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Удосконалення схеми економічної підтримки розвитку відновлювальної енергетики на основі "зелених" аукціонів та інших організаційно-економічних механізмів управління сталим розвитком галузі у бізнес-секторі і приватних домогосподарствах для забезпечення енергетичної безпеки України в умовах енергетичних флуктуацій і викликів, спричинених глобальними (зокрема пандемією COVID-19) та локальними загрозами.

Due to the prevailing economic crisis, Argentina has been facing a growing number of informal workers, many of them urban recyclers. Following the Covid-19 pandemic and the associated decline in formal employment, this number can be expected to rise even further. Increased recycling activity is, in principle, a positive development. However, the working conditions of urban recyclers often do not correspond to the ILO definition of “decent work”. It is therefore important to ask how the recycling system in Argentina can be shaped to be socially sustainable, as well as environmentally and economically sustainable. Based on qualitative stakeholder interviews, our research aimed to collect and synthesise the ideas and expectations of a diverse set of actors in the recycling sector of Buenos Aires City and selected municipalities of Buenos Aires Province. This enabled us to identify four key areas of dispute and potential action. First, work in urban recycling is a form of social safety net in Argentina, as in many countries with persistent poverty. This can lead to a trade-off between maintaining the social function of the sector and subjecting it to the kinds of efficiency requirements placed on other sectors. Given the inherent power asymmetries between large companies and individual urban recyclers, the latter may be crowded out once the sector becomes profitable. Second, it is important to avoid viewing urban recyclers as recipients of charity. By re-introducing materials into the resource cycle and reducing pressure on landfills, they create positive externalities and offer a valuable service to society. Paying urban recyclers for the service component of their work in addition to the value of the raw materials collected would constitute a significant step towards ensuring both decent incomes and broad social recognition of the workers’ value. Third, the knowledge and experience gathered by urban recyclers holds great potential for grassroots innovations, such as making productive use of materials that do not currently have a market. With the cooperation of other actors, such as universities, and the provision of resources and support via the removal of red tape, these innovators could more easily employ their ideas to the benefit of society. Fourth, as a cross-cutting issue, all solutions aimed at unlocking the potential of urban recycling for a transition of the waste sector towards economic, ecological and social sustainability require a careful navigation of the political economy dimension. Constellations of interests have led to incentives that are, in many cases, not conducive to economic efficiency and bind resources that could otherwise be used to improve recycling schemes. Reform of these incentives requires a careful analysis of power constellations and potential change coalitions. Discussion Paper

There is an increasingly vocal debate on potential long-term changes in environmental sustainability spurred by the global COVID-19 pandemic. This article scrutinizes the social science basis of selected popular hypotheses regarding the nexus between the COVID-19 pandemic and the societal transitions towards environmental sustainability. It presents results that were derived through an interdisciplinary dialogue among social scientists. First, it is confirmed that the COVID-19 crisis has likely created a potential window of opportunity for societal change. Yet, to ensure that societal change is enduring and actually supporting the transition towards environmental sustainability, a clear and well-targeted political framework guiding private investments and behavior is required. Second, it is emphasized that there are important structural differences between the COVID-19 crisis and environmental crises, like time scales. Consequently, many strategies used to address the COVID-19 crisis are hardly suitable for long-term transitions towards environmental sustainability. Third, it is argued that transitions towards environmental sustainability—building both on reducing environmental degradation and building socio-techno-ecological resilience—may create co-benefits in terms of preventing and coping with potential future pandemics. However, research still needs to explore how big these synergies are (and whether trade-offs are also possible), and what type of governance framework they require to materialize.

The residential sector in Thailand has been a fast-growing energy consumption sector since 1995 at a rate of 6% per year. This sector makes a significant contribution to Thailand’s rising electricity demand especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study projects Thailand’s residential electricity consumption characteristics and the factors affecting the growth of electricity consumption using a system dynamics (SD) modeling approach to forecast long-term electricity consumption in Thailand. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown can be seen as a forced social experiment, with the findings demonstrating how to use resources under particular circumstances. Four key factors affecting the electricity demand used in the SD model development include (1) work and study from home, (2) socio-demographic, (3) temperature changing, and (4) rise of GDP. Secondary and primary data, through questionnaire survey method, were used as data input for the model. The simulation results reveal that changing behavior on higher-wattage appliances has huge impacts on overall electricity consumption. The pressure to work and study at home contributes to rises of electricity consumption in the residential sector during and after COVID-19 pandemic. The government and related agencies may use the study results to plan for the electricity supply in the long term.

Organizations in general, and higher education institutions in particular, had to face many challenges during the pandemic in order to carry out their usual activities. Since communications and interactions between universities and students were required to take place online, the messages sent by universities on their social media platforms held greater importance. In this regard, the purpose of the paper was to identify the promotion strategies used by European universities on Facebook and Instagram in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, we were interested in identifying differences and similarities in the types of messages European universities sent on the two social networks, regarding the way they communicated about sustainability. The method used in order to conduct the research was content analysis, while having as an instrument a content analysis grid. We analyzed the activity of 20 European universities included in the World University Rankings 2021. The results of the research revealed that universities communicated more on Facebook than on Instagram, that the most frequent messages regarding sustainability were the ones about the actions carried out by universities in order to protect the environment, and that they registered a higher engagement rate on Instagram than on Facebook.

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive, often unanticipated, external disruption for many companies. As a concept for responding to such disruption, organizational resilience has recently received great attention. In the organizational context, the overriding question is how companies can become more resilient. This study aims to contribute to answering this question by identifying, categorizing, and providing specific business model patterns for achieving resilience on the corporate level. For this purpose, a review of publications by major consulting firms was conducted. Patterns were extracted from publications until a convergence criterion indicated that no new pattern could be identified considering further publications. The 110 extracted unique patterns were clustered into 13 objectives, and additionally categorized according to resilience phases, as well as business model elements, to support the application in practice. The final catalog of patterns was validated through expert interviews and thus provides organizations, such as those in the electrical industry, with an overview and specific approaches on how to tackle industrial resilience through the adaption of their business model.

IntroductionPeople experiencing homelessness (PEH) are disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. For many PEH it is impossible to isolate due to the lack of permanent housing. Therefore, an isolation facility for SARS-CoV-2 positive PEH was opened in Berlin, Germany, in May 2020, offering medical care, opioid and alcohol substitution therapy and social services. This study aimed to assess the needs of the admitted patients and requirements of the facility.Materials and methodsThis was a retrospective patient record study carried out in the isolation facility for PEH in Berlin, from December 2020 to June 2021. We extracted demographic and clinical data including observed psychological distress from records of all PEH tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 by RT-PCR. Data on duration and completion of isolation and the use of the facilities’ services were analyzed. The association of patients’ characteristics with the completion of isolation was assessed by Student’s t-test or Fisher’s exact test.ResultsA total of 139 patients were included in the study (89% male, mean age 45 years, 41% with comorbidities, 41% non-German speakers). 81% of patients were symptomatic (median duration 5 days, range 1–26). The median length of stay at the facility was 14 days (range 2–41). Among the patients, 80% had non-COVID-19 related medical conditions, 46% required alcohol substitution and 17% opioid substitution therapy. Three patients were hospitalized due to low oxygen saturation. No deaths occurred. Psychological distress was observed in 20%, and social support services were used by 65% of PEH. The majority (82%) completed the required isolation period according to the health authority’s order. We did not observe a statistically significant association between completion of the isolation period and sociodemographic characteristics.ConclusionThe specialized facility allowed PEH a high compliance with completion of the isolation period. Medical care, opioid and alcohol substitution, psychological care, language mediation and social support are essential components to address the specific needs of PEH. Besides contributing to infection prevention and control, isolation facilities may allow better access to medical care for SARS-CoV-2 infected PEH with possibly positive effects on the disease course.

Global climate change, extreme climate events, earthquakes and their accompanying natural disasters pose significant risks to humanity. Yet due to the nonlinear feedbacks, strategic interactions and complex structure of the Earth system, the understanding and in particular the predicting of such disruptive events represent formidable challenges for both scientific and policy communities. During the past years, the emergence and evolution of Earth system science has attracted much attention and produced new concepts and frameworks. Especially, novel statistical physics and complex networks-based techniques have been developed and implemented to substantially advance our knowledge for a better understanding of the Earth system, including climate extreme events, earthquakes and Earth geometric relief features, leading to substantially improved predictive performances. We present here a comprehensive review on the recent scientific progress in the development and application of how combined statistical physics and complex systems science approaches such as, critical phenomena, network theory, percolation, tipping points analysis, as well as entropy can be applied to complex Earth systems (climate, earthquakes, etc.). Notably, these integrating tools and approaches provide new insights and perspectives for understanding the dynamics of the Earth systems. The overall aim of this review is to offer readers the knowledge on how statistical physics approaches can be useful in the field of Earth system science.