Spillover effects of trade and foreign direct investment on economic growth: an implication for sustainable development

Environment, Development and Sustainability - This paper explores the advantages of international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI), which can be the main factors of transferring technology...     

Chemical contamination of the East River (Dongjiang) and its implication on sustainable development in the Pearl River Delta

A recent survey reveals that water quality and river sediments of Dongjiang (the East River) have been mildly contaminated by heavy metals and organic chemicals, such as copper, lead, PCBs, PAHs and HCHs. According to photogrammertic surveys, the sources of contamination are closely related to human activities, such as domestic and industrial discharges, agricultural chemical applications and soil erosion due to deforestation. The level of water and sediment contamination is most serious at the mid-river section near the urban of Weizhou. Due to natural dilution and diffusion, the levels of contamination are slightly decreased at the medium low section of the River near Qiaotou and Matan. Nevertheless, the levels of contamination increase again in the lower river section near Shenzhen, which is a highly developed economic zone. Since Dongjiang is the major source of potable water supply for Hong Kong (nearly 80% of potable water of Hong Kong is abstracted from Dongjiang) and the other parts of the Pearl River Delta (PRD), such organic and inorganic pollution merit concern. Ironically, most of the industrial and commercial activities in the watershed of Dongjiang are business investments of Hong Kong citizens. Cross-border environmental efforts should be enhanced with collaboration of different jurisdictions to achieve targets of regional sustainability.     

Conversion of specialised dairy farming systems into sustainable mixed farming systems in Cuba

From the 1960s onwards, a ‘High External Input’ dairy production model was applied widely in Cuba. Overall milk production of the national herd increased considerably, but the system was inefficient from both a financial and energetic point of view. In the early 1990s, after the abrupt end of inflow of capital and other resources from Eastern Europe, the dairy sector collapsed. In the short term, the modern infrastructure of milk production deteriorated and the sector experienced profound vulnerability. However, in the longer term, this situation stimulated a search for more sustainable approaches, such as low external input Mixed Farming Systems (MFS). The current study aimed to evaluate two small scale prototype farms to assess the implications of converting ‘Low External Input’ Dairy Farming Systems into MFS. Fifteen agro-ecological and financial indicators were selected and monitored over a 6-year period. Two configurations of MFS, i.e. the proportion of the farm area occupied by arable crops, were tested: 25 and 50%. Productivity, energy efficiency and cost-effectiveness all improved following conversion. Total energy input was low for both farms and decreased over time, whereas energy efficiency was high and increased over time. Human labour input was high directly following conversion, but decreased by one-third over the 6-year period. This study demonstrates, at an experimental scale, the potential of MFS to achieve ecological, productivity and financial advantages for dairy production in Cuba. Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.     

Communities of practice for knowledge co-creation on sustainable dairy farming: features for value creation for farmers

Communities of Practice (CoPs) are a promising concept for transdisciplinary knowledge co-creation in sustainable agricultural development, but empirical evidence from the farmers’ viewpoint is scarce. This paper contributes to empirical insights on the knowledge creation in CoPs as valued by farmers. Using concepts from CoP theory (domain, community, and practice) and the value creation framework (VCF) developed by Wenger et al. (Promoting and assessing value creation in communities and networks: a conceptual framework. Netherlands Ruud de Moor Center Rapport 18:60, 2011), we examined two cases issuing from a European project on sustainable dairy farming. Results indicate regional differences between the two cases and relate CoP features to value creation cycles (immediate, potential, applied, realized and reframing value). They show how specific features regarding domain, community, and practice development can enhance knowledge creation on sustainable agricultural development. Domain development should be considered consciously taking into account the project duration. The community should include actors with specific competencies, such as farmers with an open attitude, researchers with (practical) domain expertise, and advisors with skills as translators between researchers and farmers. The practice development, or the actual knowledge creation, should unify two equally important types of interaction that contribute differently to value creation in CoPs: individual farmer–researcher–advisor interactions and farmer group–advisor interactions. Our research provides both valuable information for designing and managing knowledge co-creation initiatives and anchors further research on competencies and activities required to foster the two types of interactions for knowledge creation.     

Knowledge for sustainable development: a worldviews perspective

A huge tension exists between recognizing sustainable development (SD) as a meta-discourse and accepting a limitless interpretational width. We analyse the impacts of diversity of worldviews on the interpretation of SD—as a knowledge-based concept—through a critical literature review, resulting in recommendations on the topic. We apply a social-constructionist approach, appreciating the complex socio-ecological interactions at the heart of SD. Only recently worldviews are recognized as constitutive elements of SD. Little attention has been given to the impacts on generated knowledge for SD. Variety of worldviews induces a variety of knowledge claims and needs. To retain SD’s ‘universal’ appeal as practical decision-guiding strategy for policy and action, we propose an integrative approach towards knowledge for SD—entailing an explicit pluralization of knowledge. SD should be re-interpreted as a joint worldviews construct, embracing a diversity of views in collaborative research and co-production of knowledge. Interpreting SD as a joint endeavour is necessary to overcome historical obstacles like cultural hegemony and a hierarchy of knowledge systems. We identified the following requirements for an inclusive knowledge for SD paradigm: re-interpretation of SD as a worldview constructs in progress; interpretative flexibility; co-production of knowledge; subjectivity awareness and self-reflexivity; respect for a diversity of worldviews/knowledges; identifying shared goals; collaborative research; a systems approach; transdisciplinarity; and recognition of contextuality. Further research—concerning potential methodologies and typologies—to reconcile variety of worldviews and knowledge systems in a joint SD worldviews construct is urgently needed.     

Way for sustainable development of energy in China

The report of Chinese Communist Party's 18th National Congress clearly stated that the construction of ecological civilization needs to join hands with the overall layout of the construction of socialism with Chinese characteristics,and the greatest obstacle to achieving ecological civilization is the energy structure in China.Currently,the third industrial revolution—marked by green technology and cloud computing technology—is happening,and it will have a huge impact on future energy development.The fundamental way to solve the problem of energy resource constraints is developing the renewable energy,and the fundamental approach for renewable energy is developing distributed energy and services.The important factors to achieving China's energy production and consumption revolution are accelerating the construction of distributed energy system and overall energy structure adjustment in China.     

Resource use efficiency and economic losses: implications for sustainable rice production in Vietnam

The study aimed to estimate resource use efficiency and economic losses by using stochastic frontier analysis. The data set were collected in An Giang Province of Vietnam through personal interviews with 199 rice farmers. The results revealed that returns to scale are decreasing. Rice farmers had high levels of output-oriented and input-oriented technical efficiency with the means of 91.92 and 85.39 %, respectively. The mean environmental efficiency was 82.03 %. The mean efficiency of normal inputs was 61.20 %. Among the bad inputs, pesticide and energy were the least efficient ones with the mean values of 51.39 and 45.53 %, respectively, indicating serious overuses of these inputs. As regards normal inputs, capital had the lowest efficiency score at 21.08 %, followed by seed quantity at 26.4 %. Further, the total economic losses were estimated at 8261 thousand VND (380 USD) per hectare, which is equal to the sales of about 1600 kg of rice per hectare or the efforts to increase by 20 % of output level. This study suggests that rice farmers need to contract inputs, particularly environmentally detrimental inputs to improve profits. To improve the productive efficiency, the use of ecological engineering, collective pump and cultivation of three rice crops per year are possible options.     

Recovery agenda for sustainable development post COVID-19 at the country level: developing a fuzzy action priority surface

Environment, Development and Sustainability - As a response to the urgent call for recovery actions against the COVID-19 crisis, this research aims to identify action priority areas...     

Regions on their way to sustainability: the role of institutions in fostering sustainable development at the regional level

Sustainable regional development as a politically requested concept challenges regions within the European Union since the Amsterdam Treaty 1997. A growing body of literature identifies cooperation between stakeholder groups as one of the limiting factors for implementing sustainable regional strategies. This leads to the question, how cooperation within a region could be organised. How can institutions support the implementation process of sustainable development on the regional level? Regional institutions are both supporters of cooperation between regional stakeholders and key players in regional development processes. Their connections strengthen the importance of networks in the sustainable regional development process.     

Innovation through collaboration: scaling up solutions for sustainable development

The open collaborative philosophy employed in the success of open source (OS) software can be applied to hardware design. Specifically, the development of OS appropriate technologies (OSAT) can improve sustainable development efforts worldwide. Yet, widespread OSAT use is far from ubiquitous. Given that lack of communication, access to information and poor collaboration are among the largest barriers to a more effective OSAT dissemination, this paper explores opportunities to overcome such obstacles using four techniques: (1) collaborative online platforms, (2) crowd-sourcing, (3) the concept of knowledge commons, and (4) enabled educational institutions through service learning and applied research. The results are analyzed, and conclusions are drawn that outline paths to higher multiuser collaboration for OSAT deployment.     

Philosophy of sustainable development: understanding public health

Environment, Development and Sustainability - Health has been a focal point in sustainable development policies. Seventeen new goals of sustainable development contribute directly or indirectly to...     

Resource management for sustainable development: a community- and GIS-based approach

A combined approach utilizing GIS, Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and Focus Group Discussion (FGD) has been developed for resource mapping in a rural poverty-prone area of Bangladesh. This model integrated GIS and participatory tools to include the voices of the stakeholders in assessing available resources and needs. The resource mapping framework, developed using PRA with local community people and community gatekeepers, was aimed at sustainable resource management, and ArcView GIS was used to digitize the resource maps as a Decision Support System (DSS). A detailed assessment and analysis of the quality, quantity and physical status of resources was first mapped in the field and then digitized using GIS. FGD-based interaction with community people at each union in a subdistrict of Bangladesh revealed stakeholders’ opinions on land and water body management. The present paper demonstrates the power of this model as a policy-making tool for sustainable development and poverty eradication. It also recognized the need for collaboration between interdisciplinary policy planners and researchers to develop and implement a policy on agricultural resource management for poverty-prone areas.     

Long-term strategy for sustainable development: strategies to promote far-sighted action

Given progress in policies for pursuing sustainable development, promoting commitment to thinking and acting more far-sightedly has become the primary strategic challenge. In the face of impatience, selfishness, uncertainty, analytical limitations, and vulnerability, strategies for promoting far-sightedness can be identified by assessing how these obstacles can be overcome. Strategies for creating or rescheduling tangible and deference rewards, realigning performance evaluations, implementing cognitive exercises, framing communications, altering decision-making processes, using self-restraint devices both to resist temptation and to enhance credibility, altering institutions to empower the patient, and stabilizing living conditions are the major categories for identifying and assessing the many strategies which arise out of both ordinary and constitutive policy initiatives.

Innovation for sustainable development: from environmental design to transition management

Society needs to adapt in order to provide the wealth that an increasing part of the world population is getting used to. We are on a track to ecological and resource collapse if actions are not taken soon. Technology will have to play a key role in the process of changing industrial society. But innovation has to be embedded in social and organizational innovation. We need sociotechnical change. Environmentally conscious design has been practiced in engineering design for more than a decade. Its merits are sometimes blamed as futile, as the world has not witnessed a significant contribution to the solution of the larger (global) problems. This paper first sketches a scheme of the various levels of technological change, ranging from: (1) incremental optimizations of single artifacts, to (2) major change of artifacts, (3) systems change, and (4) technological transitions (involving changes in production and consumption). It outlines the stakeholders involved in these types of innovations and the parties that could orchestrate the innovation process. In this paper, It is argued that the most encompassing level of technological innovation, the level of transition, is crucial for achieving long-term sustainable development, as it has the largest potential for improvement. However, transition is not very well manageable. The paper contains a review of the literature regarding the occurrence of technological transitions. After a transition has occurred, the new system is often not efficient. Its gains in terms of diminished resource consumption or pollution have to be enlarged by less encompassing innovation strategies, such as systems innovations and product optimization. Transitions for sustainable development are often impossible, as the new systems have to compete with fully developed and optimized systems that have far advanced at the learning curve, i.e., are optimized by various systems and incremental innovations. Less encompassing levels of innovation, even those that aim at more sustainability, can counteract transitions that have more potential for sustainable development by improving the competing (unsustainable) technology. The paper will give several examples of this dilemma and some guidelines for developing government policies as well as corporate strategies. On the policy level, it is argued that it is especially important to develop (scope for) market niches for new sustainable systems and products as they create scope for experiments that could lead to transitions.