• Energy Research
• 12. Responsible consumption close
• 9. Industry and infrastructure close
• 14. Life underwater close
• KZ close
• KH close

The research objective is to assess the role of green financing and financial inclusion in developing a cleaner environment for macroeconomic stability in ASEAN economies. The study attempted to estimate the climate mitigation factor associated with a more sanitary environment between 2012 and 2019. Panel data analysis using the augmented Dicky–Fuller test, Phillip–Perron, and fully modified standard most minor square test provides long-term findings in panel data analysis. In addition, the vector error correction technique was also applied to infer study results. The findings indicate that climate change mitigation indicators have a significant impact on the gross domestic product of ASEAN economies. According to the data, a one percent rise in the green finance index results in a 0.321 percent increase in the amount of pollution removed from the environment. According to the research findings, environmental pollution must be decreased, and energy sources must be switched to more creative and ecologically friendly alternatives. Using study findings, several policy recommendations are offered and suggested for stakeholders for implementation. As per our best understanding, effective implementation of study findings and suggestions maximum chances are developing a cleaner environment and boosting macroeconomic stability in the ASEAN context.

This study investigated the current practices and challenges for the sustainable fashion of luxury boutique fashion brands (LBFBs) in Vietnam. A series of in-depth interviews with 20 founders and managers of LBFBs in Vietnam was conducted. Findings show that sustainable practices improve ethnic cultures, strengthen the usage of local resources, promote sustainable lifestyle, and thereby contributing to sustainable development of the boutique fashion brands. However, the brands face some challenges while dealing with their stakeholders such as shortage of available internal resources, bias in consumer perception and purchase behaviors, and legal barriers to achieve accredited environment certification that, in turn, weaken the sustainable practices in the local context. Results also provide some insightful information for small & medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to adjust their sustainability practices in order to improve their competitive advantages in the marketplace.

Asian developing countries face challenges of serious air pollution and large shadow economy. Fiscal policy is anticipated as a solution to cope with these obstacles. This paper empirically examines the impact of shadow economy on air pollution and the role of fiscal policy in moderating the impact through the two tools of government expenditure and taxation in 22 Asian developing countries during 2002–2015. The estimation results from the fixed effects and the system generalized method of moments show that air pollution is positively affected by the shadow economy; and expansionary fiscal policy can reduce air pollution through abating shadow economy, and can lessen the detrimental effect of shadow economy on the environmental quality. Specifically, the increase in government expenditure reduces the positive effect of shadow economy on air pollution, but a tax-hike intensifies it. It is also found a stronger negative impact of government expenditure, compared to positive impact of taxation, and a dominant impact of shadow economy on air pollution. The findings imply that policy-makers can use appropriate fiscal policies to control air pollution and to reduce the destructive effect of the informal economy on the environmental quality in developing countries. Especially, governments in developing countries should allocate more budgets on environmental projects in their fiscal reforms for the sake of moving to greener and more inclusive economies with low-carbon activities.

This study assesses the cumulative impact of climate change and reservoir operation on flow regime and fisheries in the Sekong River Basin. Ensemble of five selected Regional Climate Models (RCMs) were used to project the future climate under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios. The projected future climate was used to simulate the future hydrology using the SWAT model while HEC-ResSim was utilized for reservoir simulation. Finally fish-flow relationship was developed to estimate the fish catch and productivity in future. Upon investigation we found that, Sekong River Basin is likely grow warmer and drier in future under climate change. The basin is expected to face 1.3-3.6 °C rise in mean annual temperature and receive 0-6% less annual rainfall in future. The wet season in the basin is anticipated to be drier (0% to -6%) while the dry season rainfall shows no particular trend (-3%-10%). Such a change in climate is likely to alter the mean annual flow in future between -3 and 5% at Attapeu, -6 to 2% at Ban Veunkhane, Lao PDR, and -7 to 1% at Siempang, Cambodia (basin outlet). Under climate change, we expect decrement in minimum flow but increment in the maximum flow while opposite is anticipated under reservoir operation. Operation of Xekaman 1 and Sekong 4A are likely to increase the minimum flow at river outlet by 32-59% and 13-18% respectively whereas maximum flow is expected to decrease by 28-5%. In addition, climate change is likely to have crucial impact on fisheries with up to 19% and 12% reduction in fish catches and fish productivity respectively. However, reservoirs tend to have negligible impact on fisheries.

The article presents the results of research on the influence of lead production slag on the environment and ecology of the city. Due to the open storage of slags, an excess of maximum permissible levels (MPL) of lead was established: near the plant, the concentration of lead in the soil exceeds 3000 mg/kg, while the MPL is 3.2 mg/kg. The data of analyzes obtained by methods of scanning electron microscopy and X-ray microanalysis, performed on a scanning electron microscope (SEM), as well as the results of X-ray fluorescence semi-quantitative analysis, performed on an X-ray fluorescence wave-dispersive spectrometer, have been presented. The results of thermal analysis of samples in air in the 20-1000 °C temperature range are presented.It was revealed that lead slag contains a fairly high amount of toxic metal compounds. It has been established that the average content of toxic metals in slags formed as a result of the activity of a lead plant is: lead - 2, 38%; zinc - 9.81%; copper - 0.97%; iron - 25.31%; silicon oxide - 24.62%; calcium oxide - 16.21%; potassium oxide - 1.42%; sulfur - 1.35% of the total sample weight.The offered technology of a selective method for the extraction of non-ferrous metals allows to enhance the ecological state of the environment and reduce their negative impact on human health by means of the disposal of the lead production slags.

AbstractThis study examines the association between tourism development, technology innovation, and carbon emissions by simultaneously testing Environment Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis in China. The study develops and uses a novel composite index of tourism development and technology innovation. Utilizing quarterly data from 1995Q1 to 2017Q4, the study employs QARDL (Quantile Autoregressive Distributive Lag) approach and Granger causality‐in‐quantiles. The outcome of the study reveals that the observed relationship is quantile‐dependent, which may disclose misleading results in previous studies using traditional linear methodologies (such as OLS/ARDL) that address the averages. Primarily, the findings indicate that tourism development (TOR) and technology innovation (TII) significantly mitigate the level of carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) in the long run at lower‐higher (0.05–0.95) emissions quantiles and higher‐highest (0.7–0.95) emissions quantiles, respectively. Economic growth (GDP) and globalization (GLO) exert a positive asymmetric influence on CO2 only at lower‐medium (0.05–0.40) emissions quantiles and medium‐higher emissions quantiles (0.50–0.95), respectively. In the short run, TII, and GDP2 possess an insignificant impact across all emissions levels, while TOR shows a positive influence on CO2 only at lowest‐lower (0.05–0.20) emissions quantiles. The study confirms the presence of the EKC hypothesis at lower‐higher (0.05–0.70) emissions quantiles in the long run. Moreover, the outcomes of Granger causality in quantiles confirm asymmetric bidirectional quantile causality between TOR, TII, GLO, and CO2, while a unidirectional causality running from GDP to CO2. The results recommend that the Chinese government should implement integrated “tourism‐technology” policies based on the asymmetric emissions‐reduction effects of tourism and technology innovation in the long run.

AbstractBackgroundThe Gaza Strip in Palestine is currently facing a serious electrical power deficit due to the local political situation. In addition, the main source of energy in Gaza Strip is traditional fossil fuel which is environmentally harmful. To ensure that electrical power in the Gaza Strip can be maintained continuously without any day-long power failures is a challenging task for decision-makers. The lack of reliable electrical power has motivated the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip to adopt an alternative source of energy which is reliable, sustainable, environmentally friendly and abundantly exists. Therefore, they decided to implement solar energy systems to power their houses in order to replace or to complement the traditional sources of energy. This has motivated the current study which aims to find out whether solar energy can be an alternative source of energy to the conventional energy for domestic use in the Gaza Strip to sustain inhabitants’ daily life. This has been tested by studying the readiness and attitudes of household people in the Gaza Strip to adopt solar energy in their homes. This work is a novel study in its contents. According to the authors’ knowledge, this is one of few studies considering this topic.MethodsTo understand the reasons for successful solar energy system adoption by individual households in Gaza, the authors have created an electronic questionnaire. The dependent variable is chosen to be the adoption of energy, and independent variables are the environmental benefit, the cost of adoption of solar energy, and the economic savings of solar energy measured. The electronic questionnaire consists of two parts: part one consists of personal questions; the second part consists of 22 items on a five-point Likert scale and the studied sample population consists of the 10% of the Al-Shifa Medical Complex employees (1819 employees). The electronic questionnaires were electronically circulated to the study sample. The data were then collected and analyzed using an SPSS program.ResultsThe authors found that only 19.5% of the studied sample population have installed solar energy systems on their houses. The results show that some factors, including the governorate in which employees are living, house ownership, total cost of energy/month, available space to install the solar panels, and the desire to share the cost with neighbors did not affect the decision to use solar energy. On the contrary, the type of house and the knowledge of renewable energy influenced the decision. Compared to previous studies, we also found that knowledge is an important factor in implementing renewable energy (Zakaria et al. in Earth Environ Sci 268:012105. https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/268/1/012105, 2019, Szakály et al. in Energies 14:1–25. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14010022, 2021). Though our study did not reveal an impact of cost of installing the system on making the decision to adopt renewable energy (Assali et al. in Renew Energ 136:254–263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2019.01.007, 2019), we will it regard it as an important factor.ConclusionThe adoption of solar energy in Gaza is limited. The kind of the house and the knowledge of renewable energy are imperative to increase utilization of solar energy by households in Gaza. Therefore, it is important to start a public information campaign on the advantages of solar energy through the universities by giving classes to all university students and/or by giving general talks for the public. To conquer the limiting factors, the public authority ought to consider the framework and support the neighborhood occupants.

The complexity of reality can be better represented by models able to involve uncertainty and time patterns. We present a general formulation of a stochastic dynamic multiobjective optimization model and we provide different solution concepts based on its transformation into different deterministic equivalent models. We provide two applications to sustainable decision making in portfolio management and optimal workforce allocation.