Sustainable Green Growth in Developing Economies

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) initiated by Chinese government could be regarded as a systematic framework for promoting economic cooperation and development among the countries along the Belt and Road and China. This paper attempts to analyze economic and environmental performance in 61 developing countries along Belt and Road. An additive total factor productivity growth measure allows aggregating contributions of individual countries along the BRI to construct a reasonable measure. Both desirable and undesirable outputs are considered. The growth in the total factor productivity is decomposed with respect to the economic and environmental contributions. The annual average growth rate of green productivity is 3.1% and the disparity of economic and environmental performance could be observed among countries. Some countries show robust economic growths while environmental performance slows down green growth. This indicates that developing economies should pay attention to environmental impacts and promote sustainable development by sharing emission reduction technologies.

Evaluating Ports Environmental Performance based on the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP)

Appropriate environmental performance is considered one of the most important indicators in the sustainable development of organizations and industries. Evaluating the environmental performance in ports as one of the two main parts of the maritime transport system is of particular importance. Therefore, the current study was designed and conducted to develop a method for evaluating the environmental performance of ports based on the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP). In the present study, 22 experts in the field of environment and marine sciences were selected in 2020. Firstly, various studies on the factors affecting the environmental performance of ports were reviewed. Secondly, a questionnaire was designed to assess ports’ environmental performance. Thirdly, this questionnaire was developed using the Delphi technique. Finally, by determining the weight of each parameter, the method of environmental performance assessment in ports was developed based on the FAHP. The final normalized weights for six environmental performance factors including reactive and proactive performance, sustainability, socio-cultural, economic, and governance were estimated 0.202, 0.241, 0.226, 0.070, 0.080, and 0.182. Additionally, it was found that each of the parameters had a different weight and impact on these factors. The highest and lowest impact on the environmental performance index belonged to environmental risk assessment (weight=0.217), cultural effects, and justice (weight=0.107). In the current study, a new method was developed for evaluating the environmental performance of ports based on six factors, 32 parameters, and FAHP. Therefore, this method may provide an effective step in reducing environmental impacts and improving the level of environmental performance in ports to achieve the goal of green port.