Research priorities for managing the impacts and dependencies of business upon food,energy, water and the environment

Delivering access to sufficient food, energy and water resources to ensure human wellbeing is a major concern for governments worldwide. However, it is crucial to account for the ‘nexus’ of interactions between these natural resources and the consequent implications for human wellbeing. The private sector has a critical role in driving positive change towards more sustainable nexus management and could reap considerable benefits from collaboration with researchers to devise solutions to some of the foremost sustainability challenges of today. Yet opportunities are missed because the private sector is rarely involved in the formulation of deliverable research priorities. We convened senior research scientists and influential business leaders to collaboratively identify the top forty questions that, if answered, would best help companies understand and manage their food-energy-water-environment nexus dependencies and impacts. Codification of the top order nexus themes highlighted research priorities around development of pragmatic yet credible tools that allow businesses to incorporate nexus interactions into their decision-making; demonstration of the business case for more sustainable nexus management; identification of the most effective levers for behaviour change; and understanding incentives or circumstances that allow individuals and businesses to take a leadership stance. Greater investment in the complex but productive relations between the private sector and research community will create deeper and more meaningful collaboration and cooperation.     

Visualizing dynamic capabilities as adaptive capacity for municipal water governance

This study seeks to expand empirical research on how municipalities have adapted and innovated (or not) their water systems as a result of climate change. We analyze characteristics of water governance at the municipal scale in Oklahoma, USA. ArcMap 10.3 was used to build a qualitative geographic information system (GIS) based on fieldwork, including interviews and site-observations, to compare dynamic capabilities that lead to innovation in 38 cities in the state. The GIS enables visualization of our digitalized research to understand the interconnections between drivers of innovativeness—the combination of dynamic capabilities and innovation rates—and state of water resource infrastructure in place specific and regional planning contexts. In particular, the GIS takes into consideration income level, the influence of state-level water policy (Water for 2060 Act), water manager certification levels, population, dynamic capabilities, and perceptions of risk and vulnerability to water system change. Digitizing this information provides a diverging perspective on the historical lack of innovation in the public sector, as different socio-cultural, socio-economic, and socio-political contexts occur throughout Oklahoma, a state notorious for its oil centered economy and its climate change deniers. The findings suggest that innovativeness is directly related to dynamic capabilities and indirectly related to population size, income level, and the educational backgrounds of water decision-makers. The visualizations also show that some cities have surplus capacity for adaptation, while others were able to more efficiently turn capacity into water management innovations. Seeing representations of water governance success and failure in communities affords the opportunity to educate citizens and decision-makers to adapt water infrastructures to the effects of climate change, showcasing the utility of digitalization in a quest for sustainable solutions.     

Digital sustainability: basic conditions for sustainable digital artifacts and their ecosystems

The modern age has heralded a shift from the industrial society, in which natural resources are crucial input factors for the economy, towards a knowledge society. To date, sustainability literature has treated knowledge—and in particular digital artifacts—mainly as a means to the end of achieving sustainable development. In this conceptual paper, we argue that digital artifacts themselves ought also to be considered as resources, which also need to be sustainable. While over-consumption is a problem facing natural resources, with sustainable digital artifacts, underproduction, and underuse are the biggest challenges. In our view, the sustainability of digital artifacts improves their potential impact on sustainable development. A theoretical foundation for digital artifacts and their ecosystem allows us to present the relevant research on digital information, knowledge management, digital goods, and innovation literature. Based on these insights, we propose ten basic conditions for sustainable digital artifacts and their ecosystem to ensure that they provide the greatest possible benefit for sustainable development. We then apply those characteristics to four exemplary cases: Linux kernel development, Bitcoin cryptocurrency, the Wikipedia project, and the Linking Open Drug Data repositories. The paper concludes with a research agenda identifying topics for sustainability scholars and information systems academics, as well as practitioners. A number of suggestions for future studies on digital sustainability are also put forward.     

Integration and implementation of sustainable ICT-based education in developing countries: low-cost,en masse methodology in Kenya

The quality of education in Kenya’s public elementary schools has continued to drop, which is an ironic outcome in the wake of the introduction of tuition-exempt primary education. This removal of tuition costs led to a surge in primary education enrollment that overwhelmed the existing educational infrastructure. Overcapacity in classrooms led to frustrated teachers and mediocre delivery of content amid the overstretched resources and limited education budget. To remedy this situation, the government has begun introducing various information and communication technologies (ICTs) in schools to supplement current resources. This comes with mixed results. This paper aims to demonstrate effective strategies for integrating low-cost ICT-based materials in schools in developing countries through a community of practice. Three schools were used to illustrate integration of sustainable ICT-based education in a style of classroom characteristic in developing schools. Development and use of prerecorded DVD-based content was proposed as an effective solution. A comparative study was undertaken to evaluate the differences in student comprehension and educator delivery of education involving a digital, ICT-integrated classroom and a traditional, analog-type teaching method classroom to underscore the empirical evidence of the effectiveness of introducing a low-cost ICT-based program. This study also shows that teachers are better positioned to lead the design and development of appropriate and innovative materials. Furthermore, to cope with the immense amount of materials that need developing to correspond with the curriculum, it shows that with the emergence of a community of practice of teachers, many suitable low-cost materials can be developed. This takes place through an iterative collaboration as opposed to traditional top-down approaches, which have a proven record of failure.     

Social-ecological system resonance: a theoretical framework for brokering sustainable solutions

Sustainability science is a solution-oriented discipline. Yet, there are few theory-rich discussions about how this orientation structures the efforts of sustainability science. We argue that Niklas Luhmann’s social system theory, which explains how societies communicate problems, conceptualize solutions, and identify pathways towards implementation of solutions, is valuable in explaining the general structure of sustainability science. From Luhmann, we focus on two key concepts. First, his notion of resonance offers us a way to account for how sustainability science has attended and responded to environmental risks. As a product of resonance, we reveal solution-oriented research as the strategic coordination of capacities, resources, and information. Second, Luhmann’s interests in self-organizing processes explain how sustainability science can simultaneously advance multiple innovations. The value logic that supports this multiplicity of self-organizing activities as a recognition that human and natural systems are complex coupled and mutually influencing. To give form to this theoretical framework, we offer case evidence of renewable energy policy formation in Texas. Although the state’s wealth is rooted in a fossil-fuel heritage, Texas generates more electricity from wind than any US state. It is politically antagonistic towards climate-change policy, yet the state’s reception of wind energy technology illustrates how social and environmental systems can be strategically aligned to generate solutions that address diverse needs simultaneously. This case demonstrates that isolating climate change—as politicians do as a separate and discrete problem—is incapable of achieving sustainable solutions, and resonance offers researchers a framework for conceptualizing, designing, and communicating meaningfully integrated actions.     

Economic growth and CO<Subscript>2</Subscript> emissions

This article considers a planner’s optimum control exercise with environmental pollution and derives a testable link between the growth rates of consumption and pollution. The link is then empirically estimated for the case of CO₂ emissions for a sample consisting of the union of top 25 countries in terms of CO₂ emissions, population and per capita GNP. The analysis suggests that the interrelationship between the growth rates of CO₂ emission and economic development is mostly significant for countries that have a high level of CO₂ emissions and population.     

鄱阳湖克氏原螯虾的分布现状及其群体外部形态聚类分析

克氏原螯虾(Procambarus clarkii)作为外来入侵物种,对淡水水生生物的多样性已构成严重威胁为国内外学者所共识。有鉴于此,本项目通过对环鄱阳湖湖盆地域9县（市）计12个调查点进行样本采集,并对其多个形态学指标进行测量和数据聚类分析,以探讨克氏原螯虾在该地域的地理分布现状。研究结果表明,克氏原螯虾在鄱阳湖湖盆地域已占据一定的生态地位,并呈现全湖广泛分布及泛滥孳生趋势,已形成对其他水生生物多样性和生态系统稳定的潜在威胁;聚类分析结果显示,鄱阳湖克氏原螯虾群体外部形态上分为两个类群,即星子县、永修县、共青城市群体为一类,鄱阳县、新建县、余干县群体聚成一类,两类群似不存在地域上的交叉,但尚不能说明这两类群为完全不同的群体。同时,提出了防控克氏原螯虾的可行性建议     

基于土地利用变化的四川省生态系统服务价值研究

认识和理解土地利用变化对生态系统服务价值的影响及相互作用关系具有重要意义。在分析国内外各种生态服务价值评价方法和对各类生态系统生态服务价值系数进行修正的基础上,采用生态系统服务价值评估模型、敏感性指数和价值变率模型,对各类生态系统的各项生态服务价值、土地利用变化对四川省生态系统服务价值的影响进行了计算和分析。结果表明：（1）四川省土地利用以林地和牧草地为主,1996~2006年耕地、未利用土地、牧草地和水域面积减少,林地、建设用地和园地面积呈增加趋势;（2）1996~2006年四川省生态系统服务价值由1996年的7 214588×108元上升到2006年的7 305018×108元,增加90431×108元,园地生态系统服务价值持续增加,而农田、牧草地、水域、未利用地则继续减少;（3）土地利用的生态服务价值区域差异显著,空间上呈现西多东少的分布格局,西部高山高原区和盆周山区的生态系统服务价值总量较大,成都平原和四川盆地丘陵区所提供的较少;（4）四川省生态系统服务价值缺乏弹性,价值变率反映林地面积的变化对研究区生态系统服务价值的变化具有较大影响