• Energy Research
• 16. Peace & justice close

Introduction. The problem of Ukraine's economic development in modern conditions is directly related to the implementation of the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement, so the national economy is facing new opportunities and challenges, including the lack of effective mechanisms to restrict timber exports. The research aimed at assessing the effectiveness of the export bans to the EU. Aim and tasks. The aim of the paper is to study the mechanisms of regulation of the timber market and their export to the EU. Results. The impact of the imposed moratorium on the declared goals is analyzed in the paper. Analyzed statistics show no effect moratorium on the reduction of deforestation and halt exports of unprocessed timber. It is also impossible to make a clear conclusion about the positive impact of the moratorium on the supply of raw materials of domestic enterprises woodworking and furniture industries. However, within the structure of Ukrainian exports, the share of products of woodworking and furniture industries has increased. This was due to the reduction of Ukrainian export volumes against the background of increasing the share of exports of timber and wood products, as well as the resumption of sales of the furniture industry. Conclusions. A study of the ban on raw wood showed that in general, the effect of the moratorium imposed is not obvious, since the number of woodworking enterprises has increased and the level of employment in these sectors has increased. Ukraine requires the adoption of a comprehensive targeted program that would combine measures to develop both the woodworking and forest industries. The national interest of Ukraine is the preservation and restoration of forests, and the moratorium introduced is an example of how partial, fragmentary unsystematic decisions are made. The practical significance of the results allows to analyze existing and find new alternative export balance, ensuring equal opportunities and non-discrimination between domestic and European Union market.

Differences between the expected and the actual performance of buildings have been attributed partly to the influence of occupants; post-occupancy evaluations have thus gained more importance in the last years. There are a variety of methods to evaluate the performance of buildings. However, many of them are expensive, time consuming, intrusive or require expert knowledge, and thus, it has been difficult to embed them in practice. This investigation seeks to categorise the methods according to their purpose and usability to provide feedback. This study aims at linking different types of evaluation methods to different purposes for monitoring buildings. The objective is providing with the information needed to set up and carry out the monitoring of a building in-use. This overview was based on the experience of the authors in a number of non-domestic and domestic case studies, and on literature review. The study shows that the selection of the evaluation methods should be made according to the objective of the evaluation, the depth and nature of the study, the audience of the feedback, and the resources available for the evaluation. The relationship between all these factors have been studied and represented visually for a better comprehension of the methods.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) rest on a set of broadly accepted values within a human rights framework. The SDGs seek to improve human lives, improve the planet, and foster prosperity. This paper examines the human rights framework and the principles of social justice and shows that, while the SDGs do not specifically state that there is human right to food, the SDGs do envision a better, more just, world which rests upon the sufficiency of the global food supply, on environmental sustainability, and on food security for all. Then the paper examines the interrelationships between the SDGs, food access and waste, and human rights within a framework of social justice. Finally, it looks at the potential pandemic of hunger wrought by COVID-19, showing that COVID-19 serves as an example of a crisis that has raised unprecedented challenges to food loss and waste in the global food supply system and tests our commitment to the principles espoused by the SDGs.

This paper presents a novel two-level Stackelberg game strategy to model the competitive relationship between power supply companies, integrated energy systems, and end users in energy trading. In the upper-level game, the power supply company acts as a leader, which stimulates the electricity purchase of the IES by adjusting the electricity price. While the integrated energy system serves as a follower, whose objective is to minimize the operational cost and determine the power purchased according to the electricity price. In the lower-level game, the integrated energy system behaves as a leader, and it sets the energy sales price on the basis of the actual energy demand of the user. As a follower, end users adjust their energy consumption strategies to balance energy purchase expenditure and energy use experience. The proposed two-level game model well describes the competition among the three participants. In order to solve the model, a distributed algorithm using alternating iterations is presented. Numeric studies have demonstrate that the developed game strategy can obtain the equilibrium solution of each participant, and can provide a good reference for energy system trading and operation.

In this article we examined the ways in which strategic ambiguity (Eisenberg, 1984) in the use of keywords (Williams, 1976/1983) served an enabling function within a discourse marked by conflict and ideological divisions. Our analysis focused on the intertextual relationships between five documents intended by the government to guide the development of biotechnology in New Zealand. Through our analysis we identified ‘sustainability’ as a keyword and three major roles for the deployment of the discourse strategy of strategic ambiguity in the use of this keyword. First, strategic ambiguity lent an internal and intertextual coherence to the texts (albeit superficial). Second, it allowed multiple perspectives and objectives to co-exist. Third, strategic ambiguity facilitated the participation of discourse actors who subscribed to ideologies that were more or less incommensurable.

ABSTRACT Three graduate-level short courses on ecological agriculture and food systems were held in 1995–1997 in Norway to introduce systems thinking, creative research methods, and innovative learning approaches. In 1999, a three-day evaluation and planning workshop was held to assess course impacts, to determine relative importance of content areas, to compare learning methods with special attention to case studies, and to vision and develop action plans for future education in the region. Students and faculty agreed that soft systems research methods and varied learning processes in the course were more valuable than specific technical content that can be learned in other venues. Nine priority education areas were identified for ecological agriculture: (1) systems thinking, (2) research methods, (3) farmer/stakeholder participation, (4) improving production methods, (5) relating agriculture to food systems, (6) learning about learning, (7) values and ethics, (8) faculty development and institutional ch...

Spatial planning has to deal with trade-offs between various stakeholders’ wishes and needs as part of planning and management of landscapes, natural resources and/or biodiversity. To make ecosystem services (ES) trade-off research more relevant for spatial planning, we propose an analytical framework,which puts stakeholders, their land-use/management choices, their impact on ES and responses at the centre. Based on 24 cases from around the world, we used this framing to analyse the appearance and diversity of real-world ES trade-offs. They cover a wide range of trade-offs related to ecosystem use, including: land-use change, management regimes, technical versus nature-based solutions, natural resource use, and management of species. The ES trade-offs studied featured a complexity that was far greater than what is often described in the ES literature. Influential users and context setters are at the core of the trade-off decision-making, but most of the impact is felt by non-influential users. Provisioning and cultural ES were the most targeted in the studied trade-offs, but regulating ES were the most impacted. Stakeholders’ characteristics, such as influence, impact faced, and concerns can partially explain their position and response in relation to trade-offs. Based on the research findings, we formulate recommendations for spatial planning.

The current business situation requires enterprises to possess the ability not only to compete but also to carry out widely understood cooperation. It has an undeniable impact on the operation of each of the entities involved. Cooperation between companies opens up new prospects for development. It is evident in the creation of new strategies, quality improvement, an increase in competitiveness and the introduction of innovation, etc., that is, in actions that would be difficult to perform independently. The aim of the paper is to present the results of research on the cooperation between enterprises in the “Lodz-Warsaw corridor” carried out in the framework of the project entitled “Systemic Support for Management Processes in Local Government Units” co-financed by the European Social Fund under the Human Capital Operational Programme.