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Twenty-minute neighbourhoods highlight the importance of well-connected and mixed-used neighbourhoods and communities with proximate access to employment, essential services, public transport, and open spaces. Shorter distances together with re-prioritised public spaces encourage more active transport choices, resulting in public health benefits and reduced environmental pollution. Higher liveability brought about by mixed-use developments enables people to have equitable access to local facilities, amenities, and employment opportunities, promoting vibrancy, social cohesion, and intergenerational connections. The attributes of 20-minute neighbourhoods also combine to create places, that are acknowledged as friendly for all ages, address changing needs across the life course, and provide better support for the ageing population. Furthermore, there are indications that 20-minute neighbourhoods may be more resilient against many of the negative impacts of stringent public health protocols such as those implemented in periods of lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this article, we evaluate and compare planning policies and practices aimed at establishing 20-minute neighbourhoods in Melbourne (Australia) and Scotland (the UK). Using case studies, we discuss similarities and differences involved in using place-based approaches of 20-minute neighbourhoods to address 21st-century challenges in key areas of health and wellbeing, equity, environmental sustainability, and community resilience.

South Africa is an emerging and industrializing economy which is experiencing remarkable progress. We contend that amidst the developments in the economy, the role of energy, trade openness and financial development are critical. In this article, we revisit the pivotal role of these factors. We use the ARDL bounds [72], the Bayer and Hanck [11] cointegration techniques, and an extended Cobb–Douglas framework, to examine the long-run association with output per worker over the sample period 1971–2011. The results support long-run association between output per worker, capital per worker and the shift parameters. The short-run elasticity coefficients are as follows: energy (0.24), trade (0.07), financial development (−0.03). In the long-run, the elasticity coefficients are: trade openness (0.05), energy (0.29), and financial development (−0.04). In both the short-run and the long-run, we note the post-2000 period has a marginal positive effect on the economy. The Toda and Yamamoto [91] Granger causality results show that a unidirectional causality from capital stock and energy consumption to output; and from capital stock to trade openness; a bidirectional causality between trade openness and output; and absence (neutrality) of any causality between financial development and output thus indicating that these two variables evolve independent of each other.

Abstract This paper is based on dynamic optimization methodology to investigate the economic energy efficiency issues in developing countries. The paper introduces some definitions about energy efficiency both in economics and physics, and establishes a quantitative way for measuring the economic energy efficiency. The linkage between economic energy efficiency, energy consumption and other macroeconomic variables is demonstrated primarily. Using the methodology of dynamic optimization, a maximum problem of economic energy efficiency over time, which is subjected to the extended Solow growth model and instantaneous investment rate, is modelled. In this model, the energy consumption is set as a control variable and the capital is regarded as a state variable. The analytic solutions can be derived and the diagrammatic analysis provides saddle-point equilibrium. A numerical simulation based on China is also presented; meanwhile, the optimal paths of investment and energy consumption can be drawn. The dynamic optimization encourages governments in developing countries to pursue higher economic energy efficiency by controlling the energy consumption and regulating the investment state as it can conserve energy without influencing the achievement of steady state in terms of Solow model. If that, a sustainable development will be achieved.

Abstract Since the adoption of the Kyoto protocol in 1997 and its entry into force in 2005, as well its aftermath such as the Doha amendment and Paris agreement, national policies have become more conscious of the usage of clean energy, mostly the different forms of renewable energy and nuclear energy. Ratifying countries and signatories had committed themselves to binding targets for the reduction of greenhouse emissions by 8% with respect to 1990 levels until 2012, also based on the particular contribution to global emissions from each country. This paper examines the integrational properties of clean energy consumption from eight emerging economies which are also high greenhouse gas emitters. The empirical results show that the clean energy consumption is stationarity for Brazil and Philippines by using a quantile unit root test without smooth breaks (Koenker and Xiao, 2004). However, after capturing the smooth breaks (Bahmani-Oskooee et al., 2018), we find the clean energy consumption of China, Pakistan and Thailand are stationary. The time-varying deterministic trend with smooth breaks is more fitted to the path of clean energy consumption in comparison to the deterministic trend without smooth breaks. The paper suggests economic insights useful for policy making.

Many countries are developing or reviewing national adaptation policy for climate change but the extent to which these meet the health needs of vulnerable groups has not been assessed. This study examines the adequacy of such policies for nine known climate-vulnerable groups: people with mental health conditions, Aboriginal people, culturally and linguistically diverse groups, aged people, people with disabilities, rural communities, children, women, and socioeconomically disadvantaged people.The study analyses an exhaustive sample of national adaptation policy documents from Annex 1 ('developed') countries of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: 20 documents from 12 countries. A 'critical computational linguistics' method was used involving novel software-driven quantitative mapping and traditional critical discourse analysis.The study finds that references to vulnerable groups are relatively little present or non-existent, as well as poorly connected to language about practical strategies and socio-economic contexts, both also little present.The conclusions offer strategies for developing policy that is better informed by a 'social determinants of health' definition of climate vulnerability, consistent with best practice in the literature and global policy prescriptions.

Providing access to electricity for the roughly 3 billion people who currently have no access or limited access to reliable service is a fundamental social and economic development challenge. A significant part of this population lives far away from the power grid, mostly in rural areas, where mini-grids could go far in meeting this enormous demand.

This paper presents estimates of short-run sectoral and economy-wide effects of the introduction of a carbon tax in Australia. The results are derived using an enhanced version of the ORANI multi-sectoral model of the Australian economy. We simulate the introduction of a carbon tax at a rate of 1991-92 $25 per tonne, designed to achieve the Toronto target of a 20 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions below the 1988 level by 2005. We find that the macroeconomic impact would depend critically on the extent to which price rises flowed through into wage rates. Assuming fixed money wages, real GDP would be decreased by an estimated 0.9 per cent, and employment by 1.2 per cent. To maintain a given employment level in the face of the carbon tax would require a reduction in the foreign-currency-equivalent wage rate estimated at 2.8 per cent. This would also entail a decrease in the real wage rate (defined with respect to the consumption price deflator) of 2.8 per cent. Government could promote lower wage outcomes by returning the carbon tax revenue to the community through reductions in other taxes. Enhancements to ORANI used in this simulation include disaggregation of the fossil fuel sector and provision for carbon taxation.

The paper examine the causative relationship between oil resource rent and economic growth. We use the Autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) and Toda-Yamamoto approach as estimation strategy. Contrary to the widespread belief that natural resource extraction (oil resource rent specifically) spurs economic growth, we find that oil resource rent has an insignificant positive effect on economic growth. We also find a unidirectional causative relation between oil resource rent and economic growth, flowing from economic growth to gas resource rent without any feedback effect. Our findings implies that as the Ghanaian economy grows and expands in term of economic activities, the demand for gas increases which is likely to be imported from the rest of the world. Hence, it will be beneficial for government draw short and long term plans concerning gas production in Ghana. The short-term plan should aim at expanding the existing gas producing/extracting firms while the long-term plan should target setting up a new gas firms in Ghana. This will contribute to economic growth of Ghana. Similar conclusions can be drawn for developing countries with similar socioeconomic and demographic setting like Ghana. Hence, our empirical findings/results are relevant beyond Ghana’s boundary.