"Interestingly, more than a third (36 %) of surveyed programs offered only a single course in urban forestry and/or arboriculture; this is a finding that deserves more investigation as it may relate to interdisciplinarity, and to the placement of students into careers in the field",15
"
a Institutional location (college, school, department, division, or similar) of urban forestry and/or arboriculture programs within 115 institutions of higher education",15
b Number of courses relating to urban forestry and/or arboriculture at these institutions (note that only 108 institutions answered the questions about the number of courses taught at their instruction) Table 2 shows the types of degrees to which coursework in urban forestry and/or arboriculture applied,15
A majority of institutions indicated that the type of degree that contains urban forestry and/or arboriculture coursework is a bachelors of science (B.S,15
"Sixty-three (54 %) of institutions had some type of formal undergraduate or graduate program (a named major, minor, certificate, or emphasis; hereafter, “named” programs) that included coursework related to the field of urban forestry and/or arboriculture; of these named programs, 48 of 60 (80 %) institutions responding to this question indicated that one or more course that included content relating to the field was required",15
"Institutions with named urban forestry or arboriculture programs identify their majors, minors, areas of emphasis, and/or concentrations that include coursework in urban forestry and/or arboriculture by a variety of titles (Table 4)",15
"The plurality of named programs was titled Urban Forestry, with Horticulture also being a common name",15
"Common write-in responses included titles similar to Natural Resource Management, Landscape Architecture, or Community Forestry",15
Seventy-four percent of institutions (85 of 115 responding to this question) consider the field of urban forestry/arboriculture to be interdisciplinary,15
The only significant difference in program characteristics was the type of degree granted that relates to urban forestry/arboriculture,15
"Institutions that offered 2-year Associate’s degrees with coursework related to urban forestry and/or arboriculture less frequently defined the field as interdisciplinary compared to institutions that do not offer Associate’s degrees (chi-square test: χ
2 = 10.524, p = 0.001)",15
programs tend to differ in considering urban forestry/arboriculture interdisciplinary makes sense,15
"These disciplines are the most natural science-oriented of the 13 included in our list, with the exception of planning/urban planning, which has close associations with landscape architecture",11
Other disciplines were viewed as much less important: A majority of institutions rated the disciplines of anthropology/sociology and medicine/public health as either not at all important (11 %) or slightly important (45 %),3
"Anthropology/sociology are clearly social sciences, while medicine/public health is likely viewed as being only tangentially related to the field of arboriculture",3
Incorporation of other disciplines into urban forestry and/or arboriculture curriculum falls short of the stated importance of these same disciplines,15
"No discipline was rated very incorporated by the majority of institutions, although biology/ecology (50 %) and forestry (44 %) were rated very incorporated by a plurality of institutions (Fig. 2)",15
"Biology, environmental science, forestry, and horticulture were nearest to having incorporation at the level of importance",15
"Overall, this indicates that institutions are experiencing a significant attainment gap, and that perhaps the desire to be interdisciplinary exceeds institutional capacity",16
"Interestingly, when the field is not considered interdisciplinary, incorporation index scores for horticulture, forestry, landscape architecture, and natural resource management disciplines are slightly higher than for institutions where the field is considered to be interdisciplinary (Fig. 3)",15
These disciplines are presumably considered closely related or even already within the field of urban forestry/arboriculture,15
Comparison of degree of incorporation of interdisciplinary concepts by whether or not respondents identify the field of urban forestry/arboriculture as interdisciplinary (bottom bars; n = 34) or not (top bars; n = 94),15
"Although there is no significant difference in defining the field as interdisciplinary by location of the program within the institution (Fisher’s exact test: p = 0.263), it is interesting that all 8 programs located within environmental science/studies departments or schools consider urban forestry/arboriculture to be interdisciplinary",15
This could indicate a lack of complete understanding of what these disciplines entail and thus reluctance to make an extreme judgments about the degree to which these disciplines are incorporated into their urban forestry and arboriculture curriculum,15
"Incorporation index scores for key concepts from within the urban forestry/arboriculture field are the highest (average index score for all key concepts of 3.0), followed by scores for concepts from the natural sciences (2.6 average)",15
"Index scores for incorporation of key concepts from a within the field of urban forestry/arboriculture, b the natural sciences, and c the social sciences Key concepts that are considered very incorporated into current curriculum by more than 50 % of institutions are: benefits of trees (71 %), tree identification (71 %), plant/tree biology (68 %), plant/tree selection (65 %), planting/installation technique (60 %), pruning (60 %), planting site selection (57 %), tree diversity (56 %), soil/nutrient management (54 %), and pest/disease management (52 %)",15
Table 5 compares the results of this study to the results of the two most recent surveys of urban forestry and/or arboriculture curriculum (Elmendorf et al,15
"2011), and the most important and most adequately addressed educational topics in urban forestry (Elmendorf et al",15
"Tree planting and tree selection appear only on lists of urban forestry-related topics and not as a topic in arboriculture curriculum, which Wiseman and colleagues (2011) as well as others (e.g., Skiera 2014) note may be due to the traditional focus of arborists on care of existing (already planted) landscape trees",15
"Concepts from the natural sciences that are most incorporated are invasive species (38 % of institutions rate the concept as very incorporated), biodiversity (30 %), urban ecology (24 %), ecosystem services (23 %), and landscape ecology (21 %)",15
"The five least incorporated concepts from any discipline are all from the social sciences: optimization methods (54 % of institutions rate the concepts as not at all incorporated), transportation (46 %), vacant land management (44 %), mental health (41 %), and program evaluation (40 %)",3
"It is possible that public health is being incorporated in a curriculum through an overview of tree benefits, which ranked highest in importance in this study",3
Going into detail of how the array of ecosystem services provided by trees affect human health through physiological and psychological means might be beyond the institutional capacity and faculty knowledge,16
"In fact, it may be the case the field of urban forestry/arboriculture is being incorporated into environmental science/studies, rather than the other way around",15
There is a trend toward traditional forestry schools in the USA to combine with larger units that cover broader areas with natural resource management or environmental science (O’Hara and Redelsheimer 2012),15
"Unfortunately, these multi-faceted and interdisciplinary ideas have not been widely incorporated into urban forestry and/or arboriculture curriculum (although they have been used in some urban forest research and practice: program evaluation: Clark and Matheny (1998), and Vogt et al",15
Urban forestry as a field of research and practice aims to ensure the production and maintenance of trees and their benefits in cities,15
"Erik Jorgensen of the University of Toronto, often considered the founding father of the term urban forestry if not the field itself, wrote in 1970 that urban forestry …does not deal [solely] with city trees or with single tree management, but rather with tree management in the entire area influenced by and utilized by the urban population…[including] the watershed areas and the recreational areas serving the urban population, as well as the areas lying between these service areas and politically designated urban areas [i.e., cities with municipal boundaries] and their trees",15
"499, emphasis added) This original definition of urban forestry is much broader than many would commonly consider the field to be (see, for example, the variety of definitions cited in Konijnendijk et al",15
"With such a broad definition of what constitutes urban forestry, it is easy to see how broadly trained professionals who had experienced educational instruction and possess a knowledge and skill base rooted not only in urban forestry/arboriculture but in many different disciplines would be better suited to manage trees in cities than more narrowly trained specialists",15
"However, many major disciplines that have relevance and utility to urban forestry/arboriculture are not rated as particularly important to the field, much less incorporated into curriculum (anthropology/sociology, economics, engineering, public policy/public affairs)",15
"Furthermore, key concepts from within the social sciences are particularly lacking in urban forestry and urban forestry curricula, with only two concepts (GIS and community/public engagement) bearing an incorporation index score over 2.5 and closer to “more” than “less” incorporated (Fig. 5c)",15
"Our study provides valuable context for examining more closely modern notions of interdisciplinarity among educators in institutions of higher education with urban forestry and/or arboriculture curriculum, and can serve as a foundation on which to begin discussions of strengthening the interdisciplinary ties of the urban forestry field",15
"Educators and others within the field of urban forestry/arboriculture have long called for an interdisciplinary approach to education, research, and practice in the field (Deneke 1978; Miller 1994; Miller et al",15
"And in the Journal of Forestry in 1994, career urban forestry educator Bob Miller advocated for locating urban forestry educational programs as a specialty or concentration within a traditional degree in forestry in order to ensure that graduates entering urban forestry practice are more broadly trained",15
"…Because of the large variety in knowledge and skills required, no single discipline or profession dominate urban forestry",15
Urban areas are characterized by high dynamics and urban forestry professionals need to keep themselves abreast with developments in their field,15
"In an essay tracing the evolution of schools of forestry, Miller and Lewis (1999) note that some traditional foresters lament that the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s in the USA resulted in the apparent dilution of the traditional forestry discipline by incorporating more environmentally and ecologically oriented coursework in to forestry curriculum, which even resulted in the re-branding of entire schools (e.g., the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies)",15
"This trend continues to this day, in part to cope with declining enrollment in traditional forestry programs, at institutions of higher education in both North America and overseas, with forestry programs in the United Kingdom broadening into natural resource management programs and incorporating environmental studies curriculum (Leslie et al",15
"Though neither programs of urban forestry/arboriculture nor related career opportunities are experiencing enrollment problems to quite the same degree, our study and others (e.g., Randrup et al",15
2002) show that there is apparently increasing recognition of the importance of an interdisciplinary urban forestry education,15
An interdisciplinary approach is important to the functioning of urban forestry and arboriculture professionals in an increasingly globalized and interconnected world,15
"Ultimately, urban forestry/arboriculture programs (as all educational programs) are subject to trade-offs with respect to curriculum design (including the incorporation of interdisciplinary aspects): between depth and breath of coursework, in cost and length of the degree, between adhering to centuries-old tradition and adapting to meet modern developments, between attracting and retaining students and meeting accreditation requirements, adhering to credit limitations (e.g., maximum of 120 required credits) set by policy makers, in building the skills and knowledge required for a specific career and preparing students for broader civic and community life",15
A recent student perspective piece in the Journal of Forestry spoke to these sentiments in regards to forestry programs (McGown 2015),15
McGown (2015) acknowledges the “image problem” of forestry and associated difficulties attracting students,15
"Accredited forestry programs may also frequently overly restrictive requirements, including many lab courses, lengthy and potentially financially challenging summer field camps, or simply “too many courses” compared to other similar but “more flexible” degrees such as natural resource management (McGown 2015)",15
"Although these concerns are specifically for forestry programs, as this survey revealed, arboriculture and/or urban forestry programs are commonly located within forestry departments, a potential weakness for these programs",15
Strengthening the interdisciplinary offerings of urban forestry/arboriculture programs has both positive and negative implications for managing these trade-offs,15
Increasing interdisciplinary offerings may increase the appeal of urban forestry/arboriculture and aid in student retention,15
"First, interdisciplinary education to what purpose? Practically, program directors and those involved in urban forestry and arboriculture curriculum design should not incorporate interdisciplinary coursework into program or degree requirements simply for the sake of interdisciplinarity",15
"For instance, curricula should draw from environmental and sustainability science to incorporate coursework that teaches about the impacts of climate change on urban forests and trees and how to manage this green infrastructure under the constraints of increasing temperatures and highly variable precipitation",13
"However, only with a clear idea of what we want students to be able to know and do with interdisciplinarity (“learning objectives” in the parlance of education) can we begin to designate specific interdisciplinary core competencies for urban forestry and arboriculture education",15
"Second, how might we assess whether arboriculture and urban forestry education is interdisciplinary? This study did not attempt to calculate a metric to indicate the extent to which an institution’s urban forestry and arboriculture curriculum is in fact interdisciplinary",15
"For urban forestry and arboriculture, future research on interdisciplinary education should aim to synthesize the specific interdisciplinary learning objectives across programs, and then design assessment tools and indicators to evaluate student achievement of these objectives.",15
"Financial inclusion (FI) is the backbone for every economy; however, a sustainable environment is also inevitable",8
"However, FI, EC, and CR are found to be prominent reasons for environmental degradation",15
A sustainable environment with an required financial inclusion is an emerging challenge around the globe,8
"In this context, to achieve high financial and economic growth, high production and processing are required that results in pressure on the environment, and ecological resources are becoming scarce (Arouri et al., 2012; Solarin & Shahbaz, 2015; Xu et al., 2018)",8
Frankel and Romer (1999) found that financial markets can stimulate economic growth,8
"Moreover, economic growth is substantially dependent on financial development (Amin et al., 2020)",8
"Furthermore, financial inclusion (FI) is an essential element of FD; the idea of FI emerged in the early 2000s when a study by Chibba (2009) investigated the linkage of financial inclusion and poverty",8
"According to World Bank (2018), “financial inclusion implies that all individuals and businesses have access to a range of financial products and services, such as transactions, payments, savings, credit, and insurance, to meet their needs in an affordable, convenient, responsible and sustainable manner.” FI can be also be understood as ease of access to financial products for individuals and business entities (Zaidi et al., 2021)",8
"Therefore, the INF development can lead to achieving the climate change goal of SDGs",13
This traditional energy consumption is putting pressure on the environment,7
"With the substantial improvement in financial inclusion, the OECD is the most noticeable group for nations",8
"Against this premise, this study intends to add some value to the literature in the given two ways; firstly, studies are uncommon in re-investigation of the nexus of FI, INF, and EF by controlling GDP, energy, and corruption in OECD economies for the period 2004 to 2017",16
The studies on financial inclusion and ecological footprint are uncommon,8
"On the contrary, in the countries where access to financial services and funds is relatively easy, industrial activities (production and processing of goods and services) are boosting",1
"(2021) investigate the linkage of FD, EF, and corruption in BRICS and N-11 countries by using system GMM, and found negative association of FD and EF",16
"Furthermore, in GCC countries, the effect of financial development is also studied against the environment and found the similar negative role of FD towards the environmental degradation (Yang et al., 2021b)",15
(2020) found the renewable energy as the supportive element in reducing the ecological footprint in the BRICS panel,7
"However, the concept of financial inclusion and its relationship with the ecological footprint is uncommon and needs attention",8
"Theoretically, Grossman and Krueger (1995) explored the nexus of economic growth and the environment",8
"Finally, “the index financial inclusion, namely ATMs, Deposits, Bank Branches, and Life Insurance” the data for FI is initially taken from “International Monetary Fund” (IMF, 2017) and then used PCA to finalize the index",8
It is an indication that infrastructure development is helping to reduce environmental degradation in OECD countries,15
"It means that with the rise in income level, energy use, and corruption, the environment is deteriorating in the OECD region",16
"Finally, the level of corruption is alarming for the environment (Awais & Wang, 2019; Yao et al., 2021)",16
"Based on the findings, this study is offering the following policy implications for the sampled panel economies: Firstly, the role of FI is not supportive and is to reduce environmental degradation in the OECD economies",15
"Moreover, the incentive should be given to use sustainable alternatives to achieve the desired climate change",13
The OECD countries may invest to improve the INF to achieve targeted climate change and ultimately sustainable development,13
"Thirdly, the role of corruption is found to be deteriorating for the environment",16
The OECD management should work to eradicate the unfair practices to reduce the level of corruption,16
"Furthermore, the study of technological innovation and renewables in OECD economies and their impact on ecology may further reflect highlight the issue in a different way.",8
"The Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG #6) of the United Nations (UN) is hinged on the provision, availability, and sustainability of water for the global populace by 2030",6
"Furthermore, this work fits the Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG #6) of the United Nations (UN)",6
"The high concentration of H+ ions aids the protonation of the functional groups at lower pH, making the adsorbents become more positively charged leading to the inhibition of adsorption of the cationic dyes on it",3
This shows the applicability of these inexpensive adsorbents for real-life waste water treatment particularly for the treatment of dye effluents before discharge into the environment,6
Policymakers and authorities in Africa are often concerned about economic growth and stability owing to the long history of socioeconomic problems that have bedeviled the continent for years,8
"Based on the empirical results from the study, three main factors significantly increase environmental pollution through CO2 emissions among the countries, namely: fossil energy consumption, income levels, and the shares of the manufacturing sector in the total gross domestic product (GDP)",7
"Also, numerous natural resources spreading across the breadth and length of the continents include crude oil, natural gas, gold, copper, uranium, coal, diamonds, iron, livestock, forests, and arable land, among several other resources, as seen in Fig. 1 (African Development Report and AfDB 2007; Gokee 2016; Alao 2007; Aliyu et al",15
"Due to the importance of energy consumption in production activities, oil and gas have become very essential among other natural resources in the international market as they help nations meet up with their domestic energy demands",7
"As such, environmental researches are a step in the right direction as they are key to facilitating the right policy directions toward the achievement of SDGs 11 and 13 with the primary focus of ensuring environmental sustainability via collective climate action",13
"Generally, the economic facets of the challenges of resource dependence in rentier states in Africa have received substantial attention in the literature given severe economic challenges in many African countries, however, the environmental dynamics, which hitherto have received less attention should be emphasized considering the enormous dangers and risks from environmental degradation in recent times",15
"However, massive returns from resource rents may not necessarily guarantee the expected levels of economic growth and development",8
"Aside from the health hazards and environmental degradation from oil exploration activities that are predominant in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, Hill (2012) argued that the oil industry has significantly undermined the development of other sectors in Nigeria",15
"Thus, making Africa’s vulnerability to climate change and environmental disasters relatively higher (Kula et al",13
"The resource curse theory is often premised on historical antecedents of some common factors like civil wars, corruption, and gross mismanagement of funds that often thrive on weak institutions in many resource-rich countries (Gritsenko and Efimova 2020; Henri 2019; Tyburski et al",16
"In a nutshell, the economic facets of resources abundance have generally dominated the literature over the years, considering that achieving economic growth and stability through macroeconomic policies is the central goal of policymakers and authorities in many African countries",8
"However, the dynamics of environmental challenges have been changing in recent times, therefore, requiring more attention from policymakers and authorities going by the continent’s vulnerability to climate change and environmental disasters (Kula et al",13
The fundamental work of Kuznets (1955) focused on the response of inequality in income distribution to trends in economic growth,8
The results show that both urbanization and renewable energy consumption have no significant effect on pollution levels as proxied by carbon emission while fossil energy consumption does induce pollution levels significantly,7
"The study further pointed out that economic growth, energy use, and agricultural practices constituted a major aspect of environmental pollution in Africa",8
"Related data were drawn from the World Bank development indicator (WDI, 2020) for a panel of the selected countries between 1995 and 2016 to explore the question of the validity of the EKC in a sectoral composition framework that accounts for the share of both manufacturing and services sectors, in addition to the dynamics roles of energy consumption among the countries",7
"As for the energy composition among the countries, both energy consumption from fossil sources and corresponding rents from fossil sources were factored into the model",7
"In the case of the former, the amount of energy consumption from fossil resources as a percentage of the total energy consumption (\({FEC}_{it}\)) was utilized, while the sum of natural resources rents (\({NR}_{it}\)) on fossil resources, namely oil rents, natural gas rents, and coal rents were utilized for the latter",7
"As for the manufacturing sector, the sectors’ shares in total GDP, which is based on the total manufacturing value added, (\({MGI}_{it}\)) was utilized, and its values are obtained from the net output of a sector after adding up all outputs and subtracting intermediate inputs",9
"The services sector consists of the value-added in both retail and wholesale trade, real estate services, education, transport, financial services, and health care services, among others",3
"In Eq. (7), the \({\tau }^{th}\) conditional quantile of the dependent variable (environmental degradation as measured with CO2 emission levels) is represented by \({Q\mathrm{LnCO}2}_{it}(\tau /{\chi }_{it})\), while the vector of the explanatory variables is denoted by \({\chi }_{it}\)",15
"From the table, there is a strong significant positive correlation between carbon emissions and income levels as well as fossil energy consumption levels and manufacturing sector but an insignificant negative and positive correlation with natural resources rents and service sector, respectively",7
"The estimated long-run coefficients from the QR outputs in Table 4 show that there are three main drivers of environmental pollution through carbon emission levels among the countries, namely; fossil energy consumption, manufacturing sector, and income levels",7
The QR estimates reveal the exacerbating effects of fossil energy consumption on the carbon emission levels among the countries,7
Fossil energy consumption has strong and positive impacts on emission level and the effects are highly significant and consistent across all the conditional distribution of emission levels from the lower quantiles (\(\tau\) = 0.10 to \(\tau\) = 0.30) to the mid-quantiles (\(\tau\) = 0.40 to \(\tau\) = 0.60) and the upper quantiles (\(\tau\) = 0.70 to \(\tau\) = 0.90),7
"Besides, the output of the mean estimations of the DOLS approach gives more credence to the QR results as it reveals that carbon emission levels rise by 0.67% when there is a percent rise in fossil energy consumption level among the countries",7
"Also, there is evidence of a strong two-way causality between fossil energy consumption and carbon emission levels in Table 5, which further corroborates the long-run results",7
(2017) have also demonstrated how primary energy consumption increases environmental pollution for the case of Latin American countries,7
"Interestingly, fossil energy constitutes the main share of total primary energy use among the understudied countries, and the current results are just a reaffirmation of how conventional energy consumption, in particular, can be detrimental to environmental sustainability, as evidenced in extant empirical studies (Koengkan 2018; Adebayo and Rjoub 2021)",7
"This shows that energy demands in the manufacturing sector thrive more on conventional energy sources at the detriment of environmental quality, and this is further buttressed by the observed one-way causality link from fossil energy consumption to the share of the manufacturing sector, as seen in Table 5",7
"For income levels and natural resources rent, unlike the impacts of fossil energy consumption that were positive and consistent across all the conditional distribution of carbon emission levels, the impacts of income levels and natural resources rent mixed, and they exhibit significant differences across the quantiles",7
"This finding is also understandable considering the resource-abundant setting of the panel causality in Table 5, where causality runs from fossil energy consumption and resource rent to real income while income in turn granger causes CO2 emission",7
"The QR approach was combined with the DOLS technique to explore the impacts of energy components and sectoral composition of the economy on the conditional distribution of environmental degradation as proxied by carbon emission levels among selected fossil energy resource-abundant African economies, including Algeria, Nigeria, Egypt, and Angola between 1995 and 2016",15
"The empirical analysis shows that fossil energy consumption, manufacturing sector, and income levels significantly induce environmental pollution through carbon emission levels among the countries",7
"Furthermore, the causality evidence reveals a strong two-way causality between fossil energy consumption and carbon emission levels which further corroborates the strong positive impact of fossil energy consumption on environmental pollution levels among the countries as seen in the long-run estimates",7
"Also, causality runs from fossil energy consumption to income",7
"This is a reflection of the mono-economy structure of dependence on trade and services in the oil and gas industry among the countries, and this may constitute challenges to the actualization of sustainable economic growth in the long term due to the effects of shocks that often create fluctuations and instability in the international oil market",8
"Owing to the environmental damages from fossil energy consumption in terms of rising carbon emission levels among the selected leading oil-producing African countries, it is also recommended that authorities and policymakers come up with workable approaches to ensure energy portfolio diversification plans",7
"Rather than having fossil energy accounting for over 90% of total energy consumption, as is the case for some of the countries, attention has to be paid to the huge environmental benefits that come with renewable energy resources",7
"Fortuitously, the potential for renewable energy resources is estimated to be very high among many African countries, including those in the current analysis",7
"Therefore, these countries can harness their vast renewable potentials by tapping into solar and wind sources as sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels in terms of decarbonization",13
"As such, the resource-abundant African economies can be better positioned toward the actualization of SDGs 12 that emphasizes responsible consumption and production, among other crucial environmental and developmental issues",12
The current study has focused on the case of the selected four leading oil-producing countries using the carbon emission perspective for environmental degradation,15
"Furthermore, following the foundation laid in the current study, future studies can also be tailored toward the exploration of the impacts of energy dynamics on environmental degradation while disentangling sectoral components within the specific context of ecological performances and biocapacity among resource-abundant African countries.",15
"The governments of South Asian economies must encourage green FDI initiatives for water management, ensuring water security, securing natural resources for enhancing the sustainable development of regional economies",6
It is a vital source of life and one of the most significant material resources for a human being and economic development (Alcamo et al,8
It will result in problems such as future food security and environmental sustainability (Bruinsma 2009; Rosegrant et al,2
"Considering water scarcity as a global issue, the world sustainable development goals (SDGs) have given an immense importance to water supply management and also considered that its economic opportunities can play a pivotal role in eradicating the grave problem of poverty (SDG 2015Footnote 1)",6
"The impact of climate change has led to severe adjustments in water use and distribution in Asia (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2016)",13
The increasing rate of urbanization in South Asia and the rise of industrial water usage will cause water scarcity in the future because the demand for resources has increased dramatically (Mancosu et al,6
"Asian Development Bank (ADB) also reported that, in addition to other outcomes, iceberg melting, floods, and droughts caused by climate change would harm water irrigation and agricultural farming in South Asian countries (Asian Development Bank (Asian Development Bank, 2017)",13
"The scenario of some studies has analyzed the possible climate change effects and socioeconomic growth on water availability (for example, Fung et al",13
"Theoretically, the volume of foreign direct investment is considered to be the prime determinant of a country’s economic growth; however, eventually, it can hurt both the natural resources and local livelihoods",8
"It has been observed that socioeconomic and environmental outcomes of FDI in the fields of agriculture and hydropower generation lead to significant changes in domestic groundwater reserves, which ultimately results in problems like access to clean drinking water for human and livestock (Avery 2010; Elias and Abdi 2010)",7
"Similarly, in another attempt by Güler (2009), the economic and technical development has significantly increased the demand for energy consumption",7
There are various studies which found that energy production required massive use of water resources which ultimately become an issue of water scarcity (Tsoutsos et al,6
It is evident that influx of FDI in agriculture and hydropower generation with all its socioeconomic benefits has adverse effect on environment as it reduces the groundwater reserves ultimately leading to shortage of clean drinking water for human population and livestock (Avery 2010; Elias and Abdi 2010),7
"On the other hand, a recent study carried out by Khanji and Hudson (2016) exposed that optimum water utilization significantly affects economic growth of the country",8
"Economic development, increasing population, and agriculture augmentation have been considered the leading indicators of this rising trend",8
The study analyzed that growth in population leads to water scarcity,6
"Because for a number of processes such as drilling oil, generating and distributing electricity, mining coal, and refining gasoline from traditional and renewable energy sources, a huge amount of water is needed",7
(2005) concluded that all of the conventional and presently used procedures of electricity generation are resulting in natural resource degradation especially environment and water,7
"1997; Falkenmark 1997), water supply as a water scarcity indicator (Seckler 1998), water shortage with the ratio of water footprint–to–water availability (Aldaya et al",6
The study at hand found that energy production significantly contributes to water scarcity,6
"Recently, Zhang and Anadon (2013a, b) found that energy production is a major contributor to water scarcity",6
"Foreign direct investment indeed can bring a variety of benefits to South Asian countries, but due to increasing industrial development enhances environmental pollution and it causes severe water pollution that leads to decrease the amount of renewable fresh water",6
We also found that the population has a more substantial effect on water scarcity as compared to energy production and FDI,6
It is essential for countries to rationally develop policies on the utilization of water resources and prevent water pollution and damage,6
"Furthermore, economies must shift energy production ways to solar energy as well",7
"Policymakers must be developing plans for water management timely and slowing the population growth, and educating people about the water usages can also be a useful strategy",6
"In recent times, empirics have tried to find the determinants of renewable energy consumption",7
"Hence, the primary focus of the analysis is to estimate the impact of financial integration, education, and ICT on renewable energy consumption in China",7
"The long-run estimates of the financial integration are positively significant at most quantiles, confirming the positive impact of financial integration on renewable energy consumption",7
"In line with these results, several appropriate financial integration, digitalization, and education policies are recommended",9
"Since the last century, the reliance of human societies on energy based on fossil fuels has increased manifold for its progress and existence, which has significantly contributed to the economic development of the societies (Li et al",8
"However, the dependence of the nations on fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas has created many issues, including energy poverty, resource exhaustion, climate change, and global warming (Lei et al",13
"Coal, oil, and gas are known as non-renewable energy sources, which are the primary reason behind carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and, consequently, global warming (Aslam et al",7
"The main crux of all these pacts and conferences is to limit the world temperature and mitigate the effects of global warming by reducing CO2 emissions and increasing the share of renewable energies (e.g., wind, solar, hydel, nuclear, and biomass) in the total energy mix of developed and developing economies (Yang et al",7
"Despite all these pledges, the transition process from non-renewable energy sources to renewable ones is quite slow, and the dream of increasing the energy demand is still far from reality (Churchill et al",7
"Three extents of sustainable growth have been properly recognized in these goals including environmental, social, and economic (Murshed et al",8
"Sustainable development goal 7 is about “ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.” To achieve this goal, the economies can alter their energy systems by growing their share of clean and renewable energy sources and by planning for more suitable energy sources to boost their economic and social development along with environmental performance as described in the SDGs (Khan et al",7
"However, transitioning from non-renewable energy sources to renewable ones is daunting because of structural, procedural, and financial constraints",7
"In order to increase the renewable energy demand, reducing the cost of renewable projects and increasing the role of the financial sector can play a significant role (Timilsina 2021)",7
Financial capital is the biggest hurdle in deploying renewable energy projects (Ji and Zhang 2019),7
"Therefore, private investors should step up because investment from the public sector alone is not sufficient to provide the necessary capital funds for deploying renewable energy projects (Wang et al",7
The private investors have turned their attention toward renewable energy projects because renewable energy is termed a normal commodity (Tsao et al,7
"Several factors are reported in the given literature, including knowledge of renewable energy, environmental cognizance, rising income, and funds availability and accessibility that can significantly and positively impact the renewable energy demand and thus facilitate the transition of the energy sector (Zhao et al",7
"Furthermore, the demand for renewable energy is positively linked to household income, i.e., higher income causes the renewable energy demand to rise (Köksal et al",7
"Therefore, integration of the financial sector can remove the financial hurdles for the deployment of renewable energy demand through the collaboration of various financial markets (Tan and Uprasen 2021; Fakher et al",7
"(2021), renewable energy generation requires a massive investment",7
"Since the initial cost of renewable energy projects is too high, due to this reason, investors hesitate to enter the renewable energy sector (Tsao et al",7
Another reason behind the lack of investment in renewable energy projects is their long payback periods (Asongu and Odhiambo 2021),7
"In this regard, integration of the financial sector can help remove the financial constraints and promote the production of renewable energy projects by providing financial capital and thereby positively impacting the transition of energy structure from non-renewable sources to renewable ones (Oluoch et al",7
"Hence, financial integration and development are crucial for promoting renewable energy generation in the long run",7
Renewable energy generation in the economy keeps on rising along with the rise in the availability of financial services and foreign capital flow (Qamruzzaman and Jianguo 2020; Yuping et al,7
"In addition to the financial sector integration, several other determinants of renewable energy consumption are recorded in the available literature",7
"Among these determinants, economic growth and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are the most celebrated ones (Hashemizadeh et al",8
"On the other side, some empirics have confirmed the positive relationship between renewable energy demand and CO2 emissions (e.g., Mukhtarov et al",7
"However, very few have focused on the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in affecting renewable energy demand",7
"Since ICT is vital for achieving sustainable development, its role can be crucial in increasing the demand for renewable energy projects",7
"2016), which also affects the renewable energy demand",7
"Moreover, ICT can also lead the foundation stone of the digital economy, which may spur the demand for renewable energy in the economy",7
Education is a significant driver that encourages renewable energy consumption and controls pollution emissions,7
Education can trigger environmental awareness and enhance the use of renewable energy consumption,7
"However, some studies report that education can contribute to environmental degradation through the consumption of energy-intensive products, such as manufacturing activities, transportation, and the use of dirty technologies (Khan et al",15
"Additionally, educational attainment can stimulate the consumption of renewable energy sources by discovering new solutions and disseminating of renewable energy in society (Villanthenkodath and Velan 2022)",7
Education raises environmental awareness among people that affects the household’s propensity to consume renewable energy sources,7
"As already mentioned, a growing body of literature has analyzed the determinants of renewable energy consumption",7
"However, none has analyzed the financial integration, education, ICT, and renewable energy consumption nexus",7
"To the best of our knowledge, this is the first-ever study that has tried to analyze the impact of financial integration, education, and ICT on renewable energy consumption in China",7
"Thus, using the QARDL cointegration approach, we want to examine the cross-quantile long-term impact of financial integration, education, and ICT on renewable energy consumption in China",7
"Moreover, from Eq. (1), we confer that financial integration, ICT, education, GDP, and CO2 emissions are represented by FIt, ICTt, Edut, GDPt, and CO2t, respectively, while RECt represents renewable energy consumption",7
"The variables of concern are renewable energy consumption (REC), financial integration (FI), digital development (ICT), education (Edu), GDP per capita (GDP), and CO2 emissions (CO2)",7
"To measure renewable energy consumption, the study uses total energy consumption from all sources",7
"The data for renewable energy consumption is assembled from EIA, for financial integration data is collected from the KOF index, and for all other variables, data is taken from the WDI",7
Our findings confirm that financial integration positively influences renewable energy consumption in China in both the short and long run,7
"The start-up cost of renewable energy projects is too high, and the operational and procedural cost of renewable energy projects is also too high",7
"In addition, the long payback periods of renewable energy projects are also a problem in increasing renewable energy consumption",7
"As a result, the provision of capital for renewable energy projects becomes more affordable, increasing renewable energy consumption",7
"(2019) and Qamruzzaman and Jianguo (2020), the sustainable increase in renewable energy consumption is primarily based on the development of the financial sector and, consequently, the availability of financial products and services and capital inflows from abroad",7
"Furthermore, due to financial integration, households and small businesses can avail of bank loans to deploy renewable energy projects for their houses and businesses, thus increasing the demand for renewable energy",7
The role of ICT is also positive in increasing renewable energy consumption in China,7
"(2022) that out of total global energy consumption, the share of ICT increased from 3.7% in 2007 to 4.6% in 2012",7
(2022) and Villanthenkodath and Velan (2022) by demonstrating that education enhances the understanding of people regarding renewable energy consumption,7
"Thus, the knowledge about renewable energy consumption influences the behavior of consumers and environmental values",7
Education plays a significant role in transforming the behavior of people toward renewable energy consumption and increasing their awareness of energy-saving practices (Fang et al,7
"Moreover, education can trigger renewable energy consumption by exploring renewable energy solutions and their diffusion in society",7
"Energy based on fossil fuels is the primary driver of improving the economic growth of nations, which has raised the living standards of the people globally",8
"Moreover, the fluctuating fuel prices may reduce the pace of economic growth and create the problem of the current account deficit in oil-importing countries",8
"However, among all these problems, the issue of energy poverty and environmental degradation have become the most celebrated issues at the international level",15
"Hence, in recent times, the empiric has tried to find the determinants of renewable energy",7
"One of the main hurdles in the deployment of renewable energy projects is the high initial cost, and financial integration can play a crucial role in providing necessary financial capital",7
"Hence, the primary focus of the analysis is to estimate the impact of financial integration, education, and ICT on renewable energy consumption in China",7
"The long-run estimates of the financial integration are positively significant at most quantiles, confirming the positive impact of financial integration on renewable energy consumption",7
"As far as the asymmetric impact of financial integration and ICT on renewable energy consumption is concerned, significant Wald tests confirmed asymmetric impact in the long run",7
"Firstly, integrating the financial sector provides the necessary funds to cover the starting and procedural costs of renewable energy projects at a reasonable cost",7
"Therefore, policymakers should try to promote financial integration in China to increase renewable energy consumption",7
"Secondly, the digitalization of the economy pushes the energy demand upward",9
"To meet the rising energy demand, the only solution is to increase renewable energy production, which is reliable, affordable, and clean",7
"Finally, increasing the formal literacy rate can increase awareness about environmental-related problems, which persuades people and businesses to increase renewable energy consumption",7
"Since the study only includes China as a country to estimate the nexus between financial integration, education, ICT, and renewable energy consumption",7
The literature review confirms that this reconsideration for green space has a positive effect on the air quality of large cities and to reduce the air pollution,11
"The purpose of this study is to evaluate the annual vegetation changes in the green space of Mashhad, Iran as a very populated city in the middle east to study the air pollution",11
"The main contribution in comparison with the relevant studies is to study the relationship between clean, healthy, and unhealthy days with the green space area for the first time in Mashhad, Iran",11
"2021), while other studies prove that with controlling CO2 emission costs and energy consumption can be reduced through communities (Andersson et al",7
It goes without saying that urbanization and industrialization are two main green space and ecosystems (Wan et al,11
(2009) who investigated the green space changes and patterns of Mashhad city in Iran from 1987 to 2006,11
They calculated the mortality rate and the green space relationship using satellite imagery and NDVI metric,11
"All in all, the main contributions are summarized as below:
 This study aims to investigate the green space area and its changes in Mashahd, Iran, during 2013 to 2019",11
"This paper studies the relationship between clean, healthy, and unhealthy days with green space area",11
"With regard to the findings of this paper, it is suggested that increasing vegetation area and green space of the city directly affected the air quality and can increase the clean and healthy days",11
"The solar energy is captured by the collector and transferred to the tube that delivers the working fluid, water",7
"The test data such as friction factor, Reynolds number, uncertainty analysis, Nusselt number, solar collector efficiency, coefficient of convective heat transfer, linear dimpled tube velocity analysis, achieving maximum energy efficiency and thermal efficiency have been used to generate parametric values for parabolic plate solar water heaters",7
"The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by the United Nations Conference in Paris in 2015, are worldwide pledges to end poverty and enhance people’s quality of life",1
"SDG 7 states that by 2030, all people will have access to clean, modern, and safe energy services",7
"However, being connected to the power grid does not guarantee access to quality, dependable, safe, and cost-effective energy by SDG 7",7
"In actuality, this population does not satisfy the requirements of SDG 7",7
"In this sense, securing access to energy entails more than just a physical link to a source of energy; it also entails a reliable supply",7
"For instance, the absence of access to electricity in 2019 harmed 10% of the global population (771 million people), limiting their growth opportunities (Madurai Elavarasan et al",7
"The bulk of this population lives in rural areas, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa (578 million people lack access to electricity), India, Asian countries, and, to a lesser degree, the Middle East and North Africa",7
"However, this area still has 11 million people lacking access to energy (Fernandez-Fuentes et al",7
Renewable energy resources must be maximized to provide energy and environmental security since billions of people take hot water baths every day (Barone et al,7
Solar water heating (SWH) is one application that optimizes available renewable energy resources in residential and business contexts (Habchi et al,7
Solar energy production is an advantage for India because of its geographical location,7
Renewable solar energy has a key role since it has always been accessible and can be relied upon (Naveenkumar et al,7
The parabolic trough collector (PTC) effectively generated steam and electricity using solar energy (Sharma et al,7
Medium temperature ranges were created using commonly available solar energy and several collector types using PTC technology,7
"Due to its practicality and cost-effectiveness, most solar energy systems utilize solar power for water heating",7
"Because of the intermittent nature of solar energy and the absence of energy storage, solar water heaters can only be used occasionally in a given location (Pandey et al",7
"This research aims to provide instantaneous hot water for domestic and small business use using a stand-alone, manually monitored parabolic dish solar geyser (PDSG) (Sagade et al",9
"In this work, the mass flow rate of the water in the tube was varied in the range of 1.0 to 3.0 kg/min in steps of 0.5 kg/min to analyze the friction factor, Reynolds number, uncertainty analysis, Nusselt number, solar collector efficiency, coefficient of convective heat transfer, linear dimpled tube velocity analysis, and achieving maximum energy efficiency and thermal efficiency were all suggested to be improved in the proposed technique",7
Parabolic trough collectors are used for absorbing solar energy and transmitting it to the aluminum-coated copper dimpled tube,7
"This doubles the quantity of solar energy gathered, increasing total heat production",7
"Using \({D\vartheta }_{0}\) indicates the uneven distribution of light, \({F}_{k}\) indicates the sun brightness on cylindrical imbibe surfaces, \({Z}_{b}\) indicates the parabolic collector, and \({Z}_{cdr}\) indicates symmetric species of compounds that can provide efficient water heating in solar systems are stated as, As presented in Eq. (1), \({B}_{b}{J}_{E}\) the absorber’s capacity to absorb energy, \(JZB\) indicates terms of long-term average radiation direction, and \({Z}_{cd}\) indicates an integrated storage collector consisting of a tank three times the size of a solar absorber and a storage tank (Pandey et al",6
Solar water heating systems use heat exchangers to convert the solar energy collected in collectors into usable hot water,7
"The solar energy is collected by the collector and subsequently sent into the pipe, but only under certain circumstances",7
"Solar energy is collected through flat plate collectors, which consist of an insulated metal box with a glass plate on top",7
"\({\overline{G} }_{R}-\) indicates the solar radiation rays, \({\overline{G} }_{d}{\overline{T} }_{d}-\) indicates the incident on the collector’s surface is necessary to \({\overline{G} }_{c}\) which indicates the collector’s efficiency and its real output in terms of captured solar energy is described (do Carmo Zidan et al",7
"\(DY\) indicates that solar power has long been recognized for its \({C}_{p,nf}\) which indicates long-term stability, safety, dependability, and accessibility",7
Recent growth in the usage of solar panels \({C}_{E}\) indicates the other renewable energy sources can be attributed to this technology’s ease of installation and operation stated as (Al-Waeli et al,7
The copper coating on the sun-facing side of the collectors allows solar energy to flow through,7
Another technique to estimate the efficiency of a solar water heater is to use the solar fraction by dividing the total amount of conventional hot water heating demand by the proportion of solar energy (delivered energy and tank standby losses),7
The quantity of energy required by the backup water heater grows as the proportion of solar power increases,7
"According to the present model, for copper dimpled tube with aluminum-coated tube (experimental analysis), at mass flow rates 1.0 kg/min, 1.5 kg/min, 2.0 kg/min, 2.5 kg/min, and 3.0 kg/min, the achieving maximum energy efficiency at dimpled with the aluminum coated tube was found to be 0.43, 0.35, 0.38, 0.44, and 0.42 respectively",7
"For copper dimpled tube with aluminum-coated tube (CFD) analysis), the Achieving maximum energy efficiency at mass flow rates 1.0 kg/min, 1.5 kg/min, 2.0 kg/min, 2.5 kg/min, and 3.0 kg/min was found to be 0.46, 0.44, 0.43, 0.46, and 0.47 respectively",7
Achieving maximum energy efficiency This displays the association between CFD re-enactment and the efficacy of warm water at several levels of the stream,7
The usage of solar power is an appropriate approach to satisfy future energy demands,7
Solar power is a renewable energy source,7
"The paper discusses an integrated approach to the management of three primary resources: water, energy, and food (WEF), as these increasingly represent the greatest global risks because they are expected to be highly impacted by climate change, demographics, aging infrastructure, and other challenges in the twenty-first century",13
"An interdisciplinary WEF nexus platform is defined and proposed to support scholarship and to be a bridge between science, policy, and the general community of stakeholders",4
"The paper concludes with a call for a WEF nexus community of practice (NCoP) to promote and enable an integrative approach to develop and employ tools with the purpose of strengthening sustainable food security, increasing energy production, and bridging water supply gaps that have arisen in demands for both food and energy",2
"This growing population alongside clustering in urban areas negatively impacts the security of these resources, leading to increasing stress on water supply and decreased water quality, particularly in regions such as the Middle East-North Africa (MENA), Asia, and Central America which are already experiencing water stress (UN-DESA 2011)",6
"Additionally, 795 million people currently lack sufficient food to lead a healthy life, with the majority living in developing countries, where nearly 13 % of the population is undernourished (WFP 2015)",2
"Many of the same geographic regions, including sub-Saharan Africa, MENA, Asia, and Central America, also exhibit poor energy security and access (EAPI 2013)",7
"Climate change also impacts the availability of WEF resources by impacting crop productivity, water supply, and demands for cooling and heating",13
"With subtropical regions already experiencing both the greatest population growth and the highest stress on WEF resources, the effects of climate change will likely reduce rainfall further, thus making surface water less available and further depleting stored soil moisture (Milly et al",13
"At the same time, storm intensities and periods between rain events are both expected to increase and this will impact both agricultural production and soil quality",2
Longer dry spells and less precipitation will lead to increased water needs and decreased water quality and freshwater availability,6
"Climate change is likely to have a ripple effect in which stress on one primary resource provokes wider consequences because of the interconnectedness of the WEF nexus, leading to greater competition when supply decreases",13
"Consequently, with less water available to support energy production, access to energy-dependent activities such as cooling, lighting, and travel is likely to decrease",7
"The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) describes the nexus as “a new approach in support of food security and sustainable agriculture” and as a means to understand and manage “the complex interactions between water, energy, and food” (FAO 2014a, b)",2
"The Integrated Water Resource Management Association (IWRA) was formed in 1971 to “improve and expand the understanding of water issues through education, research and information exchange among countries and across disciplines.” Alcamo (2015) identified the use of systems thinking to investigate the common principles and models used to describe the WEF nexus and the use of systems theory to establish its scientific basis (Alcamo 2015)",6
"In 2011, more than 550 people gathered in Germany at the conference The Water, Energy and Food Security Nexus—Solutions for the Green Economy, which called for new approaches to address the WEF security nexus by developing a framework to define it and enabling integrated solutions to address the challenges it posed (Bonn Nexus Conference 2011)",2
"In the same year, the US Department of Energy released a Water-Energy Nexus report highlighting options for reducing the resource footprints of energy production and water treatment, while other meetings like Nexus 2014: Water, Food, Climate and Energy Conference and Earth Observations and the Water-Energy-Food Security Nexus took place in the USA and in Italy",2
"A long-standing challenge for water management is the lack of integration between the sectors interacting with water across geographical areas and within large, often transboundary, basins through integrated water resource management (IWRM)",6
"In an effort to foster IWRM in 1996, the Global Water Partnership (GWP) was founded by the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) to promote the “coordinated development and management of water, land and related resources, in order to maximize the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems” (GWP 2012)",17
"The United Nations Secretary-Generals’ Advisory Board on Water & Sanitation (UNSGAB) sees the two approaches as complementary (UN-DESA 2011) and states that both approaches facilitate sustainable growth and protect essential environmental services, as summarized in the following table (UNSGAB 2012): IWRM Nexus Allows sustainable development pathways 

 

 Promotes efficiencies in the resource development and allocation 

 

 Calls for greater co-ordination between inter-linked resource producing/consuming sectors 

 

 Clearly recognizes the consequences of decisions made in one sector for the other sectors 

 

 Emphasizes the need to change the way policy and decision-making occurs in order to improve human welfare and social equity 

 

 However, in reality, nexus thinking also normally starts from one of the WEF perspectives, making the concept appear more relevant to that specific sector than would the IWRM approach of water-first",8
"Consequently, the nexus approach could make integration more palatable to some nations in transboundary basins heretofore reluctant to embrace IWRM because of the emphasis on bringing all activities in line with water management",6
"We will offer two examples from different locations and contexts: food security in Qatar, which reflects interactions between demands for water, energy, and land, and shale gas production or hydraulic fracturing in Texas, which reflects interactions between demands for water, energy, and transportation",2
"In Qatar, the implications of increasing food security (independence from imports) from 10 to 20 % was analyzed by quantifying the increased food production, considering the costs of energy, carbon, and water footprints",2
"The WEF platform would define data gaps and develop a common accounting framework for the nexus, while the CoP could help monitor the effectiveness of nexus governance by offering good governance models",16
"The WEF nexus framework can be built on joint management across the nexus sectors and supported by technologies, observations, science, and good governance as well as the formation of a nexus community of practice that could play an important role in supporting the nexus platform as it moves from planning to implementation (Lawford and Mohtar 2015)",16
"For example, the nexus platform, provided by the WEF NCoP, could help by answering questions related to achieving the water goal without sacrificing food security, given that food security is inherently dependent upon water availability",2
"This study examines the annual time series over the period of 1971–2017 for Brazil, India, China, and South Africa, and 1990–2017 for Russia, to explore the relationship between environmental quality and economic growth in correspondence with the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis as well as the Decoupling Index (DI)",8
This study concludes that economic expansion and environmental degradation are interrelated in the long run,15
"Environment degradation (CO2 emission) can be eradicated by continuous economic growth, management of energy demands and energy crises, implementation of environmentally sustainable policies, application of green technologies for the use of natural resources, and controllability of urban population growth with immediate and effective actions",8
"Excessive global greenhouse gases (GHGs), like carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), are some of the most significant causes of climate change that are accountable for by human activities",13
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted global temperature and sea level for the next 100 years in 2007 (Lau et al,13
Sustainable development goal 7 (SDG7) under this agenda is motivated to enhance international cooperation to obtain and promote clean energy research and technology with renewable energy and clean and clear fossil fuels technologies,7
"In addition, sustainable development goal 13 (SDG-13) is interlinked wit SDG-7",13
The contribution of financial development in rapid economic growth is as vital and vibrant as blood for the human body (Costantini and Martini 2010; Phimphanthavong 2013; Kaushal and Pathak 2015),8
"Financial development plays a vigorous role in economic growth by encouraging savings for increasing quantitative and qualitative capital as well as to boost investment, but at the same time, it has devastating impacts on the environment, which cannot be ignored (Jenkıns and Katırcıoglu 2010; Sadorsky 2010; Saboori et al",8
Financial development positively contributes to environmental sustainability by developing advanced green technologies and enhancing facilities for industries in research and development (Al-Mulali and Sab 2012),9
The EKC hypothesis terminology is based on the relationship between economic growth and environmental dilapidation and accurately demonstrates how environment quality is influenced by different economic expansion stages (Saboori et al,8
"However, economic growth and the rise in per capita income level lessens the degradation of the environment",8
"In 1991, a similar curve was created to show the relationship between economic expansion and environmental dilapidation (inverted U-shaped curve) to measure the effects of economic growth on environmental sustainability (Rasoulinezhad and Saboori 2018; Sarfraz et al",8
"Once these countries achieved a level of economic growth, their per capita income of environmental quality was upgraded, so the environmental awareness level also became high (Andreoni and Levinson 2001; Bhattarai et al",8
Environmental degradation has become the gravest concern socially and economically in the last two decades,15
The existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution is confirmed by a EKC with a long-run relationship,8
"EKC depicts the natural process of economic growth; the turning point of an EKC shows the economy moving toward the betterment of the environment gradually by applying green technologies, plus heightening awareness of climatic change and its harmful effect",8
Gross domestic product (GDP) is an indicator of economic growth,8
"Still, the results supported the notion that those human activities and economic growth negatively influenced the environment more than the prosperity of the country, which grows with time (Boopen and Vinesh 2011)",8
(Onafowora and Owoye 2014) and (Baek 2015) observed that an early economic development stage degraded the environment,8
The secondary or highly expansion stage of economic growth increases the quality of the environment; hence why developed and developing countries have different environmental quality,8
"Environmental destruction also comes from energy use, and energy use is a strong determinant of economic growth in the recent era",8
Energy consumption leads toward economic expansion because of productivity enhancement as well as environmental pollution,7
A strong unidirectional causal relationship is observed between GDP per capita and energy consumption per capita in seven MENA countries with high environmental quality (Mehrara 2007; Omri et al,7
"Implementation of Pooled Mean Group (PMG) and panel granger causality tests on a data set of 35 years from 1980 to 2014 observed a bi-directional causal relationship between urbanization, economic growth, and CO2 emission (Khoshnevis Yazdi and Golestani Dariani 2019)",8
The rapid growth of energy consumption directly contributes to the emission of carbon dioxide and the reason behind both factors’ growth is the growth of the urban population in Asian countries,7
"Urban population growth increases the industrialized economy and decreases the agrarian economy, which ultimately raises the energy consumption’s impact of intensive degradation of the environment (Arouri et al",7
"This is because the growing need for the consumption of natural resources directly or indirectly contributes to the production process, which generally causes wastages (raw, manufacturing, industrial) that are related to environmental degradation",15
"Global GDP growth and the ecological footprint have a 195% and 292% ratio per capita, respectively (Charfeddine and Kahia 2019)",8
"This situation was explored by Club of Rome’s economist in the Limit of Growth (1972) and The First Global Revolution (1992), which explained that environmental degradation comes from human activities and intervention in natural resources and water resources obliteration",15
"The third strand of study is related to the analysis method, i.e., the ARDL method for long- and short-run relationships and the DI to examine the growth speed of the economic expansion and environmental degradation with pre- and post-accuracy tests",15
The real GDP per capita is proxied as a key variable of economic growth,8
"1 are given below:
 Environmental sustainability Economic Growth Square of Economic Growth Control Variables i.e.Energy use (EU),Urbanization (URB),and Natural Resources (NR) In Eq",8
"In the case of Coupling/ No Decoupling (DI ≤ 0) Both factors, i.e., economic expansion and environmental degradation grow instantaneously, but the increasing CO2 emission (Environmental degradation) is faster than the economy",15
Table 3 reported the long-run relationship between GDP as economic growth and CO2 emission as an environmental indicator,8
"Environmental degradation downturns might be due to the high-income level, awareness about environmentally friendly products, and innovation to reduce environmental degradation in urban areas (Yasin et al",15
"In the second phase, all countries show weak decoupling except India and China.
 The decoupling value of India is -0.1987 (1986–2000), showing a coupling effect which means that economy and CO2 emission, growing simultaneously, but the growing speed of CO2 emission is faster than economic growth (Ruffing 2007)",8
"China is in an ever-increasing decoupling phase with the decoupling value of 0.9931, a clear indication of diminishing CO2 emission with economic growth",8
"In the total periodic phase of Brazil, China, and South Africa, economic growth diminishes the CO2 emission in the growing phase",8
"This research employed the EKC to check the relationship between CO2 emission and economic growth by using two different approaches, i.e., the EKC and the DI, to consider energy use and the urbanization natural resources to control environmental factors",8
"In the second economic phase from 1986 to 2000, the CO2 emission growth of India was faster than economic growth",8
"Overall, the study revealed that carbon dioxide emission and gross domestic product have a long-run relationship and become the cause of environmental degradation",15
"Over the past two decades, environmental degradation has continuously increased and has become a major concern for policymakers",15
"Rising greenhouse gas emissions have been attributed to rapid economic development and growth, interlinked with human activities",8
"Lastly, the DI was employed to check the speed of growth in between economic growth and pollutant gases in BRICS countries",8
The results indicate a negative and significant impact of energy consumption on poverty,7
The study suggests that the government makes the energy accessible to the people to fulfill their basic needs which ultimately reduces poverty,1
"Moreover, the government should make policies to improve the environment as the study found that environmental degradation significantly contributes to poverty",15
"According to The Poor People’s Energy Outlook (Action 2010), the shortage of energy contributes to poverty in three ways; first, it lowers the efficiency of existing earning activities; second, it sabotages new earning opportunities; and third, it increases the costs of production (Action 2012); so when access to energy will be disturbed, energy poverty takes hold on the people",7
"Energy poverty means poor people are unable to assess modern energy such as power, and if energy will not be provided to them, then they will remain poor",7
"Climate uncertainty characterized by severe weather events such as storms, droughts, floods, heatwaves, and rising sea levels and worst effects of climate change prevents the poor people to have an acceptable living standard because poor people are directly dependent on the environment for their survival (Kumar and Yashiro 2014)",13
Most of the previous researchers concluded that high economic growth (Suryahadi et al,8
Few studies established a direct effect of energy consumption on poverty and proposed that increased energy consumption is a tool for economic prosperity as well as a solution to poverty particularly in developing nations (Farooq et al,7
"2019; Okwanya and Abah 2018), whereas the indirect effect of energy consumption on poverty is unrecognized yet",7
This study aims to examine the direct and indirect effects of energy consumption on poverty in Pakistan,7
"(2007) and Su and Ang (2012), established the link between energy and economic progress that tends to reduce poverty",1
Some researchers empirically established a connection between energy consumption and poverty by following the energy transition theory (Foster et al,7
Access to modern energy services is a persistent challenge to many developing countries,7
"Therefore, Poverty reduction is one of the main challenges for the world",1
"For the achievement of SDGs, we have to target that resource which provides access to basic needs and support the communities to uplift the living standards of individuals",1
"According to the study of Bourguignon and Morrison (2002), during the last two decades, the international rate of poverty dropped from 94% in 1820 to 10.7% in 2013, whereas the global poverty share of South Asia has increased from 27.3% to 33.4% during the period of 1990–2013 and in Pakistan 50 million people are still living below the national poverty line (Deyshappriya 2018)",1
"The regions of South Asia and East Asia and the Pacific region performed well in the poverty reduction between 1990 and 2013 as the headcount ratio dropped from 60.2% to 3.5% and from 44.6% to 15.1% respectively, but there is still need to eradicate the poverty for the accomplishment of SDG 1",1
"However, the consumption of energy may pollute the environment because the energy from conventional sources is mostly generated from natural gas, lubricant, and petroleum that are the main contributors to environmental degradation",15
2010; Okwanya and Abah 2018) and a few studies have been found in the context of Pakistan which have examined the influence of EC on economic growth (Komal and Abbas 2015; Siddiqui 2004),8
"This study found that mismanagement, poor governance, and income inequality cause POV and POV to contribute to ED in Pakistan",10
"POV significantly correlated with ED because poor people have no access to clean water, toilet, and electricity; so they use charcoal and firewood to cook their food which aggravates ED",6
"Moreover, the study found that deforestation and wetland degradation are positively linked to POV",15
(2009) reviewed the literature on climate change and POV in African countries,13
"So, it is proposed that: H1: “There is a positive relationship between environmental degradation and poverty” Hasnisah et al",15
"According to the study, EC positively affects the economic growth that negatively affects POV",8
Consumption of energy causes environmental degradation (Ozcan et al,15
"2019), and environmental degradation may be a cause of the increase in poverty because the environment is the basis for the survival of poor people",15
"Similarly, consumption of energy tends to reduce poverty because the increase in consumption of energy indicates more industrialization, employment opportunities, and better food, hygienic water, health facilities, and housing facilities (Shyamsundar 2002)",1
"So, this study is an attempt to test this theoretical indirect link between environmental degradation and poverty empirically",15
So it is proposed that: H4: “Environment Degradation mediates the relationship between energy consumption and poverty” Figure 2 represents the conceptual framework of this study,7
"Third, this study investigated the association between environmental degradation and poverty (H3)",15
"After confirming the three hypotheses, the study examined the mediating role of environment degradation between energy consumption and poverty (H4)",7
"The study has used some control variables like “economic growth, population, and globalization” (Zafar et al",8
"Per capita, energy consumption is used as an independent variable",7
The environment is used as a mediator between energy consumption and poverty that is measured by per capita carbon emissions (CO2),7
"The study also uses some control variables such as economic growth, globalization, and population size",8
"In model 1, the significant association between dependent (POV) and independent (EC) has been tested, along with some control variables (economic growth, globalization, and population)",8
"In addition to EC, some control variables such as economic growth and population are also significantly associated with POV",8
The coefficient of economic growth (− 6.1896) shows an inverse association with POV at a 1% level of significance while the coefficient of the population (0.2750) shows a positive association with POV at a 5% level of significance,8
"In addition to EC, some control variables such as economic growth and population are also significantly associated with ED in the long run",8
The coefficient of economic growth (0.0050) is positively related to 1% while the coefficient of the population (0.00030) is positive and significant at 10% while the study found no long-run significant association between globalization and ED,8
"In addition to ED, some control variables such as economic growth and population are also significantly related to POV in the long run",8
"The coefficient of economic growth (− 19.897) is inversely related at 10% while the coefficient of the population (2.4182) is positively related at a 10% level of significance, while the study found no long-run significant association between globalization and POV",8
"In addition to EC, some control variables such as economic growth and population are also significantly associated with POV",8
The coefficient of economic growth (− 0.4976) shows inverse and negative association with POV at 10% level of significance while the coefficient of globalization (1.3986) shows a positive association with POV at 5% significance level and the coefficient of globalization (2.6372) is also positively associated with POV at 10% level of significance at a first lag,8
"In addition to EC, some control variables such as economic growth and globalization are also significantly related to ED in the short run",8
The coefficient of economic growth (0.00065) shows a positive and significant relationship with ED at a 1% level of significance while globalization (0.0057) is positively related to ED at a 10% level of significance,8
"Moreover, economic growth and population are also significantly associated with POV in the short run while globalization (5.0364) is positively related at a 5% level of significance",8
"Similarly, the results of control variables such as economic growth and globalization are also significantly associated with POV",8
The coefficient of economic growth (− 0.1311) shows a negative association with POV at a 5% level of significance at first lag while the coefficient of globalization (0.6966) shows a positive association with POV at a 10% level of significance,8
"However, the consumption of energy may pollute the environment because the energy from the conventional sources is mostly generated from natural gas, lubricant, and petroleum that are the main contributors to environmental degradation",15
The study found a significant negative association between energy consumption and poverty in the short run as well as in the long run; these findings are similar to previous studies (Goozee 2017; Okwanya and Abah 2018; Sakanko and David 2018),7
"We also found a positive significant association between environmental degradation and poverty in the short run as well as in the long run; these findings are similar to Satterthwaite (2003), Shyamsundar (2002), and Swinton et al",15
Environmental degradation increases poverty because the environment is a basis for the survival of poor people that became suspected when the environment becomes deteriorated,15
"Energy consumption directly affects poverty in the sense that when people consume more energy, then their living standard will enhance in such a way that people may get adequate access to their necessities such as food, hygienic water, health facilities, and housing which in turn reduce the level of poverty",7
"This study has some theoretical and practical implications: first, this study extends the available literature on poverty by empirically establishing the indirect effect of energy consumption on poverty",7
"Second, the government should focus to make energy accessible to the people for poverty reduction in Pakistan",1
"Third, Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should step in to regulate greenhouse gases in the electricity sector under the Clean Air Act",15
"Fourth, the government should provide subsidies to promote the use of renewable energy to keep the environment clean",7
"Fifth, the government should impose a tax on the consumption of non-renewable energy",7
"Sixth, the government should encourage the private sector to increase the production of clean energy by subsidizing renewable energy",7
"The present study has few limitations: this study uses only one measure of environment degradation, Energy consumption, and Poverty; future studies can be conducted by using different proxies of these variables",7
"Women are over-represented globally among the food insecure population, yet only recently have analyses on gender differences in perceived life satisfaction (LS) controlled for food insecurity (FI)",2
"Using data collected through the 2014 Gallup® World Poll, which included the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), responses to the FIES (8 questions) comprised the FI variable, with 0 affirmative responses denoting food security, and 1–8 affirmative responses denoting FI",2
"Food security is a top priority for many countries worldwide, emerging as both a moral imperative and a legislative commitment",2
"This is reflected in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework, and in efforts to develop indicators, which better measure food insecurity (FI)",2
"The global community largely recognizes food security as existing when, “..all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life,” (FAO 1996), yet we struggle to accurately measure who the food insecure are, and where they live",2
"A push for food security measures that can accurately capture the complex dimensions of food availability, access, utilization, and stability has continued, and remains unfulfilled (Cafiero et al",2
"The Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) is a global food security measure which directly asks people about food-related behaviors and experiences associated with FI, building on a sound statistical basis used to enable cross-country comparisons and gender disaggregated results (Cafiero et al",2
"It is comprised of eight questions that assess behavioral domains known to exist at differing levels of FI, and was adopted as one of two indicators used to monitor SDG 2.1, “End hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round,” of which the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is custodian",2
"The relationship between gender and FI has been documented well in the last decades, notably in low-income countries, and specifically while considering women’s empowerment indicators",5
"Additionally, during times of crisis in low-income countries, women and girls are often encouraged or forced to reduce their intake in favor of other household members, which can result in higher malnutrition rates among women in food insecure populations (Brown et al",2
"A study using datasets from 2001 to 2008 NHANES data shows intra-household differences in food security, consistent with the present study’s findings: U.S",2
"External to the household, the ways in which women’s and girls’ food security are affected can be seen through their limited access to education and employment opportunities (Asian Development Bank 2013), which can stunt their economic autonomy and weaken their bargaining position in the family and community",2
"Women’s weaker decision-making can translate into little or no voice in differential feeding and caregiving which favor boys and men, often resulting in malnutrition and food insecurity, and potentially lower health outcomes (Asian Development Bank, 2013)",2
"These limitations can affect not only the woman’s food security and nutrition, but also that of household members dependent on her",2
"Similar to food security, wellbeing as a latent trait has been researched from various sector perspectives",2
"It is generally agreed that a wide range of functions and capabilities will determine if people are able to lead a good life, with current research including economic status, physical and mental health, family circumstances, and human and political rights measures, among others (Deaton 2008)",3
This reinforces that LS is of paramount interest for researchers and policy-makers aiming to support the wellbeing and food security of a society (Graham 2015),2
"This analysis and subsequent paper authorship was conducted via collaboration between McGill University’s Institute for Global Food Security and FAO’s Voices of the Hungry (VoH) project, responsible for developing the FIES and implementing it for SDG indicator 2.1.2 reporting",2
"Range of severity of food insecurity, (Voices of the Hungry, 2015) For the purposes of this study, individual respondents were categorized as “food secure” if all questions were answered “no”",2
"The Rasch model is widely used in education and psychology studies, and provides the statistical basis for experience-based food security measurement (Cafiero et al",2
"A new variable was created that combined food security and gender to form mutually exclusive categories, comprised of: food secure men, food insecure men, food secure women, and food insecure women",2
These variables were chosen for their influence on food security from recent and relevant literature,2
"The dependent variable used for MLR model 1 was FI, which refers to the individual’s food security status as classified by the FIES raw score, or the number of affirmatively answered FIES questions",2
"More men reported attaining some secondary (49.9%) or completing a tertiary level education (13.0%) than did women (45.6% secondary, 12.0% tertiary education)",4
"While progress in developing and implementing individual-level measures continues, these indicators are not mainstreamed in the field of food security measurement to date (Brunelli and Viviani 2014)",2
"A recent example is the case of GDP growth and the “Arab Spring”, a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests in multiple Middle Eastern and North African countries from 2010 to 2012",8
"For policy-makers, subjective wellbeing measures can be valuable indicators, which can alert them to issues that other economic indicators may fail to identify; these can be protective for large-scale community infrastructure and national food security planning",2
"As there is a correlation between income and wellbeing (and food security), this present study controlled for income",2
"or UK, however other factors may be more influential on LS (the evaluative side of wellbeing): community trust, employment, mental and physical health, and the quality of governance and rule of law (Helliwell et al",16
"The sample size of 1000 respondents per country (excluding those larger population countries such as India or Russia) is a limitation for formalizing conclusions concerning representation of minority populations, indigenous populations, or specifically vulnerable people",1
"This enriches the current body of knowledge by demonstrating that this disparity in food security does include those higher income countries, as well as low-income countries",2
"A key strength of this study was the large and diverse sample provided by the 2014 GWP, which allowed the relationship between food security and LS to be explored in a geographically and culturally diverse sample of individuals",2
"This finding is of paramount interest to food security and wellbeing researchers alike, as it is a global phenomenon, demonstrating gender differences in LS, when controlling for FI at the individual level",2
"It has been demonstrated throughout this study that, in order to measure the progress of societies, we need to develop and uniformly administer reliable indicators, which extend beyond the traditional measures for wellbeing and food security",2
Climate action got attention from the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),13
"Reported results indicate the negative effect of ERTs and IQ towards CBCO2, which means that adoption of ERTs and better IQ is supportive in controlling environmental degradation",15
"Since environmental regulations are designed by policy institutions, therefore, the quality of such institutions reflects the level of environmental degradation in an economy (Awais and Wang 2019)",15
"In this context, green growth plays an important role in economic growth and environmental sustainability (Danish and Ulucak 2020)",8
Green growth refers to green production and consumption patterns by making use of ERTs,8
ERTs are the technologies which are used in the production and processing of goods or services that lead to mitigate environmental degradation (Mensah et al,15
"For emission mitigation, green technology can play a vital role as countries are now making it a vital part of their policy and planning",9
It can be assumed that technological advancement can lead up to combat climate change and the reduction of carbon emissions,13
Most of the time environmental protection activities generate funding from the public sector to address their issues; such cases are beneficial for the governments,15
"The private sector also invests in environmental protection issues such as the energy sector, but do see its benefits",15
"Many top-tier countries like China, Japan, Russia, the USA, and most European countries are shifting towards renewable to cut down their carbon emissions helping both developed and developing countries to identify the loopholes in their economic development",8
It is one of the most recent topics where IQ has an impact on environmental degradation,15
"It helps to set up a rule of law, tries to resist corruption, and shows improvement in the management of public finances (Wang et al",16
"Studies on environmental degradation have been conducted in the past, but little is known about the institutional role in environmental sustainability",15
Literature is silent in explaining the role of these top five carbon emitters in the world’s environmental degradation under the umbrella of the EKC hypothesis,15
Literature is reviewed to develop a logical model in the discourse of environment-related technologies and environmental degradation,15
"Afterward, the rationale of relevant literature is described to identify the gap.
 Research has been carried out to understand ERT’s role in green growth",8
"(2019), the effect of technological innovation on green growth is observed",8
"It was established that a certain region’s requirements differ from each other, but the overall use of technological innovation is essential for green growth",8
"As technological advancements are gaining importance to combat environmental degradation, the study by Sohag et al",15
(2015) has discussed the use of technological innovation on energy usage in Malaysia,8
Our study contributes towards green technology but concerns top emitters of the world,9
Another unique study about public-private partnerships concerning carbon dioxide emissions due to technological innovation was conducted by Shahbaz et al,8
"(2020) studied the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and urbanization, globalization, financial development, and consumption of renewable energy",7
"Additionally, the ERTs and IQ are proposed to check the reduction in the CBCO2 emissions because ERT and IQ are found to reduce environmental degradation (Ibrahim and Law 2016; Danish and Ulucak 2020)",15
"EC is used for energy consumption in QBTU, collected from IEA (2018)",7
It refers to the situation that economic growth has a positive impact on CBCO2 emissions but insignificantly,8
"Since theoretically proposed that the ERT is helpful to reduce carbon emissions, the ERT is found to be supportive in mitigation of CBCO2 emissions in the top 5 carbon-emitting countries (China, India, Japan, Russia, and the USA)",13
ERT improves the efficiency of production by the transformation of energy thereby helping the CBCO2 emissions reduction,13
The development of ERT also improves the share of renewable energy in total energy and helps to reduce energy intensity,7
"Therefore, the top 5 emitters need to improve IQ to strategize environmental concerns because they are responsible for 59% of the environmental degradation in the world",15
"This work aims to assess multidimensional energy poverty and energy efficiency for environmental policy measures using data envelopment analysis (DEA), a DEA-Like mathematical composite indicator applied on a dataset based on multiple sets of variables from South Asian economies",7
"In contrast, the long-term effects of remittance revenue, economic growth, and urbanization on energy use are approximately 20%, 8.25%, and 0.03%, respectively",8
"Nearly 1.1 billion citizens globally have encountered electricity shortages in recent years, with 1 billion losing connections to renewable energy",7
"Clean energy and domestic energy networks have been the subject of several research on their affordability, durability, and long-term viability (Nikolaidis and Poullikkas 2017; Sun et al",7
"However, to our understanding, few attempts have been made to recognize the social determinants of multidimensional energy insecurity in South Asia, where inequalities in household socioeconomic status thwart efforts to gain universal access to renewable energy (Azzimonti 2018)",7
The period 2014–2024 was declared a decade of sustainable energy for all by the United Nations General Assembly,7
"Goal 7 reads: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all (Mohsin et al",7
The multidimensional poverty measurement consists of two groups of methods,1
"However, considering the joint distribution of deficiencies at the household level, we use the second method to identify multidimensional poor households",1
The primary aim is to develop a tool that provides decision-support to reduce energy poverty with a smooth transition,7
"They will be unable to invest further on access to energy supplies until their incomes rise, and their hardship will begin (Sinha and Shahbaz 2018)",7
"Gender inequality impacts employment openings and wage costs in South Asia, with female jobs in the private sector being compensated less than male employees",5
Energy stability and environmental protection are critical concepts that must be well described and quantified,15
"On the other hand, many regional countries have vast amounts of renewable energy resources, which will support all regional countries if an improved energy exchange system is developed (Mohsin et al",7
"According to the overall energy poverty ranking, Bhutan is also more stable in terms of electricity stability and environmental protection",15
"India alone is expected to raise its energy consumption by over 140%, relative to a global increase of 55%",7
"The area includes transitional societies that are dealing with inflation, underdevelopment, population growth, and environmental degradation (Alemzero et al",15
"The concept has even gained traction recently, given the Paris Agreement’s importance to limit global emissions levels by 1.5 degrees Celsius",13
Population group identification is at most risk of being unable to meet the basic needs through income-based poverty indicators,1
"The overall electrification rate in the area is 74%, indicating that about 417 million citizens do not have access to electricity",7
"South Asia’s population is expected to increase by 25% by 2050, according to projections.
 Average energy poverty index Economic development, industrialization, and increasing population growth are creating questions regarding energy supply and environmental sustainability",8
"Increased population implies more need for facilities, facilities, and transportation networks, which means more energy consumption (Nawaz et al",7
About 35% of Bangladesh’s population does not have access to electricity,7
Electricity generation in the energy field is mainly reliant on fossil fuel supplies,7
"African countries are still in the lock-in state of diversifying their energy mix, consuming an overwhelming 81% of their energy from fossil fuel sources (Alemzero et al",7
"Consequently, these FDI, GDP, and trade openness will help to reduce energy poverty in the region",7
"The findings suggest that many of the variables have a mixed effect across nations, meaning that policymakers can coordinate initiatives for social, environmental, and economic growth at the same time",8
The rise in energy poverty may be justified by a similar pattern we saw in Sri Lanka’s growing share of renewable energy,7
"In 1925, Sir Ganga Ram built Renala, a power station at the BRB Canal that produced electricity using water’s kinetic energy potential",7
"The percentage for Pakistan’s rural population with electricity access is 70.66%, and that for Sri Lanka is 82.65%, which is comparatively higher",7
"Fossil fuel energy consumption was recorded at 68.69% (% of total) for India, making it the highest value holder, while Nepal had the lowest percentage of 11.56%",7
"In the 1980s, hydropower accounted for 70% of Pakistan’s energy mix; however, owing to political uncertainty, each new government initiated short-term schemes, reducing hydropower’s share to just 31%",7
Table 2 shows Pakistan’s energy mix,7
"The response to this issue is to promote energy saving, improved energy production, and the use of renewable energy sources for power generation",7
"Fortunately, Pakistan has a geographical position that lends itself to the use of renewable energy sources",7
"Bhutan has complete access to electricity, which is primarily produced by hydropower",7
The lack of clean energy options in Bhutan’s total energy mix is mostly to blame for the rise in CO2 emissions per capita,7
"Bhutan had no green energy options in its energy mix during the study span of 2006–2017.
 Individual indicator score Nonetheless, the country’s average CO2 emissions are far lower than those of other countries in the area",7
"Sri Lanka’s energy poverty score has improved due to a policy shift toward clean energy use, enhancing the country’s energy efficiency while reducing environmental burdens",7
"South Asian countries plan to enhance existing industries’ production capacities, create green jobs in the economy by 2020, and fight climate change (Nawaz et al",13
"As a result, the countries must pursue and maximize their clean energy capacity to solve the problems associated with insufficient power supply",7
Creating a robust policy system powerful enough to impact decision-makers is a significant roadblock in the renewable energy market’s growth,7
"Even though Pakistan has established numerous plans and policies, the renewable energy sector’s priority remains poor",7
"Modern energy services dependent on renewable resources have little technical capability for architecture, construction, deployment, management, and maintenance",7
"In contrast, a percentage of 0.32 was recorded for the energy squared poverty gap (Table 4).
 Individual indicator score In developed countries, the renewable energy market faces a number of economic problems, including small-scale markets, high capital costs, and lengthy payback times",7
"Furthermore, the clean energy market is concerned with a high level of potential threats and uncertainty",7
The implementation of these projects has aided the green energy market’s growth in several emerging and industrialized countries,7
Which often aids project promoters in making informed decisions about such predetermined factors and consequences,3
Energy efficiency retrofits are another term in this domain that aims to change and improve the output of any system that has already been built,7
"In 2017, these three countries imported 88%, 81%, and 73% of their overall energy sources, respectively—the proportion of renewable energy sources (RES) in electricity production",7
"The proportion of RES in electricity generation has increased significantly in Sri Lanka, from 0% in 2006 to 9% in 2017, rising at a pace of 26.99% per year",7
"Pakistan and Afghanistan each have about 1% renewable energy in their power production, while most of the four countries have little to no renewable energy",7
Providing a reliable and renewable energy source has emerged as one of the most important and extensively researched science issues,7
"Energy research is linked to several issues that complicate energy availability reliably and sufficiently, such as rising energy demand and climate change",13
"Climate change issues, on the other hand, contribute to discussions regarding electricity supply sources",13
Energy protection and environmental management concerns could stifle economic growth and increase poverty,8
"Pakistan and Sri Lanka showed significant variation between the rate of change in per capita energy consumption (i.e., 0.41% and 2.39%, respectively)",7
The following are the results of variance decomposition showing that endogenous energy consumption shocks define most energy consumption outcomes,7
Energy consumption declines steadily from year one to year ten,7
"We find that, of the three independent variables studied in this article, remittance income has the most significant effect on energy demand, surpassing that of economic development and industrialization",8
"In addition to insufficient electricity generation, weak energy delivery networks are another critical factor contributing to increased power demand and supply gaps",7
The authors of a new study looked at ways to improve hydropower exchange between Nepal and India,7
"It suggests that incomes, economic development, industrialization, and energy use have a long-term impact on energy poverty",8
"However, it is worth noting that renewables account for less than 5% of total energy consumption in most South Asia countries",7
"Our results suggest that increased outflows would boost energy demand in South Asian countries in terms of policy implications, resulting in positive economic development",8
"Furthermore, this study’s findings suggest that a rise in remittance income may help developed countries gain access to reliable and long-term renewable energy",7
"Policymakers should devise strategic policies regarding the promotion of migrant workers based on the findings of this study to ensure secure and sustainable renewable energy, which is necessary to achieve SDG 7 by 2030.",7
hieving carbon-neutrality has become a global agenda following the ratification of the Paris Agreement,13
"Therefore, this study specifically aimed at evaluating the environmental impacts associated with energy consumption and other key macroeconomic variables in the context of Bangladesh over the 1975–2016 period",7
"The outcomes from this study are expected to facilitate the carbon-neutrality objective of Bangladesh and, therefore, enable the nation to comply with its commitments concerning the attainment of the targets enlisted under the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals declarations",13
"The overall findings from empirical exercises reveal that aggregate energy consumption, fossil fuel consumption, and natural gas consumption boost the carbon footprint figures of Bangladesh",7
"Besides, economic growth and international trade are also evidenced to further increase the carbon footprints",8
Achieving carbon-neutrality has become a global agenda following the ratification of the Paris Agreement (Qin et al,13
"Moreover, the Goldman Sachs Investment Bank has classified Bangladesh as one of the Next Eleven (N11) nations that are poised to achieve substantial degrees of economic growth in the 21st century",8
"Among the N11 nations, Bangladesh accounted for the second-highest real GDP growth rate of 6.4% in 2015 (Kuepper 2019, May 06)",8
"For instance, the water quality in Bangladesh has persistently deteriorated primarily due to the disposal of industrial effluents, domestic waste, and agricultural runoffs (Hassan et al",6
"Besides, deforestation is another of the major forms of environmental degradation in Bangladesh since the nation is extremely vulnerable to natural calamities like floods and landslides (Islam et al",15
Bangladesh is among the 196 global economies that have ratified the Paris Agreement at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) in December 2015 (Li et al,13
"Besides, it is also of local interest for Bangladesh since the nation is one of the global nations that are highly susceptible to climate change atrocities (Hasnat et al",13
"2018). Besides, reducing CO2 emissions can also be considered as a national agenda since the emission-induced climate change consequences have been acknowledged to negatively affect the domestic sectors as well, especially agriculture (Shakoor et al. 2021; Dagar et al",13
"Since the agriculture sector makes a decent contribution to Banglades's total value added, achieving carbon-neutrality can also be effective in facilitating the nation's food security agenda",2
"Most importantly, transforming from a pollution-intesive to a low-carbon economy would ultimately enable Bangladesh to simultaneously achieve both economic and environmental welfare in the years to come.  Among the major factors responsible for environmental degradation in Bangladesh, the nation’s monotonic fossil fuel dependency, in the past and also at present, is said to have adversely impacted the environmental quality (Murshed et al",15
"The nation has predominantly utilized both local and imported fossil fuels to bridge its persistently increasing energy demand; consequently, a major portion of Bangladesh’s total final energy consumption level is currently generated from the combustion of fossil fuels (World Bank 2020; Murshed and Alam 2021)",7
"During the post-2000 period, fossil fuels on average accounted for almost two-thirds of Bangladesh’s aggregate primary energy consumption figures (World Bank 2020)",7
"Under such circumstances, it is has been prescribed that the nation should gradually phase out its fossil fuel dependency through the addition of renewable energy resources into the national energy mix (Murshed and Tanha 2020)",7
"Hence, keeping environmental sustainability into cognizance, a Clean Energy Transition (CET)Footnote 1 is extremely important for Bangladesh",7
"However, the nation is yet to succeed in enhancing its shares of renewables in both the total primary energy consumption and electricity output levels (World Bank 2020)",7
"Against this backdrop, this paper aims to empirically identify the macroeconomic factors which can facilitate Bangladesh’s carbon-neutrality objective and enable the nation to comply with its Paris Agreement and SDG commitments",13
"Compared to CO2 emissions, the CFP are more comprehensive indicators of CO2-induced environmental degradation since these footprints are measured in terms of the quantity of productive land area needed to absorb the CO2 emissions stemming from the combustion of fossil fuels, in particular Wackernagel et al",15
"To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the only study that specifically scrutinizes the relationships between CFP and energy consumption for the case of Bangladesh",7
"Lastly, this study adds to the limited literature that has overlooked the issues of Structural Breaks (SB) in ascertaining the energy consumption-environmental quality nexus for Bangladesh",7
Besides a snapshot of the renewable energy consumption scenario of Bangladesh is also highlighted in this section,7
"Following its independence, the size of the Bangladesh economy has substantially enlarged whereby higher economic growth has simultaneously degraded the environment",8
"However, the nation is yet to significantly increase its overall renewable energy shares in the total final energy consumption and electricity output figures",7
Figure 3 illustrates the energy consumption trends in Bangladesh over the 1990–2015 period,7
It can be seen that renewable energy accounted for almost 72% of the total final energy consumption figures of Bangladesh in 1990,7
"Between 1990 and 2015, renewable energy shares have reduced by almost 37 percentage points",7
"However, following the acute shortages in the natural gas supply, the government is planning to set up coal-fired power plants to meet the electricity demand",7
"However, diversifying the energy mix in this manner would boost the fossil fuel dependency of the nation whereby CET in Bangladesh can be expected to be further delayed",7
"Simultaneously, renewable energy resources are ideally to be augmented into the energy systems which, in turn, can be anticipated to reinstate environmental welfare in Bangladesh.
 The trends in renewable and nonrenewable energy and electricity consumptions in Bangladesh 
Source:
World Bank (
2020
)
 The preceding studies focusing on the impacts of energy consumption on the environment have predominantly evaluated the effects of aggregate energy consumption on CO2 emissions (Ben Jebli et al",7
"In a study on Turkey, Ozturk and Acaravci (2010) scrutinized the energy consumption-CO2 emissions nexus using annual data from 1968 to 1995",7
"(2016) found a long-run association between energy use, CO2 emissions, and economic growth in China between 1990 and 2012",8
"Besides, the authors also asserted that energy consumption causally influences CO2 emissions without the feedback association",7
"In a study by Mirzaei and Bekri (2017) on Iran, the authors predicted a positive correlation between energy consumption and CO2 emissions",7
"In line with their findings, the authors concluded that energy consumption and emissions of CO2 in Iran are likely to increase by 4.3% and 5%, respectively, between 2010 and 2050",7
"(2018) found a long-run association between energy consumption and CO2 emissions for 170 low, lower-middle, upper-middle, and high-income economies",7
"Moreover, the authors also found evidence of heterogeneous causal nexuses between energy consumption and CO2 emissions across the different income groups",7
(2020) found evidence of bidirectional short-run causation between total primary energy consumption and CO2 emissions for all seven nations apart from Indonesia,7
"In the context of Indonesia, a reverse causality running from CO2 emissions to total primary energy consumption was found in the short run",7
"The energy consumption-CO2 emission nexus was also evaluated using disaggregated energy consumption data (Murshed, 2021c)",7
The findings from these studies have collectively referred to the relationship between energy consumption and CO2 emissions being conditional on the type of energy resource consumed (Dong et al,7
(2016) found the consumption of renewable energy resources to lower down CO2 emissions in the context of 17 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries,7
(2017) found renewable energy consumption and CO2 emissions to be negatively correlated for Pakistan while Sinha and Shahbaz (2018) referred to renewable electricity output accounting for lower CO2 emissions in India,7
(2017) predicted that replacing the consumption of coal with wind power is likely to significantly reduce the nation’s CO2 emission figures in the future,7
"Likewise, the consumption of solar power has also been identified as a means of curbing CO2 emissions (Lodi et al",7
"(2021) recently documented evidence of renewable energy consumption not being able to explain the variations in the CO2 emission levels in the G7 countries; however, the authors did conclude that nuclear energy use is a credible means of abating emissions in these countries. Hence, these aforementioned studies have mostly identified fossil fuel consumption to be detrimental to environmental quality",7
"Although the initial studies on the energy consumption-environmental quality nexus have predominantly used the CO2 emission levels to proxy for environmental quality, contemporary studies have preferred to use the EFP to quantify the state of the environment (Nathaniel 2021; Solarin et al",7
"In another study on 44 African nations, Nathaniel and Adeleye (2021) remarked that energy consumption is detrimental to achieving environmental sustainability across Africa since higher energy consumption was evidenced to boost the EFP of these nations",7
"Similarly, in the context of 11 newly industrialized economies, Destek and Sarkodie (2019) found that energy consumption accentuated the EFP across these countries between 1977 and 2013",7
"However, the country-specific analysis statistically certified the positive energy consumption-EFP nexus for China, India, Mexico, Singapore and Thailand but not for Brazil, Malaysia, Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, and Turkey",7
The positive energy consumption-EFP nexus was also presented in the study by Baloch et al,7
(2019) showed that both renewable and nonrenewable energy consumption had positive long-run associations with the EFP,7
"However, the marginal impacts of renewable energy consumption, in this regard, were found to be significantly lower than that of nonrenewable energy consumption",7
"Hence, these results suggested that renewable energy is a relatively environmentally friendly fuel",7
"Using annual data from 1980 to 2014, the authors claimed that greater consumption of renewable energy reduced the EFP while nonrenewable energy consumption was found to increase the EFP",7
The role of energy consumption on the EFP of Malaysia was assessed by Ahmed et al,7
The empirical results indicated that only in the long-run energy consumption increased the EFP in Malaysia,7
"Thus, the authors highlighted that energy consumption, especially in the form of renewable energy resources, in the long run, would lead to better environmental quality in South Africa",7
"Besides, disaggregating overall energy consumption into oil and gas consumption, Majeed et al",7
"Ulucak and Danish (2020), in the context of the OECD nations, documented evidence of renewable energy consumption helping to reduce the CFP figures of these countries",7
"Furthermore, the authors also asserted that the transition from nonrenewable to renewable energy within these nations can significantly help to improve the environmental quality since fossil fuel consumption was evidenced to boost the CFP figures",7
The previous studies on the impacts of energy consumption on environmental quality in Bangladesh have also been predominantly centered on impacts on CO2 emissions in particular,7
"(2012), the authors found a long-run association between aggregate energy consumption and CO2 emissions in Bangladesh over the 1972–2006 period",7
"However, the results indicated a unidirectional causality stemming from energy consumption to CO2 emissions",7
"In contrast, Khan (2013) could not establish a statistically significant causal linkage between energy consumption and CO2 emissions using annual data from 1965 to 2007 in the context of Bangladesh",7
(2020) probed into the energy consumption-CO2 emission nexus between 1972 and 2010,7
The relevant studies in this regard have mostly claimed that the nonlinear inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions is conditional on the level of energy utilized within the economy (Al-mulali and Ozturk 2016; Le and Ozturk 2020),8
(2013) employed the EKC model and found total energy consumption to adversely impact the nation’s CO2 emissions both in the short- and the long run,7
The authors also remarked that energy consumption had a critical role to play to bend the EKC for Bangladesh,7
(2017) also explored the impacts of energy consumption on CO2 emissions under the EKC hypothesis-testing framework,7
"In line with the findings, the authors concluded that in the long run energy consumption contributed to higher CO2 emissions across all five South Asian countries",7
"Apart from the country-specific examinations, the energy consumption-CO2 emissions nexus concerning Bangladesh was also explored using panel datasets",7
(2019) found energy consumption to catalyze CO2 emissions across the panel of the N11 economies,7
(2017) concluded that energy consumption and financial stability degrade environmental quality by boosting CO2 emissions in the South Asia countries,7
"In a similar study using disaggregated energy consumption data for the N11 nations, Sinha et al",7
(2017) concluded that renewable energy consumption reduced CO2 emissions while biomass and nonrenewable energy consumption increased CO2 emissions,7
(2016) found a positive correlation between total energy consumption and CO2 emissions,7
"Besides, in the short run, a unidirectional causality running from CO2 emissions to energy consumption was also evidenced",7
A similar correlation between energy consumption and CO2 emissions concerning these five South Asian economies was also asserted in the study by Zakaria and Bibi (2019),7
"Although several studies investigated the impacts of energy use on CO2 emissions, no country-specific study has been conducted to assess the energy consumption-CFP nexus in the Bangladesh context",7
"In a study on 13 Asian economies including Bangladesh, Lu (2020) highlighted that since the energy mix of the Asian countries is predominantly fossil fuel-intensive, a rise in the overall energy consumption level adds to the EFP figures of these nations",7
"(2019) found evidence regarding higher energy consumption, within 59 countries under the BRI of China, attributing to the rise in the EFP",7
(2019) concluded that renewable energy consumption contributed to lower down the EFP while fossil fuel consumption was found to boost the EFP,7
"Therefore, it is apparent from the aforementioned empirical evidences on Bangladesh that the use of the CFP to assess the energy consumption-environmental quality nexus is yet to be extensively explored",7
"Moreover, most of the existing studies have predominantly assessed the impacts of aggregate energy consumption on Bangladesh’s environmental quality",7
"However, the possible fuel-specific heterogeneous impacts of energy consumption on the environmental attributes need to be evaluated for policy implications",7
The variable EN refers to the total energy consumption per capita levels,7
The empirical model is controlled for the level of economic growth within the Bangladesh economy since the quality of the environment is believed to be influenced by the economic activities which take place along the growth stream (Liang and Yang 2019),8
Several studies have used real national income levels to proxy for the level of economic growth (Nathaniel and Khan 2020; Ahmed et al,8
"Considering the possible heterogeneity of the environmental impacts of economic growth, the sign of the elasticity parameter ∂2 could also be either positive or negative (Sharif et al",8
"On the other hand, the hydroelectricity consumption data is the only renewable energy (nonfossil fuel) consumption data that is available in the Bangladesh context",7
"The CFP, aggregate energy consumption, real GDP and trade openness are positively skewed while fossil fuel consumption, nonfossil fuel consumption, natural gas consumption, hydroelectricity consumption, and urbanization are negatively skewed",7
"Thus, just after independence, the economy of Bangladesh could not take off in a robust manner which could have possibly influence the energy consumption-environmental quality nexus that is being explored",7
The elasticity estimates reveal that higher aggregate energy consumption levels tend to boost the CFP of Bangladesh in the long-run,7
"A 1% rise in the per capita total energy consumption levels is predicted to increase the per capita CFP by 0.19%–0.21%, on average, ceteris paribus",7
A similar positive correlation between overall energy consumption and EFP was reported in the studies by Destek and Sarkodie (2019) and Baloch et al,7
"Although the aggregate energy consumption levels are found to be positively associated with the CFP, heterogeneous impacts are ascertained at the disaggregated per capita energy consumption levels",7
"Hence, the government’s recent decision to introduce coal into the national energy mix could further jeopardize the prospects of ensuring environmental sustainability in Bangladesh",7
"Rather, it is ideal for the nation to integrate renewable energy resources into the energy system to gradually phase out fossil fuel dependency",7
"The authors asserted that higher consumption of nonrenewable energy was responsible for higher CFP levels while and increasing renewable energy reduced the CFP of these nations.
 For a robustness check of the long-run elasticity estimates, the impacts of natural gas and hydroelectricity consumptions on the CFP are also explored",7
"Among the other key determinants of CFP, the elasticity estimates show that economic growth in Bangladesh is not conducive to ensuring environmental sustainability",8
"Hence, it can be said that the nation has traditionally traded off higher economic growth for lower environmental quality",8
"This can also be explained in terms of Bangladesh’s energy consumption trends which have predominantly been spearheaded by fossil fuels including natural gas, petroleum oils and coal",7
"Since both Bangladesh and Pakistan share similar economic and energy consumption structures, it can be said that both these nations are yet to effectively safeguard their respective environment",7
It is apparent that total energy consumption in Bangladesh affects the nation’s CFP,7
"The estimates indicate a unidirectional causal association stemming from aggregate energy consumption to CFP, without the feedback",7
This feedback causal association suggests that environmental degradation in the form of rising CFP levels are likely to trigger awareness regarding the need for ensuring environmental sustainability within Bangladesh,15
"Hence, keeping into consideration the corresponding elasticity estimates, these causality findings indicate that energy consumption plays a vital role in influencing Bangladesh’s CFP",7
"The finding of the unidirectional causality running from total energy consumption to CFP is parallel to the findings reported by Destek and Sarkodie (2019) for 11 newly industrialized economies.
 Besides, the causality estimates reported in Table 7 confirm the existence of a unidirectional causal relationship stemming from the per capita real GDP and the CFP levels of Bangladesh",7
"Similarly, a unidirectional causal influence of economic growth on the EFP for the case of European nations was also highlighted in the study by Alola et al",8
"In line with this notion, the majority of the world economies have ratified the Paris Agreement and have committed to attaining carbon-neutrality at the earliest",13
"Therefore, this study specifically aimed at evaluating the environmental impacts associated with energy consumption and other key macroeconomic variables in the context of Bangladesh over the 1975–2016 period",7
"The overall findings from empirical exercises revealed that aggregate energy consumption, fossil fuel consumption, and natural gas consumption boost the CFP of Bangladesh",7
"Besides, economic growth and international trade are also evidenced to increase the CFP in Bangladesh",8
"Therefore, the overall findings from this study can be expected to enable Bangladesh to comply with its commitments concerning the attainment of the environmental welfare targets enlisted under the Paris Agreement and the United Nations SDG declarations",13
"Firstly, since the results indicated that the traditional fossil fuel dependency of Bangladesh is one of the major factors responsible for the surge in the nation’s CFP figures during the period of this study, it is ideal for the government to diversify the national energy mix",7
"In this regard, the government must invest in renewable energy technology development in order to elevate the share of renewables in the total final energy consumption and electricity output figures of Bangladesh",7
"Besides, energy infrastructural development should also be prioritized to further facilitate the integration of renewable energy into the domestic energy system",7
"Simultaneously, Bangladesh should also try to attract foreign direct investments toward its renewable energy sector which can be expected to bridge the nation’s technological constraints which have traditionally inhibited the CET phenomenon in Bangladesh",7
Such cross-border intra-regional flows of renewable energy into Bangladesh can be anticipated to reduce the nation’s CFP figures further,7
"At the same time, the government should also incentivize renewable energy utilization within the production processes by extending low-interest loans to private sector projects that are directly linked with renewable energy development in Bangladesh",7
"Simultaneously, the stringency of the environmental protection laws should be enhanced so that the foreign countries do not exploit the weak environmental regulations of Bangladesh to relocate their dirty industries to Bangladesh",15
"Furthermore, it is recommended that Bangladesh includes renewable energy in its import basket which can effectively facilitate the CET phenomenon to help the nation achieve its carbon-neutrality objectives",7
"As part of the future scope of research, this paper can be extended by controlling for institutional quality since the poor quality of institutions is one of the other key factors responsible for environmental degradation in Bangladesh.",15
"lthough increased attempts to preserve biodiversity ecosystems have been widely publicized, bibliometric research of biodiversity loss remains limited",15
"Using VOSviewer, we hope to provide a bibliometric assessment of global research trends on biodiversity loss from 1990 to 2021",15
"According to the findings, biodiversity loss research is expected to rise dramatically in the near future",15
"However, the role of social sciences and economics in biodiversity loss studies has received little attention",15
"Biological Conservation was the most productive journal, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America was the most influential journal in biodiversity loss literature",15
"Lastly, the outcomes of this study suggest that existing socio-economic concerns can be integrated into decision-making processes to improve biodiversity conservation",15
Biodiversity benefits people by improving their well-being,15
Biodiversity loss continues at an alarming rate in all conditions,15
"Convention on Biological Diversity (2004 p.2) defines biodiversity loss as “the long-term or permanent qualitative or quantitative reduction in components of biodiversity and their potential to provide goods and services, to be measured at the global, regional, and national level”",15
"2016), climate change (Alkemade et al",13
"2021), environmental degradation (Asafu-Adjaye, 2003; Dietz and Adger 2003; McPherson and Nieswiadomy, 2005; Pandit and Laband 2007), food consumption (Crenna et al",15
"The rising attempts to preserve biodiversity ecosystems have been widely publicized, but bibliometric research on biodiversity loss is insufficient",15
"Subsequently, the purpose of this study is to provide a bibliometric assessment of global research trends on biodiversity loss",15
"2011; Ravichandran 2012), this work focuses on the bibliometric analysis of biodiversity loss rather than biodiversity",15
"Finally, this study examines the publishing trends of biodiversity loss by utilizing a more recent dataset, as well as a large and well-established data source, the Web of Science Core Collection database",15
The bibliometric assessment on biodiversity loss provides substantial evidence on the possible connections between biodiversity and other threatening processes,15
"(2010), and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2010) reported that, despite growing worldwide conservation efforts, biodiversity loss will continue to accelerate",15
"In view of this, the bibliometric assessment on biodiversity loss would provide some useful insight into why conservation efforts have been less successful",15
"The PRISMA process began with the identification step, which was accomplished by employing search strings on the topic TS = (“Biodiversity chang*” OR “biodiversity collaps*” OR “biodiversity cris*” OR “biodiversity declin*” OR “biodiversity loss*” OR “biodiversity risk*” OR “biodiversity threat*”)",15
"The top-ranking Web of Science categories were Ecology, Environmental Sciences, and Biodiversity Conservation, accounting for 41.86%, 28.35%, and 21.90% of all papers published, respectively",15
"Environmental Sciences Ecology, Biodiversity Conservation, and Science Technology Other Topics were the key research areas among the experts with the most publications",15
"Given this, there is an increasingly recognized effort to conserve biodiversity from ecological and biodiversity perspectives",15
2021) and deforestation (Aleixandre-Benavent et al,15
"These include economic growth, international trade, population, governance and institutional factors, economic inequality, tourism, and food consumption",8
"Consequently, the findings show that existing socio-economic concerns can be factored into decision-making process to improve biodiversity conservation",15
This means that there is a growing interest in fields related to biodiversity loss,15
"Publication years and citations Despite an increase in publications on biodiversity loss and the awareness of the need for biodiversity protection, conservation efforts have been less than successful",15
Figure 2 depicts the twenty most productive publishing countries in the biodiversity loss literature,15
"Table 2 shows the top 10 most cited articles on the topic of biodiversity loss, with over 650 citations",15
"These publications were obviously a wake-up call and led to the “Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)” during the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, in which 150 countries pledged to strengthen efforts in biodiversity conservation, the use of biologically sustainable resources, and equitable sharing of benefits from biodiversity (Earthwatch Institute 2022; Habibullah et al",15
The recent review of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 (that includes 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) faces a similar fate (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity 2020),15
"The node size shows the number of times a keyword appears in the biodiversity loss documents; the larger the node, the more frequently a keyword appears in the biodiversity loss records",15
b Keywords Plus The Author Keywords can be divided into five clusters; each cluster represents a subfield of biodiversity loss during the observed period,15
"Keywords for the green cluster are biodiversity loss, invasive species, biodiversity change, beta diversity, and community ecology, to name a few, which are associated with biodiversity loss mechanisms, whereas keywords for the blue cluster include biodiversity conservation, deforestation, land use, habitat loss, land-use change, and so on, which are primarily connected to biodiversity loss drivers",15
"The conservation theme is represented by the yellow cluster (cluster 4, 17 items) with keywords such as conservation, extinction, protected areas, threatened species, monitoring, and others",15
"Finally, the purple cluster (cluster 5, 12 items) focuses on climate change topics with keywords such as climate change, ecosystem services, sustainability, agriculture, sustainable development, and so on",13
"Climate change, patterns, impacts, ecology, and dynamics are a few of the topics covered in the largest cluster (red cluster, 37 items)",13
"Keywords such as biodiversity loss, productivity, responses, implications, richness, and so on are found in the blue cluster (cluster 3, 29 items)",15
The overlay connects the keywords to the publication date and aids in tracing the evolution of a particular topic over the observed period (Det Udomsap and Hallinger 2020),3
"Figure 6 b demonstrates the latest Keywords Plus terms which include biodiversity change, ecosystem services, beta-diversity, water, phylogenetic diversity, and biodiversity loss",15
"Author Keywords that appeared in 2012 and 2014 consist of food web, GIS, ecology, indicators, endangered species, and threatened species",15
"b Keywords Plus In summary, Keywords Plus appeared to be broader in biodiversity loss literature, whereas Author Keywords seemed to be more specific",15
The results also signals that there has been a shift in the biodiversity loss literature from the issues of threatened species to the potential issues of species diversity,15
"A range of human-induced drivers such as deforestation, land-use change, habitat loss, habitat fragmentation, and agricultural intensification (cluster 3) significantly contribute to biodiversity loss, invasive species, and biodiversity change (cluster 2)",15
"According to the World Bank (2021, para.6), “climate change and ecosystems degradation combined can push the planet ever closer to irrevocable tipping points.” Therefore, integrated approaches are required to address the combined issues of climate change and natural loss (The World Bank 2021)",13
"The direct drivers of change in nature are changes in land and sea use, direct exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution, and invasion of alien species",13
"These indirect drivers can be categorized as socio-economic dimensions, which are typically ignored in pure biodiversity loss studies",15
"Lastly, monitoring and conservation planning may be an essential tool to prevent the extinction of threatened and endangered species (cluster 4)",15
"These include (i) biodiversity conservation needs more attention on biodiversity response to climate change and human activity, (ii) designing a decision-making procedure with multiple criteria and providing climate-mitigation and adaptation strategies towards reducing such impacts on biodiversity, (iii) biodiversity conservation can be improved by integrating existing socio-economic concerns into decision-making process, and (iv) protected areas have emerged as a conserving tool to safeguard biodiversity",15
Understanding the bibliometric assessment provides a valuable picture on biodiversity loss from various aspects,15
"Biological Conservation, Plos One, and Biodiversity and Conservation were the most devoted to publishing journals on biodiversity loss, while Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America received the most citations",15
"The Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of Queensland, and German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research were participated actively in biodiversity loss research",15
"The keywords co-occurrence analysis indicates that there has been a notable shift in academic attention to biodiversity issues in the previous few years, from threatened species to species diversity",15
The bibliometric analysis also confirmed that there has been a global interest in biodiversity loss over the last 30 years,15
"Current trends reveal that publications and citations will increase rapidly in the near future, indicating that biodiversity loss will become a rising global concern",15
"Unfortunately, conservation efforts have been less than successful, despite an increase in publications on biodiversity loss and awareness for biodiversity protection",15
"Indirect factors such as population expansion, unsustainable production and consumption, and accompanying technology advancement are projected to exacerbate biodiversity loss in the future (IPBES 2019)",15
"Subsequently, the socio-economic dimensions should receive further attention in the future, and it will appear to be a new research theme of biodiversity loss",15
"As a result, the findings of this study imply that biodiversity conservation can be improved by incorporating existing socio-economic concerns into decision-making process",15
"This paper employs panel cointegration technique to investigate the long-run relationship between carbon emissions and five impacting factors (per capita GDP, primary energy consumption, international trade, fossil proportion, and quadratic per capita GDP) in 50 representative developing countries during 1995–2017",7
"The empirical findings confirm the existence of long-run equilibrium, and the regressing coefficients of fully-modified OLS (FMOLS) indicate that (a) impacting features of the inverted U-shaped curve of Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) theory appear in a few countries, such as Mexico, Croatia, Kazakhstan, Iran, Algeria, Indonesia, and Thailand; (b) the energy consumption has statistically positive and significant impacts on boosting the carbon emissions; (c) the negative effect of international trade emerges in the developing nations enjoying trade surpluses; and (d) fossil energy share poses a mixed impact",7
"To mitigate global warming, the parties to the Paris Agreement pledged to regulate the global average temperature rise within 2 °C and to strive to limit it to 1.5 °C at the pre-industrial level",13
The lower energy efficiency of developing countries denotes the enormous potential for carbon emission reduction,7
Their National Determined Contributions (NDC) will crucially contribute to global climate governance issues,13
"Due to the data availability and accuracy, this paper selects 50 representative developing countries accounting for 66% of the population, 57.2% of primary energy consumption, 61.8% of carbon emissions, but 36.5% of GDP of the world",7
"Thus, international assistance has become a prerequisite for many countries to achieve more stringent NDC targets",13
"Three of these goals—goal 7: to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy; goal 8: to promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment, and decent work for all; and goal 13: to take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts—directly relate to the 3E systems and are the effective solutions to assist poor countries to achieve sustainable development",8
"Recently, the increasing investment and technical assistance from developed countries and emerging economies represented by China to developing countries have greatly boosted the economic development and social progress, especially in infrastructure construction, energy supplying, and improvement of human’s livelihood",8
"A slowdown in the growth of energy consumption and carbon emissions is discovered, showing a trend of entering the growth platform",7
(2018) identified regional cooperation and trade integration could lead to energy efficiency convergence to promote the catching-up process of energy efficiency to make up the gaps among countries,7
"Energy-economic development in 50 developing countries The econometrics methodology has been expanded with many theoretical branches, which inevitably causes the barriers to delivery for beginners and even dissemination of errors",8
"Generally, there is a tight correlation between real GDP, energy consumption, and carbon emissions (Zhang et al",7
"The impacting function of GDP and energy consumption on carbon emissions is reasonably positive, especially in developing countries or province level",7
"Liu and Hao (2018) confirmed the dynamic links among carbon emissions, energy use, and economic growth in 69 BRI countries during 1970–2013",8
"Indeed, the clean power can contribute to the effective reduction of carbon emissions, such as renewable energy (Lu 2017; Nguyen and Kakinaka 2019; Sharif et al",7
"Specifically, the supportive policies of renewable energy should be compatible with the stagewise development; otherwise, the financial burden will hinder the national progress",7
"Because the carbon emissions emerge a complicated nexus with the economy, energy mix, geospatial trade, population and so on, this issue deserves comprehensive discussions",7
"It is shown as follow: Various fossil shares of energy consumption will affect the carbon emission factors and then affect total carbon emissions, especially for the power sector (Ang and Su 2016)",7
"With international trade and fossil share as additional variables into a modified EKC framework, the nexus formula in this study can be written as: where PGDP is per capita GDP, PGDP2 is the quadratic per capita GDP, EC denotes total energy consumption, T is the share of imports and exports in GDP, and F refers to the fossil share",7
"The data of GDP (2010 USD), population, merchandise trade, and fossil proportion come from the World Bank Database (WDI 2018), and the data of primary energy consumption and carbon emissions are referenced to the BP Database (BP 2018)",7
"As shown in Table 6, the parameters of EC for all developing countries are statistically positive and significant, indicating the increasing energy consumption would boost the carbon emissions",7
"Specifically, EC has a stronger impact on carbon emissions in nations dominated by traditional fossil energy, such as Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Macedonia, Poland, Kazakhstan, South Africa, China, India, and Indonesia; 1 unit increasing in energy consumption would increase carbon emissions by more than 3 units",7
"However, because the dominating resource of power generation is the low-carbon energy of natural gas, the impacting function of energy consumption on carbon emission is less influential in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, and Middle East countries",7
Lu (2017) found bidirectional causality between carbon emissions and renewable energy for 24 Asian countries in 1990–2012,7
This is a reflection of the positive influence of reducing fossil energy and promoting renewable energy on mitigating the global warming crisis,7
"The results of panel unit root test and bootstrap cointegration test reveal the long-run equilibrium relationship between carbon emissions and five explanatory variables (per capita GDP, energy consumption, fossil proportion, international trade, and quadratic per capita GDP)",7
"For all of the developing countries in this paper, energy consumption poses a positive impact on carbon emissions",7
And the empirical validation reveals the clean energy consumption mix can mitigate the environmental impact,7
"Actually, developing countries have a strong willingness to participate in global governance with sharp NDC targets, but now their contributions are not outstanding due to their poor affording ability",13
"For the countries satisfying EKC theory, economic growth is the top priority but the concept of sustainable development cannot be altered",8
The carbon abatement technology progress and potential energy intensity reduction are the two main inhibiting factors (Fan et al,7
"To achieve SDG targets, energy efficiency and renewable energy development should be regarded as persistent solutions to reduce energy intensity and carbon intensity without jeopardizing economic growth for developing countries, such as accelerating power plant building and promoting electricity to replace original energy utilization",7
"Taking South Asian and Southeast Asian countries, for example, the results reveal that the potential rising of energy consumption and a high share of fossil fuel raise carbon emissions",7
"Thus, the proactive and available moves are controlling energy cap through enhancing energy efficiency and decreasing carbon intensity by boosting renewable integration",7
"Expanding infrastructure and upgrading technology for supplying modern and sustainable energy, as one of the SDG targets, are crucial to reducing carbon emissions, aligned with the results of the positive impact of energy consumption and fossil fuel share in this paper",7
The infrastructure investment substantially facilitates economic growth and employment with direct and/or indirect impacts on the achievement of nearly 72% of SDGs (Thacker et al,8
"Therefore, developing countries should target to improve efficiency and promote renewable energy through proper policies and investments",7
"Taking the power industry as an example, introducing the appropriate power generation types and technology is the priority to improve energy efficiency, considering the resource conditions, infrastructure, affordable electricity tariff, and environmental constraints of the host country",7
"Renewable energy generation technology has matured, and its cost has fallen sharply",7
The developing countries should take the opportunity to participate in the global energy technology innovation and develop renewable energy locally,7
"However, it does not mean that large-scale development of renewable energy should be realized in the short term",7
"Thus, the host countries should tighten the environmental protection standard and charge rational sewage tax",15
The need for assessing and analyzing the energy and resources consumption in huge building organizations such as campuses can help raise awareness on the rapidly growing issue of climate change (International Energy Agency and United Nation Environment Programme 2019),13
Their results revealed that the main contributors of greenhouse gas emissions are electricity generation with 41% and automotive commuting with 18% of the total (Clabeaux et al,7
(2013) studied on measuring the energy consumption of colleges and universities in Guangdong province of China,7
"They applied survey on 98 colleges and universities to calculate the energy consumption per student, including electricity, water, gas, and cooling energy, from 2006 to 2010",7
"Their results revealed that there is a great difference in energy consumption for electricity and natural gas per student between the universities; thus, they suggested that the energy consumption evaluation indexes showed that the conservation-oriented campus should take the influence of school type into consideration (Zhou et al",7
"The development and establishment of the AGU Sumer campus on such a site have ensured to maintain the cultural heritage and historical values of the factory, while it has incorporated more unique elements in the design to promote sustainability",11
The method was developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013,13
"To quantify GWP and greenhouse gas emissions, the climate change factors of IPCC with 100 years horizon are used and expressed in kg CO2 equivalent",13
"Additionally, the CED V1.09 method was used for the quantification of the energy consumption of the campus",7
Waste costs are the result of expenses from the waste management system of the campus,12
The environmental impacts of the university campus The majority of the emissions (98.8%) are accounted for by the energy consumption of the system boundaries in this study,7
GWP being one of the indicators of this study was developed for simultaneously studying the impacts of global warming of various greenhouse gases in terms of CO2 equivalent by their radiative efficiency and for how long they are present in the atmosphere (Environmental Protection Agency 2016),15
"The electricity generation from fossil-based sources such as hard coal, lignite, and natural gas is highly unsustainable when compared to other renewable sources such as hydropower, solar, and wind",7
"On the other hand, the CED determines the total direct and indirect energy consumption by the campus during its usage stage of the life cycle (Frischknecht et al",7
"As another environmental indicator, the CED is used to quantify the total energy consumption of the campus in terms of renewable and non-renewable energy sources in this study",7
"The waste management system implemented in the university is appropriate with waste-sorting practices as there are several disposable stations situated all around the campus with specific bins allocated for a specific material disposed of namely paper, metal, organic, glass, and plastic in the sense of having and maintaining a sustainable waste disposal methods (Wiganingrum et al",12
"In addition, a gray wastewater management system used on the campus, which treats the wastewater, discharged from the campus’ restrooms to be used for the automatic water-planting systems around the campus",6
The carbon tax basically places a tax rate on the CO2 emission by buildings,12
"Since campuses are mainly comprised of a collection of various buildings and similar structures, this tax form would maintain a reduced emission level while maintaining the economic growth for the campus (Huang et al",8
The inventory results confirmed that the campus contributes significantly to protect cultural heritage and its transfer to future generations,11
"In addition, the campus performed weak social performance under subcategories of ‘Equal opportunities/discrimination’ and ‘Health and safety’ due to the weakness of formal policies on equal opportunities and preventive measure of health and safety for workers",10
"Moreover, the formal policies on equal opportunities/discrimination should be well-prepared and applied to prevent possible inequalities and discrimination among the workers",10
"The results revealed that the society is not well informed in three subcategories, which are ‘Public commitment to sustainability issues,’ ‘Contribution to economic development’ and ‘Technology development.’ Although the university gives priority to sustainability issues in both educational and research areas, the survey results show that the society does not aware of these efforts of the university on sustainability issues",8
The proposition of equipping the campus with its own electricity generation systems and heating application systems is one of the ways to minimize the effects in this matter,7
"Underlining once again, the implementation of the campus’ own energy generation facilities could reduce the cost and improve the economic growth of the campus",8
"Bangladesh is facing a serious threat in the age of global warming, and climate change as the country is looking forward in achieving the SDGs by 2030",13
"Yet, there is a dearth of study regarding the relationship among crucial macroeconomic drivers and ecological footprint (a proxy for environmental degradation)",15
"Under the circumstances, this study explores the effects of economic growth, capital formation, urbanization, trade openness, energy use, and technological innovation on the ecological footprint by adopting the novel dynamic Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) simulations approach for Bangladesh, using annual frequency data from 1972 to 2017",8
"It was observed that the Bangladesh economy is still at the scale stage of its economic trajectory, emphasizing economic growth relative to her environmental status",8
"However, capital formation, urbanization, and energy use seemed to degrade environmental quality, while trade openness and technological innovation upgraded the environmental quality",8
"Putting it more elaborately, a unit escalation in GDP per capita increases the ecological footprint by 0.829% in the long run, while a unit increase in energy consumption upsurges the ecological footprint by 1.074% and 0.761% in the long run and short run, respectively",7
"Furthermore, the frequency domain causality unveiled the long-run feedback effect between economic growth and ecological footprint",8
"However, policymakers of the nation face two main challenges, i.e., ensuring sustainable economic development and preserving environmental quality (Dogan et al",8
"Alternatively, the process of economic development becomes a downside when the growth rate is given more affluence than the ecological condition (Yasmeen et al",8
"Like other developing nations, the economic progression of Bangladesh is accompanied by the extreme level of pollution, land erosion, deforestation, and depletion of resources (Masukujjaman et al",15
"Therefore, the conflicted relationship with the environment quality and economic growth draws attention to raising awareness about the eco-friendly economy (Ozturk et al",8
"If this is any indication, it is important to investigate and comprehend the factors that influence environmental degradation in Bangladesh to offer policy options for reducing emissions and promoting long-term growth, given that Bangladesh is one of the world’s most populous developing countries",15
"Finally, this manuscript was carried out to shed some light on the concern of the environment and economic growth in Bangladesh",8
"Besides, Bangladesh’s per capita income and economic growth are rising due to heavy industrialization and urbanization in recent years",8
"Eventually, the amount of consumption of the ecological resources also increases, which creates pressure on the environment and stimulates environmental degradation",15
But CO2 emission represents only the partition of environmental degradation and fails to give a holistic perspective on environmental status (Ahmed et al,15
"In recent years, researchers preferred ecological footprint as a more suitable indicator to explore environmental degradation as it represents the human dependency on the environmental system (Dogan et al",15
"Secondly, economic growth stirs the consumption of forest, water, and land resources",8
"Therefore, choosing the emission as an indicator for environmental degradation may focus on only industrialized activities (Liu et al",15
"So, there is an inverted U-patterned linkage between economic growth and environmental pollution (Esteve and Tamarit 2012)",8
"To our best knowledge, this is one of the first empirical studies that considered ecological footprint for analyzing not only the EKC hypothesis but also for exploring environmental degradation in the context of Bangladesh",15
"The current research adds to the theory of income-induced environmental degradation hypothesis taken Bangladesh as a case study, popularly known as the Environmental Kuznets Curve",15
"Moreover, this research will help policymakers develop suitable environmental and energy policies while considering the effects of trade, economic growth, and urbanization",8
"This section represents the review of relevant research on environmental degradation and its determinants across various contexts, thereby ascertaining the selection of variables for this study",15
Several studies explored the causes of environmental degradation by taking only negative indicators like pollutants of the environment into account,15
"Most of the researchers deal with CO2 emission; however, it only reveals partial information on environmental degradation",15
"Similarly, an inverted U-patterned linkage between economic growth and environmental pollution is found in Pakistan (Hassan et al",8
Urbanization goes hand-in-hand with economic growth (Abbasi et al,8
"Therefore, rural to urban migration tends to upsurge in the forthcoming years, fostering environmental degradation (Ahmed et al",15
"Indeed, urbanization enhances deforestation (Defries et al",15
"Apart from the aforementioned determinants, this study also considered energy use as a possible catalyst for environmental degradation",15
(2013) revealed that the use of energy positively affects environmental degradation in India,15
"Sarkodie and Adams (2018) exposed that renewable energy technologies advocate a limpid environment, while fossil fuel energy degrades the environment",7
"Likewise, energy consumption degrades the environmental quality in Singapore, China, Mexico, India, and top forested countries (Destek and Sarkodie 2019; Abbasi et al",7
(2019) scrutinized the effect of energy consumption on carbon dioxide emissions,7
They elicited that energy consumption has a significant negative effect on environmental quality,7
"Renewable energy use promotes environmental quality and curtails carbon dioxide emission, while the use of traditional energy does damage the environment in Pakistan (Khan et al",7
"Although several researches exposed the association between technological innovation and environmental quality by using distinguish country-level data, models and methods produce mixed outputs",8
"(2020) found that technological innovation yields a lower amount of emission, thus improving the environmental quality in the context of Pakistan using the data from 1970 to 2017",8
"Likewise, negative nexus between ecological footprint and technological innovation was also reported by Yang et al",8
"However, a positive linkage between environmental quality and technological innovation has also been explored in the preceding researches (Töbelmann and Wendler 2020; Chen and Lee 2020; Yu and Du 2019)",8
The above literature reveals significant arguments about either positive or negative effects of the selected stimulus on environmental degradation across countries,15
"Besides, In Bangladesh, no study has been performed utilizing dynamic ARDL simulations to relate variables such as technological innovation, energy usage, capital formation, trade openness, urbanization, and economic expansion to environmental deterioration",8
"Therefore, it is imperative to assess this linkage in Bangladesh because Bangladesh has been facing the serious threat of environmental degradation and growing demands for ecological resources in recent decades",15
"The theoretical framework of this study is based on the EKC hypothesis developed by Kuznets (1955), which was centered on income inequality",10
"However, some environmental economists like Panayotou (1997) and Grossman and Krueger (1991) improved this idea by looking into the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality",8
"This hypothesis described that the effect of GDP growth on the environmental quality of any economy occurs in three stages: scale, structural, and composite effects",8
"Environmental degradation occurs during this phase, but after reaching a tipping point, environmental quality begins to improve due to technological advancement and increased environmental awareness",15
The non-renewable energy sources boost developing countries’ economic and production activity; hence this phase is relevant to them,7
"We extracted the data on ecological footprint from the Global Footprint Network (GFN) and then the data on economic growth, capital formation, urbanization, trade openness, and use of energy from the World Bank",8
This study employs ecological footprint measured as a proxy of environmental degradation following the previous literature (Adedoyin et al,15
"In line with previous studies, GDP per capita was employed as a proxy for economic growth (Ahmed et al",8
"Initially, we modeled the impact of GDP per capita on environmental degradation measured by ecological footprint",15
"To evaluate the effect of these factors on environmental degradation, we encompass these factors in our empirical model",15
"where lnEF, \(ln\) CA, \(ln\) URB, \(ln\) TO, \(ln\) EU, and \(ln\) TI represent natural logarithm forms of ecological footprint, capital formation, urbanization, trade openness, use of energy, and technological innovation, respectively",8
"Moreover, the ARDL model is widely used in recent studies regarding environmental degradation and economic factors (Gülmez et al",15
Significant variation of energy use and technological innovation reflects the gradual transition in sectoral changes of Bangladesh’s economy,8
"In other words, economic growth, capital formation, urbanization, trade openness, energy use, and technological innovation have a long-run impact on the ecological footprint",8
"However, the elasticity of both lnGDP and lnGDP2 revealed that economic growth monotonically increases the ecological footprint of Bangladesh",8
"Reportedly, it is apparent that the long-run coefficient value is higher than that of the short-run, meaning that economic growth continues to dilapidate environmental quality more rapidly in the long-run",8
This outcome signifies the economy of Bangladesh is yet to develop in a sustainable manner that could help Bangladesh palliate the devastating impact of economic growth on environmental quality,8
"Although capital formation does not foster environmental degradation in the short run, it hampers the environmental quality in the long run",15
"The long- and short-run coefficients of urbanization were both positive and significant, implying that urbanization promotes the expansion of the ecological footprint and, as a result, environmental degradation",15
"(2019) for Pakistan, where they found an insignificant effect of urbanization upon environmental degradation",15
"(2018), where they evidenced that trade openness mitigates environmental degradation and contradicts the finding of Charfeddine (2017) for Qatar and Adedoyin et al",15
"(2019) for Pakistan, where they claimed that energy consumption injures environmental quality",7
"On the other hand, despite causing short-run damage to the environment, technological innovation seems to heal the environment in the long run",8
"In the short run, each 10% increase or decrease in economic growth invariably worsens the environment",8
Economic growth and ecological footprint,8
"The dots represent the predicted value, whereas the deep blue to light blue lines depict the 75%, 90%, and 95% confidence intervals, respectively The link between technological innovation and environmental footprint is demonstrated by the projections in Fig. 7",8
Any 10% increase or decrease in technological innovation results in an equal and positive short-term shift in ecological footprint,8
"Afterward, environmental quality tends to improve in the long run with any positive change in technological innovation, whereas environment experiences more drastic deterioration to any further technological slowdown in the long run",8
Technological innovation and ecological footprint,8
The above figure denotes ± 10% in technological innovation and its effect on ecological footprint,8
Table 8 reports that the bidirectional long-run causal relationship exists between economic growth and ecological footprint,8
"These revelations symbolize that likewise economic growth and ecological footprint, interdependency exists between capital formation and ecological footprint, urbanization and ecological footprint, and trade openness and ecological footprint",8
"Further, a one-way long-run causal relationship was revealed from technological innovation to ecological footprint",8
"This paper explores the relationship between ecological footprint and economic growth with consideration of capital formation, urbanization, trade openness, energy use, and technological innovation",8
"The findings of the dynamic ARDL model suggest that the EKC hypothesis does not hold for Bangladesh, as no inverted U-shaped association is observed between economic growth and ecological footprint",8
"Similar to economic growth, capital formation seemed to devastate the environment in the long-run",8
"In addition, short-run, medium-run, and long-run feedback revealed between (i) capital formation and environmental degradation, (ii) urbanization and environmental degradation, and (iii) trade openness and environmental degradation",15
"However, the one-way causal relationship runs from energy use to environmental degradation throughout the short-run, medium-run, and long-run periods",15
Technological innovation also evidenced a long-run unidirectional causal link with the environment without any feedback effect,8
"Therefore, the sustainability of urbanization should be the pivotal agenda of environmental policies since reducing urbanization will hamper economic growth",8
"Besides, industries should be decentralized from the city of Dhaka and Chattogram to all over the country with a proper environmental plan so that people do not migrate to these major cities but to other cities that will promote economic growth without depleting the environment",8
"Therefore, the government should resort to updating the environmental policies and regulations of the law in consonance with eco-friendly economic growth",8
"Each industry, small or large, should be brought under the umbrella of stricture regulations, and they should continuously use of clean and renewable energy to reluctant themselves pollute the environment. For that reason, Bangladesh should aim to produce or import clean and renewable energy",7
"Reportedly, clean energy helps improve individual well-being",7
Capital formation has a positive relationship with environmental degradation,15
"Operation of the control measures like cyclone, dual cyclone, multiclone and the bag filter generates solid waste (dust)",12
Maintaining proper combustion temperature and the fuel to air ratio help reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides,13
"It is to be noted that the management of wastes is one of the aspects of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Targets and Indicators",12
"Of these, SDG 12: Target 12.4 is “by 2020, achieve the environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle, in accordance with agreed international frameworks, and significantly reduce their release to air, water and soil in order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment” (UN, 2015)",12
"The SDG 12: Target 12.5 is “by 2030, substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse” (UN, 2015)",12
The practice of recycling and reuse of solid wastes and wastewater is in concurrence with the UN’s sustainable development programme,12
Maintaining proper combustion temperature and the fuel to air ratio help reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides,13
"Since renewable energy has the paramount importance of achieving environmental sustainability, developing countries like Pakistan have been facing numerous renewable energy generation (REG) development challenges",7
"Based on relative significance, the lack of good governance is unveiled to be the most significant factor, while environmental effects is found to be the least significant one",16
"At the same time, among crucial barriers, lack of good governance has shown the largest contribution to REG development",16
"Despite having immense potentials for sustainable energy sources, a developing country like Pakistan is still at its nascent development stage",7
"Also, the investments in renewable energy projects are facing plenty of barriers, which guide them to failures (Majeed and Ozturk 2020)",7
"However, this is also argued that being rich in rivers—that are naturally supportive for power production—the governments may put efforts to and formulate strategies with the support of international agencies for promoting hydropower, and hence may overcome the energy shortage issues (Shah et al",7
"In the face of these twin phenomena, several economies have started developing renewable energy (Lin and Ankrah 2019; Le and Ozturk 2020), and many economies are experiencing a transition from non-renewable to renewable energy generation (hereafter REG) systems (Gasmi et al",7
"Some of them considered income inequality as the role player in REG development, while others considered the economic and environmental effects of renewables",10
"The fourth group of works considered the diffusion of renewable energy technologies, either in the light of diffusion of innovation models (Jabeen et al",7
Those works opted for Roger’s model of innovation diffusion and the theory of planned behavior to evaluate renewable energy adoption and REG development for various economies,7
"However, they overlooked the crucial factor of “lack of good governance,” which may play an essential role in REG development",16
(2019) conducted an analysis merely based on the barriers to the adoption of clean energy in Pakistan,7
(2020) examined and found the pushing impact of renewable energy policy and renewable governance in the ASEANFootnote 1 countries,7
"Furthermore, Nevzorova and Kutcherov (2019) investigated the drivers of biogas-based technological innovation in Austria, Italy, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Sweden, and the UK",8
"They found the factors involving cooperation, the capacity of technology, and the support for biogas policy as the significant drivers of technological innovation of renewables",8
(2019) employed the modified Delphi method (MDM) and fuzzy analytical hierarchical process (FAHP) to examine the barriers to the adoption of clean energy in Pakistan,7
"Second, none of the previous researches is known to quantify the “lack of good governance” as a crucial influence factor (CIF) of REG development",16
"Do the factors such as lack of good governance, governmental energy policies, environment, economy, resource endowment, renewable adaptation, energy demand, public acceptance of renewables, economic returns of renewable projects, and investment environment for new projects on renewables impede or drive the REG development? What are the most significant CIFs of REG development in developing countries like Pakistan? What are the significant crucial drivers and crucial barriers among those CIFs? What contributions do they extend to the REG development, and what is their relative significance for the REG development in terms of impact size? The work comprehensively investigates the crucial influence factors of REG development in Pakistan",16
"Second, dissimilar from the existing studies, this work has quantified the crucial influence factor of “lack of good governance,” which may play a key role in the large-scale REG development",16
"In a nutshell, this research extended novel results in terms of the contribution of “lack of good governance” as a crucial barrier to REG development",16
"Among other CIFs, endowed resources, power production approach, renewable energy demand, investment environment for renewable energy projects, economic returns of renewable energy projects, environmental effects, and public acceptance are revealed as the crucial drivers",7
"On the other hand, renewable energy adaptation and governmental energy policies are exposed to be the crucial barriers to REG development",7
"Referring to the generalization of empirical findings, despite the fact that the research is carried out through conducting a questionnaire survey from respondent belonging to Pakistani universities and an electric company, its implications can be generalized for other developing countries such as Ghana and Algeria, among others, which are experiencing the twin phenomenon of energy crises and environmental degradation as documented by Lin and Ankrah (2019)",15
"Furthermore, the “lack of good governance” may virtually exist in almost all developing world",16
"To this end, a literature review has been conducted making use of the key platforms, including the database of Scopus, Science Direct, Willey, SpringerLink, and Web of Science, utilizing keywords like “renewable energy generation,” “influence factors,” “crucial factors,” etc",7
"Source: authors’ elaboration based on literature review Based on previous studies, endowed resources are essential for the extensive use of renewable energy",7
Pakistan is naturally rich in the context of renewable resources having huge potential for the generation of renewable energy (Jabeen et al,7
The technical capacity of solar power through photovoltaic solar cell and solar thermal technologies is approximated to be 149 GW by 2010 and 169 GW by 2050,7
"In this regard, 13 GW of wind energy and 5 to 15 GW of biomass energy are estimated by 2050 (Jabeen et al",7
(2020) investigated renewable and sustainable energy resources from the perspective of Saudi Arabia,7
"Furthermore, the optimum exploitation of renewable sources like geothermal, hydropower, solar, and biomass can minimize the energy shortage in a developing country like Pakistan",7
"In short, to execute renewable energy projects successfully, it is crucial to address the stability and abundance of the resources (Raza et al",7
Pakistan is addressing the challenges associated with the development of REG and established joint research and development centers with technologically progressed countries (Jabeen et al,9
"(2021a,) studied selected 90 global economies and revealed that nuclear energy production, being a renewable energy source, was a significant driver of environmental sustainability",7
"Thus, Strupeit and Palm (2016) suggested promoting technological advancement in Germany, Japan, and the USA for the further development of renewable energy production",7
The demand for renewable energy explains the space for renewable power production in the market and finds the necessity and importance of market growth,7
"(2021) viewed that export product diversification in a country can escalate the energy demand significantly, instigating the countries to switch toward renewable energy sources",7
These researches implicated that renewable energy demand could have a positive contribution to REG development,7
"In light of this, the following hypothesis is extracted:
 H3: Renewable energy demand may impart a positive impact on REG development",7
"The technological unsuitability, inaccessibility of experienced personnel, the unattainability of spare parts, high price, inaccessibility of loan, weak buying power, unfair power pricing, awareness, informational deficiency, lack of inadequate arrangements for training, and distributed renewable power systems were identified to be the most significant obstacles of renewable energy growth (Yaqoot et al",7
(2021b) argued that emerging economies like South Asia are still struggling with the issues of renewable energy adaptation on a large scale,7
"(2021) postulated that off-grid renewable energy systems face plenty of difficulties in developing nations like Bangladesh, making REG development sluggish",7
"In addition, the present research details the factors affecting the adaptation of renewable energy, as mentioned in Appendix Table 5 (see Appendix A)",7
"Based on the review of those researches, the following hypothesis has been drawn:
 H4: Renewable energy adaptation is expected to impart a negative impact on REG development",7
(2020) evaluated the influence of the auctions in promoting the accumulation of renewable energy capacity and found the driving impact of tendering in the case of 20 developed countries,7
"(2016), political and economic factors also play a significant role in the growth of renewable energy development in the context of the Indian economy",7
"For the growth of sustainable energy, the investment environment is important to attract more investments, which is affected by investment profits, availability of loans, and fluctuation in the interest of loans",7
"The projects of renewable energy need heavy investment, thus depend significantly on the investment environment",7
"In their study, Inglesi-Lotz and Ajmi (2021) attached utmost importance to the role of foreign direct investment in renewable energy projects and the complementary influence of energy supply and its pricing on such investments",7
"According to these arguments, the following hypothesis is extracted: H5: Investment environment for renewable energy projects is expected to have a positive impact on REG development",7
Estimation and assessment of renewable energy means are vital to launching REG projects,7
Accurate estimation and assessment of renewable energy methods by advanced research increase the investors’ faith in financial viability and hazard minimization (Fashina et al,7
The cost of energy production affects the sustainable growth of the power industry and also offers profit margins for financiers,8
The investors’ acceptance and profitability of the project are affected by the amount of renewable energy linked with feed-in tariffs and the power grid,7
"In other words, the more renewable energy amount linked to the power grid, the more economic progress and investors’ profitability will be",7
"Following these studies, the hypothesis drawn is given as follows: H7: Economic returns of renewable energy projects are expected to impart a positive impact on REG development",7
"Power production causes the destruction of natural resources, climate change, and pollution",13
(2021) claimed that it is not only the economic determinants but also the environmental motives that play a significant role in renewable energy deployment,7
(2019b) noted that the rivalry environment of the Indian wind power industry remained a dominant driving force of this industry’s development,7
"These practices are executed through the provision of research and development support to attain technological advancements, granting privileged tax rates, allocating monitory subsidies, and implementing logical feed-in tariffs for the REG projects (Roth et al",9
"2020).
 Public acceptance of renewable energy generation",7
"In a different work, Bohlmann and Inglesi-Lotz (2018) identified that universal access to electricity had been the central concern of South African Government bodies",7
The said research suggested that the developing nations formulate effective energy strategies to assure renewable energy development,7
The regulatory issues are the main reason which will not enable the country to attain renewable energy goals,7
It ultimately affects the development of renewable energy development negatively (Obeng-Darko 2019),7
"Based on these studies, the following hypothesis is formulated:
 H10: Lack of good governance is expected to impart a negative impact on REG development",16
"Among the CIFs of REG development, lack of good governance, public acceptance, and governmental energy policies remained the top three factors with path coefficients −0.310, 0.287, and −0.248, respectively",16
"Concerning f2 values, lack of good governance has shown the largest influence size, public acceptance having the second largest, which is followed by the influence size of governmental energy policies",16
"As regards renewable energy adaptation, Zhao and Chen (2018) identified it as a driver to the REG development in China",7
"To this end, lack of good governance remained the strongest crucial barrier, while public acceptance is exposed to be the strongest crucial driver of REG development",16
The findings of current research are peculiar in terms of consideration of the role of barriers like lack of good governance and governmental energy policies,16
"Contrariwise, it also implied that good governance and properly managed and monitored governmental energy policies could prove to be drivers of REG development, not only in Pakistan but also in the countries suffering a similar situation like Ghana (Lin and Ankrah 2019) and Sub-Saharan African countries (Adams and Acheampong 2019)",16
"Following the findings of this research, although a lack of good governance impedes the REG development, establishing good governance may prove to be its crucial driver",16
"In another work, Sen and Ganguly (2016) declared the importance of good governance in a way that the inclusion of effective strategies and positions may provide support for the growth of renewable power production",16
"In contrast, setting up good governance may mitigate the investment risk and thus may attract investors to invest in developing countries like Pakistan, Ghana, Bangladesh, and Sub-Saharan Africa",16
"In this regard, although 67% of the world’s population is reported to avail of a clean energy facility for cooking, an approximate population of 3 billion depends on traditional fuels for cooking",7
"In light of this, good governance may achieve national goals of REG development by contributing to SDGs",16
"As an additional argument, although governmental policies may significantly influence green energy technologies, the public opinion of those policies may also have a significant role (Kardooni et al",7
"(2019c) revealed that demand conditions, governmental energy strategies, and policies remained the main booster of wind energy development",7
The existence of a powerful and positive link of incentive policy system and rapid development of renewable energy markets has been declared by Kung et al,7
"In light of the findings, the investment environment for renewable energy projects is revealed to play an important role in driving REG development",7
(2021a) suggested that investment in the renewable energy sector may be boosted through the expansion of financial avenues,7
"(2020) extended the argument that REG development may lead to sustainable development, which would further expand the financial resources to develop the renewable energy sector in the developing world",7
"In light of the seventh SDG, for supporting clean and affordable energy, the financial flows to the developing world were recorded to rise from 9.9 billion US dollars in 2010 to 18.6 billion US dollars in 2016 (Economic and Social Council 2019)",7
"Based on the findings of this research, renewable energy adaptation has been proved to be a crucial barrier in the development of REG",7
"Therefore, to attain technical skills, a systematic establishment of technical training experts is direly required (Sen and Ganguly 2016; Fashina et al",4
"The government, communities, academic institutions, and entities should cooperate to increase the number of technical talents in developing countries like Pakistan (Maqbool and Sudong 2018) to convert renewable energy adaptation into a driver rather than a barrier to REG development",7
"Moreover, along with strategic issues, Pakistan’s renewable energy sector faces technical barriers to REG development (Irfan et al",7
"This is aligned with the 13th SDG of “Climate Action,” which conveys the requirement of urgency to combat climate change and its spillover effects",13
"Concerning this, for the purpose of adaptation plans at the national level, 28 countries were noted to access the “Green Climate Fund”–based grants in May 2019",13
"As a final argument, the estimated size of impact, as well as the significance order of the crucial drivers or crucial barriers, can lead the policymakers and authorities to prioritize their choices for decision-making regarding the prospective plans of renewable energy development",7
"In this regard, although the present research covers ten crucial factors that most impact the renewable energy development in Pakistan, however, it did not take into consideration the consumers’ perception-based factors, norm-based factors, and factors involved in the adoption and diffusion of new technologies such as renewable energy technologies",7
"Based on relative significance, the lack of good governance is unveiled to be the most significant factor, while environmental effects is found to be the least significant one",16
"Moreover, among the crucial drivers of REG development, public acceptance is found to be the prime contributor, while among crucial barriers, lack of good governance has shown the largest contribution to REG development.",16
"The current paper examines the effect of public–private partnerships investment in energy (PPIE) on CO2 emissions while taking economic growth (GDP), foreign direct investment (FDI), and trade openness (TOP) into consideration for Bangladesh from 1997 to 2019",8
This research suggests technical development for a greener production procedure and public–private partnership funding in green energy,7
"Worldwide climate change will have negative consequences such as reduced biodiversity, decreased worldwide food production, sea-level rise, and increased disease mortality",13
"Nevertheless, the steady rise in demand for energy and minimal state resources has motivated policymakers to involve local communities and private enterprise stakeholders in renewable energy generation",7
"Bangladesh is among the top 7 nations severely impacted by climate change, according to the 2021 Global Climate Risk Index report",13
"Also, the selected variable public–private partnerships investment in energy as a factor of CO2 emissions is not studied for Bangladesh (see Table 1 related studies on public–private partnerships investment in energy and environmental degradation)",15
"Richter (2012), for example, stated that no single measure could offer the resources required to realize the hope of a renewable energy future",7
"Although the significance of renewable energy for energy needs and environmental conservation is well described, academic research on the role that can be performed via public–private partnerships for a sustainable energy and environment future is limited",7
"This research explores the linkage between public–private partnerships investment in energy (PPIE) and CO2 emissions, considering the essential role of economic growth (GDP), foreign direct investment (FDI), and trade openness (TOP) in Bangladesh",8
"Established on these assertions, we project the particular CO2 emissions model as follows: Where CO2t, PPIEt, GDPt, FDIt, and TOPt are carbon emissions, public–private partnerships investment in energy, economic growth, foreign direct investment, and trade openness",8
We anticipate α2 > 0 if the link between economic growth and CO2 emissions is positive if not α2 < 0,8
"Therefore, the Bangladesh administration should concentrate on more PPIE to improve the quality of the atmosphere via technological progress and alternative energy projects",8
"The key causes for positive linkage are that fossil fuels are important contributors to industry and agriculture, increasing economic growth and decreasing environmental sustainability (Adedoyin and Zakari, 2020; Adebayo 2021)",8
"(2021a, b) for Turkey, and Chishti and Sinha (2022) for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, who found that economic growth harms environmental sustainability",8
"This concludes that if all other variables stay stable, a rise in TOP will raise environmental degradation by 0.3498%, 0.3236%, and 0.3554%, respectively",15
The government must promote public–private partnerships in renewable energy sources,7
Bangladesh must emphasize corporate sector initiatives on improving energy efficiency and reducing environmental emissions while also allowing financiers to participate more in businesses with a stronger emphasis on the environment and ecological financing,7
The selected papers included in this special issue are a contribution to tackle these challenges and foster innovation in the organic food and farming sector,9
"This special issue includes selected papers from the International Workshop ‘Organic farming and agroecology as a response to global challenges’, jointly organized by GRAB-IT (Research Group on Organic Farming - Italy), Department of Agricultural Sciences – University of Naples Federico II (Italy), and Associazione Scientifica Centro di Portici, Naples, with endorsement from ISOFAR, RIRAB (the Italian Network for Organic Farming Research) and Agroecology Europe",2
"The renewed attacks to the organic sector, especially from scientists that try to undermine the contribution of organic food and farming to Global Sustainability Goals, are best contrasted with sound research findings showing the societal relevance of the sector and the solid science-based approach to sustainable farming that organic agriculture represents, from its start (Rahmann et al",2
The second paper (Løes 2019) focuses on the importance of integrating circular economy approaches in organic food and farming,12
Minimizing outputs of waste and pollution by recycling and efficient utilization of renewable resources is often hampered in practice because standards for certified organic production and processing tend to prefer natural products while avoiding processing and especially chemical processes,12
The new challenge is to go beyond a system of third-party certification only and instead re-focus on meeting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) passed by the UN General Assembly in September 2015 and specifically SDG 12: ‘Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns’,12
Both organisations are leading as research institutes and funding bodies in agricultural development and place strong emphasis on gender issues and women’s empowerment in their work,5
"This paper analyses the ways in which these organisations integrate gender dimensions into their research and funding strategies, with the overall objective being to discuss the gender-responsive approaches which are most successful for achieving women’s empowerment in agricultural development",5
It argues that both organisations take gender issues seriously but need to address some shortcomings which hinder women’s empowerment,5
This paper gives recommendations for more effective gender-responsive approaches for these and similar organisations working on improving global food security,2
"Food security is one of the major global challenges of international development and, as such, was enshrined in the 2000 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which have replaced the MDGs as the international goals for the post-2015 international development agenda (UN 2015b)",2
"The high priority of food security in the post-2015 international development agenda is reflected in the fact that the goal to ‘End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture’ was listed as SDG 2, after SDG 1 to end global poverty. Food security as defined by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) is “when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for a healthy and active life” (quoted in World Bank et al",2
"Food security consists of four interrelated dimensions, defined as food availability (the availability of sufficient quantities of food to meet the dietary needs of people), food access (the economic and physical capacity of individuals to access food), food utilisation (the ability of individuals to use food in safe ways to meet their specific nutritional and dietary needs), and stability (no exposure of individuals or households to external shocks, such as food price or economic crises, which increase vulnerability) (FAO et al",2
"As the recent The State of Food Insecurity in the World report has shown, there has been “uneven progress” in meeting the targets of the MDGs about food security, such as ‘cutting by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by 2015’, and hence wide-spread global food insecurity persists (FAO et al",2
Gender equality is seen as “crucial for agricultural development and the attainment of the MDGs [and now the SDGs] (World Bank et al,5
"2), and is “the single most important determinant of food security (FAO and ADB 2013, p.1), and the “key to eradicating hunger” in the world (Villarreal 2013)",2
"Incorporating gender issues and perspectives, and understanding gender-differentiated roles in agriculture and food security are thus critical for improving agricultural development and food security, and for closing the gender gaps in these areas (FAO 2013; UNDP 2012; World Bank 2009)",2
Climate change has gender dimensions and gender-differentiated impacts with women being more exposed and more vulnerable to climate change risks than men (World Bank et al,13
"3) and in meeting the MDG of improving gender inequalities and women’s empowerment; however, gender inequalities still persist worldwide (UN 2015a, p",5
"It is therefore imperative to continue researching, monitoring and evaluating the gender work of all agencies involved in this global effort to improve food security so that lessons learnt can be shared for better gender-mainstreaming efforts",2
"International agricultural research institutes and funding bodies play important roles in international efforts to achieve food security and improve agricultural development through policy-oriented research and funding, and identifying sustainable and effective methods for agricultural production",2
Studies have shown that policy-oriented research conducted by international agricultural research centres do have a positive impact on policy change and directions (Renkow and Byerlee 2010; Walker et al,2
"As organisations promoting gender-responsive programs, the methods and approaches they endorse for women’s empowerment have been deemed appropriate and important as subjects for critical analysis",5
"The objectives are three-fold: (i) to highlight in what ways IFPRI and BMGF incorporate gender into their research and funding strategies, (ii) to show what kind of gender-responsive approaches are more successful than others for achieving women’s empowerment and decreasing gender inequalities in agricultural development, and (iii) to suggest possible improvements for making gender-responsive work more effective",5
"Additionally, with one of the biggest challenges of gender-responsive programs being the difficulty of measuring women’s empowerment, we also critically analyse the tools currently being utilised by the organisations for this purpose",5
We conducted a thematic analysis of major project or strategy documents of both organisations (Table 1) in order to assess the outcomes of projects and funding initiatives in regard to gender equality and women’s empowerment,5
"This analysis was corroborated with a key informant approach through five semi-structured interviews with IFPRI and BMGF employees experienced in gender-responsive work, and international agricultural researchers from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research",2
"The identified themes from the document analysis, such as ‘gender mainstreaming’ or ‘women in leadership’, were also used in the analysis of the interview transcripts to identify consistencies and contradictions",5
"Due to the paper’s focus on the role of gender inequalities for food insecurity, and on IFPRI’s and BMGF’s gender-responsive work encouraging the empowerment of women, we utilised a feminist theoretical framework for our analysis",2
Feminist Theory aims to understand gender inequality and empower women in all aspects of life and industry (Allen and Sachs 2007),5
Gender inequality is based on unequal power relations between men and women,5
"Women play a vital role in major areas of food security such as food production, distribution and utilisation, and contribute to other crucial areas that support agricultural production and development, such as seed protection, crop domestication, and soil and water conservation (Agarwal 2012; UNDP 2012)",2
"If women were given equal decision making power surrounding food as men in the home, it is estimated that child malnutrition could decrease by 13% (Behrman et al",2
"Overcoming gender gaps in agricultural production and development, to which we turn in the next section, is thus crucial for achieving global food security",2
"The input and value of women’s roles in agricultural production and food security could be enhanced if gender-specific constraints in regard to ownership of assets, access to productive inputs, credit and extension services were eliminated (UNDP 2012)",2
Many academics commenting on gender disparities in land access and ownership focus solely on gender inequality as the cause (Karl 2009; Kiptot et al,5
One of the major obstacles for achieving gender equality is the prevalence of existing social and cultural norms that create barriers for the empowerment of farming women,5
Gender mainstreaming is one of the most prominently suggested techniques for achieving gender equality in agriculture,5
"Karl (2009, p.9) describes gender mainstreaming as “bringing women into the mainstream [forefront] of agriculture, rather than further marginalising them with small, isolated projects”",5
Feminists have criticised the concept of gender mainstreaming because it involves mainstreaming women into a society or institute which would still be considered patriarchal,5
Critics would prefer a more rigorous approach to women’s empowerment in the face of such patriarchy (Karl 2009),5
(2009) who suggest that governments must take responsibility for gender disparities and close them through incorporating women’s empowerment initiatives into agricultural development policy and improving credit and loan options exclusively offered to women,5
"This could increase women’s employment opportunities in newer commercial industries and heighten their ability to pass valuable knowledge about sustainability, climate change adaptation and nutrition onto younger family members",13
"The FAO (2011, p.3, emphasis in original) states, “gender roles can change”, and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) are two organisations whose work is very much concerned with women’s empowerment in agriculture through changing traditional gender roles",5
The following sections will discuss the gender-responsive approaches and impact on women’s empowerment of the two organisations,5
"Established in 1975, IFPRI is a highly regarded international agricultural research institute focusing on research-based policy solutions for hunger and malnutrition in developing countries",2
IFPRI is one of many partner organisations of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR),2
"The ‘engendering [of] agricultural research, development and extension’ has been a central objective of IFPRI’s for over twenty years (Meinzen-Dick et al",2
"Inequalities found in the areas of markets, support services, assets, technology, income generation, agricultural productivity and the impacts of new technologies and innovations are at the centre of this program",2
"This alludes to the commitment to gender being made by CGIAR, and as IFPRI’s enveloping organization, this could be considered reflective of IFPRI’s own efforts toward women’s empowerment",5
BMGF is at the forefront of placing emphasis on gender equality and women’s empowerment in agriculture,5
BMGF’s initiative to exclude agricultural research projects without a gender focus is effective in encouraging organisations seeking funding to include a gender focus in their programs in order to obtain a grant,2
"There is a method of measuring and evaluating nutrition, women’s empowerment and income in families",5
The project includes policy which protects its participants and employees from exploitation or sexual harassment,5
"Although it is difficult to measure the extent of gender inequalities and women’s empowerment, both BMGF and IFPRI place significant focus on innovative and effective research methods through gender disaggregated data collection, monitoring and evaluation, and through empowerment measurement tools (BMGF 2008; IFPRI 2013)",5
"One such tool developed by IFPRI (through funding by BMGF) is the Women’s Empowerment in International Agriculture Index (WEAI), which utilises points and indicators to measure farming women’s empowerment across projects and communities",5
"Our analysis of IFPRI’s Gender, Agriculture and Assets Project (GAAP) suggests an overall low women’s empowerment impact when utilising the WEAI (See Table 2)",5
The application of the WEAI was utilised to understand its shortcomings as a women’s empowerment measurement tool,5
"The WEAI is difficult to apply to small projects and is more easily applied to broad, national data sets on women’s empowerment in agriculture",5
A major flaw in its design is that it does not include indicators for measuring increased nutrition which is a significant area of concern in food security (Amaringen 2014; Behrman et al,2
"(2012), education and training are key for encouraging women to assert themselves and be more productive in controlling agricultural assets",4
"98), “the most cost-effective means of maximizing contributions [by international organisations] to gender equality and empowerment is to develop an institutional culture that is women-friendly and empowering.” This leads us to the issue of ‘gender mainstreaming’ which presented itself as another important theme in the documents and interviews",5
Both IFPRI and BMGF have mentioned or promoted gender mainstreaming as a means for empowering farming women (BMGF 2008; IFPRI 2013),5
"3), “a gender mainstreaming strategy can ensure that the practical needs and strategic interests of women and girls are considered in each proposal and that understanding the complexities of gender roles helps refine our project goals and design.” The concept is supported by many scholars in the field, suggesting that altering a society’s views of gender roles will create long-term empowerment for farming women (Sachs and Alston 2010; Behrman et al",5
"In addition, interview results have suggested that gender mainstreaming as a sole approach for women’s empowerment within a research institute is ineffective",5
Interview respondents shared a negative view of gender mainstreaming as a lone tool for women’s empowerment at a research level,5
"The shared view was that gender mainstreaming allows institutes to make claims of having mainstreamed gender approaches within projects, without placing any great emphasis on gender-responsive research as a whole",5
"While IFPRI’s gender research staff are primarily women, it should increase the emphasis it places on gender equality through internal gender initiatives",5
The inclusion of men in gender-responsive research methods is increasingly becoming recognised as an important component of women’s empowerment (Wanner and Wadham 2015),5
"Engagement with men in gender-responsive research is crucial to understanding the specific historical and societal patriarchy that exists in the project area, further informing research projects and increasing the potential for women’s empowerment outcomes (Wanner and Wadham 2015, p",5
A major setback to projects has been the unintended disempowerment of women through increases in domestic violence and added time burdens following the provision of agricultural assets to women,5
"For example, the CARE project saw societal backlash in the form of increases in violence against women (Johnson et al",5
"It helps to create more of a partnership model, more of a family based plan.
 This reiterates the importance of including men in women’s empowerment initiatives",5
Educating men on the importance of farming women’s empowerment can work to avoid men experiencing feelings of displacement which could trigger acts of violence,5
"The BMGF respondent suggested that this could be due to focusing primarily on increasing dairy production: 
“This is the kind of risk that happens when you focus exclusively on productivity and don’t also increase women’s empowerment as you go.
This is the classic unintended consequence
.” (emphasis added)",5
Preliminary research could also be key to understanding the gender dynamics within a specific community that could promote increases in domestic violence as a result of research projects,5
"Education and extension services were somewhat promoted in the GAAP report and can provide an opportunity to encourage women’s emancipatory agency through financial independence, and to contest the social inequalities that hinder their agricultural production",10
"Agricultural knowledge can also provide women with leverage for negotiating agricultural rights and improved intervention strategies, as has been seen in some climate change adaptation programs (Tschakert et al",13
"The main objective was to find out what kind of gender-responsive work is effective and what kind of lessons can be drawn for IFPRI, BMGF and other organisations working in the field of agricultural development and food security",2
The Institute stresses the need for thorough research approaches such as the collection of sex-disaggregated data and measuring women’s empowerment through the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI),5
"Additional future research on measuring gender equality and women’s empowerment, including research about the effectiveness of the pro-WEAI and the effectiveness of sex-disaggregated surveys, is required to gauge the progress of gender-responsive work",5
"While IFPRI’s GAAP assisted projects saw some increases in nutrition and women’s decision making, the report acknowledges that the impacts on women’s empowerment were relatively low",5
Unintended disempowerment of women through increases in domestic violence and added time burdens seen in some projects have serious negative implications for farming women in project countries and steps should be taken to prevent them,5
"Additionally, the long-term impacts of these projects are unclear and can only be determined through ongoing analyses of women’s empowerment in the areas focused on by research programs",5
BMGF’s approach to women’s empowerment through funding and ongoing guidance for researchers has positive implications for the effectiveness and level of gender work incorporated into research projects,5
Sharing of knowledge among research institutes and other relevant development organisations is increasingly becoming recognised as essential for productive food security initiatives (Kristjanson et al,2
"Through funding of projects, the Foundation shows its support for women’s empowerment and acts as a source of information for effective methods, providing stability for research projects",5
IFPRI experienced increases in domestic violence and added time burdens for women following the provisioning of agricultural assets in GAAP project initiatives (Johnson et al,5
88ff) can help to increase women’s empowerment overall at the local level,5
Initiatives such as these emphasise the importance of gender equality at all levels of an organisation and could help to promote gender work at both an internal and external level,5
We hope that our paper and recommendations can help as a call for action and guide for more effective gender-responsive work in organisations working for global food security.,2
Poverty reduction and environmental sustainability are the two significant challenges the world needs to cope with in the twenty-first century worldwide,1
"Environmental impact is a constraint in the path of poverty alleviation and sustainable development, as well",1
"In the twenty-first century, both climate change and poverty are disasters worldwide (Rizk and Slimane 2018)",13
"2019), but among many challenges, poverty reduction is the more vigorous particularly in developing countries (Ouyang et al",1
"To achieve sustainable development goals, it is crucial to fight against two key factors, such as poverty and climate change",13
Poverty alleviation and environmental safety assume priority especially for ecologically vulnerable areas and poverty-stricken territories in Asian countries,1
"Climate change such as rising temperatures, varied rainfall patterns, and natural disasters will affect human health, including heat exposure, undernutrition, and increased explosion and transmission of illnesses (Zhou et al",13
"Poor health condition causes to rise in poverty; hence health contributes to a reduction in poverty, and this indicates that the influence of climate change on health is increasing (Maione et al",13
"However, fossil fuel consumption generated greenhouse gas emission which is responsible for climate change (Bilgili et al",13
"From the short-term perspective, economic growth contributes to reducing poverty, but on the other hand, it is worsening the environment",8
These factors are potentially affecting the ecological footprint and directly impact on poverty alleviation; countries will become economically better and protect the environment,1
"However, there is a scarcity of studies that address the nexus between poverty and environmental degradation that depend on natural resources",15
Climate change and its impacts are among the most vulnerable and the most significant environmental issue the world is coping with recent times,13
Evaluating the role of climate change that affects the reduction of poverty is of great importance to the inclusive valuation of climate change impacts on the social economy and mitigation of its negative consequences (Zhou et al,13
Further hypothetical and practical work is required to get efficient and logical results of uncovering relations between economic development ecological footprint and poverty,8
"Hence, the objective of this study to explore the impact of poverty on ecological footprint and vice versa in the presence of economic growth and several control factors for Asian countries",8
"In this, the ecological footprint is a measure for environmental sustainability, which is the function of poverty, access to electricity, per capita GDP, economic independence, inflation, and population",7
"Moreover, economic growth is measured in GDP per capita (US$, constant 2010), inflation is estimated at consumer prices (% of annual), and the population is calculated in (1000s of people)",8
"Data for population, inflation, and economic growth were retrieved from the World Bank",8
"Economic freedom is an index that lies between 0 and 100, 0 indicates the least, and 100 shows the maximum",8
The data for the economic freedom index is obtained from The Heritage Foundation,8
This study uses ecological footprint as an extensive proxy of environmental degradation (Alola et al,15
The ecological footprint as a measure of environmental degradation is widely debated in the literature (Nathaniel et al,15
An increase in ecological footprint leads to reduce poverty (columns 1 and 2),1
"Poverty is also one of the factors of environmental degradation, especially in Asian countries",15
It means that the steps taken globally to combat global warming may influence the poverty rate,1
"Industrialization is the key to eradicate poverty; however, this causes to increase intensity and extent of environmental pollution",1
"Likewise, on the role of GDP in ecological footprint, the coefficient of GDP and square of GDP are positive and negative, respectively (columns 3 and 4), and it is recommending that an initial rise in per capita GDP causes environmental degradation, but later more rise in per capita GDP decreases ecological footprint",15
One plausible reason may be that earlier in the economic development of a country’s pollution increases,8
"Further, economic growth rises owing to poor environmental performance (Abdul et al",8
The decrease in the price level (inflation) may help in poverty alleviation in Asian countries,1
"It means that access to electricity is imperative to accomplish the Millennium Development Goals, which reduces poverty (Rizk and Slimane 2018)",7
It ought to be seen that access to electricity reduces poverty but increases ecological footprint,7
Access to renewable energy sources would be a help to improve environmental quality (Abdul et al,7
"It is suggested that renewable energy utilization in houses and commercial purposes is an alternative to fossil fuel, which considerably diminishes carbon emissions (Abdul and Khan 2019b)",7
One of the key policies to accomplish these objectives might be to understand growing concerns of excessive fossil energy consumption that need to be controlled at earlies in Asian countries,7
Renewable energy is already economically viable and can slowly complete with fossil resources,7
"Towards accomplish sustainable development, this empirical study provides a fresh look at the relationship between ecological footprint, poverty, and GDP to control the empirical model with the total population, inflation, and access to electricity in Asian economies spanning 2010–2016, by using DK regression",7
The study’s findings inferred that measures taken to combat climate change and global warming which may have a growing impact on poverty,13
It is recommending government and policy analysts in Asia countries should care about poverty while designing policies for controlling environmental degradation,15
"Most of the budget is allocated to the environment, which is why resources become limited to reduce poverty",1
The government should take measures in parallel to control both environmental degradations and to alleviate poverty,1
"For instance, further results agree that access to electricity has a detrimental effect on both ecological footprint and poverty",7
The complex situation suggests that poverty will be eradicated to increase access to electricity consumption but with the promotion of renewable energy supply (solar and wind),7
This implies that renewable energy sources may help in the replacement of pollution-intensive energy sources (fossil fuel),7
More access to electricity from renewable sources will significantly decrease poverty and global warming to pave the way for sustainable development,7
"Among these factors, the poor institutional environment in the Asian region characterized by the lack of democracy, poor enforcement of forestry laws and regulation, and the lack of land-use planning represents a major challenge to environmental sustainability in the SDGs era",15
"Moreover, to decrease the price level through improvement in institutional quality can be the most effective tool for poverty alleviation in Asian countries",1