scholarly journals Transitional Pathways towards Achieving a Circular Economy in the Water, Energy, and Food Sectors

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (17) ◽  
pp. 9978
Author(s):  
Dhesigen Naidoo ◽  
Luxon Nhamo ◽  
Shenelle Lottering ◽  
Sylvester Mpandeli ◽  
Stanley Liphadzi ◽  
...  

Achieving sustainable socio-economic development requires approaches that enhance resource use efficiencies and can address current cross-sectoral challenges in an integrated manner. Existing evidence suggests an urgent need for polycentric and transformative approaches, as global and local systems have come under strain. This study conducted a systematic literature review at the global level to assess the progress made towards achieving a circular economy between 2010 and 2020, a period covering the formulation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the initial five years of their implementation. The focus was on the potential of improved water and energy use efficiency, linking them to food production within the context of a circular economy. Identifying successes, opportunities, challenges, and pathways towards a circular economy from the literature review facilitated developing a conceptual framework to guide strategic policy formulations towards a more sustainable economy. A combination of transformative approaches is analysed in an integrated way in response to the 2030 global agenda on sustainable development. Thus, the study is informed by the initiatives to attain SDGs and mitigating negative environmental impacts due to waste and pollution. The premise is to enhance transformational change as a catalyst for employment creation and the attainment of a green economy while reducing waste. Transformative approaches have been identified to provide pathways towards global climate targets and protection of the environment from further degradation. They are a catalyst to achieve SDG 12 on ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns.

2022 ◽  
pp. 650-665
Author(s):  
Kehinde Adekunle Adetiloye ◽  
Abiola Ayopo Babajide ◽  
Joseph Niyan Taiwo

This chapter is on the use of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the achievement of green economy in Nigeria with the specific aim of assessing the performance of key issues in the SDGs. Five goals SDGs 6, 7, 11, 12, and 15 for water and sanitation, safe human settlements, renewable energy, sustainable consumption and production, and ecosystem, respectively, are selected for assessment for the green initiatives and the economy. Budgets on economic and social services follows the pattern theory: that government allocates and reallocates at will without cognizance of the population's interests. The assessment holds the fact that only two of these goals are being met somehow—renewable energy and clean water—and not necessarily because of the need to achieve the goals but as part of private sector and dynamic market initiatives, clearly indicating failures for the others. For the most part, Nigeria failed in the areas of ecosystem, good human settlement, and responsible consumption. The chapter suggests the encouragement of entrepreneurial initiatives, the initiation of new policies on green economy, and the enforcement of regulations already in place to power the economy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-27
Author(s):  
Lyudmila Mochalova

During the last three decades the entire progressive world has been trying to put into practice the concept of sustainable development, which implies balancing environmental, economic and social aspects of development. The main focus of this paper is to generalise and systematise modern theoretical and practical approaches to achieving the sustainable development goals. The author devotes particular attention to the concept of circular economy. The conceptual frameworks of sustainable development, green economy, and circular economy (closedloop economy) constitute the methodological basis of the research. The methods include analysis, synthesis, classification, observation. The author proves the possibility and importance of taking into account the sustainable development goals while managing general modernisation processes in society and the economy. The paper reveals that the development of the ‘umbrella’ concept of green economy as a tool for attaining the sustainable development goals, relies on the concepts of environmentally friendly production, the best available technologies, and the circular economy. The author considers theoretical and practical foundations of the circular as a new trend in the development of the concept of sustainable development and studies regulatory, market, financial, investment, economic, technological, and organisational factors that affect the application of the circular economy principles in Russia. The results of the research can help to reach the sustainable development goals at various levels and spheres of economic management using the closed-loop economy tools: circular business models, secondary raw materials markets, methods for managing the cyclical nature of production and consumption


Author(s):  
Kehinde Adekunle Adetiloye ◽  
Abiola Ayopo Babajide ◽  
Joseph Niyan Taiwo

This chapter is on the use of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the achievement of green economy in Nigeria with the specific aim of assessing the performance of key issues in the SDGs. Five goals SDGs 6, 7, 11, 12, and 15 for water and sanitation, safe human settlements, renewable energy, sustainable consumption and production, and ecosystem, respectively, are selected for assessment for the green initiatives and the economy. Budgets on economic and social services follows the pattern theory: that government allocates and reallocates at will without cognizance of the population's interests. The assessment holds the fact that only two of these goals are being met somehow—renewable energy and clean water—and not necessarily because of the need to achieve the goals but as part of private sector and dynamic market initiatives, clearly indicating failures for the others. For the most part, Nigeria failed in the areas of ecosystem, good human settlement, and responsible consumption. The chapter suggests the encouragement of entrepreneurial initiatives, the initiation of new policies on green economy, and the enforcement of regulations already in place to power the economy.


2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 1427-1432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregg Lawrence Furie ◽  
John Balbus

The Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development represents a crucial opportunity to place environmental health at the forefront of the sustainable development agenda. Billions of people living in low- and middle-income countries continue to be afflicted by preventable diseases due to modifiable environmental exposures, causing needless suffering and perpetuating a cycle of poverty. Current processes of economic development, while alleviating many social and health problems, are increasingly linked to environmental health threats, ranging from air pollution and physical inactivity to global climate change. Sustainable development practices attempt to reduce environmental impacts and should, in theory, reduce adverse environmental health consequences compared to traditional development. Yet these efforts could also result in unintended harm and impaired economic development if the new "Green Economy" is not carefully assessed for adverse environmental and occupational health impacts. The environmental health community has an essential role to play in underscoring these relationships as international leaders gather to craft sustainable development policies.


Holzforschung ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (11) ◽  
pp. 1071-1078
Author(s):  
Jie Chu ◽  
Anuj Kumar

AbstractThe implementation of circular economy in wood industries is an effective way for future sustainable development. The wood industries in China are not in the direction of circular economy approach due to less availability of assessment/calculation data of pollutants as per life cycle assessment (LCA) criteria. The present study focuses on the calculation of emission and pollutants from wood industries as per LCA; the emission and pollution data were collected from fiberboard Medium-density fiberboard (MDF), plywood and particleboard (PB) production. The comparative analysis of dust emissions, industrial waste gases and chemical oxygen demand (COD) were performed among three wood industries. The results revealed that the fiberboard industry was the highest emitter of dust, industrial waste gas and COD; and particleboard industry was the least emitter. Further, results indicated that pollutant index of wood industries were significantly changed between 2015 and 2017; the industrial waste water discharge increased five folds and the COD, dust and industrial gases increased two times. This study provides with the emission and pollutants data of wood industries as per LCA to promote the sustainable development for circular and low carbon economics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 5234
Author(s):  
Mustafa S. Al-Tekreeti ◽  
Salwa M. Beheiry ◽  
Vian Ahmed

Numerous decision support systems have been developed to address the decision-making process in organizations. However, there are no developed mechanisms to track commitment down the line to the decisions made by corporate leaders. This paper is a portion of a study that establishes a framework for a comprehensive metric system to assess commitment to Sustainable Development (SD) decisions down the line in capital projects, and sets the groundwork for further development of performance indicators for SD outcomes. This ultimately leads to investigating the relationship between commitment to corporate decisions and better project performance in SD parameters. Hence, this study explores the literature to extract relevant parameters that reflect the degree of the project participants’ commitment to SD decisions and to develop commitment indicators. The study created then validated an index to track this commitment along the project stages: the Sustainable Development Commitment Tracking Tool (SDCTT). The SDCTT was tested on an infrastructure project case study. In this paper, techniques relevant to the first stage of projects (planning and definition) are presented. The SDCTT is the groundwork for the future development of performance indicators for SD outcomes, and within the postulated model should ultimately contribute towards reducing project waste, energy use, and carbon emissions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (12) ◽  
pp. 90-94
Author(s):  
V. V. Rebrova ◽  

The article gives the author's vision of the sustainable development of a public corporation based on the movement towards "green" growth. The results of the author's research aimed at establishing a link between the financial condition of Russian public corporations and ESG criteria are presented. This is a connection that necessitates the transition to a "green" economy at the level of an individual enterprise, not only for reasons of ethical business practices, but also because of the possibility of extracting financial and economic benefits. The article proves that the application of ESG practice leads an individual economic entity to economic and social prosperity.


2021 ◽  
pp. 183933492110526
Author(s):  
Al Rosenbloom

This article is a commentary on how marketing scholarship can be more relevant as it tackles the human development challenges presented by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The commentary argues that as businesses are transforming themselves into purpose-driven organizations, marketing needs to be a part of that transformation. SDG 1 No Poverty and SDG 12 Sustainable Consumption and Production are discussed within the article. The commentary also tackles the institutional barriers that work against path-breaking SDG marketing scholarship: normative promotion and publication expectations along with the practitioner-academic research divide. Without realigning the incentives that reward original, boundary-spanning SDG marketing scholarship, the marketing discipline will be stuck in a cycle of rewarding one behavior while hoping for another.


2021 ◽  
Vol 250 ◽  
pp. 06007
Author(s):  
Elena Korneeva ◽  
Natalia Skornichenko ◽  
Tatiana Oruch

Sustainable development is becoming a very important issue in the 21st century. Facing global changes such as the global warming, global climate change, as well as other pressing issue, all spheres of economy and social life need to take part in mitigating them and preventing disasters from happening. Our article studies the role of the small business in the above processes and the place of the small business in promoting sustainable development through its actions, public and social awareness and responsibility. We show how even small and medium enterprises can become a decisive power in tackling the climate change and promoting green thinking and sustainable awareness. This can be achieved through enhancing social responsibility of business companies which can greatly contribute to supporting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and promoting sustainable economic growth.


2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
José Miguel Rodríguez-Antón

No one has the slightest doubt about the enormous potential that the African continent has as a tourist destination. The diversity of cultures, the great biodiversity that it possesses, the multiple artistic manifestations that it offers and the beauty of the seas that surround it are key pieces in continuing to promote its capacity as a tourist attraction, which is approximately 60 million tourists per year who generate seven percent of exports and employment. However, in order for Africa to take off, it is necessary that a number of conditions related to security, health, education, eradication of poverty, reduction of inequalities, peace and justice and quality of its waters, among others, are intimately related to the Sustainable Development Goals defined in the 2030 Agenda. In this context, we maintain that the implementation of the Circular Economy in Africa will be a key tool in this process of improving the sustainability of this continent in its three aspects, economic, social and environmental, and raising its level of tourism competitiveness.


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