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Highlights • We partition Italian municipalities into homogeneous groups with similar features. • To form the groups, we use the drivers of separate waste collection. • The quality of local institutions emerges a key variable in this procedure. • Morphology, cultural consumption and the income also play a major role. • The municipalities of Veneto, Campania and Sardinia achieve remarkable results. Abstract The European Commission identifies separate waste collection as a primary factor in its sustainable development strategy. The EU Member States are expected to achieve a separate waste collection rate of 50% by 2020. Although Italy is not very far from such target, it features wide regional variation in the extent of separate collection. Municipal administrations are the key managerial units for the implementation of the environmental policy. By means of the Classification and Regression Tree Analysis, this work assembles Italian municipalities (NUTS-4) into homogenous groups, that share common characteristics with respect to geographic, economic and socio-cultural covariates. Three benchmark regions are identified, i.e. Veneto, Sardinia and much of Campania. The results achieved in these areas depend on the joint action of citizens and institutions and may inspire local-level waste management policies in other areas of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Analyze the layout of pollution-intensive industries using the kernel density method. • The characteristic of spatial evolution was "agglomeration-diffusion-agglomeration". • Using a spatial panel model to analyze the effects of the seven factors. • The degree of industrial agglomeration and economic level were the major effect factors. The studies of the spatial layout and impact mechanism of pollution-intensive industries have become one of the research hot spots for regional sustainable development. From the viewpoint of enterprise dynamics, this study used a spatial econometric model and kernel density analysis methods to analyze the spatial layout characteristics of pollution-intensive industries in the urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River (UAMRYR) in 2010, 2015, and 2020, and to explore the reasons for the formation of the spatial divergence of different sub-industries. The results showed that (1) in the past decade, the pollution-intensive industries in the UAMRYR have spatial shift characteristics, basically presenting a "core-edge" pattern from central cities to peripheral cities, and an "agglomeration-diffusion-agglomeration" spatial trend. (2) Different sub-industries had obvious differences in their agglomeration and diffusion trends. The proliferation trend of the non-metallic mineral products industry and the agricultural and sideline foodstuffs processing industry were obvious, which made environmental management difficult. The manufacture of raw chemical materials and chemical products presented the trend of agglomeration, then diffusion, followed by agglomeration, and transferred to areas outside the urban agglomeration, which reduced the pollution to the environment to a certain extent. The spatial pattern of the electricity, heating power production and supply industry were relatively stable, with little overall change. (3) The spatial layout of pollution-intensive industries was mostly driven by the level of economic development and the degree of industrial agglomeration. Innovation capacity and labor cost promoted the spatial diffusion of industries, and the degree of trade openness intensified the agglomeration of pollution-intensive industries in space. The results of the study provided a more microscopic perspective for understanding the changes in the spatial pattern of pollution-intensive industries and served as a reference for the government to formulate industrial and environmental policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wide-ranging, indicator-based assessments of large, complex ecosystems are playing an increasing role in guiding environmental policy and management. An example is the EU’s Marine Strategy Framework Directive, which requires Member States to take measures to reach “good environmental status” (GES) in European marine waters. However, formulation of indicator targets consistent with the Directive’s high-level policy goal of sustainable use has proven challenging. We develop a specific, quantitative interpretation of the concepts of GES and sustainable use in terms of indicators and associated targets, by sharply distinguishing between current uses to satisfy current societal needs and preferences, and unknown future uses. We argue that consistent targets to safeguard future uses derive from a requirement that any environmental state indicator should recover within a defined time (e.g. 30 years) to its pressure-free range of variation when all pressures are hypothetically removed. Within these constraints, specific targets for current uses should be set. Routes to implementation of this proposal for indicators of fish-community size structure, population size of selected species, eutrophication, impacts of non-indigenous species, and genetic diversity are discussed. Important policy implications are that (a) indicator target ranges, which may be wider than natural ranges, systematically and rationally derive from our proposal; (b) because relevant state indicators tend to respond slowly, corresponding pressures should also be monitored and assessed; (c) support of current uses and safeguarding of future uses are distinct management goals, they require different types of targets, decision processes, and management philosophies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the UN in New York the Open Working Group created by the UN General Assembly proposed a set of global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which comprises 17 goals and 169 targets. Further to that, a preliminary set of 330 indicators was introduced in March 2015. Some SDGs build on preceding Millennium Development Goals while others incorporate new ideas. A critical review has revealed that indicators of varied quality (in terms of the fulfilment certain criteria) have been proposed to assess sustainable development. Despite the fact that there is plenty of theoretical work on quality standards for indicators, in practice users cannot often be sure how adequately the indicators measure the monitored phenomena. Therefore we stress the need to operationalise the Sustainable Development Goals’ targets and evaluate the indicators’ relevance, the characteristic of utmost importance among the indicators’ quality traits. The current format of the proposed SDGs and their targets has laid a policy framework; however, without thorough expert and scientific follow up on their operationalisation the indicators may be ambiguous. Therefore we argue for the foundation of a conceptual framework for selecting appropriate indicators for targets from existing sets or formulating new ones. Experts should focus on the “indicator-indicated fact” relation to ensure the indicators’ relevance in order for clear, unambiguous messages to be conveyed to users (decision- and policy-makers and also the lay public). Finally we offer some recommendations for indicators providers in order to contribute to the tremendous amount of conceptual work needed to lay a strong foundation for the development of the final indicators framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] A conceptual approach to measuring sustainable intensification (SI) is developed. [•] We find economic, social and ecosystem based aspects of SI. [•] Lack of progress towards SI reflects recent policy stasis towards sustainability and intensification criteria. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Considering the on-going strive towards new, alternative indicators to measure our societal development pathways, and the fact that policy indicators remain largely enigmatic with regard to their patterns of embeddedness in institutional decision-making processes, it appears necessary to work towards reducing our lack of understanding of their interactions with policy-making. In the present paper, we focus on exploring the significance of composite indicators for policy making in the particular policy environment of the EU-institutions. Our research is underpinned by the conviction that such indicators are not systematically used directly, but have an indirect influence on policy making that needs to be better understood. Our analytical framework – in order to analyse the ways in which composite indicators enter policy processes – is characterised by the distinction between the ‘use’ and the ‘influence’ of indicators on the one hand, and on the other hand between 3 types of factors: indicator factors, policy factors and user factors. Our empirical results show that while most of the academic attention and political debate around indicators has tended to focus on ‘indicator factors’, such quality attributes actually mattered relatively little in our setting as determinants of indicator influence. This rejects the idea that the robustness of evidence would lie exclusively in its technical quality and in the independence of its producer, and instead calls attention to the processes of evidence-construction. Simultaneously, ‘user factors’ (beliefs and representations of policy actors) and ‘policy factors’ (institutional context) were crucial as explanatory factors of the policy mechanics we identified. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Proposing the STSL framework for target selection and compensation modes in win–win PES. • Constructing the environmental vulnerability-livelihood assets evaluation system. • Detecting the priority areas for implementing conservation PES or restoration PES. • Developing ten differentiated hematopoiesis payment modes. Spatial targets and payment modes are the key components for solving the issue of "where to pay and how to pay" and for supporting ecosystem service providers to achieve sustainable livelihoods and end poverty through payments for ecosystem services (PES) for environmental protection and poverty reduction. Here, we present the Spatial Targets and Sustainable Livelihoods (STSL) framework and analyze regional environmental vulnerability and livelihood assets in the Longnan Municipality of China. We constructed reasonable spatial targeting and payment modes according to each actual type. We classified the present 27 poverty-stricken areas in Longnan Municipality into two levels of environmental vulnerability, four classes in combination with natural capital, eight categories with the addition of human capital, and ten subcategories considering environmental vulnerability and all five livelihood assets. Finally, considering regional development and sustainable livelihoods for poor people, we suggest spatial layout targets for implementing conservation or restoration ecological projects and 10 differentiated payment modes. This study provides an appropriate proposal for certain regions to implement the environmental policy of win–win PES and fills the research gap regarding specific payment modes for PES. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: There is a need to define sustainable development in terms which are more clearly policy-relevant, so as to facilitate the quantitative evaluation of sustainability policies. This paper presents a novel quantitative method to evaluate urban sustainability enhancing policies to further enable evidence based policy making. Quantitative data on more than 300 economic, social and environmental attributes of 79 small to medium sized urban Irish settlements were assembled into a database. This provided a baseline against which projected impacts of fresh policy implementation may be evaluated. Literature searches for assessments of the impacts of policy implementation provided quantitative data on the likely impacts of policies in transport, environment, socio-economics and quality of life. The method has been named Sustainability Evaluation Metric for Policy Recommendation (SEMPRe), and is designed to be user-friendly for decision makers. SEMPRe assigns each candidate policy a numeric value indicating its projected effectiveness in enhancing settlement sustainability as an aid to evidence based decision making. As further quantitative assessment of impacts of additional policies are published in future, the range of policies testable using SEMPRe will increase. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Evidence on the role of information and knowledge for policy making shows that policy actors seldom use information as a direct input to their decisions. Similar patterns of (non)use have been identified in the case of indicators in the environmental and sustainable development policy domains. The objective of the paper is to elucidate the patterns of environmental indicator use and to argue for the introduction of a ‘politics of policy indicators’. With a limited set of characteristics (e.g. legitimacy, credibility and salience) of indicators, which help to apprehend the usability of indicators, we argue that the usability profile of indicators can be analysed as a matter of construction and deliberation by indicator creators and policy actors. The performance of indicators as policy tools – as rendered with their usability profile – is co-dependent of the institutional embeddedness of the indicators. Our conclusion makes the case that if environmental improvements towards more sustainability are partly relying on the quality and uptake of information into policy processes in order to steer decisions, then the ‘usability profile’ of indicators itself should be subject to collective and conscious steering. This call to ‘steer the steering’ is supported by the wider calls to initiate patterns of ‘reflexive governance’ within the sustainability policy domain. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The development of systemic environmental monitoring and indicators for sustainability requires one to tackle the complexity of human–environmental systems. To this end the ecosystem approach is proposed here as a framework and the ecological network analysis as a tool for investigation while an urban system, represented as a water flow network, is discussed as a case study. Flow distribution is used to calculate total system throughput, development capacity, average mutual information, ascendency and overhead. These indices condense the complexity of the flow structure (representing system''s metabolism) into a few measures that provide information on how systems grow and develop; because of this they are consistent with the sustainability context. Two alternative scenarios are presented to discuss the effects of management actions (policies) on sustainability as they change the flow structure and system level indices. While it is shown that increasing system activity (intensity of processes) augments potential for development but not realized development, actions that improve the organization of flows, thus increasing average mutual information, may reduce total system throughput and drive the system toward more sustainable conditions. System level indices are holistic measures that unveil the relation between internal processes and whole system performance. Understanding this relation is crucial because the former are the target of environmental policies but sustainability, the objective of such policies, is an overall system trait. Because of these features system level indices can be examples of a new quality of indicators for sustainability assessment. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The adoption of suitable indicators is fundamental to implement sustainable development at the local level. It helps in the analysis and evaluation; supports the decisional process and helps the communication between the citizens and the society, in general. Furthermore, the aggregated indexes – by representing the observed context in a simple way – may help the community in the definition of effective improvement goals and also serve as important tools to monitor the fulfillment of the planned objectives. The Dashboard of Sustainability (DS) is a mathematical and graphical tool designed to integrate the complex influences of sustainability and support the decision-making process by creating concise evaluations. The city of Padua, Italy, agreed to use the DS in its Local Agenda 21 project, financed by the Italian Ministry of Environment. The available data were sufficient to design 61 useful indicators of environmental protection, economic development, and social promotion. The results of the analysis were discussed in Padua''s community forum on the Local Agenda 21 process. The graphical and numerical results helped Padua reach a consensus on the plan for future sustainability, one that was understood and accepted by all the stakeholders. In order to adapt this tool to a local context, two changes in the methodologies were necessary: to measure urban sustainability, for which “ad hoc” set indicators were used; and to allow a comparative evaluation, for which the performances of Padua were evaluated over time. These changes were possible, thanks to the flexibility of such tool. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In close coordination and collaboration with the Lebanese Environment and Development Observatory at the Ministry of Environment, the Faculty of Health Science at the University of Balamand developed an action plan to “establish a decentralized environment and sustainable development monitoring network through local authorities using agreed upon environment and development indicators”. This effort was part of a pilot regional project involving six Mediterranean countries with funds provided by the Ministry of Environment, Greece through the University of Athens to establish a “Mediterranean Environmental Reporting, Monitoring and Information System” for Mediterranean countries. According to a well-defined selection process, a total of 44 municipalities out of more than 700 municipalities belonging to three unions representing three different regions in Lebanon qualified for inclusion in the project with 17 choosing to participate in MED-ERMIS-Lebanon. Meetings with concerned public officials at all levels were then held to ensure the support of all relevant governmental institutions and therefore the success of the project. Applying a participatory approach, local government officers and representatives from concerned ministries, universities, research centers and non-governmental organizations were invited to attend the different workshops at the municipality level to produce the appropriate lists of indicators. A total of 110 indicators were generated and grouped into four major categories adopted by the national indicator system: (1) population and socio-economics; (2) economic activities; (3) environment; and (4) sustainable development activities and policies. “Indicator data sheets”, a “door-to-door questionnaire” and a “municipality archive survey” were developed for data compilation, calculation, and presentation; and a total of 6250 surveys were filled (≈20%). Field surveying was carried out by trained teams using the “Multistage Cluster Systematic Random Sampling” technique and data entered for analysis. Data is being currently interpreted, and a user-friendly software application hosted on the University of Balamand web-site to facilitate the updating of indicators and the dissemination of indicator data on the World Wide Web has been developed allowing access to information by all interested parties. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Forest condition, biodiversity and ecosystems services are strongly interlinked. • A transferable and operational European wide forest condition indicator is presented. • The methodology includes structural, functional, and compositional variables. • This spatially explicit indicator is built on information accessible EU databases. • This supports the monitoring and assessment of efforts towards EU and SDG goals. Forest condition, biodiversity, and ecosystem services are strongly interlinked. The biodiversity levels depend to a large extent on the integrity, health, and vitality of forests at the same time as losses of forest biodiversity lead to decreased forest productivity and sustainability. Under this conceptual framework, this study presents a methodology for mapping forest condition at European scale supporting the attainment of the 2020 Aichi Biodiversity Target 5 " the rate of loss of all natural habitats, including forests, is at least halved and where feasible brought close to zero, and degradation and fragmentation is significantly reduced" and the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), as well as the EU forest strategy since the sustainable forest management is oriented to support the provision of forest services and to enhance the condition of biodiversity forests' host. The work presents the developments of an operational indicator at European scale. This spatially explicit information on forest condition can be the baseline map with a 1 km resolution to monitor the state and changes of condition by exposition to pressures and threats. This condition indicator considers structural, functional, and compositional aspects of forest with relevance for health and vitality of species and habitats hosted by forest ecosystems. The methodology implemented used harmonized, published and open datasets. It provided confident results for the assessment of the condition within hemiboreal, temperate and alpine forests, showing the Carpathian, Dinaric Alps and Alps, among others, as hotspots with pre-dominantly good condition. The results were validated with data derived from the reporting for the EU Habitat Directive and explicit dataset on known primary forests in Europe. However, this method underestimated the forest condition in the Mediterranean and Boreal forest types due to data gaps, regional specific characteristics, and design limitations. This study illustrates an operational and transferable approach for addressing the assessment of ecosystem forest condition at European scale being considered as a support tool for European countries when mapping and assessing their national territory, as potential common approach to map forest ecosystems that allows for consistent aggregation and comparisons across scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The relation between urbanization and eco-environment in SREB was explored. • Coupling coordination degree model between UAEE of SREB was established. • The negative interaction effect of UAEE is mainly focused on the northwest regions. • Advocate sustainable development, realize the balance between UAEE. Rapid urbanization in China in recent decades has given rise to increasingly serious ecological and environmental problems. Specifically, the provinces along the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) in China have experienced rapid urbanization, and need to take pro-active action in balancing urbanization development with eco-environment conservation. This paper aims to develop comprehensive urbanization and eco-environment (UAEE) evaluation models to explore UAEE development of SREB in China from 2004 to 2018. In terms of methodology, these evaluation models are subsequently combined with CCDM (Coupling coordination degree model) and GTWR (Geographically and Temporally Weighted Regression) models to measure and analyze coupling degree and spatio-temporal heterogeneity of UAEE. The results show that: Firstly, from 2004 to 2018 in all regions of the SREB, the urbanization showed a gradual upward trend. Among them, comprehensive urbanization index (CUI) of Guangxi increased by 3.067%. Secondly, the comprehensive eco-environment index (CEI) of Chongqing, Sichuan, Guangxi, Shaanxi and Gansu has improved; while the eco-environment quality of Yunnan, Qinghai, Ningxia and Xinjiang has deteriorated during this period, with the rate of decrease in Xinjiang reaching a significant 2%; Thirdly, in 2018, Chongqing, Sichuan, Guangxi, Shaanxi and Gansu are in a state of high coordination level with the eco-environment under the rapid urbanization process, while Yunnan, Qinghai, Ningxia and Xinjiang are at a moderate coordination level. Since 2011, these areas are in a state of lagging development of the eco-environment. Finally, the interactive relationship between UAEE tends to converge. There is heterogeneity in time and space among SREB regions. The negative interaction effect of UAEE is mainly focused on the northwest regions. In conclusion, this research will provide a basis of scientific evaluation for the coordinated degree of UAEE, promote regional urbanization vis-à-vis the improvement in environmental policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]