Environment, Development and Sustainability最新文献

The unrelenting surge in global warming in the current era requires the inevitable needs for international cooperation to mitigate the escalating carbon emissions. While theoretical researches have examined potential frameworks as to an international environmental agreement (IEA) to mitigate global warming problem, none considered the impact of asymmetric technology difference on the optimal allowance trading scheme when forming a stable IEA. By using the method of participation game theory and numerical simulations, this paper envisages a set of countries with asymmetric abatement technology in a noncooperative participation game to study the various impacts of the magnitude of technology difference among countries, the scope of the “allowances to emit” trading, the decision orders and the number of total countries on the optimal trading scheme under the stability of IEA. It characterizes three trading scenarios in a participation game and analyzes in detail that the magnitude of technology difference and the coverage of trading system have impacts on the optimal coalition size as well as the feature of coalition member. The quantitative findings show that if the technology gap is sufficiently small/large, the largest/smallest abatement achieves under a worldwide trading system instead of a trading system within the IEA members. From the perspective of social welfare, the upshot of optimal IEA size as well as trading scheme is provided upon the magnitude of technology difference. In sum, a comprehensive global environmental convention with a worldwide “allowances to emit” trading system is overarching and optimal for the global society. These findings drive towards some key policy implications that establish a sound trading scheme allowing fair participation for all countries and encourage innovation activities in abatement technologies and so on.

Enterprise green innovation (EGI) is necessary to develop sustainably. With the continuous advancement of the digital economy, whether digital transformation (DT) can enhance the quantity and quality of green innovation in enterprises is an important issue that urgently needs to be explored. More importantly, the complex moderating roles of formal and informal institutions have not received sufficient attention. Based on the data of 3595 listed companies in China from 2011 to 2021, this study empirically analyzed the impact of DT on EGI. It tested the moderating role of environmental regulation (ER) and Confucian culture (Ru). The research found that (i) DT positively impacts EGI quantity and quality and can improve EGI quality better. This fundamental conclusion has passed various endogeneity and robustness tests. (ii) ER positively moderates the relationship between DT and EGI and can better moderate the relationship between DT and EGI quantity. (iii) When the Ru in a region is relatively high, the positive moderation effect of ER on the DT-EGI relationship is enhanced. (iv) The DT-EGI relationship is characterized by significant heterogeneity, like property rights, industry, and regional distribution. Specifically, the DT of state-owned enterprises, manufacturing enterprises, and enterprises in the central and western regions can better promote EGI. Therefore, managers should increase investment in DT to encourage enterprises to promote EGI actively. While strengthening environmental regulations, the government should also pay attention to the guidance of Ru and flexibly adjust relevant policies based on the heterogeneity of different enterprises to achieve the EGI effects of DT.

Environmental decline has been a global concern for all humanity and living species for many years. Despite the ongoing global response to increasing environmental degradation, the world still faces unrelenting environmental decline. Turkey sees sustainable development and green growth as responses to environmental decline while maintaining steady growth. The key issue here is how to manage/reduce environmental decline without jeopardizing rapid growth to meet the needs of the current generation. Therefore, this article analyzes sustainable development in Turkey in terms of policy and practices. For this purpose, it first presents a literature review on environmentalism, sustainable development and green growth, and then scrutinizes sustainable development policy and practices in Turkey. Briefly, although Turkey has embraced the policies of environmental conservation, Turkey’s core environmental discourse favors the steady growth and industrialization while ensuring the environmental conservation. Bear in mind that Turkey is still grappling with rapid growth to sustain a livable life for every citizen. As a result, the state is striving to balance various policies and the interests of many stakeholders to achieve sustainable development.

Climate change remains a significant challenge, which threatens the tourism sector in Zimbabwe. This study employs the destination sustainability theory to examine the perceptions of tourism business managers on the impacts of climate change on tourism activities in selected tourist centres in Zimbabwe. A qualitative research approach was adopted in which in-depth interviews were conducted with 30 managerial employees selected through purposive and snow ball sampling strategies. Participants were drawn from multiple study sites, namely Nyanga and Chimanimani; Hwange, Victoria Falls, and Binga; Kariba, Lake Chivero, Mana pools; and Gonarezhou. Findings showed that the perception of tourism facilities managers towards climate change were varied, with managers mostly concerned about climate change induced risk of flooding, shortened tourists vacation time, delayed opening of facilities, damage to supportive tourism infrastructure, loss of biodiversity and reduced capacity utilisation. Additionally, findings reveal that tourism is highly sensitive and vulnerable to the impacts of climate change in the selected study sites due to mediating variables encompassing over-dependence on tourism resources sensitive to climate change, an undiversified tourism market base, and reliance on outdoor tourist activities, coupled with other site specific variables. Overall, tourist sites lack adaptive capacity to recover from the impacts of climate change, hence the adoption of a wide range of smart climate change proofing strategies, notably sinking of boreholes to alleviate water shortages, translocation of wildlife, clearing blocked roads, rehabilitating damaged bridges, investing in energy saving appliances, and green energy. The findings of the study underscore the need for tourism facilities managers to adopt a climate change centric approach when developing climate change proofing strategies to enhance the sustainability and resilience of the sector.

The flourishing development of digital economy (DE) in China has profoundly affected the operation mode of social industry, commerce, agriculture and other industries, and the influence of DE on rural residents’ income needs further study. Based on the panel data of 31 provinces in China from 2017 to 2020, a multiple linear regression model of DE and rural per capita disposable income (PCDI) is constructed, and the model is estimated by the two-stage least squares method. The findings show that DE can improve rural PCDI. From the perspective of the intermediary effect, DE can promote rural PCDI through reducing agricultural product output, because the development of DE broadens the income channels of planting crops and reduces the production and operation costs. From the perspective of the adjustment effect, technological innovation has a significant negative adjustment effect on the influence of DE on PCDI, which shows that although DE makes up for some shortcomings in rural areas through technological innovation, it also accelerates the loss of resources.

This study aims to analyze the cost–benefit of demand–supply scenarios on hydropower generation and supply situation in the Marun catchment (Khuzestan province located in Iran) using the Low Emission Analysis Platform (LEAP). For this purpose, demographic data, macroeconomic indicators, and per capita consumption of various energy carriers in both urban and agricultural sectors in 2015 were extracted and calculated for Marun catchment. Then, key assumptions affecting energy consumption including population growth rate, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, and urbanization percentage for 2015–2040 were estimated and the trend of energy demand changes was modeled. Next, four scenarios including (1) Business-As-Usual (BAU), (2) Demand-Side Management (DSM), (3) energy mix and (4) integration scenarios were simulated with LEAP model and net present value (NPV) index calculated for each of them. The results show that final electricity demand in 2040 will be equal to 5094 MWh, while electricity generation capacity is equal to 3.1 million MWh. The results of cost–benefit analysis of different scenarios show that NPV Index of using energy-saving lamps is—$ 251 million compared to BAU scenario and is the best economic alternative to supply the electricity demand of the Marun catchment.

The compounding effects of rapid urbanization and climate change are driving cities in the Global South to urgently require localized intervention. This imperative hinges on the existence of robust institutional frameworks and strategies. The researchers observed that Accra’s Climate Action Plan (ACAP) in Ghana incorporates enabling factors that support urban climate governance; nevertheless, there is a lack of clarity regarding the key success implementation indicators that have been integrated to determine sustainable outcomes. The article, therefore, aims to qualitatively evaluate the governance frameworks and strategies put in place to attain a sustainable future in Accra by 2030. The evaluation of strategies focuses on two fundamental domains: stakeholder engagement and policy instruments. The governance framework is examined in terms of budget and funding options; monitoring and evaluation processes, internal coordination and cross-sector collaboration. The study employs interviews, content analysis, and a three-dimensional framework to assess sustainable development synergies. The findings of the study reveal specific policy instruments that are suboptimal at the local scale due to prevailing decentralized frameworks constraining the city’s autonomy. Furthermore, the ACAP has yet to be integrated into the city’s budget, with funding remaining limited. The institutional integration of ACAP is also significantly hindered by bureaucratic inefficiencies, limitations in monitoring and evaluation framework, and weakness in both internal and cross-sectoral collaborations. Another evidence from this study is that ACAP, while conducive for promoting sustainable development, shows limitations in addressing social sustainability. This is attributed to the absence of a comprehensive social risk and gender-responsive analysis of the impacts associated with the implementation of ACAP. The article thus concludes that the pursuit of a sustainable urban future in Accra remains impeded, unless meaningful efforts are directed toward enhancing the governance framework and revising the policy. The study recommends a more systematic analysis of policies to promote stronger social sustainability, inter alia. Policymakers and scholars focusing on local climate policy and sustainable urban development can find utility in the findings.

The coordinated development among city subsystems is an essential driving force of city sustainability. This paper uses the Entropy Weight-TOPSIS Model and Coupling Coordinated Model to measure and compare the City Sustainability Performance (CSP) and Coupling Coordination Performance (CCP) of 52 cities in northern China. The results show that the current measurement results of city sustainability may be too optimistic. The overall sustainability level of the northern Chinese cities is low. Only a few cities, such as the capital, provincial capitals, and other regional central cities, achieved relatively positive CSP and CCP. Nevertheless, under the surface, even in the cities with positive results, their subsystems’ coordinated development is unsatisfactory. The spatial distribution indicates that the high pollution and energy consumption industrial transfer from other regional central cities to the surrounding cities may cause the disadvantage of the CSP and CCP of the surrounding cities. In the context of slowing global and Chinese economic growth, the city economy subsystem development is likely to be lower than the development of the environment, society, and city governance subsystem. To achieve high-quality city development, cities should focus on achieving coordinated development of the environment, society, economy, and city governance.

Globally, the concept of carbon neutrality is gaining traction, and the impact of environmental policy on business has been thoroughly studied. Although research on the impact of environmental policy on the production efficiency of enterprises has been extensive, the mechanism of this effect within the enterprise remains obscure. This paper analyzes “the role process of green innovation and cleaner production” within the enterprise in terms of “environmental policy and enterprise production efficiency improvement” using an innovative approach based on the Porter effect. This paper examines the chain-mediating effect of “green innovation → cleaner production” in “environmental policy → enterprise production efficiency” using data from Chinese publicly traded companies. Different impacts are analyzed by separating environmental policies into environmental regulatory policies and incentive environmental policies. (1) Regulatory environmental policies promote green innovation, which assists enterprises in achieving cleaner production and improving production efficiency. (2) Incentive environmental policies do not promote green innovation but can assist enterprises in achieving green production, which improves enterprise production efficiency. The heterogeneity test of state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises yields intriguing new findings in this study. Through systematic analysis, this paper reveals the internal mechanism of the impact of environmental policy on enterprise output. Finally, policy recommendations are proposed to assist the government in achieving green economic development.

Heterogeneity in urban landscapes plays a vital role in the flow of matter, energy, and information that in turn leads to the change in Land Surface Temperature (LST) over time. The relationship between LST and heterogeneity serves as a valuable resource for urban design, planning, and management. It aids in making informed decisions about how to manage urban land cover to reduce LST. This study seeks to make urban heterogeneous landscapes more balanced to mitigate and regulate LST. In this study, we examined three key landscape characteristics: patch shape complexity, structural and spatial heterogeneity within the landscape, and the connectivity between similar and dissimilar patches. These factors play a crucial role in achieving an appropriate level of heterogeneity for sustainable development. Subsequently, we analyzed these three landscape characteristics in Tehran to examine their relationship with LST, utilizing landscape ecology principles, landscape metrics, and statistical methods. Our findings suggest that the built patches hold greater significance. Furthermore, the shape complexity of both built and green patches plays a critical role in reducing LST, which has the potential to mitigate the urban heat island effect. Consequently, when devising strategies to enhance the heterogeneity of urban environments, built patches should be given priority.