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This article presents a model of development, civil war and climate change. There are multiple interactions. Economic growth reduces the probability of civil war and the vulnerability to climate change. Climate change increases the probability of civil war. The impacts of climate change, civil war and civil war in the neighbouring countries reduce economic growth. The model has two potential poverty traps – one is climate-change-induced and one is civil-war-induced – and the two poverty traps may reinforce one another. The model is calibrated to sub-Saharan Africa and a double Monte Carlo analysis is conducted in order to account for both parameter uncertainty and stochasticity. Although the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) is used as the baseline, thus assuming rapid economic growth in Africa and convergence of African living standards to the rest of the world, the impacts of civil war and climate change (ignored in SRES) are sufficiently strong to keep a number of countries in Africa in deep poverty with a high probability.

The global community has set intensive targets in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to better people’s lives after closing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It corresponds to the 2030 aspirations of the United Nations to enhance and promote the sustainable development of human society. The current paper explores the impact of fiscal hedging and R&D in energy Using a green-energy system in SDGs. To do this, we used TOPSIS and QARDL methodologies on a 21-year dataset of South and Southeast Asian economies from 2000 to 2020. The study results show that fiscal hedging contributes favourably to the environmental degradation of the underlying economy. Research and development (R&D) in renewables has contributed negatively to ecological degradation and SDGs in the economies of South & Southeast Asia. This study suggests policy guidelines for advanced and developing economies based on fiscal stability and technical innovation through R&D to meet SDG.

Agriculture is the largest sector of Pakistan’s economy, contributing almost 22% to the GDP and employing almost 45% of the total labor force. The two largest food crops, wheat and rice, contribute 3.1% and 1.4% to the GDP, respectively. The objective of this research was to calculate the energy return on investment (EROI) of these crops on a national scale from 1999 to 2009 to understand the size of various energy inputs and to discuss their contributions to the energy output. Energy inputs accounted for within the cropping systems included seed, fertilizer, pesticide, human labor, tractor diesel, irrigation pump electricity and diesel, the transport of fertilizer and pesticide, and the embodied energy of tractors and irrigation pumps. The largest per-hectare energy inputs to wheat were nitrogen fertilizer (52.6%), seed (17.9%), and tractor diesel (9.1%). For rice, the largest per-hectare energy inputs were nitrogen fertilizer (32%), tube well diesel (19.8%), and pesticide (17.6%). The EROI of wheat showed a gradual downward trend between 2000 and 2006 of 21.3%. The trend was erratic thereafter. Overall, it ranged from 2.7 to 3.4 with an average of 2.9 over the 11-year study period. The overall trend was fairly consistent compared to that of rice which ranged between 3.1 and 4.9, and averaged 3.9. Rice’s EROI dipped sharply in 2002, was erratic, and remained below four until 2007. It rose sharply after that. As energy inputs increased, wheat outputs increased, but rice outputs decreased slightly. Rice responded to inputs with greater output and an increase in EROI. The same was not true for wheat, which showed little change in EROI in the face of increasing inputs. This suggests that additional investments of energy in rice production are not improving yields but for wheat, these investments are still generating benefits. The analysis shows quantitatively how fossil energy is a key driver of the Pakistani agricultural system as it traces direct and indirect energy inputs to two major food crops.

Management of natural resources is pivotal for sustained economic growth—the increasing ecological footprints causing biocapacity deficit threaten the resource conversation agenda. The study identified the potential causes and consequences of natural resource depletion in a broad cross-section of 138 countries. Ecological footprints, international migrant stocks, industrial value-added, and population growth influenced natural resource capital across countries. The results show that ecological footprints, industrial value-added, and population growth are the detrimental factors of resource capital. In contrast, continued economic growth is helpful to conserve natural resources for future generations. The rise and fall in the natural resource degradation are evident in the wake of international migrants’ stocks to support an inverted U-shaped relationship between them. The Granger causality inferences confirmed the one-way linkages, running from international migrant stocks, economic growth, and population growth to natural resource degradation. It verifies migrants-led, affluence-led, and population-led resource degradation. Ecological footprints Granger causes industrial value-added across countries. The forecasting estimates suggested that economic growth would likely to influenced greater in magnitude to resource degradation by its innovation shocks of 4.791%, followed by international migrant stocks, population growth, ecological footprints, and industrial value added by their innovation shocks of 4.709%, 1.829%, 1.247%, and 0.700%, respectively. The study concludes that international migrant stocks should manage smartly, causing more resource degradation via a channel of increasing biocapacity deficit across countries.

The implementation of sustainability-oriented practices in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has been discussed frequently over the years. Recent studies on sustainability have focused mainly on links between ecological and economic sustainability. This exploratory study aims to explore institutional barriers and facilitators regarding the implementation of sustainability-oriented practices in the Indonesian batik industry and to provide policy recommendations. The Indonesian batik industry is well-known for its cultural heritage and for being part of the Indonesian identity. Batik products are mostly hand-crafted by women crafters. The study used in-depth insights from two focus groups conducted with entrepreneurs active in the batik industry, while also building on earlier empirical insights. The lack of customer knowledge and socio-cultural and regulatory factors were found to be barriers to sustainability in batik SMEs. Ecological, technological, socio-cultural, and political factors were found to facilitate achieving sustainability objectives. This study contributes to the sustainable entrepreneurship and women entrepreneurship literature by considering facilitators and barriers as they are experienced by batik entrepreneurs and by furthering the conceptualization of sustainable entrepreneurs as either “committed” or “followers”.

This paper investigates how social outcomes from urban transport projects typically play out by reflecting on multi-scale spatial changes induced by projects over time, and the extent to which such changes meet varied interests in project outcomes. We use a multi-methods case study approach using two exemplars, a metro project in London and Seoul, which established extensive public transport networks to support urban growth. Our study highlighted that urban transport network expansion does not always enhance life opportunities for all due to intermediate and cumulative impacts of spatial changes induced by projects. Immediate benefits such as enhanced accessibility were often undermined by long-term consequences of incremental spatial changes at local scales. This study also indicated that differential patterns of spatial changes around nodes between centre and periphery could be attributed to multiple negative impacts on people living in the most deprived areas. To enhance social outcomes, we suggest an integrated approach to urban transport and spatial development that focuses on scale and temporal dimensions of spatial transformation enacted by projects. In conclusion, achieving sustainable and equitable effects from urban transport infrastructure requires careful examination of broader societal consequences of long-term spatial changes and locational contexts, especially function and socio-economic conditions.

AbstractAnalyzing the politics and policy implications in Brazil of attributing extreme weather events to climate change, we argue for greater place-based sensitivity in recommendations for how to frame extreme weather events relative to climate change. Identifying geographical limits of current recommendations to emphasize the climate role in such events, we explore Brazilian framings of the two tragic national disasters, as apparent in newspaper coverage of climate change. We find that a variety of contextual factors compel environmental leaders and scientists in Brazil to avoid and discourage highlighting the role of climate change in national extreme events. Against analysts’ general deficit-finding assumptions, we argue that the Brazilian framing tendency reflects sound strategic, socio-environmental reasoning, and discuss circumstances in which attributing such events to climate change—and, by extension, attribution science—can be ineffective for policy action on climate change and other socio-environmental issues in need of public pressure and preventive action. The case study has implications beyond Brazil by begging greater attention to policies and politics in particular places before assuming that attribution science and discursive emphasis on the climate role in extreme events are the most strategic means of achieving climate mitigation and disaster preparedness. Factors at play in Brazil might also structure extreme events attribution politics in other countries, not least some other countries of the global South.