Three Decades of Environmental Values: Some Personal Reflections

The journal Environmental Values is thirty years old. In this retrospective, as the retiring Editor-in-Chief, I provide a set of personal reflections on the changing landscape of scholarship in the field. This historical overview traces developments from the journal's origins in debates between philosophers, sociologists, and economists in the UK to the conflicts over policy on climate change, biodiversity/non-humans and sustainability. Along the way various negative influences are mentioned, relating to how the values of Nature are considered in policy, including mainstream environmental economics, naïve environmental pragmatism, the strategic role of corporations, neoliberalism and eco-modernism/techno-optimism. At the same time core value debates around intrinsic value in Nature and instrumentalism remain relevant, along with how plural environmental values can be articulated and acted upon. Naturalness, human relations to non-humans, and Nature as other, remain central considerations. The broadening of issues covered by the journal (e.g. covering social psychology, sociology and political science), reflect the need to address both human behaviour and the structure of social and economic systems to confront ongoing social-ecological crises.

Interdisciplinary Approach to the Study of State Socio-Economic Systems

The success of implementing a state economic policy operating under the conditions of a particular economic model depends on the diversity of aspects. The social one is the most important among them. The social aspect of the economic system and politics is oriented first and foremost to human resources, which is the base of the social-economic system. In this article the interdisciplinary approach has been identified as a priority in the field of study of the essence and development of new types of socio-economic systems, considering the whole complex of factors of their environment of formation. The existence of a close interconnection of economic and social aspects has been determined: the influence of non-economic, including social, determinants on the development and functioning of innovative models of the state structure; ensuring social development through existing economic shifts. It's concluded that an interdisciplinary approach in analyzing the concept of sustainable development and finding ways of its implementation is a necessity.

The Role of Technology in Nigerian Catfish Production: A Review

This article examines the state of Catfish production in Nigeria and the roles technology has played over the past decades. Heightened demand as a result of increased population puts considerable pressure on production. In response to this pressure aquaculturists ramped up production activities, this demand-driven increase exposes the major gaps as the industry struggles to cope with the absence of fundamental structures like inadequate structured funding, markets, processing and preservation facilities among others. Such gaps exist in all aspects of aquaculture and technology is a viable plug for many of them. The aquaculture of developing nations has certain peculiarities which predispose it to slow development. Many fishermen and aquaculturists in low-income regions are trapped in economic systems that result in relative poverty. Many reasons have been put forward to explain the dynamics behind these consequences with technology playing a major role from the consensus. Rapid advances in hatchery, water quality and molecular technology have been identified as some of the active drivers of Catfish production in Nigeria. The article focuses on the history, progress and prospects of aquaculture technology in Nigeria. It does so by reviewing the technologies already established in Catfish farming and the impact of their roles in balancing fish demand and supply.

Resilience of Social-Infrastructural Systems: Functional Interdependencies Analysis

Critical infrastructures serve human activities and play an essential role in societies. Infrastructural systems are not isolated but are interdependent with regard to social systems, including those of public health and economic and sustainable development. In recent years, both social and infrastructural systems have frequently been in dysfunction due to increasing natural or human-made disasters and due to the internal and external dependencies between system components. The interconnectedness between social-infrastructural systems (socio-economic systems and technical-infrastructural systems), implies that the damage to one single system can extend beyond its scope. For that reason, cascading dysfunction can occur and increase system vulnerability. This article aims to study the functional interdependencies between social-infrastructural systems and to propose a methodology to analyse and improve the resilience of these systems. Combining Actor Network Theory and the Functional Models approach, the social-infrastructural Interdependence Resilience (SIIR) framework was proposed. To assess the applicability of the approach, the framework was applied to study the interdependence of a social-infrastructural system in the Nantes Metropolis. The studied system was composed of the local Highway Infrastructure (an infrastructural system) and the Emergency Medical Service (a social system). The results (1) show the feasibility of SIIR for investigating the interdependencies of two urban systems, and (2) provide a guideline for decision-makers to improve the functional interdependencies of urban systems.

Green Energy in the Caribbean: Influence on Toursim and Economic Development

The green energy agenda has become one of the most important issues in international relations. Many island states of the Oceania have taken the course of green economy construction. The Caribbean states are in some way similar to the Oceania ones and have also made several steps towards greener future. Some of these states are tightly connected with international tourism, leading to the high dependence of their economies from touristic revenues. The article examines this interconnection, including economic component in the analysis. The major question of the article is how does (or doesn’t) tourism influence the development of green energy in the Caribbean states. The two major economies examined in the region are Cuba and Dominican Republic as the two examples of the totally different economic systems and approaches to the development of the green energy. The key findings of the article include such conclusions as the possibility of synergetic interdependence between tourism, economy and green energy and the positive effects this interdependence has. The other finding is that the Cuban method of introducing green energy is less effective than the Dominican one. The novelty of the article includes the comparison of the two economic models in the Caribbean and the development of strategies for the green energy proliferation in the countries.

The role of institutional potential and social entrepreneurship as the main drivers of business opportunity and competitiveness

Institutional potential plays a key role in creating business opportunities. However, past studies did not emphasize on the consistency and the interaction between institutional and entrepreneurial potential-shaping factors. This research aimed to explore the role of these two aspects in spotting market gaps and encouraging competitiveness. Mixed methods were used, with basic concepts focusing on new institutional economic theory. The results showed that standardization, commercialization, technology, productivity, invention, social capital, and human capital strengthened institutional potential and social entrepreneurship. This created more ventures and encouraged competition. However, there is a need to eliminate institutional barriers to improve the efficiency and productivity of the socio-cultural-economic systems.

Mechanisms for Stabilizing Crisis Situations in Visegrad Europe

In the article, the authors, pointing out the main challenges faced by the Central European countries in the last two years, analyze the measures taken by the governments of the Visegrad countries ‒ individually and jointly ‒ in an effort to overcome the negative consequences of crisis situations and to give a new impetus to the development of societies in social, political and economic spheres. The pandemic of 2020/2021 in a certain sense can be considered as a milestone measuring the effectiveness of political and economic systems established over three decades in these countries. The authors have chosen for this publication only some, but decisive measures, such as internal political stabilization, social, as well as economic devices to help the population in a pandemic. Analyzing the main “alarming points” of Central European countries, the authors come to the conclusion that the democratic parliamentary system established in these countries over the years of reforms, based on a network of non-governmental organizations, plays a significant positive role in overcoming them; the manifestation of independence in taking decisions affecting the interests of the nation despite delays or counter-measures of Brussels; taking into account the peculiarities of national and regional development in other areas.

Identification as an Indicator of Social Entropy Under Globalization: Ukrainian Realities and International Context

The purpose of the article is to show modern trends in identification in the context of globalization and the specific conditions of political and economic systems, to indicate ways of influencing their formation, to change the value paradigm of identification associated with harmonious human relations. А hypothesis is that modern identification in Ukraine does not correspond to the liberal-democratic tradition and will continue to generate conflict. The existing identification structure should be used to reorient individuals and groups to effective communication within organizations, which will contribute to the political stability and security of the state. The following approaches and research methods have been used as tools to achieve this purpose: synergetic method; the reflective method; the dialectical method; a comparative method; structural-systemic method; synthesis method. The article covers the following issues: Analysis of identification models; Features of the identification mechanism in post-soviet realities; Modern synergetic model of identification in Ukraine; Peculiarities of culture formation in the conditions of digital and socio-cultural globalization; A new approach to identification as a factor of political stability and security. The authors made the following conclusions: The “ethnic model” of identification turns into a strange attractor, resulting in the Ruelle-Takens scenario. According to the theory of synergetics, this scenario became possible after three bifurcations in the political and economic system of Ukraine over the past 29 years. The “turquoise paradigm” elements should be taken as a basis for model of national identity.

Soviet Planning: What and Why Is Relevant in the XXI Century

Planning has become widespread in countries with different socio-economic systems. At the same time, both the evaluation of the results of using planned methods and these planned methods themselves have significant differences. They depend both on the features of the socio-economic systems in which planning was applied, and on the tasks that it solved. To study these dependencies, it is useful to turn to the experience of planning in the USSR, which demonstrates different options for using planning methods. During the years of the new economic policy, planning functioned in the conditions of a broad development of market and capitalist relations. Therefore, the planning methods were adapted to the market conditions. The planning itself was mainly indicative, and the achievement of planned results was built by influencing the economic interests of economic entities. Therefore, it is possible to find a significant similarity in the model of Soviet planning during the years of the new economic policy and those planning methods that were used in the post-war period in Europe, Japan, and then in the new industrial countries. The model of directive planning, which was developed in the USSR in the 1930s of the twentieth century, provided both certain advantages in the development of the economy (the mobilization and concentration of significant masses of resources for deep structural changes in the economy, the implementation of large scientific, technical and social projects), and was burdened with serious contradictions. The Soviet model of directive planning did not have effective institutions that expressed the economic interests of enterprises and their collectives, did not create incentives for technical re-equipment of existing enterprises, and ultimately led to the predominance of the interests of the top government departments. To prevent the development of such contradictions, one-sided reflection of the interests of narrow social groups, the planned system should be built on democratic grounds.