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The article discusses the relationship between value addition and environmental sustainability using ten years data of an Indian Paper Mill. Analysis of the data reveals that there is a negative correlation between value addition and environmental sustainability over the ten-year period.

This paper examines India's minor industries. This paper's main argument emphasizes the value of small businesses and their contribution to the economy. Despite their significance, tiny businesses pollute and deal with a variety of issues, both significant and petty. Technical and financial concerns can be solved internally, but external issues like adherence to laws and regulations need to be effectively managed. This essay aims to provide some light on the environmental performance of small manufacturing sectors. Focusing on "a sustainable vision," or a trade-off between economic growth, profitability, and a sustainable environment, an attempt is made to address some measures that can improve environmental quality within these tiny enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Urban growth management strategy in India's National Capital Region is evaluated. • There is a lack of regulatory and non-regulatory instruments for growth management. • Problems in the institutional environment are determined. • Policy implications are derived for growth management in the global South. Abstract Considerable progress has been made in theoretically understanding the process of sprawl and devising corresponding growth management strategies in the global North. However, urban growth as sprawl remains a serious challenge in the global South, cutting across various geographic and municipal boundaries. The undesirable consequences are excessive expansion as well as inadequate infrastructure and service provision. At the core of steering this development are growth management strategies aiming to secure economically, socially and environmentally sustainable growth. This paper evaluates the performance of the growth management strategy in the National Capital Region of India based on a conceptual framework covering programme design, institutional setting and market interactions. It uses a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods to evaluate policy performance across multiple scales (city, metropolitan, state and region). The research found the limited success of policies, the failure to combine policy with regulatory and non-regulatory instruments, and insufficiencies in the institutional environment, all of which hinder effective growth management. To curtail sprawl, this paper recommends moving towards flexible growth boundaries, introducing self-contained communities as policy component, integrating and enforcing land-use and transport planning, empowering lower-tier authorities and adopting regulatory and non-regulatory instruments for plan implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental concerns are no longer unfamiliar in the over populated country like India. It is been decades, since when the government, firms and companies including stakeholders are making efforts for constant and sustainable development in the economy with minimum deterioration of environment. Environmental degradation, climate change and global warming are such issues that induced concern related to environment protection among the producers and consumers as well. The aim of this paper is to understand the purchasing behaviour of the consumers for eco-friendly products and what are the factors that affect the buying intention for such products. The study was conducted in Uttar Pradesh region of north-western part of India and data was collected using well-structured questionnaire among 230 respondents using convenient sampling out of which the results of 198 questionnaires were used for analysis. One-way ANOVA test has been used to test the significance level of the independent variable over dependent variable. The findings revealed that education level does not affect the concern for environment protection when buying the eco-friendly products. The analysis showed that the willingness to pay for green products was also influenced by income level of the consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2015, the United Nations member states adopted the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Education, which is the fourth Sustainable Development Goal, has seen some major transformations with the advent of digital technologies. Education is now increasingly being imparted through these digital technologies as well. In the past few years, researchers have paid considerable attention to studying this changing educational landscape. However, there exists two major gaps. First, the existing literature highlights the importance of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in imparting quality education by exploring characteristics of ICTs such as: portability, connectivity and usability but fails to explore learners' perception towards online education. Second, the changing educational landscape resulting from the use of ICTs has often been reported with regard to developed economies, giving little consideration to emerging knowledge economies. The present study overcomes these two gaps by exploring the motivators; de-motivators; as well as potential facilitators of online education, from the perspective of learners in emerging knowledge economies. Further, it attempts to understand individual differences with respect to country, gender, age, employment status and educational qualification towards the enrolment, preference and awareness related to online education. The study presents an in-depth comparative analysis of two emerging knowledge economies: India and Uganda and has been undertaken in two phases. In the first phase in-depth interviews were conducted with 51 learners to explore the motivators, de-motivators, and potential facilitators of online education. Data thus collected was checked for content validity through an extensive literature review. In the second phase, a structured questionnaire was administered to 252 respondents, drawn from a population of participants pursuing or having an intention to pursue online education in both countries. The present work provides better insights for further facilitation and improvement of online education in emerging knowledge economies. Mann-Whitney U-Tests and Kruskal-Wallis tests were undertaken to establish statistical validity. The paper concludes with some suggestions and recommendations on how to overcome barriers and factors which de-motivate learners from pursuing online education in order to achieve the desired Sustainable Development Goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 sets targets for nations to reduce marine pollution, ocean acidification, and sustainable use of coastal and ocean resources, which requires data on nutrient load, litter/plastics, pH, and biodiversity. Monitoring programs with large-scale and long-term data is an important source of environmental information and can play a crucial role in implementing the SDGs. This paper uses the Sea Water Quality Monitoring (SWQM), the coastal monitoring program of India, as a case study to examine the extent to which the monitoring program contributes to achieving the SDG 14 targets. The SWQM program is a multidisciplinary, long-term coastal monitoring program initiated by the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), Government of India, in 1990 to assess the coastal water quality. The paper highlights the interrelationships between the SWQM and SDG 14 targets (14.1.1, 14.2, 14.3, and 14.5) and discusses the challenges and opportunities of linking the national program to SDGs. Strengthening the program by increasing monitoring locations, sampling additional environmental parameters and biodiversity components, and using advanced scientific tools can be an efficient and pragmatic approach to SDG 14 implementation through the SWQM program. Aligning the long-term monitoring program and other research programs of a nation to the SDGs could provide potential co-benefits and more efficient utilization of funds. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With rapid industrialization and technological development, India is facing adverse affects of unsustainable pattern of production and consumption. Education for sustainable development has been widely recognized to reduce the threat of environmental degradation and resource depletion. This paper used the content analysis method to explore the extent to which green curriculum has been incorporated in engineering education. The green curriculum index suggests that Indian technological education is following vertical integration, with low emphasis on horizontal integration of green curriculum resulting into non-sustained green culture and environmental behaviour among the students. Furthermore, higher educational institutions should understand and accept the relevance of sustainable development rather than responding to the legitimate formality for creating a low- carbon and green economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing critically on the effects of the conditions for foreign direct investment on sustainable growth in the recipient country, this paper analyzes the potential for investments in environmental innovations in India. The definition of sustainability applied in this paper incorporates economic development and investment which promotes environmentally and socially friendly production and innovation. As the Indian economy experienced strong growth in GDP in recent years, but is still lagging behind in providing the basic needs of clean water, clean air and proper waste management for households and companies, the necessity for sustainable development exists. From a methodological point of view this paper uses macroeconomic data to evaluate quantitatively the potentials and needs of Indian states. This results in a state ranking showing the potential for sustainable development in selected Indian states, based on economic and environmental indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diversity of practices and dynamism in traditional mountain production systems of south Asia has been the focus of recent studies. This paper attempts to describe the diversity and dynamism of social and agricultural practices in a traditional mountain production system. The paper is based on ethnographic data gathered from Jangi village in district Kinnaur of Himachal Pradesh, where farmers are described and interpreted in the context of their risk-mediating roles in their agro-pastoral activities. Here, risk mediation is the reduction or elimination of this possibility, as well as the minimisation of its impacts, in case such a loss or harm does occur. The paper can be seen as contributing to a growing body of literature on resource use planning, management and sustainable development, also indicating that people are changing in response to the forces of globalisation, while maintaining their ecological knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Businesses have voluntarily adopted environmental strategies to go beyond compliance. This can be attributed to: a) business community's realisation that environmental investments have the potential to improve business performance and b) pressure from multiple stakeholder groups. In order to improve business relations with the stakeholders, business needs to identify these stakeholder groups and also understand their environmental concerns across the entire life cycle of the product. The first part of this paper deals with relevant theory and introduces a framework to analyse significant environmental stakeholder groups and their influence across its entire life cycle on corporate behaviour. The second part of the paper presents a system approach to improve stakeholders' satisfaction and further develops a model based on Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to measure stakeholders' satisfaction. The results are discussed through a case of a steel manufacturing unit in India. The paper closes with a discussion of research implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Home garden' (HG) is a complex sustainable land use system combining annual and perennial crops, trees, shrubs, livestock and fishery. The flow of goods and services provides not only food and nutrition security and employment, but also other co-benefits. Though HGs have attracted international attention since 1950s, it has not been widely researched especially in the context of rural India. This paper presents the results based on a field study carried out in 100 HGs in Paschim Medinipur District in the West Bengal, located in eastern part of India. A structured questionnaire was used to identify different aspects related to HG characteristics, their role in household consumption, problem areas and the different socio-economic characteristics of the HG owners. The results suggest that home gardeners with a higher level of education and who are using modern inputs are able to derive more benefits from the HGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Considering the present trends of urbanization and motorization in India, there is an urgent need for integration, revitalization and renewal of the smaller towns and cities to make urban areas in India more sustainable. Unless our regional space is reorganized to upgrade development of towns and cities and integrate them with each other and the larger cities, the urbanization process in India will become unsustainable. It is argued that High Speed Rail (HSR) can play a role in achieving this more balanced and sustainable development of towns and cities, opening up opportunities for growth across a wider, inter-connected, region, with the benefit of taking the pressure of the larger cities to absorb additional burgeoning populations. This paper will make the case that in the current Indian context, current patterns of mega-city growth are unsustainable, and that HSR can play an important role in providing opportunities for medium and smaller size cities through their interconnections. It begins by highlighting the role that railways have played in India and other countries, noting that merely economic analysis of their costs and benefits generally underestimated their contributions to development. It then provides an introduction to HSR and its potential impact in general, before applying this to the example of the State of Karnataka in South India. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Brundt land Report, also known as "Our Common Future" report, was released by the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987. Shortly thereafter, many countries started to focus on sustainable development. One of the areas within the overall sustainability that has received high level of emphasis during the last 10-15 years is the sustainable built environment or green buildings. The United States and India are two such countries, one from the developed world and the other from the rapidly developing group, who are strongly promoting sustainable built environment. The main goal of this paper is to identify the environmental laws in the United States and India related to sustainable development with focus on green buildings. It further highlights the major features of the U.S. and the Indian legal systems related to the sustainable built environment. In addition, this research describes various governmental and private initiatives related to the promotion of green buildings in these two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An integrated strategy for urban Air Quality Management adopts a hierarchical approach - graduating from micro to macro-level management of the problem. The paper provides a conceptual framework, and analyses it in the Indian context through energy-environment modelling and local-level studies. The key insights from the analysis are: technology transfers from developed countries promote environmentally sustainable development; conjoint markets for greenhouse gas and local pollutant mitigation optimises costs and generates co-benefits; a mixed policy regime, including market instruments, is preferable to pure technology-push policies as it can deliver technology-equivalent benefits at lower costs; an independent environment regulatory authority would reduce risks of institutional failures and lower transaction costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We consider the interdependence between ICT infrastructure, financial inclusion, and economic growth. • We use data from 20 Indian states from 1991 to 2018. • We have found endogenous relationships between the variables and have determined the direction of causal links. • We suggest policies to elevate economic development to the same level as ICT infrastructure development and financial inclusion. The roles played by the financial sector and of information and communication technology (ICT) in economic growth are well established in the literature. With increasing development and the convergence between the financial and ICT platforms, digital financial systems emerged which have opened new opportunities to close the wealth gaps between the "haves" and "have-nots" in the developing world. In this paper, we examine the short-run and long-run dynamics between economic growth, financial inclusion initiatives, and ICT infrastructure development in 20 Indian states over the period from 1991 to 2018. Using the Granger-causality technique, we show evidence of strong temporal causality between these variables in the short and long term. Our empirical results demonstrate that careful co-curation of ICT infrastructure development, financial inclusion initiatives, and economic growth strategies is essential for these Indian states to achieve sustainable economic development. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns for sustainable development and poverty alleviation are forcing public agricultural research systems to focus on improving livelihoods security. Crop-livestock production systems are central to the livelihood security of the rural poor in India and some other countries of the tropics. With increasing population, urbanisation and incomes, massive increases are foreseen in demands for livestock products, leading to a livestock revolution. This will present associated challenges and opportunities to the research and policy systems like those that followed the green revolution in crops. The challenges would be different as the importance of livestock for livelihoods security is more in marginal rainfed and arid ecosystems. This paper develops a research policy framework for planning for a livestock revolution and discusses the implications for research and institutional reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism occurs within a system. While contemporary models of the tourism system are useful in understanding the dynamics of international tourism, it is found that these models fall short of explaining the system of conventional tourism in India. This paper explores the conventional system of vernacular tourism with the purpose of establishing the contextual nature of these practices. This examination assists in asserting that a value-based context is an indispensable factor in the sustainable development of tourism in India. In conclusion, it is asserted that India's domestic tourism is currently in a state of chaos, perpetuated by the imposition of modern tourism on pre-modern vernacular tourism that has the potential of developing into a crisis. The article ends with a plea for the formulation of an appropriate policy for domestic tourism, befitting the sustainable development paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indian Sundarbans, a diversified coastal wetland on the southern fringe of the State of West Bengal, harbors a luxuriant biodiversity and acts as a potential refuge of living marine resources. Girdled with thick mangrove foliage, this estuarine delta system offers an excellent nursery ground for most of the brackishwater finfish and shellfish. Since supply of hatchery-produced tiger prawn seed (Penaeus monodon) is highly inadequate in West Bengal, the aquaculture farms of this region largely depend on the supply from natural resources. Being motivated by a regular cash income, the majority of coastal people from Sundarbans have adopted prawn seed collection as their profession almost throughout the year as an important source of earning. The users are neither trained nor guided at any stage from collection to marketing and are fully dependent on traditional methods. They first sort out the tiger prawn seeds (mainly the postlarval stage PL 20) accounting only 0.25–0.27% of the total catch and thereafter the major portion of the haul are thrown away on the beach flats or the tidal mudflats. This wasted by-catch contains the juveniles of economic and uneconomic varieties of finfish and shellfish along with a bulk of holoplankters and meroplankters (non-target species). This practice causes several ecological and occupational consequences, namely, (i) the huge destruction of the pelagic biota that can lead to severe stock depletion as well as hamper the energy transference through the marine ecosystem food webs; (ii) constant dragging of nets along the coast and tidal creeks paves the way for soil erosion, uprooting the mangrove seedlings and saltmarsh vegetation; (iii) the water quality is deteriorating in the catchment areas due to mud erosion and (iv) due to constant contact with the seawater, the collectors are affected with waterborne diseases, skin infections, reproductive tract disease in women and many other contagious diseases.This paper, in addition to identifying the challenge to environmental quality and resource abundance, emphasizes the need for grass-root public education so that local people come to understand, support and implement sustainable resource conservation and environmental protection activities now and in the future. As a follow-up course of action, the authors have initiated a general awareness program for developing consciousness among the coastal people regarding proper use of natural resources. Initiatives are taken for educating coastal people by holding workshops and seminars with the use of educational resource materials. Exclusive awareness camps and grass root level training for coastal people are also being proposed as a future course of action by means of exhibitions, audiovisuals etc. It is proposed that local government bodies come forward to mitigate this problem with scientific and rational approaches and to take proper actions towards conservation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The aim of this paper was to assess one of the pre-eminent examples of environmental success, Nek Chand's Rock Garden in the City of Chandigarh in India. Environmental education is multidisciplinary in nature with respect to learning and developing knowledge, awareness, attitudes, values and skills. This enables society to contribute more meaningfully to maintaining and improving the quality of its surroundings. Environmental action is the next important step in the process. Unlike other vegetative parks and gardens, Nek Chand's Rock Garden consists of a series of interconnected rocky grottoes, walkways, landscaped waterfalls and thousands of animal and humanoid sculptures made out of discarded materials. In a study on domestic tourists coming to the city, the Rock Garden was found as the most preferred sightseer spot. A mechanism to maintain this garden out of tourism revenue was suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable exploitation of non-wood forest resources as a means forachieving the complimentary objectives of natural forest conservation and income generation for rural inhabitants has drawn internationalattention in recent years. Accomplishing these dual goals requires an understanding of how non-timber forest products (NTFP) extraction and marketing functions in the tropical regions. This is often hindered by an absence of basic research and analysis. The paper reviews theprevailing management systems and forest policy in India with a viewto examining the problems and prospects for NTFP development. Factors influencing the production of economically important NTFP were determined through a case study and the deficiencies in the existing marketing strategy were analysed. Measures to improve the extraction system for higher returns to both the state forestry sector and primary collectors were highlighted and the need for domestication of NTFP species was stressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]