Sustainable Consumption Trends in the World in the Context of Green Economy and Sustainability

Nowadays, sustainable growth and development are main economic policies for the countries all over the world. Decreasing natural resources, deepening environmental pollution and global warming problems are red alert of our planet. Every single country on the earth has the responsibility to protect our planet. So, increasing environmental awareness caused new tendencies in consumer behaviors. Countries aim not to pollute or harm the environment while improving their economic performance and life quality by green economy. Besides, by sustainable consumption, it is aimed to support personal sustainable development. In this context, sustainable consumption trends and the reflections of green economy applications in the world will be discussed in this chapter. In addition, developed countries and developing countries will be compared with each other through results of global ecological footprint.

A Fourth Wave of Education for Sustainability (EfS) in Higher Education

Education for Sustainability (EfS) in Higher Education (HE) is described as developing through three waves. These are overviewed in this chapter and given due acknowledgement but are shown to fall short of what is needed going forward. Consequently, a fourth wave of EfS in HE is proposed. The fourth wave of EfS in HE needs to be directed at the collaborative project of constructing “sustainable universities” (Sterling, Maxey, & Luna, 2013). The concept of “neo-sustainability” (Farley & Smith, 2014) is adopted as the basis of this next wave, as is the three nested rings model of sustainability. The argument for a strategy to educate the HE educators is outlined. It is suggested that contemporary global and local sustainability issues need to become part of student engagement within all HE courses. Finally, effort needs to be exerted by HE lecturers to develop pedagogical practices that align to the aims and principles of EfS.

Promoting Healthy Lifestyle for Sustainable Development

Economic growth, environment, and health are three significant aspects of sustainable development. Nowadays, lifestyle is increasingly evaluated as one of the most important factors influencing health. As increasing health expenditure is an important problem for sustainable development, it is essential to examine the society in terms of their health-related habits and promote healthy lifestyle to support sustainable development. In this chapter, healthy lifestyle of highly educated Istanbulites is researched. The respondents are classified into three distinct clusters according to their healthy lifestyles as “young and single individuals with low healthy lifestyle tendency.” “young and middle-aged individuals consuming natural food,” and “elderly, married adults leading healthy lifestyles.” Afterwards, analyzing the data by ANOVA and post-hoc tests, it is found that respondents in different clusters have significantly different green consumer values and health motivations. Finally, theoretical and managerial discussions are provided and some recommendations are made for academicians and practitioners.

Green Development

The focus of this chapter is to assess green or sustainable development concept because of its increased importance throughout the world. Droughts, environmental degradation, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions are important problems that the humankind have been facing since the Industrial Revolution. Renewable energy sources can be used to overcome these problems. The general tendency of modern-day societies is to transform traditional production techniques and development models to new renewable energy sources and also move towards to sustainable development path. Therefore, this study tries to explain current status of Norway, China and Turkey in terms of their renewable energy sources and policy implementations.

Enablers of Sustainable Manufacturing Overview, Framework and Further Research Directions

The aim of this paper is to develop a conceptual sustainable manufacturing (SM) framework, which is the pressing need of highly competitive and natural resource scarce world. Systematic literature review has been adopted to identify enablers of SM. The enablers identified through systematic literature review includes product design, material selection & procurement, customer requirements, regulatory norms, social values & ethics, environmental priorities, energy costs, natural resource scarcity, supply chain & logistics systems, fuel price regulations, public awareness, technology and total quality management. Author has attempted to develop a contextual relationship among enablers of SM using interpretive structural modeling. The author has further classified enablers into four categories using MICMAC analysis. The author has also outlined the limitations of present study and identified further research directions.

Making Sustainable Energy Communities a Reality

The aim of this chapter is to present a decision support framework for local energy planning, entitled “MPC+ (Map - Plan - Choose - Check)”. The proposed framework incorporates the development of the baseline emissions inventory, the identification and modelling of renewable energy and rational use of energy actions, as well as the creation of alternative Scenarios of Actions at the city level. The evaluation of alternative Scenarios is based on a multi-criteria ordinal regression approach. In addition, an extreme ranking analysis method is used, in order to examine robustness problems, estimating the best and worst possible ranking position of each Scenario. The MPC+ framework contributes to the selection of the most promising Scenario of renewable energy and rational use of energy actions, supporting the local - regional authorities in creating Sustainable Energy Communities (SEC). Finally, the “Methodological Approach for Monitoring SEC Targets” is introduced.

Harnessing Knowledge for Sustainable Development

Arab countries face two major challenges resulting from increasing competition from the rest of the world and persistent reliance on mineral resources for their growth. At the same time, sustainable development is increasingly becoming a major concern for world development. In this respect, and from a sustainability point of view, knowledge economy opens up new and more accessible opportunities through the ‘substitution' of physical resources by immaterial resources. This situation raises two fundamental questions: the first one relates to the opportunity of ensuring sustainable development while the knowledge base remains rather weak and policies often short-sighted. The second one is how an integrated approach based on knowledge can strengthen existing knowledge bases and create new ones to further sustainable development. Looking at a sample of advanced countries and Arab countries, this chapter argues that sustainability of growth rests fundamentally on the capability of properly harnessing knowledge.

Role of HRM in Sustainable Organisational Development

This chapter explores the role Human Resource Management plays to support sustainable organisation development by controlling and managing valuable resources including employees of the organisation. The chapter presents the concept of sustainable organisation development as vital and important requirement to survive the competition in the current financial era. This chapter explains that sustainable development could enable organisations to overcome current market problems as well as achieve their goals. The chapter proposes that HRM can play a crucial role in developing strategic leadership and management capabilities and thus promote economic, social and environmental forms of sustainable development.

CSR Strategies in Emerging Markets

The purpose of the chapter is to emphasize on the roles of businesses – as an effective (sustainable) development agent in emerging markets, on one hand, and of their CSR strategies – as an efficient sustainable development tool, on the other hand, in order to identify valuable business practices able to lead the emerging markets towards sustainability – through socially responsible decision making processes at business level. Having in the fore-ground the ideas of sustainability (which basically is a macro-economic concern) and responsibility (and especially its micro-economic correspondent that usually embraces the form of CSR), it will try to discover the general and specific features of the business models that capitalize the best the synergy between the social responsibility of business and the ensuring of sustainability in emerging markets.

Factors Influencing Foreign Land Acquisition and Sustainable Development in Nigeria

Of the major factors of production, land is considered the most important. Land is such a valuable resources that the desire to acquire it has been a cause of struggle among the people virtually in all hitherto existing human societies. Land acquisition is influenced by numerous factors in which all play relevant roles in understanding the dynamics of land and its utilization among the people in the society. In Africa, foreign land acquisition has become a topical issue because of the richness of the African land resources, and the scamper for these resources has been a source of concern for many observers. This chapter analyzes the factors inhibiting foreign land acquisition in a developing country like Nigeria and examines the challenges posed by such practices to the attainment of sustainable development.