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Biofuel plantations have been hyped as a means to reinvigorate Africa’s rural areas. Yet there is still apprehension about the negative environmental and social impacts of large-scale commercial biofuel production around rising food prices, land grabbing, ecological damage, and disruption of rural livelihoods. Given the extent of Jatropha curcas production in Ghana and Ethiopia and Castor bean (Ricinus communis) in Ethiopia, this paper presents the results of a study that assessed the socio-economic implications of industrial Jatropha plantations on local livelihoods in Ghana, and of industrial Jatropha and Castor plantations on local livelihoods in Ethiopia. This study used primary data collected from 234 households in Ghana and 165 in Ethiopia. The cultivation of Jatropha and Castor has had several important effects on local livelihoods in the study sites, most notably decreases in household landholdings due to the arrival of industrial Jatropha or Castor plantations; and the resulting changes these plantations have caused in household socio-economic status, food security, fallow periods, and fodder availability. We consider how a lack of meaningful consultation between local people, their traditional authorities and the biofuel company managers, along with shortcomings in each country’s broader land acquisition process and poor land use information, may have contributed to these overall negative effects on local livelihoods. We conclude by suggesting several ways that emerging biofuel industries could be improved from the perspective of local people and their livelihoods.

Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in land use and thus also point toward solutions. The 10 facts are as follows: 1) Meanings and values of land are socially constructed and contested; 2) land systems exhibit complex behaviors with abrupt, hard-to-predict changes; 3) irreversible changes and path dependence are common features of land systems; 4) some land uses have a small footprint but very large impacts; 5) drivers and impacts of land-use change are globally interconnected and spill over to distant locations; 6) humanity lives on a used planet where all land provides benefits to societies; 7) land-use change usually entails trade-offs between different benefits—"win–wins" are thus rare; 8) land tenure and land-use claims are often unclear, overlapping, and contested; 9) the benefits and burdens from land are unequally distributed; and 10) land users have multiple, sometimes conflicting, ideas of what social and environmental justice entails. The facts have implications for governance, but do not provide fixed answers. Instead they constitute a set of core principles which can guide scientists, policy makers, and practitioners toward meeting sustainability challenges in land use.

Regular assessment of progress on the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is crucial for achieving the goals by 2030 yet such assessments often require extensive resources and data. Here, we describe a method using performance auditing as a novel approach for assessing the implementation of SDGs that would be useful for countries with limited resources and data availability but might also provide an alternative to choosing particular goals and implementing them one at a time, for all countries. We argue that, instead of monitoring all 169 targets and 242 indicators, a country could assess the effectiveness of its governance arrangement as a way of ensuring that progress on implementing SDGs is on track, and hence improve the likelihood of achieving the SDGs by 2030. Indonesia is an archipelagic upper-middle-income country facing challenges in data availability and reliability, which limits accurate assessments of SDG implementation. We applied a standardized performance audit to assess the effectiveness of current governance arrangements for the implementation of SDGs. We used the Gephi 0.9.2 software (Open sourced program by The Gephi Concortium, Compiègne, France) to illustrate the regulatory coordination among public institutions. We found that Indonesia’s governance arrangements are not yet effective. They might be improved if Indonesia: (1) synchronize its SDG regulations; (2) redesigns its governance structure to be more fit for purpose; and (3) involves audit institutions in the SDG governance arrangements. These findings would likely apply to many other countries striving to implement the SDGs.

AbstractConsidering the rapid environmental changes, the transitions to sustainable practices in the construction industry is vital now. Though the developed construction industries have already made efforts to switching to more sustainable and environment friendly practices, the developing countries are still lacking it. This research was organised to understand the role of project management practises and integrated methods in the sustainable development in the developing countries, for looking on how such practices can help these construction sectors become sustainable. The moderation effect of industrial attitudes and behaviours on sustainable construction was also conducted to understand the intermediary impacts. A survey based on the snowball sample of 208 construction professionals in Ghana was conducted to determine the impact of project management practises and integrated methods on sustainable construction. Research model was tested by employing bivariate correlation and multiple hierarchical regression analysis techniques, to establish the interrelationships among the project management practices, integrated approaches, industrial attitudes and behaviours, and sustainable construction and to explain these constructs in terms of their common underlying dimensions. The findings highlight that the project management practices and integrated approaches are significantly impacting on the sustainable construction practices in terms of BIM, Digital Twin, LEED, and BREEAM. Whereas the industrial attitudes and behaviours were found to be affecting the project management practises and integrated approaches through moderating role on sustainable construction. The study was concluded by suggesting the importance of sustainable construction practices and shaping industrial attitudes and behaviours towards such practices in the developing construction industries.

Fisheries and aquaculture make a crucial contribution to global food security, nutrition and livelihoods. However, the UN Sustainable Development Goals separate marine and terrestrial food production sectors and ecosystems. To sustainably meet increasing global demands for fish, the interlinkages among goals within and across fisheries, aquaculture and agriculture sectors must be recognized and addressed along with their changing nature. Here, we assess and highlight development challenges for fisheries-dependent countries based on analyses of interactions and trade-offs between goals focusing on food, biodiversity and climate change. We demonstrate that some countries are likely to face double jeopardies in both fisheries and agriculture sectors under climate change. The strategies to mitigate these risks will be context-dependent, and will need to directly address the trade-offs among Sustainable Development Goals, such as halting biodiversity loss and reducing poverty. Countries with low adaptive capacity but increasing demand for food require greater support and capacity building to transition towards reconciling trade-offs. Necessary actions are context-dependent and include effective governance, improved management and conservation, maximizing societal and environmental benefits from trade, increased equitability of distribution and innovation in food production, including continued development of low input and low impact aquaculture.

AbstractAgriculture is the largest single source of environmental degradation, responsible for over 30% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, 70% of freshwater use and 80% of land conversion: it is the single largest driver of biodiversity loss (Foley JA, Science 309:570–574, 2005, Nature 478:337–342, 2011; IPBES. Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. IPBES Secretariat, Bonn, 2019; Willett W et al. The Lancet 393:447–492, 2019). Agriculture also underpins poor human health, contributing to 11 million premature deaths annually. While too many still struggle from acute hunger, a growing number of individuals, including in low to middle-income countries (LMICs), struggle to access healthy foods. Greater consideration for, and integration of, biodiversity in agriculture is a key solution space for improving health, eliminating hunger and achieving nature-positive development objectives.This rapid evidence review documents the best available evidence of agriculture’s relationships with biodiversity, drawing on the contributions of leading biodiversity experts, and recommends actions that can be taken to move towards more biodiversity/nature-positive production through the delivery of integrated agricultural solutions for climate, biodiversity, nutrition and livelihoods. The analysis, which takes a whole-of-food-system approach, brings together a large body of evidence. It accounts for aspects not typically captured in a stand-alone primary piece of research and indicates where there are critical gaps.

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) involves global and national policy measures as well as effective action at the landscape scale across productive sectors. Multilevel governance (MLG) characterizes policy processes and regimes of cross-scale and cross-sector participation by multiple public and private actors for improved legitimacy and effectiveness of policy. We examine multilevel, multi-actor engagement in REDD+ planning in Quintana Roo, Mexico, to find out how local perspectives align with the national policy approach to REDD+ as an integrating element of holistic rural development at territorial scale, and how current practices support procedurally legitimate MLG required to implement it. We find that there is wide conceptual agreement on the proposed approach by a variety of involved actors, in rejection of the business-as-usual sectoral interventions. Its implementation, however, is challenged by gaps in horizontal and vertical integration due to strong sectoral identities and hierarchies, and de facto centralization of power at the federal level. Continued participation of multiple government and civil society actors to contribute to social learning for locally appropriate REDD+ actions is likely to require a more balanced distribution of resources and influence across levels. Meaningfully engaging and ensuring the representation of local community interests in the process remains a critical challenge.