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In effective designing and implementation of energy and environmental policies in line of Kyoto targets for protecting global warming it is very vital to examine the presumed links between GHGs, mainly carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, energy consumption and economic growth. This paper investigates the causal relationship between economic growth, energy consumption and CO2 emissions, applying Toda and Yamamoto ‘Granger no-causality approach’ in multivariate vector autoregressive (VAR) setting in Bangladesh over 1965-2007 period. Results find the bidirectional causality between energy consumption and economic growth; and unidirectional causality from CO2 emissions to economic growth. But causal relationship between energy consumption and CO2 emissions is not found significant. This suggests that Bangladesh do not need to sacrifice economic growth or reduce its energy consumption or both in order to reduce pollutant emissions, but economic growth is found to be affected by CO2 emissions. Results also suggest that growing energy use has to maintain for sustainable economic growth.

This paper proposes a new tool to assess sustainability and make the concept of sustainable development operational. It considers its multi-dimensional structure combining the information deriving from a selection of relevant sustainability indicators belonging to economic, social and environmental pillars. It reproduces the dynamics of these indicators over time and countries. Then, it aggregates these indicators using a new approach based on Choquet's integrals. The main novelties of this approach are indeed: (i) the modelling framework, a recursive-dynamic computable general equilibrium used to calculate the evolution of all indicators over time throughout the world, and (ii) the aggregation methodology to reconcile them in one aggregate index to measure overall sustainability. The former allows capturing the sector and regional interactions and higher-order effects driven by background assumptions on relevant variables to depict future scenarios. The latter makes it possible to compare sustainability performances, under alternative scenarios, across countries and over time. Main results show that the current sustainability at world level differs from what the traditional measure of well-being, the GDP, depicts, highlighting the trade-offs among different components of sustainability. Moreover, in the next decade a slight decrease in world sustainability may occur, in spite of an expected increase in world domestic product. Finally, dedicated policies increase overall sustainability, showing that social and environmental benefits may be greater than the correlated economic costs.

cause for hope. The Colombian Coffee Growers’ Association wants to hire them. Why? Because these children have developed the independent thinking, communication, and work skills that will make them an asset to the industry. They developed these skills in their multigrade primary schools, where children do most of their learning in competence-based groups, while the teacher functions as guide and coach. In Kenya, a teenage boy is also celebrating. A primary school dropout who once survived outside the law, he now runs his own small business, lives on his own, and even helps support his family financially. He learned the skills he needed in a 12-week entrepreneurship program offered to youth living on the streets in the heart of one of Africa’s largest slums. The life-changing economic opportunities now available to these children are the direct result of the unique quality of their schooling, which has had a direct and positive impact on their immediate circumstances. In other words, these children’s schooling was made relevant to their current life experiences and those they will later encounter.

Africa has been hesitant to adopt agricultural biotechnology, lagging behind global trends over the past decade. One exception is Burkina Faso, a West African country that commercially released 125,000 ha of Bt cotton in 2009. Bt cotton may serve as a working example of how African countries can enhance sustainability using modern, science-driven technology to increase production levels while reducing input use and energy consumption. This paper reports the potential impact that Bt cotton can have on sustainability in Burkina Faso’s cotton sector based by summarizing empirical evidence from previously published studies. Based on the summary of published data collected from six years of field trials and producer surveys, Bt cotton increased cotton yields by an average of 21.3% and raised income by $106.14 per ha. Using an energy balance model, the introduction of Bt cotton would also result in a 6.6% saving in energy use. The significant increase in productivity and economic returns could be the catalyst for Burkina Faso, and other African countries, to emerge from the decade or so of stagnation and regain their competitive stance in world cotton markets while providing environmental and social benefits.

Poverty and altered planning horizons brought on by the HIV/AIDS epidemic can change individual discount rates, altering incentives to conserve natural resources. Using longitudinal household survey data from western Kenya, we estimate the effects of health status on investments in soil quality, as indicated by households’ agricultural land fallowing decisions. We first show that this effect is theoretically ambiguous: while health improvements lower discount rates and thus increase incentives to conserve natural resources, they also increase labor productivity and make it more likely that households can engage in labor-intensive resource extraction activities. We find that household size and composition are predictors of whether the effect of health improvements on discount rates dominates the productivity effect, or vice-versa. Since households with more and younger members are better able to reallocate labor to cope with productivity shocks, the discount rate effect dominates for these households and health improvements lead to greater levels of conservation. In smaller families with less substitutable labor, the productivity effect dominates and health improvements lead to greater environmental degradation

Government spending on the elderly is projected to increase rapidly as the American population becomes older. As a result, many policymakers and budget analysts are concerned about the continued viability of entitlement programs such as Social Security. The Social Security trustees' economic growth projections receive considerable attention because many people believe that higher growth would significantly improve the program's actuarial balance (that is, reduce its actuarial deficit). This belief is validated by Social Security trustees' calculations that show larger 75-year actuarial balances under faster assumed real wage growth rates. Since 2003 the trustees have reported the program's actuarial balance measured in perpetuity. But they do not provide sensitivity analysis that examines the impact of various assumptions on the infinite-term actuarial balance. This paper shows analytically that faster wage growth may reduce Social Security's infinite-term actuarial balance if the ratio of workers to retirees continues to decline rapidly beyond the 75th year. This result holds even if the decline in that ratio ceases after just two decades beyond the 75th year. The paper reports stylized calculations of the impact of real wage growth and demographic changeincluding time-varying rates of change based on official projections for the U.S. economyon Social Security's actuarial balance in a multi-period setting. Finally, the Social Security and Accounts Simulator (SSASIM) actuarial model of Social Security financing is used to estimate the degree to which increased wage growth could negatively affect the system's infinite-term actuarial balance. These results raise questions about the conventional wisdom that holds that improved wage growth would affect Social Security's financing, and how a widely used measure of Social Security's financing captures those effects.

This paper presents a schematic history of the global economy since 1800. The economic and political logic of global capitalism in this period is defined by its ability to derive a growing share of its energy from fossil fuels. The explosive growth of this period, the dominance of capital, the growing military superiority of centers of capitalist growth, and the widening disparities in the global economy are ultimately driven by the logic of fossil-based capitalism. From 1800 to 1950, the global economy experienced growing centralization of capital and power, dividing the global economy into an advanced and dominant Center and a backward and subordinate Periphery. A period of decentralization follows from 1950 to1990, when most segments of the Periphery regained various levels of control over their economies. Since the early 1990s, the forces of centralization have again gained the upper hand.

Ever-increasing population and ever-proliferating demand for variety and choice together with a marked preference in favor of deliberate under-utilization of resources as well as deprecation of thrift have exposed the available reserves of natural resources to the danger of depletion. The culture based on the market economy has made the people concerned only about producing and consuming more, with their eyes closed to the indiscriminate exploitation of resources and dumping of the obnoxious byproducts into the environment. There is now abundant scientific evidence that humanity is living unsustainably. The environment is gradually becoming more overstressed; trophic chains and various biogeochemical cycles in the nature are being interrupted; ecological services are becoming disturbed. People now are transforming ecosystems throughout the world at a faster and more extensive pace than any other time in human history. In this milieu, this paper observes that bringing human use of natural resources within sustainable limits will require a major collective effort. There is a need to sensitize the people, especially the supposed and potential ‘creative core’, to direct their efforts to a serious thinking and action to change our present preoccupation with an unsustainable development towards sustainable development. The roles of other stakeholders and volunteer-involving organizations are no less important. sustainable development requires changes in institutions, more specifically the habits of thought and action, to opt for and adopt the new paradigm of development, to change the taste and liking regarding consumption, to think of social priorities and obligation vis-a-vis the personal ones and so on. Attitudinal changes, the alteration of the world view and the habits of thought, are only possible by a proper and holistic educational planning and an efficient governance of the academia, the government departments and the law-making and law-protecting framework of our society. The paper highlights the role of the ‘creative core’ and good governance, but the intelligentsia, especially in the less developed nations where social consciousness is dominated by the myopic personal agenda, will not be effective unless the monitoring of the entire program of development is efficient. The people must, therefore, come forward. But, while social consciousness is weak and dormant, this requirement pushes us into the vicious circle. This vicious circle is the real trap and obstacle to sustainable development.