• Energy Research
• 11. Sustainability close
• University of Cambridge close

Significance Understanding the role of international trade in driving pressures on freshwater resources is key to meeting challenges at the water–energy nexus. A coupled trade and hydrological model is used to examine pressures on freshwater resources associated with energy production across the global economy. While the electric and gas sectors induce freshwater consumption predominantly within countries where demand originates (91% and 81%, respectively), the petroleum sector exhibits a high international footprint (56%). Critical geographic areas and economic sectors are identified, providing focus for resource-management actions to ensure energy and freshwater security. Our analysis demonstrates the importance of broadening the discourse on energy policy to address issues including freshwater scarcity, the role of international trade, and wider environmental and societal considerations.

This project engages with the Kogi, an Amerindian indigenous people from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range in northern Colombia. Kogi leaders have been engaging in a consistent ecological-political activism to protect the Sierra Nevada from environmentally harmful developments. More specifically, they have attempted to raise awareness and understanding among the wider public about why and how these activities are destructive according to their knowledge and relation to the world. The foreign nature of these underlying ontological understandings, statements, and practices, has created difficulties in conveying them to mainstream, scientific society. Furthermore, the pre-determined cosmological foundations of Kogi society, continuously asserted by them, present a problem to anthropology in terms of suitable analytical categories. My work aims to clarify and understand Kogi environmental activism in their own terms, aided by anthropological concepts and “Western” forms of expression. I elucidate and explain how Kogi ecology and public politics are embedded in an old, integrated, and complex way of being, knowing, and perceiving on the Sierra Nevada. I argue that theoretically this task involves taking a realist approach that recognises the Kogi’s cause as intended truth claims of practical environmental relevance. By avoiding constructivist and interpretivist approaches, as well as the recent “ontological pluralism” in anthropology, I seek to do justice to the Kogi’s own essentialist and universalist ontological principles, which also implies following their epistemological rationale. For this purpose, I immersed myself for two years in Kogi life on the Sierra, and focused on structured learning sessions with three Mamas, Kogi spiritual leaders and knowledge specialists. I reflect on how this interaction was possible because my project was compatible with the Mamas’ own desire to clarify and contextualise the Kogi ecological cause. After presenting this experience, I analyse the material as a multifaceted, interrelated, and elaborate system to reflect the organic, structured composition of Kogi and Sierra, also consciously conveyed as such by the Mamas. I hereby intend to show how the Kogi reproduce, live, and sustain this system through daily practices and institutions, and according to cosmological principles that guide a knowledgeable, ecological relationality with things, called ‘the Law of Origin’. To describe this system, I develop a correspondingly holistic and necessary integration of the anthropological concepts of cosmology, ontology, epistemology, and ecology. Based on this, I argue that Kogi eco-politics are equally embedded in this system, and constitute a contemporary attempt to maintain their regulatory relations with the Sierra Nevada and complement their everyday care-taking practices and rituals. In Kogi terms, this continuity and coherence is a moral imperative and environmental necessity. Thus framing and clarifying Kogi eco-politics may enrich insights into the nature of indigenous ecological knowledge, and may help address environmental problems. Doctoral thesis in Social Anthropology. Based on a realist and holistic approach, this work examines how the environmental political activism of the Kogi Indigenous People of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range in Colombia, is guided by a wider and complex way of being in and knowing the world. This in turn, it is argued, forms part of an elaborate, interrelated and structured 'system' of human and non-human elements, which can be framed and understood through a necessary integration of the four analytical concepts of cosmology, ontology, epistemology, and ecology.

The paper offers a foundation upon which to build a better approach to integrate archeology and cultural heritage into the policy dialogue for climate related migration, both internally to the United States and internationally. First, the paper provides a survey of the pillars of climate change policy, mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage, and how cultural heritage, archeology, and historic preservation are addressed within these three areas. It then delves further into the active role the cultural heritage community has fostered within the United States and internationally to better inform climate policy and action. It does so in part by synthesizing the work of the Pocantico Working Group on Climate Migration and Cultural Heritage, an international network of cultural leaders, archeologists, and scholars. Finally, the paper presents next steps into effectively incorporating cultural considerations into policy and legal options for addressing internal migration and relocation in the context of climate change. It is the intent of this brief piece to offer a groundwork reading of current frameworks for cultural heritage and climate change policy upon which future scholars can and should build towards finding effective ways of including heritage in climate action at the national and international levels. At its core, climate change is the modern story of the human journey. It is a story about the looming reality of losing the very things that connect us to our past and the tangible and intangible cultural heritage assets that construct the contours of our identities today.

Gender equality and women’s empowerment are essential for sustainable development, yet several constraints make achieving them difficult. A strategic management tool is required to address these challenges and manage objectives and goals effectively. This study aims to redesign Balanced Scorecard (BSC), a strategic management tool for gender equality, to enable the strategic management of goals and indicators related to the fifth sustainable goal (SDG 5) proposed by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The BSC for gender equality was developed through a comprehensive literature review on gender-specific targets and indicators and the restructuring of the traditional architecture of the BSC to include new dimensions, guiding questions, and objectives to achieve this study’s goals. Moreover, a strategy map was constructed to illustrate the strategy and cause-and-effect relationships across the BSC dimensions. This research provides concrete gender strategies that help organizations implement a management tool to measure and manage their performance related to gender equality and sustainable development. The findings suggest that the BSC for gender equality can contribute significantly to a clearer understanding of how organizations can measure and promote gender equality. The implications of this study are significant for promoting and advancing gender equality, helping organizations, researchers, and civil society translate this goal into practical terms, and applying the concepts discussed for sustainable development and women’s empowerment in practical circumstances. Ultimately, using the BSC for gender equality is expected to result in social and economic benefits for current and future generations, making it a valuable tool for organizations and policy makers to promote sustainable development and gender equality.

Manufacturing is an important pillar of the society providing goods and services of primary importance for supporting the quality of human life. One of the most pressing challenges facing Europe and the world is the need for a transition to resource-efficient economy. Sustainability, in a manufacturing context, means enabling a diverse pool of industrial participants to pursue economic growth without undermining social and environmental issues of workforce management, building community relations, use of natural resources, carbon dioxide emissions, waste management and product and services responsibility. This chapter discusses on the relevance of sustainability from manufacturing perspective, sustainable manufacturing definition, strategies, impacts and approaches and describes a roadmap for sustainable manufacturing.

Abstract The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has adopted a new law and policy framework, Vision 2030, designed to deliver a transition to a diversified and low-carbon economy. This paper analyses from an environmental law and policy perspective how law is providing opportunities and challenges in achieving the outcomes of this national masterplan. The paper employs traditional legal scholarship to assess the law itself and also explores its impact in practice, via an analysis of findings from expert stakeholder interviews. Key issues around environmental governance are discussed in depth in the light of Vision 2030. One of the key issues of focus is that of integration, in terms of the design and practice of law, institutions and outcomes. To date, it is clear that the further policies needed to ensure that environmental integration and a low-carbon transition take place are currently being created in the effort to deliver the aims of the Vision. This study finds that the transition to a low-carbon economy in the KSA is under-researched and under-explored in practice, from an environmental perspective. The findings attest that although some significant actions have been initiated, further action needs to be taken, given the importance of this transition, in the KSA in the light of the promising nature of Vision 2030 in this regard.

Left unabated, climate change will have catastrophic effects on the health of present and future generations. Such effects are already seen in Europe, through more frequent and severe extreme weather events, alterations to water and food systems, and changes in the environmental suitability for infectious diseases. As one of the largest current and historical contributors to greenhouse gases and the largest provider of financing for climate change mitigation and adaptation, Europe's response is crucial, for both human health and the planet. To ensure that health and wellbeing are protected in this response it is essential to build the capacity to understand, monitor, and quantify health impacts of climate change and the health co-benefits of accelerated action. Responding to this need, the Lancet Countdown in Europe is established as a transdisciplinary research collaboration for monitoring progress on health and climate change in Europe. With the wealth of data and academic expertise available in Europe, the collaboration will develop region-specific indicators to address the main challenges and opportunities of Europe's response to climate change for health. The indicators produced by the collaboration will provide information to health and climate policy decision making, and will also contribute to the European Observatory on Climate and Health.