scholarly journals Economic impact of the world summit on sustainable development

2004 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 492-503
Author(s):  
JH Martins ◽  
C Van Aardt

South Africa hosted the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in 2002.  This event is regarded as the single biggest conference to be held anywhere in the world. The aim of this paper is to set out the estimated economic impact of the WSSD and its parallel events on South Africa.  This impact can be expressed in monetary terms as well as employment figures.  The impact is calculated by using an input-output model and employment spin-offs determined from the IO table by using partial multipliers.  The input data were derived from a survey amongst WSSD delegates as well as information on government and private investments made.  

2002 ◽  
Vol 78 (5) ◽  
pp. 648-654 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Besseau ◽  
Kafui Dansou ◽  
Frederick Johnson

The International Model Forest Network (IMFN) was announced by Canada at the Rio (UNCED) Summit ten years ago to pilot outside of Canada a promising participatory field-level approach to sustainable forest management then being developed in Canada through its national model forest network. The IMFN has since grown from three sites in two countries (outside of Canada) in 1994 to 19 sites in 11 countries, in addition to numerous additional sites proposed and at early stages of development. Now with the successor event to Rio, the World Summit on Sustainable Development, about to take place in Johannesburg, South Africa, there is an appropriate milestone at which to pause and consider its evolution and growth. Among the elements of success attributed to the growth of the network the authors consider the nature of the approach itself as being an innovative re-formulation of widely shared management values, its flexibility across borders and ecosystems, and the support provided in its development by the Canadian Model Forest Network and other domestic and international partners. The article looks at similarities and differences between the international and Canadian applications of this approach and describes some of the lessons learned and difficulties met in applying the approach internationally. Key words: IMFNS, CMFN, International, Networking, Asia, Latin America


Economies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Krista Danielle S. Yu ◽  
Kathleen B. Aviso ◽  
Joost R. Santos ◽  
Raymond R. Tan

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced governments around the world to implement unprecedented lockdowns, mandating businesses to shut down for extended periods of time. Previous studies have modeled the impact of disruptions to the economy at static and dynamic settings. This study develops a model to fulfil the need to account for the sustained disruption resulting from the extended shutdown of business operations. Using a persistent inoperability input-output model (PIIM), we are able to show that (1) sectors that suffer higher levels of inoperability during quarantine period may recover faster depending on their resilience; (2) initially unaffected sectors can suffer inoperability levels higher than directly affected sectors over time; (3) the economic impact on other regions not under lockdown is also significant.


Author(s):  
Melanie SARANTOU ◽  
Satu MIETTINEN

This paper addresses the fields of social and service design in development contexts, practice-based and constructive design research. A framework for social design for services will be explored through the survey of existing literature, specifically by drawing on eight doctoral theses that were produced by the World Design research group. The work of World Design researcher-designers was guided by a strong ethos of social and service design for development in marginalised communities. The paper also draws on a case study in Namibia and South Africa titled ‘My Dream World’. This case study presents a good example of how the social design for services framework functions in practice during experimentation and research in the field. The social design for services framework transfers the World Design group’s research results into practical action, providing a tool for the facilitation of design and research processes for sustainable development in marginal contexts.


Author(s):  
Jacques de Jongh

Globalisation has had an unprecedented impact on the development and well-being of societies across the globe. Whilst the process has been lauded for bringing about greater trade specialisation and factor mobility many have also come to raise concerns on its impact in the distribution of resources. For South Africa in particular this has been somewhat of a contentious issue given the country's controversial past and idiosyncratic socio-economic structure. Since 1994 though, considerable progress towards its global integration has been made, however this has largely coincided with the establishment of, arguably, the highest levels of income inequality the world has ever seen. This all has raised several questions as to whether a more financially open and technologically integrated economy has induced greater within-country inequality (WCI). This study therefore has the objective to analyse the impact of the various dimensions of globalisation (economic, social and political) on inequality in South Africa. Secondary annual time series from 1990 to 2018 were used sourced from the World Bank Development indicators database, KOF Swiss Economic Institute and the World Inequality database. By using different measures of inequality (Palma ratios and distribution figures), the study employed two ARDL models to test the long-run relationships with the purpose to ensure the robustness of the results. Likewise, two error correction models (ECM) were used to analyse the short-run dynamics between the variables. As a means of identifying the casual effects between the variables, a Toda-Yamamoto granger causality analysis was utilised. Keywords: ARDL, Inequality, Economic Globalisation; Social Globalisation; South Africa


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  

Abstract This workshop is dedicated on SDGs in the focus of environmental and health issues, as very important and actual topic. One of the characteristics of today's societies is the significant availability of modern technologies. Over 5 billion (about 67%) people have a cellphone today. More than 4.5 billion people worldwide use the Internet, close to 60% of the total population. At the same time, one third of the people in the world does not have access to safe drinking water and half of the population does not have access to safe sanitation. The WHO at UN warns of severe inequalities in access to water and hygiene. Air, essential to life, is a leading risk due to ubiquitous pollution and contributes to the global disease burden (7 million deaths per year). Air pollution is a consequence of traffic and industry, but also of demographic trends and other human activities. Food availability reflects global inequality, famine eradication being one of the SDGs. The WHO warns of the urgency. As technology progresses, social inequality grows, the gap widens, and the environment continues to suffer. Furthermore, the social environment in societies is “ruffled” and does not appear to be beneficial toward well-being. New inequalities are emerging in the availability of technology, climate change, education. The achievement reports on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also point out to the need of reviewing individual indicators. According to the Sustainable Development Agenda, one of the goals is to reduce inequalities, and environmental health is faced by several specific goals. The Global Burden of Disease is the most comprehensive effort to date to measure epidemiological levels and trends worldwide. It is the product of a global research collaborative and quantifies the impact of hundreds of diseases, injuries, and risk factors in countries around the world. This workshop will also discuss Urban Health as a Complex System in the light of SDGs. Climate Change, Public Health impacts and the role of the new digital technologies is also important topic which is contributing to SDG3, improving health, to SDG4, allowing to provide distance health education at relatively low cost and to SDG 13, by reducing the CO2 footprint. Community Engagement can both empower vulnerable populations (so reducing inequalities) and identify the prior environmental issues to be addressed. The aim was to search for public health programs using Community Engagement tools in healthy environment building towards achievement of SDGs. Key messages Health professionals are involved in the overall process of transformation necessary to achieve the SDGs. Health professionals should be proactive and contribute to the transformation leading to better health for the environment, and thus for the human population.


Author(s):  
Michael Halim

The Coronavirus pandemic has caused negative effects across the globe; mortality and morbidity being the main impact. After WHO, termed the disease a pandemic in March 2020, they gave in health guidelines to follow to control the spread of the disease. The health industry, academia, and different governments are united to develop and test various vaccines at an unprecedented speed to combat the pandemic fully and bring the world back to its feet. Some of the vaccines developed include Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca. However, just like other viruses, the SAR-CoV-2 virus keeps changing through mutation, as various variants, different from the first one are emerging. Evidence shows that the three new variants; UK, Brazil, and South Africa are more severe in terms of transmissibility, disease severity, evading of the immune response, and reducing the ability to neutralized antibodies, compared to the original coronavirus. With such knowledge of the existence of different strains, the arises concerns on whether the already available vaccines are effective enough in preventing the new COVID-19 strains. Studies are still underdeveloped to learn more on the virologic, epidemiologic, and clinical characteristics of the ever-emerging variants. This research, through a systemic review of literature, seeks to find out whether the variants of SAR-CoV-2 have an impact on the efficacy of various vaccines developed in fighting the disease and the entire body’s immune response.


Author(s):  
Ifeoluwa Garba ◽  
Richard Bellingham

Access to energy is crucial in tackling many of the current global development challenges that impact on people’s economic, health and social well-being as well as the ability to meet the commitments of reducing carbon emissions through clean energy use. Despite increased attention from multiple governments and agencies, energy poverty remains a serious sustainable development issue in many developing countries. To date, most research have focused on general access to electricity and the generation of clean energy to replace fossil fuels, failing to address the lack of basic access to clean energy for cooking and heating. More people in the world lack access to clean cooking fuels than to electricity. This issue is one aspect of a broader research which investigates the impacts of optimized energy policy and energy business models on sustainable development in developing countries.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (18) ◽  
pp. 5993
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Huk ◽  
Mateusz Kurowski

Sustainable development is now an important direction for the further development of all economies in the world. It is important to balance economic development with the impact on the environment and our planet. Another direction in the development of management sciences is the emergence of the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility, which considers this impact in three key aspects—economic, environmental and social—in terms of microeconomics. This concept gives companies specific guidelines and tools that minimize their negative impact on the environment. Reducing the negative impact of companies influences the environment and this is what is mainly associated with them. However, companies should also pay attention to internal consistency and caring for employees. Company practices such as the exploitation of people, including children, and injustice in the workplace are some of the factors that can be observed in less developed countries. The article focuses on the presentation of the environmental aspect in the context of the concept of corporate social responsibility. We analyzed individual sectors of the economy in terms of the environmental aspect, with particular emphasis on the energy industry. The study is based on a statistical analysis taking into account data from 1718 companies from all over the world. The aim of the article is to present the environmental aspect in the context of corporate social responsibility in the energy industry as a direction for sustainable development of the economy. The article is based on the analysis of the literature and databases presenting CSR, which was created on the basis of questionnaire research. The article shows which regions of the world are worse and which are better in terms of the environmental aspects of CSR. Conclusions on the main CSR guidelines for the environment are also presented. We analyzed factors such as environmental routines, policies and targets, implementation of environmental management systems, ISO 14001/EMAS certification, environmental reporting, environmental requirements inside the supply chain, the trend of GHG emissions and the trend of energy consumption for their environmental impact. The analysis was carried out on the basis of given regions of the world and individual sectors of the economy, especially the energy industry.


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