• Energy Research
• 1. No poverty close
• 8. Economic growth close
• NL close

Sustainability usually refers to the ability to maintain a certain standard of human lifestyle without causing environmental damage or any other destruction to nature and biodiversity. It is beneficial for human health and well-being in addition to socio-economic benefits and contributes to environmental integrity. However, as Robert Swan (1956) once stated: “the greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it”—this is true even today; namely, there are still serious threats to the planet and there is “a short time period” for action. We all have to be obliged to save the planet in which we live throughout our daily and local activities. In this study, the authors provide an overview of the meaning of sustainable tourism and its relationship to all global Sustainable Development Goals established by UN (2015) as one way to achieve a brighter sustainable future and society for everyone, leaving no one behind. More specifically, the case of Kosovo and its potential for the development of sustainable tourism is analyzed. In this case, the authors aim to present the potential to serve the local tradition, culture, diversity, and inclusiveness through sustainable actions in the tourism and hospitality sector.

Africa has experienced unprecedented growth across a range of development indices for decades. However, this growth is often at the expense of Africa’s biodiversity and ecosystems, jeopardizing the livelihoods of millions of people depending on the goods and services provided by nature, with broader consequences for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Encouragingly, Africa can still take a more sustainable path. Here, we synthesize the key learnings from the African Ecological Futures project. We report results from a participatory scenario planning process around four collectively-owned scenarios and narratives for the evolution of Africa’s ecological resource base over the next 50 years. These scenarios provided a lens to review pressures on the natural environment, through the drivers, pressures, state, impacts, and responses (DPSIR) framework. Based on the outcomes from each of these steps, we discuss opportunities to reorient Africa’s development trajectories towards a sustainable path. These opportunities fall under the broad categories of “effective natural resource governance”, “strategic planning capabilities”, “investment safeguards and frameworks”, and “new partnership models”. Underpinning all these opportunities are “data, management information, and decision support frameworks”. This work can help inform collaborative action by a broad set of actors with an interest in ensuring a sustainable ecological future for Africa.

AbstractThe dynamic economic behavior in most integrated assessment models linking economic growth to climate change involves a differential equation solved by Jacob Bernoulli in 1695. Using the dynamic integrated climate economy (DICE) model and freezing exogenous variables at initial values, this dynamic is shown to produce implausible projections on a 60‐year time frame. If world capital started at US$1, after 60 years the world economy would be indistinguishable from one starting with 10 times the current capitalization. Such behavior points to uncertainty at the level of the fundamental dynamics, and suggests that discussions of discounting, utility, damage functions, and ethics should be conducted within a more general modeling vocabulary. Lotka Volterra dynamics is proposed as an alternative with greater prime facie plausibility. With near universality, economists assume that economic growth will go on forever. Lotka Volterra dynamics alert us to the possibility of collapse. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2013; 9: 2–6. © 2012 SETAC

In view of pressing unemployment problems, policy makers across all parties jump on the prospects of renewable energy promotion as a job creation engine which can boost economic well-being. Our analytical model shows that initial labor market rigidities in theory provide some scope for such a double dividend. However, the practical outcome of renewable energy promotion might be sobering. Our computable general equilibrium analysis of subsidized electricity production from renewable energy sources (RES-E) in Germany suggests that the prospects for employment and welfare gains are quite limited and hinge crucially on the level of the subsidy rate and the financing mechanism. If RES-E subsidies are financed by labor taxes, welfare and employment effects are strictly negative for a broad range of subsidy rates. The use of an electricity tax to fund RES-E subsidies generates minor benefits for small subsidy rates but these benefits quickly turn into significant losses as the subsidy rate exceeds some threshold value.

Spatial data on Low-and-Middle-Income-Country (LMIC) cities, and deprived areas within cities, are often not readily available in support of local and global information needs. To address this information gap, we propose the systematic semi-automated SLUMAP framework that provides policy-relevant information on deprived urban areas in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), based on free open-source software (FOSS). First, we assess user needs for spatial information on deprivation (ranging from local communities to global research and policy support). Second, we show how free or low-cost image datasets can be used for mapping the location of deprived areas at the city scale and providing an overall assessment of their spatial patterns. This is implemented as a grid-based approach using machine learning and assessing the contribution of a large number of spectral and spatial features derived from open or low-cost imagery. Third, we show how higher (spatial and spectral) resolution data can provide a detailed characterization of such areas, with a GEOBIA/machine-learning workflow and deep learning techniques. We illustrate the experiments and results on the city of Nairobi (Kenya)and discuss transferability to SSA cities.

The Pan-African Consortium for the Evaluation of Anti-Tuberculosis Antibiotics (PanACEA) was designed to build tuberculosis (TB) trial capacity whilst conducting clinical trials on novel and existing agents to shorten and simplify TB treatment. PanACEA has now established a dynamic network of 11 sub-Saharan clinical trial sites and four European research institutions.In 2011, a capacity development program, funded by the European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP), was launched with four objectives, aiming at strengthening collaborating TB research sites to reach the ultimate goal of becoming self-sustainable institutions: networking; training; conducting clinical trials; and infrastructure scaling-up of sites.Assessment in six sub-Saharan TB-endemic countries (Gabon, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia) were performed through a structured questionnaire, site visits, discussion with the PanACEA consortium, setting of milestones and identification of priorities and followed-up with evaluations of each site. The results of this needs-based assessment was then translated into capacity development measures.In the initial phase, over a four-year period (March 2011 - June 2014), the programme scaled-up six sites; conducted a monitoring training program for 11 participants; funded five MSc and four PhD students, fostering gender balance; conducted four epidemiological studies; supported sites to conduct five Phase II studies and formed a sustainable platform for TB research (panacea-tb.net).Our experience of conducting TB clinical trials within the PanACEA programme environment of mentoring, networking and training has provided a sound platform for establishing future sustainable research centres. Our goal of facilitating emergent clinical TB trial sites to better initiate and lead research activities has been mostly successful.

Ester production by microorganisms is of great importance to biotechnological processes. These volatile compounds impart pleasant, fruity aromas to beer, wine, and other fermented products. Yeast in particular are well known for their ability to produce volatile esters. The genetic and enzymatic intricacies of ester production have been the focus of many studies, mainly in S. cerevisiae. Despite this, ester synthesis in yeast is not fully understood. This holds particularly true for yeasts that produce high amounts of ethyl acetate from sugars, such as Kluyveromyces marxianus and Wickerhamomyces anomalus. As was introduced in Chapter 1, this ability has been described more than a century ago, but the enzymatic mechanisms behind the synthesis were unclear. Circumstantial evidence suggested that an alcohol acetyltransferase (AAT) was responsible for the ethyl acetate formation. Ethyl acetate is a versatile commodity chemical that is currently produced in unsustainable processes. Understanding the enzymes responsible for bulk ethyl acetate synthesis in yeast could enable rational design of novel production strains. This, in turn could facilitate the development of biobased ethyl acetate production processes. This thesis has made several important breakthroughs in the field of ester production in yeast, particularly ethyl acetate. The most significant of these was the discovery of the elusive enzyme responsible for bulk ethyl acetate synthesis in yeast. The identification of the ethyl acetate-producing enzyme in W. anomalus is described in Chapter 2. The purified enzyme showed AAT activity with ethanol and acetyl-CoA and was therefore named Ethanol acetyltransferase 1 (Eat1). Production of Eat1 in Escherichia coli enabled efficient ethyl acetate production in E. coli. The enzyme could thus potentially be used to develop new biobased ethyl acetate production processes. However, Eat1 was also able to function as a thioesterase and esterase active against acetyl-CoA and ethyl acetate, respectively. It was observed that the presence of ethanol was able to repress the hydrolytic activities, at which point the AAT activity was dominant. How ethanol can control the activities of Eat1 is unclear. It highlights that sufficient ethanol concentrations must be present to produce ethyl acetate with Eat1. It is also shown that Eat1 homologs are present in other bulk ethyl acetate-producing yeasts. These homologs are only distantly related to known AATs. Eat1 is therefore proposed to compose a novel alcohol acetyltransferase family. The discovery of this novel enzyme family was the cornerstone of the research presented in this thesis. The identification enabled further studies on the physiology of Eat1 and bulk ethyl acetate production in the native yeasts in Chapter 3. The cellular location of Eat1 in Kluyveromyces lactis was determined. The enzyme localised to the mitochondria of the yeast. This observation opposed the literature consensus which assumed that bulk ethyl acetate synthesis occurred in the yeast cytosol. Cytosolic acetyl-CoA flux in yeast is low and would presumably not support the synthesis of high amounts of ethyl acetate. The localisation of Eat1 in the mitochondria could better explain how bulk ethyl acetate synthesis occurs. The current hypothesis suggests that bulk ethyl acetate is an overflow product of yeast under iron limited conditions. Under these conditions, the entry of acetyl-CoA into the TCA cycle is impaired and acetyl-CoA accumulates. Eat1 is then proposed to relieve the accumulation by forming ethyl acetate. The TCA cycle and the major flux of acetyl-CoA in yeast are located in the mitochondria, where Eat1 is also located. It is thereby established that bulk ethyl acetate is a mitochondrial product of certain yeasts. Chapter 4 describes the engineering of efficient ethyl acetate production in E. coli using Eat1 as the catalyst. Unlike yeast, the metabolism of E. coli can support the synthesis of ethyl acetate under anaerobic conditions. This removes the need for aeration, which is costly on a large scale. Establishing the anaerobic ethyl acetate pathway was faced with several bottlenecks, and removing them was the main theme of this chapter. The pathway towards ethyl acetate could be improved by disrupting by-product formation and optimising the expression levels of eat1. Further improvements could be made by removing the N-terminal mitochondrial localisation sequence of Eat1. These sequences typically destabilise proteins unless they are removed. These approaches did improve ethyl acetate formation by Eat1 to the point where ethanol levels were no longer sufficient to repress the hydrolytic activities of Eat1. To prevent ester hydrolysis the volatility of ethyl acetate was used to strip it from the fermenter. The result was ethyl acetate production at 63.4 % of the pathway maximum. We then looked beyond ethyl acetate as a bulk chemical in Chapter 5 and investigated the role Eat1 has in general ester formation by yeasts, particularly S. cerevisiae. The formation of esters is industrially relevant also in S. cerevisiae as these compounds contribute to the aroma of fermented foods. S. cerevisiae naturally produces a variety of alcohols and thus provided a convenient platform to compare Eat1 homologs from different yeast. Expression of various eat1 genes resulted in an increase of various in acetate and propionate ester levels. By disrupting the S. cerevisiae eat1 gene the inverse effect was observed. Eat1 therefore seems to contribute to acetate ester synthesis in S. cerevisiae as well. In this chapter, a S. cerevisiae strain was generated where all known AAT genes were disrupted. Opposite to the expectations, ester production persisted in this strain, showing that even more ester-producing mechanisms exist. Chapter 6 focuses on the complex field of ester production as bulk chemicals, from the fundamentals of microbial ester production. Much research has been devoted to understanding the ester-producing processes in microorganisms. This is a daunting task as the structures and functions of esters in microorganisms are in many cases unrelated. Most esters are produced via the AAT reaction. With the exception of Eat1, which was identified in this thesis, other AATs have been studied for a long time. Still, relatively little is known about their structure and catalytic mechanisms, likely because there are no crystal structures available yet. Nevertheless, they have been applied extensively in metabolic engineering of ester production. The AAT reaction is simple. As long as a suitable alcohol and acyl-CoA are provided, the AAT will catalyse the ester formation. The real challenge of engineering ester formation is in the efficient supply of alcohols and acyl-CoA substrates. Some remarkable success has been made in recent years which is outlined in the review. In many cases, esters are less toxic and more readily extractable than the alcohols and acids they are composed of. They could therefore serve as a platform compound. In summary, this thesis contributed significantly to the knowledge of ester synthesis in yeast. The progress made on the production of ethyl acetate specifically can be used to develop new biotechnological, more sustainable production processes for this versatile compound. At the same time, much remains to be discovered.

In recent years there has been increasing attention to the transition toward a bioeconomy. From comparable transitions toward sustainability, we know that transitions require integral, inclusive approaches toward developing a long-term strategy, focusing not only on technological innovation, but also on involving the public. This is not easy. Public engagement encompasses diverse forms of public and civil society participation, and it is crucial to understand the specificities of these interactions and their effects on potential transition pathways. We present a conceptual-analytical paper where the focus lies on understanding sense-making practices in the construction of publics in the bioeconomy. Using a case-study approach, this article describes five partialities of the constructed public in the bioeconomy and analyzes the orchestration, productive dimensions and effects of these constructions. Our analysis offers a new perspective on, and appreciation of, the partiality of different forms of public participation, and varying degrees in which possibilities of system change in the bioeconomy transition are inclusive or exclusive toward differentially constructed publics. This offers an alternative, constructive way of exploring actor dynamics and politics in system change. We aim to contribute to a more nuanced and integral interpretation of public engagement in sustainability transitions, which is relevant to actors from academia, policy, industry and other spheres relevant to the bioeconomy transition.