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Many supply chains have pledged to prevent the violation of workers’ rights as part of social sustainability in their far-flung supply chains. This paper provides a way to understand why supply chains fail to overcome the violation of workers’ rights by mapping the UN SDGs onto the social foundations of the doughnut model, with respect to workers’ rights in supply chains. We develop the sustainable supply chain doughnut model with regards to the SDGs, through which we investigate workers’ rights violations. Examples from both UK-based and world-wide supply chains illustrates our conceptual model. Supply chains have shortfalls in all aspects of the social foundation when it comes to workers as one of their main stakeholders. Until supply chains are successful in overcoming shortfalls across all elements of the social foundation, moving to the next layer of the doughnut framework is impossible, which is the safe and just space for all humans, including workers. This ‘safe and just space’ seems out of reach despite international efforts such as the SDGs. The resulting conceptual model can be the foundation for descriptive, instrumental, and normative research on workers’ rights in the supply chain as part of the social sustainability.

This paper examines the impact of oil price shocks on global equities. The focus is on the heterogeneity of responses to stocks depending on three characteristics: the type of the shock; whether the country is an oil importer/exporter; the bull/bear state of the stock market. We utilise the Kilian (2009) structural VAR to distil the oil price shocks and regress stock returns on these oil shocks using a quantile regression. In addition to oil price shocks, we consider the role of both economic policy uncertainty and stock market volatility. The results reveal that equity markets in oil-importing economies do not exhibit specific patterns in response to oil shocks, whereas those in oil-exporting economies are affected by precautionary oil demand shocks. Across these markets, precautionary demand shocks have a positive effect on stock markets, although for the GCC nations it predominantly impacts only during bear markets.

Tax policies targeted at reducing alcohol consumption are typically understood to be associated with economic losses, including in alcohol production and trade sectors. This study sought to determine whether the overall effect of reduced alcohol consumption might be positive once improvements in productivity associated with reduced alcohol-related consumption are considered.This study used Computable General Equilibrium economic modelling.An economic modelling framework was developed for Scotland, which considered the fiscal and economic impacts of alcohol taxation and the economy-wide impacts. Simulation of hypothetical alcohol taxes and improvements in labour productivity calibrated on losses due to absenteeism and presenteeism in Scotland in 2017.The long-run impacts of a five pence increase in taxation alone produce negative economic impacts on jobs and Gross Domestic Product in Scotland (1189 jobs and £71.12 million). These effects are reduced by half - but remain negative - when the revenues from such policy are recycled to the economy through government spending. A small improvement in labour productivity - equivalent to 4.95% of the total productivity gap from absenteeism and presenteeism estimated for Scotland - would be sufficient to turn the economic consequence non-negative.The overall macroeconomic impact of policies targeted at alcohol consumption should include consideration of the potential productivity effect and that impact studies that do not include such mechanisms are likely to overstate the negative economic impacts of alcohol policies.

Understanding Food–Energy–Water (FEW) systems is crucial in order to plan for a resilient and sustainable future of interdependent urban–rural regions. While research tends to focus on urban transitions, the topic remains understudied relative to urban-rural regions. The often conflicting pressures in these regions (e.g., urbanization and growing crop production) may pose distinctive challenges where large urbanizations are adjacent to sparsely populated rural areas. These systems may further shift in response to local and global economic and demographic trends, as well as climate change. Identifying these complex system trajectories is critical for sustainability and resilience planning and policy, which requires the pooling of both urban and rural expertise across multiple disciplines and domains. We convened panels of subject matter experts within a participatory causal loop diagramming (CLD) approach. Our workshops were facilitated by our research team to collaboratively construct the web of connections among the elements in the urban–rural FEW system. The CLDs and the discussions around them allowed the group to identify potentially significant lever points in the system (e.g., support for minority farmers to enhance food security while reducing waste), barriers to sustainability (e.g., laws restricting the sale of water treatment biosolids), and potential synergies across sectors (e.g., food and green energy advocacy jointly pressing for policy changes). Despite the greater understanding of urban–rural interdependence afforded by participatory CLD, urban factors were consistently prioritized in the representation of the integrated system, highlighting the need for new paradigms to support sustainable urban–rural transitions.

The belief that the provision of electricity in rural areas can bring about desired socio-economic changes (increased economic opportunities, improved health and education facilities) has been challenged on two related counts. First, it is argued that electrification only brings changes to resourcerich households, and second, that it drains the resource-scarce rural economy. However, changes witnessed over the years in electrified areas in rural western Nepal demonstrate some positive outcomes. In response to the availability of electricity, village people have found various productive uses for it. The activity portfolios adopted in the post-electrification phase are not simply dictated by basic needs, but are also crafted by new opportunities emerging from the introduction of electricity. However, in order for positive outcomes to be routinely realized, concerted efforts must be made and policies framed by the utilities and the government to render electrification conducive to livelihood diversification. To support improvement of people's welfare through livelihood diversification, it is critical that electricity utilization is not limited to lighting and basic domestic uses.

This report explores material and energy efficiency in industry in Lao PDR. The current state of play is identified, highlighting actions that industries can take to increase their resource efficiency. This report is a collaboration between the Climate Compatible Growth (CCG) Programme and the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI).

Initiatives on the sustainable intensification of agriculture have introduced improved technologies tailored to farmers’ local conditions by trial demonstration with free provision of improved seeds and fertilizers. It is not clear, though, whether smallholder farmers would be willing to pay for these technologies, and what factors determine their informed demand. Using a contingent valuation experiment, combined with information at baseline among 400 households in Northern Tanzania, this study measured farmers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for hybrid maize seed and local inorganic fertilizer. Farmers’ WTP was estimated using a dichotomous contingent valuation with follow-up model. Results showed that the average WTP was 61% higher for hybrid maize seed, and 15% lower for inorganic fertilizer, than their respective average local market prices during the reference period, suggesting that farmers were willing to pay a premium for hybrid maize seed, while they did not seem to be interested in fertilizer purchase at current market price. Moreover, since improved access to extension services was found to positively affect farmers’ WTP, strengthening extension services could be a suitable policy intervention to increase farmers’ demand for improved technologies. On the other hand, farmers’ risk aversion was negatively correlated with WTP for both technologies. This result suggests that encouraging risk reduction options, such as agricultural insurance, could be a useful policy strategy for boosting farmers’ demand for improved agricultural technologies.