Current Research in Environmental Sustainability最新文献

As our societies and natural systems are becoming ever more interconnected, it is critical that sustainable management can adapt to new knowledge from both the ecological and the social domains, and act on it in a timely and effective manner. This need is amplifying in the Anthropocene as we are approaching the limit for humanity's safe operating space, leading to irreversible change to ecosystem function. This urgently requires increased attention and concern regarding the information feedbacks between the silos of science, policy and society. A web of policies is in place to protect the health of people and the planet, but to ensure that they are effective we need frameworks to make sense of real-world complexities and interlinkages between multiple factors. The Drivers-Pressures-State-Impacts-Response (DPSIR) framework was created for this purpose, however, its' implicit focus on 1) analytical and 2) procedural aspects must be made explicit, to enable coordination across silos and studies. Continued creation of new DPSIR derivatives may limit its impact, while more explicit coordination between these two aspects can improve the effectiveness of DPSIR while retaining its flexibility. We thus propose five elements to support sustainable policy development and implementation using DPSIR: 1) iteration; 2) risk, uncertainty and analytical bias; 3) flexible integration; 4) use of quantitative methods, and; 5) clear and standard definitions for DPSIR. We illustrate these elements in four cases: Three highlight missing feedbacks when DPSIR elements are not made explicit and a fourth case – on per-and-polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) – showing a potential roadmap to successful policy implementation using DPSIR.

Companies have reported some voluntary initiatives such as obtaining an ISO 14001 certification to solve environmental problems and to achieve United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals. While ISO 14001 adoption has been studied extensively on the case of parent companies, there is not much prior research related to the parent-subsidiary relationship. This paper attempts to answer the question why Japanese subsidiaries in Thailand obtain ISO 14001 certification by focusing on corporate governance characteristics of Japanese parent companies such as board diversity and on the share of voting rights in their subsidiaries. We perform a logistic analysis using panel data from 117 subsidiaries in three industrial sectors (rubber products, machinery, and precise machinery) in 2017–2020. We find that characteristics such as direct voting rights in the subsidiaries and long business history of the parent companies have a strong positive correlation with ISO 14001 adoption by their subsidiaries in Thailand. The proportion of independent directors on the parent companies' boards exhibits only a slightly positive correlation. By contrast, our findings show no correlation with the proportion of female directors on the parent companies' boards due to the gender inequality gap in Japan. Our findings contribute to the empirical literature about voluntary environmental management in developing countries with regard to the parent-subsidiary relationship.

Extreme weather events can act as “focusing events” that open windows of opportunity in the policy process for increasing resilience and transforming existing systems to be more sustainable and just. However, due to the multiple and contested meanings of resilience, it is uncertain to what extent a focusing event will foster transformational policy change as opposed to re-entrenching existing systems and structures. We conducted quantitative content and qualitative narrative analyses of Puerto Rican climate and energy policy before and after Hurricane Maria to assess the effect of a climate-induced disaster on the framings of resilience and transformation. We find that these terms are used predominantly in service of changes needed to promote the stability of the existing energy system. This suggests that after Hurricane Maria, achieving stability has been the dominant goal for resilience and transformation. As long as those responsible for the Puerto Rican energy system emphasize stability without actively working to enable longer-term transformational change, Puerto Ricans are unlikely to experience a rapid transition toward a sustainable, inclusive energy system.

One of the largest consumed and grown cereals in Ghana is maize. However, there is a dearth of research on the response of maize yield to rainfall and temperature variability in Ghana. Precisely, prior studies conducted in Ghana have employed only quantitative approaches to explore the effect of climate variability on the yield of food crops including maize. However, this study combined both quantitative and qualitative approaches to investigate the effect of rainfall and temperature variability on maize yield in the Asante Akim North District of the Ashanti Region, Ghana. Since research will help the decision-making process of the policymakers at several cadres of managerial leadership of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) all around the world where the goals are intended, this study will have significant implications on the attainment of the SDGs particularly Goals 1 (no poverty), 2 (zero hunger), and 13 (climate action). Pragmatic research philosophy was utilized with the aid of questionnaire surveys involving 150 maize farmers and three focus group discussions in three purposively chosen communities (Ananekrom, Juansa, and Agogo). The Mann-Kendall trend test was used to evaluate the trends of rainfall, temperature, and maize yield data for the period 2012 to 2021 in the study district. Multiple regression was used to assess the effect of rainfall and temperature variability on maize yield. Results showed that the surveyed maize farmers perceived rising temperatures and erratic rainfall patterns. Similarly, the Mann-Kendall trend test results revealed a significant temperature rise (p < 0.05) and an increasing rainfall pattern (p > 0.05). The increasing annual rainfall and rising temperature trends increased maize yield significantly (p < 0.05) in the district from 2012 to 2021 contributing about 70% of the yield variation. The surveyed maize farmers implemented key on-farm and off-farm practices including planting drought-resistant maize varieties, crop rotation, changing diets, and selling assets to adapt to the rainfall and temperature variability. The increasing annual rainfall and temperature patterns significantly affect maize yield positively in the Asante Akim North district stressing the need for continued implementation of adaptation practices such as planting high-yielding and drought-resistant maize varieties to enhance household food security. Furthermore, the results demonstrate the urgent need for policy formulation by policymakers to make maize production resilient to the adverse impacts of the changing rainfall and rising temperature trends in Ghana.

Climate change is an important global issue that can be mitigated by the adoption of a green lifestyle. The goal in this study was to find ways to motivate participation in such a lifestyle, with a survey of residents in Korea as a first step. The survey found that most respondents are aware of the need to adopt a green lifestyle, but only a minority are willing to voluntarily adopt one. The awareness and level of participation are relatively higher for women, for married people, and for homemakers. The survey also found that environmental education in school plays an important role in promoting participation in a green lifestyle. Moreover, although respondents agree that regulation is necessary to enforce a green lifestyle, they do not favor economic penalties for nonparticipation. Thus, informing the public of the positive effects of adopting a green lifestyle is more effective than regulatory enforcement. Our findings support the conclusion that emphasis on factors related to health or economics are more effective than social factors in promoting the adoption of a green lifestyle among the public. The results can be used as basic data to establish strategies to motivate the adoption of a green lifestyle.

Because of legislation and rising public pressure, financial institutions have begun to estimate and publish their financed greenhouse gas emissions. Such emissions are indirect from financial institutions' own greenhouse gas emissions and result from those companies' financial institutions invest in or lend capital to. The current convention to allocate indirect carbon emissions of investments and loans does not reflect the duration of such loans or investment holdings, nor the variability of carbon emissions from the underlying investments. Instead, the convention is to use an outstanding loan or investment at year-end against an enterprise value including cash to estimate the portion of emissions from the investment to be allocated to the investor or a financial institution. Using such methods can result in faulty conclusions, as investment portfolios can change dynamically, where some investments may be omitted from a portfolio while others enter a portfolio later in a year. Additionally, company emissions may vary greatly throughout the year, be it because of seasonality or other factors. This pitfall results in moderately skewed financed emissions from financial institutions at best, outright wrong at worst, and opens the possibility for greenwashing. In this paper, we provide a novel way to address this, which we demonstrate through a case study.