• Energy Research
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• 11. Sustainability close
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A new environmental ban has forced the restructure of open dumps in China since 1 July 2011. A technical process was established in this study that is feasible for the upgrade of open dumps through restructuring. The feasibility of restructuring and the benefit of greenhouse gas emission reductions were assessed according to field surveys of five landfills and four dumps in Nanjing. The results showed that the daily processing capacities of the existing landfills have been unable to meet the growth of municipal solid waste (MSW), making restructuring of the landfills imperative. According to an assessment of the technical process, only four sites in Nanjing were suitable for upgrading. Restructuring the Jiaozishan landfill effectively reduced the leachate generation rate by 5.84% under its scale when expanded by 60.7% in 2015. CO2 emissions were reduced by approximately 55,000–86,000 tons per year, in which biogas power generation replaced fossil fuels Fossil fuels accounted for the largest proportion, up to 45,000–60,000 tons. Photovoltaic power generation on the overlying land has not only reduced CO2 emissions to 26,000–30,000 tons per year but has also brought in continuing income from the sale of electricity. The funds are essential for developing countries such as China, which lack long-term financial support for landfill management after closure.

Climate change, environmental degradation, and limited resources are motivations for sustainable forest management. Forests, the most abundant renewable resource on earth, used to make a wide variety of forest-based products for human consumption. To provide a scientific measure of a product’s sustainability and environmental performance, the life cycle assessment (LCA) method is used. This article provides a comprehensive review of environmental performances of forest-based products including traditional building products, emerging (mass-timber) building products and nanomaterials using attributional LCA. Across the supply chain, the product manufacturing life-cycle stage tends to have the largest environmental impacts. However, forest management activities and logistics tend to have the greatest economic impact. In addition, environmental trade-offs exist when regulating emissions as indicated by the latest traditional wood building product LCAs. Interpretation of these LCA results can guide new product development using biomaterials, future (mass) building systems and policy-making on mitigating climate change. Key challenges include handling of uncertainties in the supply chain and complex interactions of environment, material conversion, resource use for product production and quantifying the emissions released.

This study evaluated the environmental conditions of two watersheds selected on the basis of similarities in land use. The environmental conditions of the watersheds were analyzed using two geoprocessing methods and in situ evaluations by applying the rapid assessment protocol (RAP). Geospatial image processing was used to analyze land use, slope, soil classification, and rainfall, while RAP was used to evaluate the connectivity and size of riparian corridors. The results revealed varied uses of land with the landscape matrix in both watersheds, composed of agriculture, pasture, and urban centers. Urban centers were defined as spots and riparian zones as corridors. The analysis of environmental fragility considering all the geospatial variables, classified both watersheds as having medium fragility. The most fragile sites were the urban centers, which had a high slope and degraded riparian zone. Onsite assessments have shown that corridors do not have the size required by legislation; they are fragmented and unstructured, and they contain exotic species. We also propose that a multi-factorial approach be used to evaluate watersheds, associating geospatial assessments and onsite analyses that consider the limitations pointed out in each protocol. This reduces sampling errors and shows the actual state of conservation in riparian zones.

In the transition from linear production systems, unsustainable from the point of view of resources, to a model that finds strength in environmental, social and economic sustainability, the circular economy paradigm is the foundation that facilitates the planetary agro-ecological transition. The European Union has taken a number of steps (including the Circular Economy Package of Directives) shaping circularity as a wide-ranging driver measure involving many sectors. The paper intends to provide a regulatory framework on the current general situation regarding circularity in European Union, in order to extrapolate and give evidence to the aspects that intersect the agri-food sector. This is not only because they are poorly addressed in the literature, but also because there is a lack of regulatory instruments on the circular economy specifically addressing this area of interest. For this purpose, the analysis focuses on waste and residue/scrap management issues, recognized by law as by-products and end-of-waste status, as they are covered by circular economy legislation and as they can be applied to the agri-food sector. The latter allow the implementation of circularity strategies in the agri-food sector and, given the numerousness of production chains and the peculiarities of each of them, various regeneration and/or reuse processes of specific resources may be depicted. The intent is to provide useful knowledge on how to implement sustainable waste management, also proposing a concrete case on a by-product of olive oil processing, through which it is possible to highlight how the correct application of regulations favors the adoption of circular economic and management models in the firms involved, as well as informing the relevant economic operators on the possible profiles of legal liability that may arise from insufficient knowledge. Furthermore, this paper delves into the European Green Deal’s Strategy as it enriches the circular economy paradigm with new facets. NextGenerationEU and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan financially support this strategy in the aftermath of the socioeconomic crisis from COVID-19 in the EU Member States. This is in order to achieve the objective of achieving the agro-ecological transition.

Higher education is incorporating Information and Communication Technology (ICT) at a fast rate for different purposes. Scientific papers include within the concept of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) the myriad applications of information and communication technology, e-resources, and pedagogical approaches to the development of education. TEL’s specific application to higher education is especially relevant for countries under rapid development for providing quick and sustainable access to quality education (UN sustainable development goal 4). This paper presents the research results of an online pedagogical experience in collaborative academic research for analyzing good practice in TEL-supported higher education development. The results are obtained through a pilot implementation providing curated data on TEL competency’s development of faculty skills and analysis of developing sustainable higher education degrees through TEL cooperation, for capacity building. Given the increased volume and complexity of the knowledge to be delivered, and the exponential growth of the need for skilled workers in emerging economies, online training is the most effective way of delivering a sustainable higher education. The results of the PETRA Erasmus+ capacity-building project provides evidence of a successful implementation of a TEL-supported methodology for collaborative faculty development focused on future online degrees built collaboratively and applied locally.

With China’s urban renewal, parks have developed into significant green recreational areas in cities. This paper analyzed social media texts and compared the evaluation outcomes of the 50 most popular urban parks in Beijing from various perspectives, such as the characteristics of various groups of people, park types, and the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of recreational activities. The importance–performance analysis method was used to analyze the main factors affecting visitors’ satisfaction with parks. The research found the following: (1) Positive evaluation of parks was related to environmental construction, event organization, etc., and negative evaluations focused on ticket supply, consumer spending, etc. (2) Visitors of different genders and from different regions focused on different aspects of parks. (3) In terms of traffic accessibility, historical and cultural display, parent–child activity organization, and ecological environment experience, people had diverse demands from various types of parks. (4) People were more likely to visit parks located within the range of all green belts in springs and parks located in the second green isolation belt in the fall. (5) The number of non-holiday reviews of parks was higher than that of holiday reviews. (6) Managers could improve visitor satisfaction by improving the infrastructure and management of parks.

Botswana’s new national climate-adaptation plan framework acknowledges the fundamental challenges climate change is posing to household resilience. While the plan aims to be gender-responsive, there is limited empirical data on the current gender dynamics around household-level climate-adaptive priorities and practices. This study aims to understand the gendered variations of how people understand resilience to climate change in both rural and a periurban areas. The authors then consider how these views are reflected in current climate-adaptation policies and responses. A household-level baseline survey with 141 participants was conducted in Ramotswa and Xhumaga, using participant-coded narratives to understand how people understand resilience to climate change. This study found that planning for the shocks and stressors of climate change is gendered, and these variations have important implications for how equity should be reflected in a policy response.

Although the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) advocate, through SDG 4 and SDG 10, equitable quality education and the reduction of inequalities within and between countries, respectively, few studies have examined how inequalities in regional sustainability influence higher education. Therefore, this study aims to examine the relationship between regional sustainability and higher education in China using fixed-effects panel modelling. A systematic force framework showing how regional sustainability drives higher education was constructed from economic, social, and environmental perspectives, and the endogeneity in the process of how regional sustainability affects higher education was explored by introducing one-year lagged values as instrumental variables. Our results show that regional sustainability has a significant impact on higher educational attainment in China, with differing effects in the eastern, central, and western regions, respectively. In central China, economic sustainability plays a significant positive role in higher educational attainment; in the western region, economic and social sustainability have stronger positive effects, while environmental sustainability has significantly negative effects. In terms of policy implications, our findings can be used to support regional development policies to promote regional higher education.