• Energy Research
• 1. No poverty close
• 8. Economic growth close
• GB close
• DK close

Abstract Worldwide, cities are implementing circular economy (CE) strategies to reduce the resources they consume and their environmental impact. However, the evidence of the intended and unintended social consequences of the transition to “circular cities” is scattered. The lack of a coherent overview of the evidence on the subject can hinder effective decision-making in policy and practice. This study examines the extent to which the current literature addresses the social impacts that a transition to a CE produces in cities. We used a methodological approach related to systematic mapping to collate the evidence published over the past decade globally. The study finds that social impacts have rarely been considered in studies of circular cities, and where they have been discussed, the scope has been quite limited, only covering employment (mostly of informal sector workers) and governance practices. This scoping review highlights the need to further analyse and integrate social impact considerations into decision-making connected to transitions towards circular cities.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has faced a persistent fiscal deficit for the last three decades. In the vast literature, a question is still arising: is ASEAN’s fiscal deficit alarming? This study explores the fiscal deficit with different perspectives to provide guidelines for policymakers to answer this question. For this purpose, we offer fiscal causal hypotheses estimates, including the contribution of Government expenditures (GEs) and Government revenues (GRs) towards sustainable economic growth; we then evaluated two additional deficit hypotheses, the impact of fiscal deficit and deficit financing on inflation. This empirical analysis covered annual financial data for the years 1990 to 2019 of ten member countries of ASEAN by applying panel econometric techniques, which include unit root Levin, Lin, and Chu (LLC) and Im, Pesaran, and Shin (IPS) tests; the panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model for cointegration; and the Dumitrescu–Hurlin (DH) test for causality. The findings revealed that government expenditures contribute more towards sustainable economic growth while government revenues are inversely related to growth in the long run. The DH causality test supported the fiscal synchronization hypothesis and current account targeting hypothesis in ASEAN. The interest rate is found as a moderator between fiscal and current account deficits. Furthermore, the findings showed that the fiscal deficit of ASEAN could generate inflation while relying on outstanding debt. Overall, our findings concluded that the fiscal deficit of ASEAN is alarming based on the behavior of government revenues, interest rate dynamics, political stability, and outstanding debt in deficit financing.

The study examines the nature of activities and assess knowledge on occupational safety and health (OS&H) risks and practices among solid waste collectors in two low-income informal neighbourhoods in Kumasi (Aboabo and Asawase). Using observations and semi-structured interviews with 83 participants and relevant institutions, the findings indicate that informal tricycle waste collectors provided spot-to-spot waste collection using improvised sirens to signal their arrival. Workers generally had low knowledge, expressed less about occupational health risks, and thus adopted less safe work practices. The study however showed significant differences between knowledge of health risks (p < 0.000, R = 0.83) and years of working experience (p < 0.01, R = 0.74) and adoption of safe practices. Workers who had knowledge the associated health risks of the activity and also have been in the activity for more than 2 years were more likely to use at least one PPE/PPC. The study recommends that targeted interventions to mitigate risks and improve the health and safety of workers require effective risk communication. The study concludes that insight into OS&H is important to offer opportunities for better waste management strategies in the informal urban areas.

Climate plays an important role in human health and it is well established that climate change can have very significant impacts in this regard. In partnership with The Lancet and the MJA, we present the inaugural Australian Countdown assessment of progress on climate change and health. This comprehensive assessment examines 41 indicators across five broad sections: climate change impacts, exposures and vulnerability; adaptation, planning and resilience for health; mitigation actions and health co-benefits; economics and finance; and public and political engagement. These indicators and the methods used for each are largely consistent with those of the Lancet Countdown global assessment published in October 2017, but with an Australian focus. Significant developments include the addition of a new indicator on mental health. Overall, we find that Australia is vulnerable to the impacts of climate change on health, and that policy inaction in this regard threatens Australian lives. In a number of respects, Australia has gone backwards and now lags behind other high income countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom. Examples include the persistence of a very high carbon-intensive energy system in Australia, and its slow transition to renewables and low carbon electricity generation. However, we also find some examples of good progress, such as heatwave response planning. Given the overall poor state of progress on climate change and health in Australia, this country now has an enormous opportunity to take action and protect human health and lives. Australia has the technical knowhow and intellect to do this, and our annual updates of this assessment will track Australia's engagement with and progress on this vitally important issue.

Across the world, different communities will be more or less able to adapt to the impacts of climate change based on their levels of exposure, access to a diversity of livelihood assets and adaptive capacity. Pacific communities are highly exposed to many of the projected impacts of climate change, which has garnered much media and government attention over the last decade. This article investigates how the government and non-government actors in Tuvalu and Kiribati, two low-lying Pacific nation-states, are responding to the challenges of climate change, particularly in relation to how they view migration as an adaptation ‘solution’. A brief contextual overview of terms such as ‘migration’ and ‘relocation’ indicates how they have only been used more recently at the multilateral level, most notably by the President of Kiribati. Building on a historical overview, interviews (n = 10) with government officials, and representatives from non-governmental organizations and donor agencies revealed that although e...

Plants acquire carbon through photosynthesis to sustain biomass production, autotrophic respiration and production of non-structural compounds for multiple purposes. The fraction of photosynthetic production used for biomass production, the biomass production efficiency, is a key determinant of the conversion of solar energy to biomass. In forest ecosystems, biomass production efficiency was suggested to be related to site fertility. Here we present a database of biomass production efficiency from 131 sites compiled from individual studies using harvest, biometric, eddy covariance, or process-based model estimates of production. The database is global, but dominated by data from Europe and North America. We show that instead of site fertility, ecosystem management is the key factor that controls biomass production efficiency in terrestrial ecosystems. In addition, in natural forests, grasslands, tundra, boreal peatlands and marshes, biomass production efficiency is independent of vegetation, environmental and climatic drivers. This similarity of biomass production efficiency across natural ecosystem types suggests that the ratio of biomass production to gross primary productivity is constant across natural ecosystems. We suggest that plant adaptation results in similar growth efficiency in high- and low-fertility natural systems, but that nutrient influxes under managed conditions favour a shift to carbon investment from the belowground flux of non-structural compounds to aboveground biomass.

Abstract Renewable energy technologies for sustainable development are rapidly attracting attention across many disciplines despite technical, economic, and social barriers that limit application beyond the laboratory. This study proposes novel semi-automated and automated domestic hot water and electricity demand simulation experiments to evaluate the performance of a proof-of-concept prototype under simulated solar conditions. The prototype is a Partially Hybridised Solar Technology (PHST) which integrates photovoltaic (PV) and low-temperature solar thermal technology for low-cost electricity and domestic hot water supply. The domestic hot water and electrical demand profiles, and the solar radiation utilised during the study represent typical conditions of off-grid households in Sub-Saharan Africa. The prototype delivered a thermal energy supply potential of 2 , 073 ± 75 k J per day at an average solar thermal conversion efficiency of 29.4 ± 1.0 % . The average yield of Direct Current (DC) electricity was 273 Wh per day at a corresponding PV module efficiency of 12.1% but depended on the type of charge controller. These results provide essential baselines for future computer modelling work and techno-economic predictions for Sub-Saharan Africa. The study has important future implications to test standards guiding laboratory-based evaluation of Solar Home Systems (SHSs) for electricity and domestic hot water.