Technological innovation and sustainable development : Does the stage of development matter?

Technological innovation has generated much interest among scholars, practitioners, and policymakers as a critical instrument for achieving sustainable development. Although the relationship between technological innovation and sustainable development has been extensively discussed in the academic and policy circles, little studies have empirically examined the simultaneous impact of technological innovation on the three pillars of sustainable development. To fill this gap, the present study examines the ability of technological innovation to simultaneously promote economic progress and advance social and environmental conditions in the case of 75 low-, middle-, and high-income countries by demonstrating how this impact differs across the stages of economic development. From both long-run estimates and causality analysis, our findings reveal that technological innovation contributes simultaneously to the three pillars of sustainable development only in the case of rich countries; however, it only affects the economic and environmental dimensions in the middle-income countries, and no impact is found in the case of low-income countries. Future research directions, policy and managerial implications are also discussed.     

Understanding the sustainable consumption of energy resources in global industrial sector: Evidences from 114 countries

The rapid development of industry, which is an energy-intensive sector, may lead to an increased amount of energy consumption. Energy consumption decoupled from economic growth is one of the statuses towards sustainable development. This study conducted a decoupling analysis between industrial energy consumption (IEC) and industrial economic growth (IEG) to identify their relationship. It was found that among the 114 studied countries, there were 32 countries where strong decoupling occurred during the period of 2000 to 2017, while that of others were yet to come. Further, the key factors influencing the IEC of each country are identified based on the factor-related changes over the 17 years. For the 114 countries, the improvement of industrial energy output (IEO) was the most significant driver for IEC, and population also played its role in IEC increment; the reduction of industrial energy intensity (IEI) was the primary inhibitor for IEC, and the decrease of industrial employment rate slightly turned the IEC down over the period. For promoting the decoupling and less energy consumption in the industry, it is suggested to improve the energy efficiency, decelerate the industrial development, or shift the more energy-intensive industrial sectors to less energy-intensive ones, such as services. The study provides a global perspective for IEC reduction with the evidences of 114 countries, and its findings and policy implications provide the status quo and way forward for the countries aiming at reducing their IEC.     

Decomposition of energy consumption and its decoupling with economic growth in the global agricultural industry

The development of mechanization and technology has triggered the growing energy consumption in the agricultural industry. Energy saving in the agriculture industry becomes equally essential with that in the manufacturing, building, and transportation industries. The implementation of reducing energy consumption should be without costing the agricultural production, which is closely related to the food security of human beings. Strong decoupling between energy consumption and economic growth indicates the former decreases while the latter grows, which should be pursued by nations. Therefore, as the first research objective, this study analyzed the decoupling statuses between energy consumption and economic growth in the agricultural industry of 89 countries whose data exist across the period of 2000 to 2016. As a result, only 18 countries have reached strong decoupling. Secondly, this study decomposed agricultural energy consumption in the 89 countries to the effects of a driving factor (i.e., agricultural economic output) and three inhibiting factors (i.e., agricultural land, labor intensity, and energy intensity in descending order). With the identified decoupling statuses, this study provides a substantial understanding of the relationship between agricultural energy consumption and production from a global perspective. Meanwhile, the decomposed factors and corresponding policy implications provide evidence for decision makers of each nation to tailor energy-saving strategies in its agricultural industry.     

The “START” framework to evaluate national progress in green buildings and its application in cases of Singapore and China

Current studies provide little knowledge for a holistic assessment of green building (GB) studies and practices. This study addresses the gap by developing a systematic and multidisciplinary framework called “START” that integrates five interactive dimensions of GB, including S-stakeholders, To-total building life cycle concerns, A-actions of government, R-relevant contexts, and Ta-targets to facilitate scholars and policymakers' analysis of GB development and progress. A comparative review of Singapore's and China's GB journey has been conducted to illustrate the application of the framework. Results indicate that both countries face common challenges of achieving economic sustainability of GB due to market failure and lack of non-technical support. However, Singapore has made better progress in environmental and social sustainability than China. Singapore's GB program inclusively covers the whole building life phases whereas China mainly emphasizes on planning/design phase. Collectively, effective governance, strict law enforcement, engaged stakeholders, matured economy and emerging technologies facilitate the GB implementing in Singapore. Additional efforts are required for China to cope with its complexity and heterogeneity regarding climate zones, hierarchy of authority, and disparity of economy and resources allocation in various regions. The framework helps facilitate policymakers to comprehensively assess GB progress and highlights the importance of incorporating non-technical drivers, such as social, psychological, political factors, into multi-disciplinary research of GB programs.     

Eco-efficiency,eco-technology innovation and eco-well-being performance to improve global sustainable development

In today's world, determining how to improve the quality of the economy, technology innovation and human well-being within resource and environmental limits is a global sustainable development goal. Thus, research on eco-efficiency (EE), eco-technology innovation (ETI) and eco-well-being performance (EWP) has great significance for improving the efficiency of converting ecological consumption into economic benefits, technological innovation and human well-being. This paper presents a two-stage Super-slack-based measure (SBM) model to examine the EE, ETI and EWP (3E) of 102 countries. The indicator system for the 3E network process is constructed by using inputs, intermediate products and outputs. The empirical results show that the highest 3E performers are Singapore, the United States and Iceland. The results also indicate that countries with high levels of economic development have much better EE, ETI and EWP levels than low-income countries. After comparing the values of the 3E in different countries with the global average, the results further show that overall global 3E performance is relatively low. These findings provide significant references to help governments generate different strategies for improving national 3E performance.     

SWOT analysis for the development of photovoltaic solar power in Africa in comparison with China

Development of solar power becomes a necessary measure to combat global climate change and local environmental pollution in the world. In Africa, solar power resource is abundant, and deployment of solar photovoltaic (PV) offers a new opportunity for both economic growth and low-carbon development. Using an approach of SWOT analysis, we investigate the internal strengths and weaknesses, and the external opportunities and threats for PV solar power development in Africa. Particularly, factors are examined and discussed for African countries in terms of their internal strengths of rich solar resource, vast land, suitable application for distributed PV power systems; their weaknesses of small scale of renewable energy investment, shortness of foundation for the PV industrial chain, insufficient awareness of social and environmental benefits of solar PV; their external opportunities of increasing gap between energy supply and demand, raising global awareness of Climate Change, rapid decrease of PV price, as well as their external threats of dominant position of the fossil fuels, potential environmental impacts related to the solar PV development, and discontinuity of energy policies. The analysis particularly emphasizes on a new opportunity for African countries to develop their solar power resource through mutually beneficial cooperation between Africa and China within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).     

Bibliometric analysis of global environmental assessment research in a 20-year period

Based on the samples of 113,468 publications on environmental assessment (EA) from the past 20 years, we used a bibliometric analysis to study the literature in terms of trends of growth, subject categories and journals, international collaboration, geographic distribution of publications, and scientific research issues. By applying thresholds to network centralities, a core group of countries can be distinguished as part of the international collaboration network. A frequently used keywords analysis found that the priority in assessment would gradually change from project environmental impact assessment (EIA) to strategic environmental assessment (SEA). Decision-theoretic approaches (i.e., environmental indicator selection, life cycle assessment, etc.), along with new technologies and methods (i.e., the geographic information system and modeling) have been widely applied in the EA research field over the past 20 years. Hot spots such as “biodiversity” and “climate change” have been emphasized in current EA research, a trend that will likely continue in the future. The h-index has been used to evaluate the research quality among countries all over the world, while the improvement of developing countries' EA systems is becoming a popular research topic. Our study reveals patterns in scientific outputs and academic collaborations and serves as an alternative and innovative way of revealing global research trends in the EA research field.     

Environmental impact of Information Communication Technology: A review of econometric assessment methods,influential mechanism,and influential direction

In recent decades, the rapid development of the global society and economy has brought serious environmental problems, such as air pollution, greenhouse effect, and ecosystem degradation, all of which have attracted wide attention. Simultaneously, the use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) has been on the rise since the 1980s, which stimulates the growth of the economy and has a certain degree of impact on the ecological environment. Accordingly, the scientific community's interest in assessing this impact has grown considerably, and econometric methods are widely used as evaluation tools. However, the research results are often different in different regions, periods, environmental proxies, and ICT. Some studies indicate that the development of ICT is beneficial to environmental improvement, while others state that it is not. Therefore, a comprehensive analysis of the methods, mechanisms, and relative policy suggestions of this topic is desiderated. To address this gap, this paper carries out a systematic literature review of the usage of econometric methods in the assessment of the environmental impact of ICT. Among the 472 articles retrieved from scientific literature databases, 46 met the inclusion criteria and were analyzed in detail. This study aims to provide scholars with a mental picture of the current state of scientific research, identify the factors that influence the direction of ICT's impact on the environment, and enable future researchers to use more reliable and accurate estimation methods. The methods used in selected articles were divided into two main groups (i.e., time series models and panel data models), and panel data models were further subdivided into five categories. The detailed flow of these methods is summarized, and new advanced pre-test methods and estimators are highlighted. Furthermore, the analysis also indicates that among all the countries and regions involved in the selected articles, there is a non-strict inverted U-shaped curve between the level of socio-economic development and the direction of the impact of ICT on the environment. Finally, current research challenges are discussed, and potential directions for future research on this topic are also projected.     

Exploration of sustainable development by applying green economy indicators

Following the global trend of sustainable development, development of green economy is the best way of slowing the negative ecological and environmental impact. This research establishes the Taiwan's green economic indicators based on the ecological footprint and energy analysis. The results are as follows: Taiwan's ecological footprint in 2008 intensity index was at 4.364; ecological overshoot index was at 3.364, showing that Taiwan's ecological system is in overload state. Moreover, this study utilizes energy analysis model to study the sustainable development of Taiwan. Findings showed that total energy use in 2008 was 3.14 × 10(23)?sej (solar energy joule, sej), energy of renewable resources was 1.30 × 10(22)?sej, energy of nonrenewable resources was 2.26 × 10(23)?sej, energy of products from renewable resources was 1.30 × 10(22)sej, energy of currency flow was 8.02 × 10(22)?sej and energy of wastes flow was 6.55 × 10(22)?sej. Taiwan's energy per capita and the utilization rate of energy is lower while the environmental loading rate is significantly higher comparing to some other countries. The foregoing findings indicate that Taiwan currently belongs to an economic development pattern based on high resource consumption. The economic development is mainly established on the exploitation and utilization of nonrenewable resources. Therefore, Taiwan should change the development pattern, regulate the industrial structure, promote the utilization rate of resources, develop green pollution-free products, and enhance the sustainable development of ecological economic system.     

Regional analysis of global change impacts: Concepts, tools and first results

The paper introduces an approach for the analysis of global change impacts on river basins or regions. This approach is quite general and can be transferred to any region or river basin of interest on earth. The first application of the approach was in the Elbe river basin, with primary focus on the hydrologic model part and on the integration of crop growth and nitrogen dynamics. Finally, concepts for the integration of socio-economic aspects in the analysis are introduced.     

Geographical location and key sensitivity issues of post-industrial regions in Europe

Primary objectives of our work were to spatially delineate post industrial areas of the EU-27 and indicate key environmental, social and economic sensitivity issues for these regions. The density of industrial sites within NUTS-x regions for EU-27 countries was assessed by using CORINE 2000 land cover layer. A development of postindustrial society in Europe represents a strong geographic diversity. There are distinct historical and current differences between regions which form major groups, comprising similar internal characteristics and definable trends in environmental and socioeconomic sense. Regions grouped into postindustrial clusters are fundamentally different from the European average, and are facing specific problems related to global market and political changes. Eastern postindustrial regions can be characterized as socially and economically weak, exhibiting high unemployment rate, low GDP, negative population growth and a strong environmental pressure, represented by a high density of dump sites. Most of the western EU postindustrial areas have been successfully recovered and moved into new economy as shown by most of the indicators. In urban postindustrial zones, however, emission sources of pollutants seem to continually be a major problem--not necessarily in terms of exceeding thresholds, but through a remarkable difference in the amount of pollutants produced relative to other regions.     

Assessing the impact of FDI on PM2.5 concentrations: A nonlinear panel data analysis for emerging economies

While emerging markets have obtained powerful growth for foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, they are facing severe smog pollution, and this contradiction has become increasingly prominent since the financial crisis. Assessing the influence of FDI on pollutant emissions is of great significance for determining how to attract FDI to promote environmental sustainability. The present study simultaneously investigates the direct and indirect effects of FDI on PM_2.5 contamination for emerging countries spanning the period 2010–2016. Due to the features of the nonlinear analysis, a generalized panel smooth transition regression (GPSTR) model was introduced, and cross-sectional dependence, heterogeneity, nonlinear unit root, nonlinear cointegration tests and non-parametric kernel density estimation were applied to achieve this goal. The results reveal that FDI directly contributes to decreasing PM_2.5, but indirectly has on increasing PM_2.5 emissions. The total effect of FDI on PM_2.5 concentrations is proven to be negative, which confirms the pollution halo hypothesis. Moreover, the connection between FDI inflows and PM_2.5 emissions displays a threshold and dynamic characteristic and is “S-shaped”. At lower levels of FDI, the inflows of FDI exert a positive effect on reducing PM_2.5 concentrations, whereas when FDI exceeds the threshold of 23.2981, such influence is gradually weakened with an increase in its own accumulation. The study provides new assessments on FDI's contribution to pollutant emissions and evidence for environmental sustainability in the post-financial crisis era.     

How can environmental intervention work during rapid urbanization? Examining the moderating effect of environmental performance-based accountability in China

For the past three decades, ecological decline associated with rapid urbanization has been a global phenomenon, particularly in developing countries, where economic growth is often financed through off-budget earmarked revenue sources such as land sales. Under this context, governmental intervention to improve the environment may not be effective if such intervention suppresses land sales revenues, because these revenues are also used to finance environmental protection projects. What is the relationship between land revenues and environmental quality? More importantly, how does governmental intervention to improve the environment influence this relationship? Employing panel data of 31 provinces in China from 2000 to 2015, this study empirically answers these questions. We find that land financing strongly influences pollution in an inverted U-shape pattern, where local land revenues increase pollution until a turning point at which a decline in pollution is observed. More importantly, we find that environmental intervention programs can accelerate the decline in pollution. These findings establish the moderating impact of environmental intervention programs within a rapid urbanization context.     

Comparing impacts across climate models

In this paper we combine a climate-forecasting model, COSMIC, with a global impact model, GIM, to compare the market impacts of climate change projected by 14 general circulation models. Given a specific date (2100), carbon dioxide concentration (612 ppmv), and global temperature sensitivity (2.5°C), predicted impacts to economies are calculated using climate-response functions from Experimental and Cross-sectional evidence. The Cross-sectional impact model predicts small global benefits across all climate models, whereas the Experimental impact model predicts a range from small benefits to small damages. High-latitude countries are less sensitive to temperature increases than low-latitude countries because they are currently cool. Uniform global temperature changes overestimate global damages because they underestimate the benefits in polar regions and overestimate the damages in tropical regions compared to the GCM predictions.     

Environmental Specimen Bank in Ehime University (es-BANK), Japan for global monitoring

During the last 40 years, The Center for Marine Environmental Studies (CMES), Ehime University collected a variety of environmental and biological material comprising about 1000 species and 100,000 samples from many developing and developed countries and also open seas and oceans all over the world. They were categorically archived, catalogued and stocked in our Environment Specimen Bank (es-BANK) facility equipped with a -25 degrees C cold room. We have already exchanged specimens with many scientific institutions and are also eager to widen our collaboration with other specimen banks. In our survey using the air, water, wildlife and human samples, we found that the major emission sources for the industrial chemicals like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are in the developed nations while those of organochlorine (OC) pesticides like dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane and its metabolites (DDTs), hexachlorocyclohexane isomers (HCHs), etc. are located in developing countries. However, significant emission of modern environmental contaminants such as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) also seems to occur predominantly in countries with high economic growth rates. Apart from the modern incinerators and other industrial installations in developed nations, the compounds, like dioxins and related compounds (DRCs), were also found to be released in significant levels from the municipal solid waste dumping sites of developing countries. By evaluating the distribution patterns of various persistent toxic substances (PTSs) in our studies, we could conclude that DRCs and DDTs are regional contaminants, while PCBs, PBDEs, HCHs and hexachlorobenzene (HCB) are global contaminants. We also found that the pollution by PBDEs has been increasing in the last two decades while that of the legacy OCs has been decreasing.     

黄河流域水生生物资源评估及问题诊断

近几十年来,随着全球气候的变化和社会经济的发展,受筑坝建闸、河道断流、水质恶化、酷渔滥捕、人工引种、海水入侵、调水调沙等因素影响,黄河流域水生生物多样性及资源量呈下降趋势。在目前流域内多目标同步推进的要求下,黄河流域生态保护和高质量发展正不断面临新的挑战。通过分析黄河流域水生生物多样性和资源量在时空分布上的演变规律,明确了是水资源短缺、工程建设、水环境恶化等因素的共同作用导致了黄河流域的水生态危机。基于绿色生态、高质量发展的科学管理理念,提出了新时代黄河流域水文-环境-生态协同保护与修复的发展策略,为促进黄河流域水资源保护和生态系统可持续发展提供数据支持与理论参考。     

Technological challenges for boosting coal production with environmental sustainability

The global energy requirement has grown at a phenomenon rate and the consumption of primary energy sources has been a very high positive growth. This paper focuses on the consumption of different primary energy sources and it identifies that coal will continue to remain as the prime energy source in foreseeable future. It examines the energy requirement perspective for India and demand of coal as the prime energy source. Economic development and poverty alleviation depend on securing affordable energy sources and Indian coal mining industry offers a bright future for the country's energy security, provided the industry is allowed to develop by supportive government policies and adopts latest technologies for mining. It is an irony that in-spite of having a plentiful reserves, India is not able to jack up coal production to meet its current and future demand. It discusses the strategies to be adopted for growth and meeting the coal demand. But such energy are very much concerned with environmental degradation and must be driven by contemporary managerial acumen addressing environmental and social challenges effectively The paper highlights the emissions of greenhouse gases due to burning of fossil fuels and environmental consequences of global warming and sea-level rise. Technological solutions for environment friendly coal mining and environmental laws for the abatement of environmental degradation are discussed in this paper.     

基于WoS文献计量分析PM2.5研究现状

运用文献计量学的研究方法,以Web of Science(WoS)为数据源,利用Excel软件对1990—2015年发表的相关PM_(2.5)研究的文献进行数据统计与分析,从文献发表年代、主要发文国家/地区、研究机构、期刊分布、热点文献等方面采用定量、定性的方法揭示了目前世界PM_(2.5)的研究进展。结果表明,近10年关于PM_(2.5)研究发文量增长较快,PM_(2.5)研究全球关注度较高,美国无论发文量、总被引频次和H指数都远超过其他国家/地区,体现了美国在PM_(2.5)研究领域的主导地位;PM_(2.5)相关领域的研究机构主要集中在美国和中国(未包含港、澳、台地区数据);文献多发表在相关大气化学与物理学、环境、健康、气溶胶等领域的刊物上;当前研究热点由PM_(2.5)所引发全球关注的生态环境问题转入对人体健康的影响上,且国际合作研究成为发展趋势。中国自2006年以来PM_(2.5)的研究文献增速显著,发文量和累计被引频次位居世界第二,仅低于美国。     

Simulation and evaluation on the eco-industrial system of Changchun economic and technological development zone, China

Reasonable structure, adaptive patterns and effective regulation of society, economy and environment subsystems should be taken into account in order to obtain harmonious development of urban eco-industrial system. We simulated and evaluated a redesigned eco-industrial system in Changchun Economic and Technological Development Zone (CCETDZ) in the present work using system dynamics and grey cluster methods. Four typical development strategies were simulated during 2005–2020 via standard system dynamic models. Furthermore, analytic hierarchy process and grey cluster allowed for the eco-industrial system evaluation and scenarios optimizing. Our dynamic simulation and statistical analysis revealed that: (1) CCETDZ would have different development scenarios under different strategies. The total population in scenario 2 grew most rapidly and reached 3.28 × 10⁵ in 2020, exceeding its long-term planning expected population. And the GDP differences among these four scenarios would amount to 6.41 × 10¹⁰ RMB. On the other hand, environmental pollution would become serious along with economy increasing. As a restriction factor, positive or negative increment of water resource will occur according to the selected strategy. (2) The fourth strategy would have the best efficiency, which means that the most efficiently development of CCETDZ required to take science, technology, environment progress and economy increase into account at the same time. (3) Positive environment protection measures, such as cleaner production, green manufacture, production life cycle management and environment friendly industries, should be attached great importance the same as economy development during 2005–2020 in CCETDZ.     

Risk of Hunger Under Climate Change, Social Disparity, and Agroproductivity Scenarios

Considering the projected population growth in the twenty-first century, some studies have indicated that global warming may have negative impacts on the risk of hunger. These conclusions were derived based on assumptions related to social and technological scenarios that involve substantial and influential uncertainties. In this paper, focusing on agrotechnology and food access disparity, we analyzed food availability and risk of hunger under the combined scenarios of food demands and agroproductivity with and without climate change by 2100 for the B2 scenario in the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios. The results of this study suggest that (1) future food demand can be satisfied globally under all assumed combined scenarios, and (2) a reduction of food access disparity and increased progress in productivity are just as important as climate change mitigation for reducing the risk of hunger.