World Development Sustainability最新文献

Increasing population, economic activities, and the associated factors put a serious strain on municipal solid waste management in developing nations. We assessed the amount of solid waste generated and elucidated the existing management practices at household level in Mymensingh City Corporation, Bangladesh. We also investigated residents’ perceptions and attitudes on waste management and their awareness on waste-induced health and environmental problems. Data were gathered by a questionnaire survey of 352 households and two key informants’ interviews. The Kruskal-Wallis H and Pearson Chi-Squared tests were used for statistical analysis. Results show that a household generated about 0.62 kg of waste per day of which 99% was organic. Following the door-to-door approach, the city corporation collects unsegregated waste. More than 50% of the households reused fresh food waste as green fertilizer, and either reused or sold paper, metal, and plastic waste. Small, higher-income, and educated households generated higher amounts of organic waste than their counterparts. Respondents were satisfied with the existing door-to-door waste collection system, like to use of bioenergy and organic fertilizer, and were willing to pay for sustainable and eco-friendly waste management. More than 80% of respondents were aware of public health and environmental issues caused by waste mismanagement. The corporation has a plan to establish an energy and compost plant for which we suggest providing incentives for source segregation and designated bins to households. The city planners can take the findings of this study as useful baseline information for planning sustainable municipal solid waste management.

The practice of "green building" (GB) is gaining popularity in the building sector as a practical means of meeting the rising demand for eco-friendly or sustainable structures. However, the adoption of GB has been slower than it ought to have been. This study examines the significance of several obstacles to the widespread acceptance of GB. The findings gathered through statistical analysis of the responses received from a questionnaire survey provided to experts in the field of GB throughout the Northeastern states, are provided. A thorough review was done to identify 18 possible barriers to GBD in Northeast India. Descriptive and inferential statistical studies (ANOVA and Exploratory Factor Analysis) were done to evaluate the effects of different obstacles on GBD and categorize them into manageable factors. To examine the impact of various obstacles on GBD, a Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM) was established. The results revealed that poor geographic location, rating system limitations, enormous financial consequences, inadequate market conditions and policies, project viability, and poor public perception of GB contribute to Northeast India's GBD challenges. The conclusions of this paper might assist policymakers in identifying issues in GB adoption and developing appropriate measures for their wider acceptance.

Despite the increasing attention on energy poverty due to its health implications, the South African story is yet to be told, while pathways of influence have received little empirical investigation in the extant literature. This study examines how energy poverty affects mental distress in post-apartheid South Africa and explores gender and locational heterogeneities in outcomes as well as potential pathways. We use five years of longitudinal data extracted from the National Income Dynamics Survey (NIDS). We employ the Lewbel instrumental variable method to resolve endogeneity and apply causal mediation analysis to identify potential channels of effect. The findings suggest that energy poverty is associated with an increase in mental distress. This outcome is consistent across different estimation methods and conceptualisations of energy poverty. The deteriorating effect of energy poverty on mental distress is more pronounced among females and rural residents. We further establish that experiences of persistent cough and chest pains/tightness serve as potential pathways in the link between energy poverty and mental distress. We encourage the South African government to increase budgetary allocations to the free basic electricity policy and provide connection subsidies to poor households, which have the potential to alleviate energy poverty and reduce mental distress as a result.

The study aimed to spatially examine the viability and site suitability of ecotourism in the Uttara Kannada district, India. Karnataka is a fantastic destination for a variety of travel and has a lot of potentials to promote ecotourism, which has acquired popularity in recent years. Ecotourism is important to the conservation and safeguarding of biodiversity. Consequently, the current research aims to find potential ecotourism areas in the Uttara Kannada district, utilizing the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and Geographical Information System-Remote sensing (GIS-RS) methodologies. The study is based on the application of GIS-RS factors for landscape naturalness, climatic features, accessibility parameters, topographic attributes, protected and reserved regions, and natural attractiveness in the GIS platform via a weighted overlay method. To analyze and appraise the ecotourism potential in the study area, the research uses satellite and weighted overlays of auxiliary data from AHP. As an outcome, 53.54 % of the highly suitable land was found over the forest regions and finally, the Unsuitable regions were mainly indicated over the miscellaneous area (47.46 %). The majority of the most suitable ecotourism sites that fall under category S1 are located in the Taluks like Joida (27 %) and Karwar (15 %). The outcome of this paper as expected is that very high and moderately suitable regions were initiated in the forest region. The study's findings and methodology will be useful to decision-makers and planners.

Pro-environmental behavior does not diffuse sufficiently in society. Is there a way to enhance the degree of people's pro-environmental behavior? This study aims to develop a dynamic model of mutual learning in social networks to simulate the diffusion of pro-environmental behavior and to search for promising policies for promoting it. This study considers two policy measures: enhancing pro-environmental behavior of target people and changing the learning patterns of target people. The people targeted for intervention are determined by random selection, selection in descending order of degree centrality, and selection in descending order of eigenvector centrality. Centralities measure an influence of a node on other nodes through a network, based on the number of direct or indirect links. An interesting finding is that changing individual learning patterns is much more effective for enhancing the degree of pro-environmental behavior in social networks than trying to directly enhance its degree. In addition, selection of target people based on the centralities is more influential in encouraging environmentally friendly behavior than random selection, particularly in the policy of changing learning patterns. Multiplier effects are also measured: the ratio of the net increase in the number of people who enhance their degree of pro-environmental behavior at the end of a certain number of time steps beyond business as usual to the number of people intervened. Multiplier effects are always positive when learning patterns are changed. Six potential approaches to changing learning patterns are discussed: persuasion, reputation, competition, awareness of economic returns, information provisioning, and education.

Many authors argue that we live in a post-secular world where religion persists, and where, in public affairs, religious views should have an equal voice with secularity. This article examines participation in international development through that post-secular lens: To what extent do the differing worldviews of the partners affect their relationships when designing and implementing development projects? Fieldwork for the research was conducted mainly through interviews with global donor and practitioner organisations working from New Zealand and with recipients on one project in Bangladesh. We used a typology of three different parties: recipients; secular donor and practitioner organisations; and faith-based donor and practitioner organisations (FBOs). In that triangle of relationships we found the three parties’ beliefs are intensely important to them. But we also found participation tends to be transactional in that the topic of religion is generally avoided, leading to unexplored assumptions and adverse consequences to development of trust between the parties. However, we observed that FBOs and recipients can, through religion, and regardless of what that religion is, have a natural rapport. This is important as less-developed countries are generally profoundly religious. Further, in an extension to some concepts of post-secularity, our research indicated there is value in not just listening but also in debating views in-depth as a pathway to creating common ground. This may be challenging for secular organisations, but facilitators who are accepted by the three parties as understanding and respecting their views could help achieve productive relationships.

Maize is the staple food of most households in sub-Saharan Africa. The adoption of stress-tolerant maize varieties (STMV) is being promoted due to climate change. There are various methods applied to disseminate these varieties. Unfortunately, the adoption at the household level is still unsatisfactory. This study evaluated the effectiveness of the dissemination methods used in Benin. We identified dissemination methods from key informants involved in STMV seed dissemination projects. The performance of the identified methods was assessed through the perceptions of 150 maize-farming households using the Likert scale. We assessed the extent to which each method leads to the knowledge, use, and continued use (appropriation) of STMV seeds. Friedman and Wilcoxon rank tests were used for data analysis. Nine dissemination methods were identified and categorized into four groups according to their theoretical driven: strengthening social ties, capacity building, incentive, and awareness raising. Our results revealed that dissemination methods that focus on strengthening social ties, raising awareness, and providing incentives are more effective in promoting STMV adoption. Depending on the intended adoption (awareness, use, and appropriation), extension services and STMV promotional projects could focus on strengthening social ties, raising awareness, and providing incentives. However, future research must identify which of the methods leads to a higher rate of adoption of STMV.

This study tests the association between financial inclusion and energy poverty in Indonesia. It adopts multi-dimensional energy poverty and financial inclusion measures employing the 2018 Statistics Indonesia data. The energy poverty measures cover six indicators, i.e., the primary cooking fuel, indoor air pollution, lighting, ownership of household appliances, and supporting essential services such as education, entertainment, and communication. On the other hand, the financial inclusion variable involves household access to banks, credit, and insurance. In testing the financial inclusion-energy poverty association, the present study performs the Two-Stage Least Square (2SLS) method, involving household distance to the nearest financial facilities as an instrument variable (IV) to overcome the potential endogeneity problem from the reverse causality between the financial inclusion and energy poverty. This analysis reports a robust negative and significant association between financial inclusion and energy poverty, bringing potential critical notes for Indonesia's policy formulation against energy poverty.

Environmental peacebuilding investigates mutually reinforcing relationships between environmental sustainability and peacebuilding. However, environmental peacebuilding research and practice frequently neglect to explicitly take account of power relations and inequities. This is despite other fields of research highlighting the centrality of power relations in the environment and in conflict. We reviewed the environmental peacebuilding literature for i) descriptions of contextual power dynamics and ii) explicit discussion of addressing power in environmental peacebuilding interventions. Just over half of included articles contained at least one of these, meaning that nearly half of articles did not discuss or engage with power or inequity in either the environmental/conflict context or the intervention process. Where articles did engage with power, there was a tendency to draw from narrow conceptualisations of power as control over others and over natural resources. We discuss these results in the context of broader debates around conceptualising power, and highlight the value of a relational approach to power for environmental peacebuilding. Finally, we propose a framework to recentre power in environmental peacebuilding interventions. We illustrate the ways that all interventions engage with power to some extent, regardless of whether they explicitly set out to do so. We argue that reaching the ‘virtuous cycle’ of mutually reinforcing positive peace and environmental sustainability requires active transformation of power relations.

The transition to net zero requires full decarbonization of the transport sector, currently one of the leading sources of emissions globally. Transport-related carbon emissions are growing fastest in the developing world. This makes it particularly critical to understand whether low- and middle-income countries are making progress towards decoupling transport sector emissions from economic growth, as well as the extent to which their current emissions trajectory is being shaped by structural factors versus more amenable policy choices. This paper assembles and analyzes a comprehensive dataset on transport-related emissions with a uniquely broad coverage of developing countries. The paper employs the Tapio decoupling model over the period 1990–2018 to demonstrate that high-income countries are almost twice as likely to have reached relative decoupling as low and middle-income countries (70 vs 36 percent, while the latter are almost twice as likely to be in a state of negative decoupling as the former (17 versus 41 percent). This paper conducts index-decomposition and econometric analysis to shed light on the factors driving transport-related carbon emissions. Index decomposition reveals that there have been only relatively modest reductions in the transport emissions intensity of GDP since 1990 and that these have not been large enough to offset economic growth in middle-income countries and demographic growth in low-income countries. Regression analysis further shows that urbanization and industrialization are important correlates of transport-related emissions, while the correlation of policy choices with reduced emissions is rather weak.