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This paper outlines the 10 major topics related to geodiversity that have emerged since the concept was first introduced in 1993, 30 years ago. After a short introduction, each of the 10 topics is then illustrated by a relevant case study. The 10 topics (italics) and their case studies (bold) are as follows: 1. Celebrating, International Geodiversity Day; 2. Measurement/Assessment, Potential role of remote sensing; 3. Natural Capital and Geosystem Services, Coastal geosystem services; 4. Biodiversity, Mangue de Pedra, Brazil; 5. Geomaterials, The circular economy; 6. Geotourism, World's top geotourism sites?; 7. Geoheritage, Landscape restoration; 8. National Geoconservation, Trump golf course and an SSSI, Scotland; 9. World Heritage Sites and Global Geoparks, Azores Global Geopark, Portugal; 10. Sustainability, Xitle Volcano, Mexico City. It is concluded that, given the way in which geodiversity has developed as a concept, leading to new insights and avenues of research and advancing our understanding of the world since its first use, it clearly now constitutes a significant, geoscientific paradigm. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Geodiversity for science and society'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To understand urbanization across the Global South, it is indispensable to consider situated heterogeneous urban situations shaped by global and local forces and their intersections. In the case of Mexico, the political and economic desire for globalization has extended beyond the great metropolis of Mexico City to mid-size cities triggering the formulation of their own urban strategies to become global. This paper explores the connections between neoliberal public policy, globalization, urban modeling, and socio-territorial sustainability in the territorial binomial of the city of Puebla and the municipality of San Andrés Cholula in the period of 2011–2017 and its current consequences, addressed by the local planning route map, and informed by the Orange Economy-guide of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), using relevant bibliographical sources, mapping, interviews of stakeholders, and fieldwork. The ultimate purpose of the research project described herein is to provide a multi-dimensional analysis of the development of the territorial situation of the Puebla-San Andrés Cholula-urban binomial, and of its current and potential future consequences, offering supporting information for its urban planning. The research results exposed here reveal urban modeling processes informed by the Global North urban globalization theory, development of global cities in the Global South, local socio-territorial dynamics characterized by economic and political interests imprinted in the public policy, and socio-territorial patterns inherited from the colonial past, resulting in socio-economic and racial discrimination, population displacements, real estate speculation, and risking ecological and environmental sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The need to improve sustainability in manufacturing firms, which would allow them to reduce the emission of pollutants and the generation of industrial waste, has stimulated the adoption of circular economy (CE) alongside lean manufacturing (LM) practices to significantly improve the sustainable performance of organizations. However, empirical evidence provided in previous studies and that has related the practices of LM, CE and sustainable performance do not allow establishing an interconnection between these three concepts. Therefore, this paper fills this gap in the literature by exploring the relationship between these three concepts. Design/methodology/approach: A quantitative study in which data were collected from 460 managers working in the automotive industry in Mexico was conducted. The data allowed the testing and validation of four hypotheses through the use of partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS SEM). Findings: The results obtained suggest that LM practices have a significant positive influence both on sustainable performance and CE. In turn, the results also demonstrate the existence of a significant positive relationship between CE and the sustainable performance of manufacturing firms in the automotive industry as well as that CE has a positive role in mediating the interconnection between LM practices and sustainable performance. Practical implications: The results obtained from the present study will allow entrepreneurs in the automotive industry and industry professionals as well as government authorities to formulate more effective policies and strategies to support the improvement of environmental sustainability performance in the manufacturing sector. Originality/value: This is one of the first studies that have investigated the relationship between LM, CE and sustainable performance, particularly, in the automotive sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Featured Application: To date, the 'values' associated with 'heritage buildings' have received little attention in designing technical interventions for energy efficiency. This may be due to a fear that modern interventions for improving energy performance clash with heritage conservation, especially conservation of original features. We argue that energy efficiency interventions and heritage conservation can co-exist if an in-depth understanding of people's heritage values and attitudes is obtained. This paper adds to our limited knowledge of residents' approaches to heritage conservation and energy efficiency. It does so by presenting the first study of its kind in Mexico's City Historic Centre (a World Heritage Site since 1987). The results reveal the type of heritage values that residents assigned to their buildings when seeking to achieve thermal comfort and energy efficiency in heritage buildings. With building construction representing one of the largest sectors responsible for the use of natural resources, retrofitting existing heritage buildings becomes a necessity, albeit a challenging one. The emergence of specific guidance on retrofitting heritage buildings has unveiled more than never the need to understand how residents negotiate, thermal comfort, energy efficiency, and heritage conservation decisions. The paper reports the complexity of the decision-making process of residents of heritage buildings in the Historic Centre of Mexico City regarding energy efficiency, intending to improve thermal comfort and reduce energy consumption while preserving heritage values. The study involved in-depth semi-structured interviews with users of heritage buildings that were thematically analysed, complemented by the monitoring of internal environmental conditions and system dynamics analysis. The results show that although the residents perceived the buildings' temperature as poor, passive thermal comfort actions (e.g., wearing more clothes and closing windows) were preferred against invasive retrofitting solutions for thermal comfort due to residents' resistance to a potential loss in the buildings' values and the high cost of changes. The degree of change necessary for maintenance, renovation, and actions for improving the thermal comfort of a heritage building is related to values and to their preservation for future generations. The users' changes were limited to small-scale interventions in floors and ceilings while avoiding touching what they consider essential to preserve and protect (i.e., social and cultural values). Integrating the user into the decision-making process would enhance the long-term continuity and sustainability of retrofitting policies and guidelines, thus avoiding losing heritage-built stock. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crucial role of the informal economy in urban environmental management is yet to be acknowledged in policy-making. This paper explores the sustainability discourses that shape urban environmental policies, and how they relate to different conceptualisations of the informal economy. Focusing on Mexico City, this paper analyses the discourses of policy-makers and their reflection in the city's waste management plan. Results show reformist and radical discourses of sustainability are correlated with preferences as to the integration or exclusion of the informal economy in environmental policy. In addressing Mexico City's environmental challenges, policy-makers have embraced a reformist sustainability discourse that focuses on technological fixes to environmental degradation and promotes a techno-managerial mode of governing. This discourse is correlated with a view of the informal economy as a barrier to the sustainability transition, which leads to the exclusion of informal workers from the policy arena and renders invisible their working conditions and their contribution to urban life. The paper concludes that the reformist sustainability discourse obscures and reproduces environmental injustices – repoliticization of the sustainability discourses shaping urban environmental policies is necessary to achieve sustainability transitions that are also socially just. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the kitchen and the phenomenological values that emerge from it. In this text the kitchen is seen as a space of possibility within the context of the Capitalocene, from which new values and imaginations for a more sustainable future may emerge. Drawing upon ecofeminist critiques and feminist food studies, and building upon the phenomenologies of space of Gaston Bachelard and Yi‐Fu Tuan, this exploration surveys how intimacy, memory, care, and relation emerge from kitchen endeavours and what these notions mean for a Capitalocenic world. These theoretics are intertwined with ethnographic materials on foodscapes and foodways gathered in Xochimilco, Mexico City. From this, radical conceptualisations of the kitchen emerge and everyday phenomenologies spread into new spaces, while bringing together these subjects with environmental issues. I propose the notion of the antiromantic as an approach emerging from the kitchen's history as a gendered and contested space, and as a way to approach the kitchen and its labours in the midst of our current ecological crises; in this way the kitchen can be understood and inhabited as a political space of possibility for sustainable transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In México, the utilization of fast-growing plant species for biomass production presents transportation-related issues such as freshness reduction, the transportation of large volumes with minimal weight due to low density, limited storage availability, and logistical challenges. To enhance understanding in this field, the research aimed to evaluate the densification potential of a variety of organic materials, with a specific emphasis on the biomass derived from eight species of rapidly growing plants, three animal species' manure, and concentrated feed. After conditioning, 100 g samples underwent particle size analysis and were categorized into seven sizes. Pellets and briquettes (40 g, 10% moisture, 15 MPa pressure, 5 min processing, 80 °C temperature) were produced and evaluated for bulk density (BD) and pellet (PD) and briquette durability (BDU). The predominant particle sizes were 0.850 mm and 0.425 mm. Original biomass bulk density (OBBD) varied notably, with ovine manure (0.50 g cm−3) and cattle feed (0.49 g cm−3) exhibiting the highest values. Caprine manure (0.83 g cm−3) and ovine manure (0.78 g cm−3) yielded the densest pellets at 1.76 and 1.84 g cm−3, respectively. Apple tree pellets achieved premium quality with the highest hardness (97.9%). Cattle manure (1.25 g cm−3) and cattle feed (1.25 g cm−3) had the densest briquettes, with notable BBD/OBBD ratios in pine sawdust (4.6) and corn (4.5). Caprine manure and Acacia biomass briquettes showed premium quality with the highest hardness (99.1%), emphasizing densification variations and the need for tailored approaches based on organic material characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impacts of climate change and decreasing local resources are increasingly threatening the resilience and sustainable management of urban areas and infrastructures worldwide. To cope with such threads and vulnerabilities, urban sustainability and resilience oriented plans have been developed. Accordingly, policy makers need to learn how to properly integrate urban sustainability with urban resilience principles and practices in the re-shaping of urban agendas. In order to highlight the future potential of integrating transformative resilience principles into the general sustainability approach, this paper provides a critical review of a recent and successful urban regeneration and development plan, the “Mexico City Green Plan”. This paper also discusses a feasibility study for urban redevelopment and transition towards resilience in Mexico City, in order to illustrate the necessity and potential of urban resilience for the improvement of the life prospects of disadvantaged inhabitant groups. The Valle del Chalco neighborhood in Mexico City is presented as an example, whereby resilient and sustainable urban transformation was achieved through an integrated and sustainable decentralized water management and infrastructure plan. In practice, the terms ‘Sustainability’ and ‘Resilience’ can be exploited to justify conventional, non-sustainable urban development practices. The results discussed in this paper demonstrate the necessity of the integration of transformative resilience principles within sustainable urban redevelopment and regeneration. The main findings are i) Policy makers underestimate the potential of urban resilience in shaping more sustainable urban futures, since they only understand resilience as the flipside of specific vulnerabilities, ii) The building of urban resilience within sustainable urban transitions and redevelopment can effectively foster people empowerment, particularly in combination with the decentralization of resources management systems, and iii) The main challenge for the implementation and execution of transitions processes towards urban resilience and sustainability is the elimination of political barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Abstract: Mexico City has long been known as one of the world’s largest mega-cities. Although, the city’s growth rates have slowed since the 1980s, this process is not manifested evenly in spatial terms. Peripheral municipalities continue to grow at higher rates, including those municipalities in the southern part of the Federal District that contain its remaining conservation land. This growth is largely, but not exclusively, driven by the ongoing search for housing among lower-income households in the form of irregular settlement. Over time, this incremental pattern of settlement expansion has fragmented conservation land and impaired its ecological functioning. Given their role in land use planning with the reintroduction of elected local governments in the Federal District in 1997, this situation has placed municipalities quite literally at the “frontlines” of this planning and sustainability challenge. This paper examines the approach for managing land use regularization processes related to irregular settlement in conservation land adopted by the municipality of Xochimilco in its 2005 urban development plan, with reference to the experience of a specific case study community. Based on a series of interviews with residents and planning officials, the paper documents the highly-negotiated nature of “normative” planning that focuses on mitigating the impact of settlement in the conservation zone rather than stopping it completely. Given the enormous social pressures to access land for housing, the paper concludes that realistic efforts to preserve the remaining conservation land must involve a more comprehensive approach that better integrates environmental and social equity issues within and among municipal and upper-levels of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Walnut tree (Carya illinoensis (Wangenh.) K. Koch) is a plant species showing ecological, social, and economic importance in México. The objective was to determine biomass productivity and to characterize the raw material and biomass briquettes obtained from walnut thinning pruning. The variables evaluated were tree total height (TH), fresh biomass (FB) and dry biomass (DB) per hectare (kg ha−1). Briquettes were made by using the biomass obtained in both orchards. Laboratory tests for original biomass included moisture content (MC), ash content (AC), volatile matter (VM) and fixed carbon (FC), as well as high heating value (HHV). Briquette studies also included diameter (D), weight (W), length (L), volume (V), density (Ds), and HHV. The data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics and analysis of variance (ANOVA) under a completely randomized design with factorial arrangement. Thinning pruning in walnut orchards provides 12 kg tree−1 (998 kg ha−1) of dry biomass, with acceptable levels of AC ≤ 5%, FC (75 to 76%), VM (18.7 to 19.7%) and HHV (16.2 to 16.7 MJ kg−1). The briquette international quality standards were fulfilled: MC≤ 10%, AC ≤ 5% and HHV > 18 MJ kg−1. The integrated use of walnut residues reduces the management problems registered during nut production and the sustainable options to generate bioenergy will be expanded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: DPSIR and the three-pillar model are well-established frameworks for sustainability assessment. This paper proposes a planning-oriented sustainability assessment framework (POSAF). It is informed by those frameworks but differs insofar as it puts more emphasis on a constructivist conception which recognises that sustainability needs to be defined anew for each planning problem. In finding such a consensus definition, POSAF uses participatory scenario analysis and participatory planning, technical feasibility study, participatory assessment, analysis of trade-offs and social networks in an unusual combination and for goals that differ from the original conceptions of these methods. POSAF was applied in a peri-urban area of Mexico City for the design of improved water service provision, integrating solid waste management. It supported consensus amongst users about the importance of environmental issues, informed planners about the values of stakeholders and users, detected local differences, and identified possible conflicts at an early stage of decision-making. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Different components of sustainability have been measured in previous studies at national, regional, and local scales. However, few efforts have aimed to measure water sustainability at the basin level. In this work, a water management sustainability index (WMSI) for quantifying water sustainability at the sub-basin level in Mexico is proposed. Variables related to water management in the environmental, social, economic, and institutional sub-systems of each sub-basin system were selected. The variables were aggregated in four sub-indexes based on a factor analysis, the sub-indexes scores were codified to indicate the level reached of water sustainability. The WMSI classified the water sustainability of the sub-basins of Mexico between poor and deficient, and the code classification indicated the level of compliance of the 969 sub-basins proposed by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography with sustainability criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]