Geography and Sustainability最新文献

The redistribution of cropland to areas of higher elevation in China has long affected agricultural development and could seriously threaten national food security. However, there is currently little research reported on this phenomenon, which may limit the improvement of cropland protection policies. To fill this gap, we analyzed the spatiotemporal characteristics and driving mechanisms of increased cropland elevation in China during the period 1980–2020. The average cropland elevation in China increased by 17.38 m from 1980 to 2020. The gravity center of the cropland area and average cropland elevation in China moved to the northwest by 81.00 km and 51.47 km, respectively. The amount of newly added cropland in eastern China was less than that in occupied regions; however, the average elevation of newly added cropland was greater than that of occupied cropland, though the opposite phenomenon was observed in western China. Slope, temperature, land-use intensity, population, economic density, and distance to main roads were the main factors affecting the redistribution of cropland to areas of higher elevation. The effects of these major driving factors exhibited significant spatial and temporal variations in China. This study has important implications for improving existing cropland protection policies and developing more effective cropland management systems in China.

Viticulture in Argentina is an important socioeconomic sector, reflected in a significant wine market and tourism. However, climate change and related extreme events are serious concerns. The main issues are heatwaves, hailstorms, and heavy rainfall, resulting in damage to vineyards. While climate change impacts have already been discussed for regions such as the Mediterranean, the literature lacks an up-to-date overview of Argentine viticulture and potential mitigation solutions. In a country culturally and economically connected to the world of wine, it is strategic to bridge this gap to be prepared for a climatically adverse future. This perspective paper presents an overview of Argentine viticulture and its relationship to climate change. We focus on the Mendoza region, one of the most productive areas and home to cultural landscapes where internationally recognized wines are produced. Climate change is already occurring, a fact we observed by analyzing data from the past decades. We discussed how heatwaves in the lowlands drive farmers to move to the Andes slopes looking for more favorable conditions. But new threats arise, such as extreme rainfall. Due to surface hydrological processes, they can cause land degradation and compromise vineyards. We investigate these phenomena in detail, highlighting how they represent a growing challenge that must be addressed for the sustainable development of future viticulture in the area. Therefore, we propose mitigation strategies for more resilient production, drawing inspiration from the Sustainable Development Goals and suggesting a framework that can be extended to broader contexts worldwide.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is appealing for a global implementation of urban agricultural strategies to increase food availability. Bandung, a city in Indonesia, is already participating in this initiative. This research aimed to assess the contribution of urban agriculture toward household food fulfillment and income. Furthermore, the impacts on urban, subsistence, semi-commercial, and commercial agriculture were considered. In-depth interviews to obtain qualitative data and observations were also utilized. A survey of 321 households, consisting of 107 for each urban agricultural type, used questionnaires to obtain quantitative data. These inputs were further analyzed to determine the contribution of household food fulfillment and income. The results showed that average urban agriculture has an insignificant and significant contribution of 9% and 41.5% to household food fulfillment and income. This was due to the vast complexities of metropolitan problems, including limited access to land, lack of participation, dependence on on-market products, and increasing commercialization which opposed urban agricultural policies.

Achieving land degradation neutrality (LDN) worldwide is a significant target of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG15.3). Inner Mongolia, as a typical dryland region in northern China, has carried out several large-scale ecological restoration programs to combat land degradation. However, there is a lack of comprehensive assessment of its land degradation situation after ecological programs implementation, which is of great significance to supporting SDG15.3 in China. This study analyzed the land degradation situation using the improved SDG15.3.1 calculation framework based on fine resolution data in Inner Mongolia from 2000 to 2020, and finally comprehensively evaluated the land status of the whole region and those subject to ecological programs. The results show that net land restoration proportion of various ecological project regions and whole region continues to increase. The scope of the Grain for Green Program (GGP) had the largest proportion of net land restoration while the Natural Reserve Program (NRP) had the lowest proportion from 2000 to 2020. The net land restoration area of Inner Mongolia during 2000–2010 and 2010–2020 was 35,800 km² and 65,300 km², respectively. Overall, Inner Mongolia has achieved statistically zero growth in land degradation under the governance of ecological restoration programs. Therefore, reasonable planning, well monitoring, and timely assessment of ecological restoration programs are crucial to support SDG15.3.

This research paper assesses the reality of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices’ potential to promote the outcomes of sustainable food systems (SFS) within Ghana’s smallholding agriculture context. The study demonstrates that rural farmers generally perceive CSA’s contribution to ‘food and nutrition security’ and ‘economic performance’ as more important than CSA’s contribution to ‘social equity’ and ‘environmental stewardship’. From a narrow perspective, the study demonstrates that farmers perceive CSA’s potential to ‘prevent pest and disease outbreaks’ and ‘increase human capital information’ as the most important contribution of CSA to SFS outcomes. In contrast, CSA’s potential to promote environmental stewardship is perceived as the least important among Ghana’s rural farmers. This enormity of displacement of smallholders’ perceptions at large is motivated by demographic, socioeconomic and ecological factors. Moreso, the CSA for SFS outcomes narratives is driven by farmers’ self-apprise, social networks and other local information dissemination agents. Furthermore, research findings suggest farmers’ awareness of CSA practices and interventions is deficient owing to unmet training and information needs for approximately 82% of the CSA practices and interventions. This situation elucidates the dichotomy of CSA practices’ narratives as tools for attaining food, nutrition security and economic performance to the detriment of critical issues such as increasing awareness and building farmers’ capacity to engage with CSA practices while also managing socio-ecological trade-offs that emerge over time due to engagement with CSA. Critical (re)orientation is needed across the scale to drive CSA practices and interventions that confine climate adaptation and food production practices within safe planetary boundaries without undermining social, economic, food and nutrition security needs.

Climate change is a global challenge that threatens global ecological security and sustainable development. Finding ways to mitigate their impacts is paramount through engineering carbon storage, low-carbon energy transition, or natural climate solutions (NCS). NCS involve a set of measures (e.g., afforestation, land restoration, biochar reuse or sustainable land use practices). Implementing NCS increases carbon sequestration and mitigates climate change at the lowest costs and greenest ways. In addition, NCS practices can improve multiple ecosystem services (ES) such as air quality, flood and erosion regulation, pest control, water purification, wild food biomass, recreation or landscape aesthetics. However, unsustainable implementation of NCS, such as over-afforestation of dense mono-forest, can lead to tradeoffs with water supply, wildfire risk, and decreased grasslands and croplands. Therefore, to optimise the NCS implementation, reducing the tradeoffs associated and transforming the “expand ecosystem area” to “improve ecosystem management efficiency” is vital. Although NCS can contribute significantly to mitigating climate change, systematic climate actions must be accompanied by a transformation in the global society and investment in new technologies. This will be key to addressing global challenges such as the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 15 (Life on Land), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing), SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), and SDG 14 (Life Bellow Water).

Impoverished sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is under increasing environmental pressure from global environmental changes. It is now generally accepted in academic circles that economic development in SSA countries can cause environmental pressure in other countries. However, there is research gap on the impact of economic assistance on environmental pressure in SSA countries and whether economic assistance causes spatial spillovers of environmental pressure between SSA countries. To better understand the impact of economic assistance on environmental pressures in SSA, a dynamic spatial Dubin panel model was developed. It helped us explore the spatial spillover effects of economic assistance on environmental pressures in recipient countries based on the panel data from 34 SSA countries. The results show that economic assistance had a positive stimulating effect on environmental pressures of recipient countries, which means that the degree of human disturbance to the environment has deepened. Due to the regional correlation effect, neighboring countries were saddled with environmental pressures from the target country. Moreover, environmental pressures have time inertia, which can easily produce a snowball effect. The decomposition of effects shows that the impact of economic assistance on environmental pressures is relatively minor. Environmental pressures have spillover effects, so to deal with diffuse risks, joint regional prevention and control policies should be developed.

Growing attention has been directed to the use of satellite imagery and open geospatial data to understand large-scale sustainable development outcomes. Health and education are critical domains of the Unites Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), yet existing research on the accessibility of corresponding services focused mainly on detailed but small-scale studies. This means that such studies lack accessibility metrics for large-scale quantitative evaluations. To address this deficiency, we evaluated the accessibility of health and education services in mainland China in 2021 using point-of-interest data, OpenStreetMap road data, land cover data, and WorldPop spatial demographic data. The accessibility metrics used were the least time costs of reaching hospital and school services and population coverage with a time cost of less than 1 h. On the basis of the road network and land cover information, the overall average time costs of reaching hospital and school were 20 and 22 min, respectively. In terms of population coverage, 94.7% and 92.5% of the population in China has a time cost of less than 1 h in obtaining hospital and school services, respectively. Counties with low accessibility to hospitals and schools were highly coupled with poor areas and ecological function regions, with the time cost incurred in these areas being more than twice that experienced in non-poor and non-ecological areas. Furthermore, the cumulative time cost incurred by the bottom 20% of counties (by GDP) from access to hospital and school services reached approximately 80% of the national total. Low-GDP counties were compelled to suffer disproportionately increased time costs to acquire health and education services compared with high-GDP counties. The accessibility metrics proposed in this study are highly related to SDGs 3 and 4, and they can serve as auxiliary data that can be used to enhance the evaluation of SDG outcomes. The analysis of the uneven distribution of health and education services in China can help identify areas with backward public services and may contribute to targeted and efficient policy interventions.

Noise pollution is becoming a critical health risk for city life. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced many cities to implement several mobility restrictions. These restrictions changed human activity patterns and decreased the noise levels and noise pollution that often affect urban settings. As the number of infections decreased, so did the outdoor activities, influencing the population’s perception of noise. This paper aims to evaluate the changes in noise levels associated with mobility restrictions between 2020 and 2021 in Guayaquil, Ecuador. This study used crowdsourcing with the help of smartphones and mobile applications to collect geo-referenced environmental noise data. The data was used to generate noise maps in different time frames. Finally, noise level maps were created using GIS-based tools to identify the urban areas that experienced the highest noise level variation during the study period. The results show that the most significant noise increase occurred at night. Furthermore, when analyzing noise level changes in different urban areas, the western area of Guayaquil was the one that experienced the most significant noise level variation. Findings inform the perception of noise pollution and could potentially serve as a reference for decision-makers during the proposal of public policies that ensure a better quality of life for its citizens.

Rapid urbanization urges the immediate attention of policymakers to ensure sustainable city development. Understanding the urban growth drivers is essential to address effective strategies for urbanization-related challenges. This work aims to study Raiganj’s urban development and the factors associated with this expansion. This study employed global logistic regression (LR) and geographical weighted logistic regression (GWLR) to explore the role of different factors. The results showed that the role of the central business district (covariate >-1), commercial market (covariate >-3), and police station (covariate >-4) were significant to the development of new built-up areas. In the second period, major roads (covariate >-2) and new infrastructures (covariate >-4) became more relevant, particularly in the eastern and southern areas. GWLR was more accurate in assessing the different factors’ impact than LR. The results obtained are essential to understanding urban expansion in India’s medium-class cities, which is critical to effective policies for sustainable urbanization.