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Abstract It is widely anticipated that climate change will negatively affect both food security and diet diversity. Diet diversity is especially critical for children as it correlates with macro and micronutrient intake important for child development. Despite these anticipated links, little empirical evidence has demonstrated a relationship between diet diversity and climate change, especially across large datasets spanning multiple global regions and with more recent climate data. Here we use survey data from 19 countries and more than 107 000 children, coupled with 30 years of precipitation and temperature data, to explore the relationship of climate to child diet diversity while controlling for other agroecological, geographic, and socioeconomic factors. We find that higher long-term temperatures are associated with decreases in overall child diet diversity, while higher rainfall in the previous year, compared to the long-term average rainfall, is associated with greater diet diversity. Examining six regions (Asia, Central America, North Africa, South America, Southeast Africa, and West Africa) individually, we find that five have significant reductions in diet diversity associated with higher temperatures while three have significant increases in diet diversity associated with higher precipitation. In West Africa, increasing rainfall appears to counterbalance the effect of rising temperature impacts on diet diversity. In some regions, the statistical effect of climate on diet diversity is comparable to, or greater than, other common development efforts including those focused on education, improved water and toilets, and poverty reduction. These results suggest that warming temperatures and increasing rainfall variability could have profound short- and long-term impacts on child diet diversity, potentially undermining widespread development interventions aimed at improving food security.

In this paper we investigate the prospects for the large-scale use of low-emission energy technologies in Africa. Many African countries have recently experienced substantial economic growth and aim at fulfilling much of the energy needs associated with continuing along paths of economic expansion by exploiting their large domestic potentials of renewable forms of energy. Important benefits of the abundant renewable energy resources in Africa are that they allow for stimulating economic development, increasing energy access and alleviating poverty, while simultaneously avoiding emissions of greenhouse gases. In this study we analyse what the likely energy demand in Africa could be until 2050, and inspect multiple scenarios for the concomitant levels of greenhouse gas emissions and emission intensities. We use the TIAM-ECN model for our study, which enawbbles detailed energy systems research through a technology-rich cost-minimisation procedure. The results from our analysis fully support an Africa-led effort to substantially enhance the use of the continent's renewable energy potential. But they suggest that the current aim of achieving 300 GW of additional renewable electricity generation capacity by 2030 is perhaps unrealistic, even given high GDP and population growth: we find figures that are close to half this level. On the other hand, we find evidence for leap-frogging opportunities, by which renewable energy options rather than fossil fuels could constitute the cost-optimal solution to fulfil most of Africa's growing energy requirements. An important benefit of leap-frogging is that it avoids an ultimately expensive fossil fuels lock-in that would fix the carbon footprint of the continent until at least the middle of the century.

Abstract Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming the engine of a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation; as such, it has attracted much attention of scholars in recent years. Surprisingly, scarce studies have shed lights on the effects of AI on the environment, especially with respect to carbon intensity. Based on the Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology (STIRPAT) model, we use Chinese industrial sector data from 2005 to 2016 to investigate how AI affects carbon intensity. The empirical results show that AI, as measured separately by the adoption of robotics by industry and the number of academic AI-related papers, significantly reduces carbon intensity. The results remain robust after addressing endogenous issues. We find that there are both stages and industrial heterogeneity in the effects of AI on carbon intensity. AI had a more decrease effect on carbon intensity during the 12th Five-Year Plan than the 11th. Compared with capital-intensive industries, AI tends to have a more decrease effect on carbon intensity in the labor-intensive and tech-intensive industries. To enlarge the effects of AI on reducing carbon intensity, the government should promote the development and application of AI and implement differentiated policies in line with the industry characteristics.

The shift towards a sustainability-driven society includes changes to the educational system, business operations, innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystems as well as policymaking. Moreover, such a shift demands particularly a combination of top-down policy-making initiatives and bottom-up social entrepreneur-driven changes. Social innovation and entrepreneurship are providing solutions for globally recognized social and sustainability challenges such as poverty, education, environmental and climate change, peace support – worldwide yet also in the particularly challenging context of developing economies. We aim to showcase the best practices of social and sustainability-oriented innovation and entrepreneurship in the context of developing economies. In particular, we address the question of how social entrepreneur and innovator with bottom-up ideas could complement the top-down policymaking initiatives. Our design implies qualitative research aiming to disseminate the inspiring story of a social innovative enterprise, which represents a successful example of complementing policy-making efforts. Accordingly, our findings contribute to the literature on social innovation and entrepreneurship in the context of developing economies and simultaneously informs social entrepreneurs and policymakers on potential opportunities for synergy in their efforts. Peer reviewed

Abstract This paper examines the relationship between hydroelectricity consumption and economic growth in China, while controlling for fossil fuel consumption, financial development, capital, institutional quality and globalization and its components for the period, 1970–2014. We have employed the Bayer and Hanck, (2013) combined cointegration test to examine the long-run relationships between those variables as well as the autoregressive distributed lag method with structural breaks as a robustness check. The empirical findings demonstrate a long-run relationship between those variables. Hydroelectricity consumption, fossil fuel consumption, capital, financial development and globalization and its components have a positive influence on GDP in China. The findings also provide predominant evidence on the long-run feedback hypothesis between the variables. The findings suggest that policies should be implemented to increase the role hydropower in the energy mix for sustainable economic growth in the country.

This article outlines the current state of affairs in fossil fuel subsidy reform, and highlights its contribution at the nexus of climate policy, fiscal stability and sustainable development. It discusses common definitions, provides quantitative estimates, and presents the evidence for key arguments in favour of subsidy reform. The main drivers and barriers for reform are also discussed, including the role of (low) oil prices and political economy challenges. Commitments to subsidy reform by the international community are reviewed, as well as the progress at the country level. Although fossil fuel subsidy reform indeed plays a critical role in climate policy, experience shows that the rationale for such reforms is determined in a complex environment of political economy challenges, macro-economic, fiscal and social factors, as well as external drivers such as energy prices. The article synthesizes the key principles for designing effective reforms and emphasizes that subsidy reforms cannot only yield fi...

In 1996 the natural resource base of the world is being depleted at a rate far below the sustainable level. This is very evident in less developed countries (IDC), where raw limited natural resources are being poorly utilized and/or exported to more developed countries (MDC). The More Developed Countries such as the United States, Japan, and Germany use a high amount of natural resources and energy to maintain their material Standard Of Living (SOL), and this is at rates above what their own country can sustain with its own natural resources within its own borders. Both MDC's and LDC's are contributing to the decline of the earth's natural resources, the over-burdening the natural waste assimilation cycle, and the destruction of natural habitats. It is the MDC that hold global power in the form of technology, military might, and financial power, and they have the ability to be the forerunner in creating and implementing policies that would move themselves and the world toward a sustainable society worldwide. There are barriers that exist today in both MDC and LDC that prevent us from moving to a more sustainable society. In this paper I hope to identify these barriers preventing sustainable development in MDC's and LDC's, and propose possible solutions to those barriers.