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Natural resources provide a high quality of life for residents and are often one of a community's greatest advantages for workforce attraction, youth retention, recreation, climate resilience, tourism, and broader economic development. A better understanding of how nature and local economies function together is critical to fostering synergies between interconnected community needs, such as economic development and climate resilience. This paper first draws on literature to define the nature economy, which is similar to the outdoor economy but with a more holistic and interdisciplinary focus on the roles of nature in the economic, social, and ecological resilience of communities. Then, we applied the nature economy lens across three different initiatives in New Hampshire to identify transferable lessons at the intersections between the outdoor economy, community development, and environmental conservation. Finally, we discuss two common themes: the co-benefits of outdoor recreation as a community and development strategy and the challenges and opportunities of partnerships. Engaged scholars and practitioners, such as planners and community development/recreation directors in rural communities, should benefit from this approach.

This paper stresses the importance of entrepreneurial university towards improving sustainable job creation and improvement in Uganda. The dilemmas the country is facing ranges from excessive poverty, graduate unemployment; over dependence on overseas items and technology; as well as low economic growth and development. These dilemmas are partly triggered by using improper education system especially at the university level. Many people argue that university education in Uganda is principally for its very own sake--to impart knowledge and a love of getting to know with greater paper qualifications. University training is for academic superiority disconnected from day-to-day realities, a closed environment in which information and intellect is the sanctuary of the self-selecting, privileged few--no grasp of what is vital for ordinary people. Yet the fact of university schooling is about helping humans grow in their lives by supporting them to live better life. This paper hence contends that change of universities in Uganda, from ivory tower to entrepreneurial universities, will prepare the students with the conduct, states of mind and attitudes with which to be self-reliant and contribute to job creation and advancement. The paper starts by highlighting the concept of university as an ivory tower. The objectives and framework for designing entrepreneurial university is presented next. The paper suggests that university programmes at all levels of instruction ought to be made significant to the community so as to supply the youth with the required entrepreneurial aptitude.

Though there is an existence of writings on human capital and its relationship to growth, but it has missed the economic impact of universities. It is known that the knowledge of economy has a positive role in achieving economic development. So my paper focuses on the role of education expenditure in achieving economic development. The human resource is the basis for growth and development because it is able to achieve the appropriate scientific achievement and its future economic performance which is a positive return. The improvement in performance of skilled workers will be affected if Saudi government increases the education expenditure in addition to the investment in human capital. From here we can say that the human resources and the universities (government education expenditure) are two sides of a single coin whose basic and sole objective is economic growth. Therefore, this paper will test the relationship between education expenditure and economic development during the period from 2003 to 2019 through a theoretical analysis of the relationship of higher education to economic development. To explore the relationship between spending on education and economic development the author used econometric technique to analyze the study by using multi regression model depending on weighted least square (WLS). The study results show that there is a significant relationship between Saudi education expenditure and economic development, but regarding to R & D expenditure it is not significant. So the author excluded it from the model due to lack of data. Furthermore, the model WLS is effective to explore results and relations between dependent and independent variable in the case of Saudi Arabia.

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 increasingly being imparted through these digital technologies. However, this change resulting from the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is often reported without in-depth analysis especially in emerging knowledge economies. This paper overcomes that barrier by exploring the motivating factors and de-motivating factors; as well as potential facilitators of online education. The paper also attempts to understand the enrolment, preference and awareness related to online education of the respondents with respect to country, gender, age, employment status and educational qualification, while presenting a comparative analysis of two emerging knowledge economies: India and Uganda. In the first phase, in order to explore motivating, de-motivating factors, and potential facilitators of online education, in-depth interviews were conducted with 51 learners. Data thus collected was checked for content validity through an extensive literature review. In the second phase, a questionnaire was administered to 252 respondents from both countries, drawn from a population of participants pursuing or having an intention to pursue online education. It explored any potential differences in enrolment, awareness, and preference for online-education on the basis of country, gender, age, employment status and existing educational qualification, in order to get better insights for further facilitation and improvement of online-education in emerging economies. To establish statistical validity, Mann-Whitney U-Tests and Kruskal-Wallis Tests were conducted. Based on this primary and secondary data, 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.

This paper examines the impact of the digital economy on sustainable development, using panel data from cities at the prefecture level and above in China from 2011 to 2019. The results indicate: (1) The digital economy is conducive to boosting growth, increasing employment, reducing energy consumption, and cutting emissions, thereby promoting sustainable development. These findings prove robust. (2) Mechanism test outcomes reveal that, from the perspective of technological innovation, the digital economy can promote sustainable development through increasing R&D input and enhancing innovation output. (3) An extended analysis of the risk of a digital "divide" demonstrates that "dividend" of the digital economy is primarily manifests in spurring economic growth, enhancing energy efficiency, and strengthening environmental protection in lagging regions, while the digital "divide" effect is manifested in the stronger employment stimulating effect of developed regions versus backward areas. The results of this study not only enrich the relevant research system, but also provide empirical evidence to support accelerating digital transformation, strengthening technological innovation governance, and advancing sustainable development., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests., (Copyright: © 2024 He et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

The contribution of university education to sustainable development of society has become one of the most important activities of higher education institutions. After 55 years of independence, it is time to take a critical look at the role of university education in nation building in Kenya. Since independence, access and difficulties of maintaining standards of quality and efficiency with marginal available resources--more recently highlighted by a commission on higher education report--have been some of the key challenges in university education and these have impacted on the sector's contribution to the country's development. Embracing secondary data sources, the purpose of this paper is to explore the contribution that university institutions have played in Kenyan development using a framework of human capital theory. The paper concludes that long-term economic growth can only be achieved through investment in a highly skilled workforce and university education is particularly critical in this regard.

This paper reports the findings of the perceptions and attitudes towards sustainable development among Malaysian undergraduates. The study was carried out involving 154 undergraduates from five universities in Malaysia. This research was conducted based on a survey whereby the respondents were given a questionnaire to gauge their perception and attitude towards sustainable development. The output of the analyses showed that the respondents have positive perceptions and attitudes towards all sustainability dimensions--environmental, economic, and social--except for economic and social bound issues. These findings suggest that the educators who are involved in sustainable development education need to focus on economic and social bound aspects. Overall, the findings showed that the sustainable development education in higher education institutions has cultivated an appropriate sense of responsibility towards sustainability among their undergraduate students. As such, this investigation serves as a cornerstone to which the current paradigm of sustainable development education can be examined for further improvement by related stakeholders.

In this paper, it was tried to consider the current state of normative support for the development of strategic planning documents in the field of Russian education. The strategy for the development of education (DoE), as an industry document of strategic planning, has not been adopted in the Russian Federation (RF) to date. The article attempts to generalize the developments in this area, considers several international documents and projects of strategies for the development of Russian education (DRE), national strategies focused on them. The analysis of regional strategy for the DoE, which is either component of strategies for socioeconomic development of the region, or separate concepts that are focused on municipal development strategies. Due to the lack of a strategic document at the Federal level, regional development concepts are mostly aimed at solving regional problems in the field of education, at a process approach, and, in fact, are not focused on solving breakthrough problems and taking into account all-Russian and global challenges. It is concluded that the Russian educational system cannot develop effectively in the course of planning only national projects that have their own time horizon; to solve this problem, a strategy for the DRE space is necessary, which can provide guidelines for the development of each educational organization.

The growing population of young people in the world today makes them an indispensable factor in international, regional, national and local development today. The UN World Programme of Action for Youth (WPAY) and the African Union's African Youth Charter all attest to the concern development stakeholders pay to youth development. This paper analysis youth policy within 9 member states of the Central African Sub region, showcasing the vital, yet significant role that polities are creating in fostering an enabling environment for youth participation. It explores the tenets of youth policy within this sub region by depicting how the participation of youths in societal activities and decision making instances should be an asset and a prerequisite for sustainable economic growth and social development. It also expresses abysmal concern about the magnitude of youth unemployment and underemployment throughout in Africa and its profound implications for the future of our societies, particularly those residing in the Central African sub region. The study is descriptive and applies a qualitative approach based on expert interviews and desk research. It employs the explanatory case study approach, and the combined anthropological research techniques through the use of key informant interview, written records and non-participant observations. The authors also conducted research in major databases like google scholar, PUB Med with the search phrase being youth policies, participation and youth governance. The 2016 Youth Development Index Report indicates that all 9 Central African countries have a low index, and 4 of the 9 countries are ranked in the bottom 10 of the classification. The findings also reveal that conflicts, underdevelopment and lack of political willingness are customarily accountable for the lagging of this Sub region in youth policy matters. The paper also proposes indicators to monitor and evaluate Youth Policies in the Central African Sub region, using the model proposed by Tanya BASARAB, develop initiatives to promote youth participation, and encourage networking among youth organizations and institutions with the Central African Sub region.

The development of vital competencies and a mindset to rethink products, production, and business models in engineering and design students is presently of great importance. These future professionals will play a key role in the development of sustainable products. Within Eco-design and Eco-efficiency curricular unit, an assignment was developed that consisted of the development of an eco-design and eco-efficiency study of a given product, provided by a real industrial company. In this paper, the challenge description and application are reported, as well as the key conclusions.

This paper is a discussion of the relationship between women education and sustainable economic development in Kenya and its implications for curriculum development and implementation processes. The argument advanced in this paper is that the solution to the development problems in Kenya and other developing nations lies on women education. Indeed, women education is one of the initiatives that can propel Kenya in the achievement of Millennium Development Goals. In addition, women education can facilitate the achievement of Kenya Vision 2030 which aims at making Kenya a newly industrializing, middle income country providing high quality life for all its citizens by the year 2030. The paper provides recommendations on the way forward for women education in Kenya as well as the implications for curriculum development and implementation processes.

Purpose: The surging demand for higher education in Africa for expedited socio-economic growth and global sustainable development demands customising gains made elsewhere for local benefit through quality provision. This study contributes to local and international discourses on the refinement of results-based university learning content determination on the lines of the Bologna Process, and advocates the development of situationally relevant curricula for successful national advancement in Zimbabwe. Design/methodology/approach: The qualitative study uses records and documentary analysis, interviews and meetings with key participants involved in shaping academic processes at one of the country's young and fragile universities. The introspective research approach enabled the cumulative experiential and reflective contributions of participants to shape both the dialogue and follow-up action on the adoption of minimum bodies of knowledge in university curriculum reform. Findings: Participants celebrated efforts to pit harmonisation alongside autonomy in academic discourses, and suggested improvements on the mechanisms to define policy and operational frameworks for diversely-oriented academic establishments. They lauded and interrogated the discourse around minimum bodies of knowledge, calling for further critical research and analysis for defining clarity on its harmonisation function. Originality/value: This paper traverses the rapidly expanding Zimbabwe higher education system's endeavours to regulate mandates and operations, in pursuit of relevance, quality and excellence and examines stakeholder efforts at determining streamlined university curricula. It contributes uniquely to collective regulation of multiple institutions towards quality academic agendas that underpin the life-long competences of the institutions' graduates.

Germany has only recently started to discuss the possible contribution, on a conceptual basis, of post-colonial theory to development education. Drawing on key policy papers, this article explores how post-colonial and antiracist critiques of German development education have changed the field in the past decade. It first provides the history of development education in Germany and sketches the recent, decade-long debate on post-colonial perspectives in the field. The article then puts forward how development education policy deals with the topics of development, colonialism and demographics. While colonial legacies had been a topic for debate in earlier times, a decidedly post-colonial critique only entered the field about a decade ago and continues to serve as a point of tension.

Achieving high-quality development of the city requires actively promoting coordinated digitalization and low-carbon development. Previous studies have focused on the unidirectional impact of urban digitalization on low-carbonization and there is a lack of research on their interactions. This study uses the generalized spatial three-stage least squares method and the spatial simultaneous equation to investigate the endogenous interactions between urban digitalization and low-carbonization. The properties of the spatiotemporal evolution are then examined using linked coordination degree models, kernel density, and spatial statistical approaches. Finally, using the spatial panel metering model, this study empirically investigates the motivations behind the synergistic advancement of digitalization and low-carbonization. The results show that: (1) There is an endogenous interaction between urban digitalization and low-carbonization and that this interaction pattern is closely linked to geographical proximity. (2) In general, both urban digitalization and low-carbonization have a positive spatial impact and a negative spatial interaction, and their coordination levels have a significant spatial impact. (3) Throughout the research period, the coordination degree of urban digitalization and low carbonization continued to increase, showing a positive spatial correlation and a balanced development trend. (4) Economic development, industrial structure, and human capital accumulation are vital internal drivers of the synergistic advancement of urban digitalization and low carbonization. Government capacities and technological innovations are key external factors that contribute to the synergistic advancement of urban digitalization and low-carbonization. Overall, the paper is essential not only to deepen understanding of the relationship between urban digitalization and low-carbonization but also to formulate policies for their coordinated development., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Siliang Guo. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Agricultural and Rural Green Development (ARGD) and economic growth are major challenges prevalent in China, but also in other developing countries. A notable gap in current literature lies in the limited holistic approach to agriculture and rural areas, with scant attention being paid to the spatiotemporal evolution of ARGD and its coordination relationship with economic growth. This paper first offers a theoretical analysis of the interactive relationship between ARGD and economic growth and subsequently examines the policy implementation process in China in this regard. It observes 31 provinces in China from 1997 to 2020 to uncover the spatiotemporal evolution of Agricultural and Rural Green Development Efficiency (ARGDE). Using the coupling coordination degree (CCD) model and the local spatial autocorrelation model, this paper analyses the coordination relationship and spatial correlation between ARGDE and economic growth. The results show that ARGDE in China exhibited a phased growth trend and was greatly affected by policies during 1997-2020. The interregional ARGD produced a hierarchical effect. However, provinces with a higher ARGDE did not necessarily exhibit faster growth, leading to a differential pattern of optimization that involved continuous optimization, phased optimization, and continuous deterioration. Over a long period, ARGDE exhibited a trend of significant upward leaps or jumps. Finally, the CCD between ARGDE and economic growth improved, with a clear trend of high-high agglomeration characteristics that shifted from the eastern and northeastern provinces to the central and western ones. This suggests that promoting "quality agriculture" and "green agriculture" can have practical significance in accelerating the development of ARGD. In the future, it is vital to promote ARGD's transformation while mitigating the risk of degrading the coordinated relationship between ARGD and economic growth., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper, (Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Through interactions with the recently formed Cooperative of the Institute of Urban Agriculture and Nutrition (CIUAN), a catalyst initiative co-governed by community organizations and academia to engage in mutually beneficial research and teaching projects, Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is supporting community efforts to bring healthy food to urban environments. This paper will discuss an innovative model, Sustainable Research and Economic Development model, to involve undergraduate students in interdisciplinary community-based research exploring pathways for urban agriculture and urban farmers markets to turn blighted properties into gardens, or rice paddies, as part of a larger metropolitan community economic development effort.

Improvement in the environmental quality has been seen as a major concern worldwide, and a crucial agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG's). In this study, we examined the causal impacts of economic growth, financial development, nuclear energy, government stability, and socioeconomic conditions on the environmental quality of China, using quarterly data, covering the period 1984-2018. We used different proxies for environmental quality, i.e., Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions, ecological footprints, and load capacity factor, and a unique methodology named Fourier quantile causality, recently recommended by Cheng et al. (2021), for the first time in case of China. We find that nuclear energy, and government stability are positively causing the environmental quality, while economic growth, financial development, and socioeconomic conditions are degrading the environmental quality in China, since they are linked with increased income and energy consumption. Furthermore, all the explanatory variables are largely sensitive on different quantiles to affect the environmental quality; however, economic growth is a highly causing environmental degradation. Our study suggests that increasing nuclear energy consumption along with green financial measures that simultaneously support economic growth and socioeconomic conditions can be effective tools for improving environmental quality and realizing the SDGs in China., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Globally, nations are increasingly focusing on green innovation in their environmental protection efforts as part of sustainable development, and digital finance is playing a vital role in enhancing green innovation. Employing annual data from 220 prefecture-level cities between 2011 and 2019, we empirically analyze the connections among environmental performance, digital finance, and green innovation via the Karavias panel unit root test with structural breaks, the Gregory-Hansen structural break cointegration test and pooled mean group (PMG) estimation. The following four points are the key conclusions: (1) The results support cointegration links between these variables when structural breaks are considered. (2) The PMG estimation outcomes indicate that green innovation and digital finance may have a favorable long-term effect on environmental performance. (3) For better environmental performance and more green innovation, the level of digitalization of digital finance is crucial. (4) The potential of digital finance and green innovation to improve environmental performance has not been fully realized in the western region of China., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Resilience theory plays a pivotal role in promoting sustainable urban development and the long-term stable development of the national economy. Based on the "scale-density-form" model of urban resilience, this paper shifts the perspective of urban resilience from the eastern region with higher level of economic development and better infrastructure construction to the arid northwest region with more fragile ecological environment and weaker urban development potential, which enriches the connotation and mechanism of urban resilience to a certain extent. Using ArcGIS platforms, statistical data and remote sensing data as data sources, this paper analyzes the urban resilience of four southern Xinjiang regions (Aksu Administrative Office, Kashgar Administrative Office, Kizilsu Kirgiz Autonomous Prefecture and Hotan Administrative Office) in time and space from 2000 to 2020 using a three-dimensional resilience analysis framework based on scale, density and morphology. The results show that the urban de-development of the study area faces a strong scale safety constraint due to the small available land area in the study area, which leads to its small urban construction land area. The county- and city-scale elasticity levels of Aksu Administrative Office and Kashgar Administrative Office are higher than the average level of the study area, while most of the counties and cities in Kizilsu Kirgiz Autonomous Prefecture and Hotan Administrative Office are lower than the average level of the study area, with large differences between counties and cities. The geographical location of the study area determines the backwardness of the region in terms of ideology, production methods and technology, which seriously restricts the development of local society and economy. In terms of density resilience, there are large differences among counties and cities in the study area, and the density resilience of Aksu, Kashgar and Kucha is much higher than that of other counties and cities. In terms of morphological resilience, with the increasing prominence of ecological status, the urban landscape layout of the study area has changed significantly, leading to changes in the distance between its blue-green landscape and gray-white landscape, which in turn causes changes in morphological resilience. Based on the above findings, initiatives and paths for resilience regulation in the study area are proposed in terms of scale, density and morphology. The study also has a reference value for local urban safety development.

With the environmental problems brought about by the extensive economic development model attracting more and more global attention, sustainable development has become a hot topic in transformation and development of contemporary enterprises. In the context of the digital economy, there is a lack of conclusive evidence regarding whether and how enterprises rely on digital capabilities to improve green efficiency and achieve sustainable development, especially for new ventures. Therefore, based on the knowledge creation spiral theory, this paper examines the relationship between digital capabilities, green knowledge creation, and sustainable development of new ventures. The study tested its hypotheses on a sample of 316 Chinese new ventures. The results showed that digital capabilities can positively affect environmental, economic, and social performance of new ventures and support their sustainable development; green knowledge creation plays a mediating role in the relationship between digital capabilities and sustainable development, and green pressure positively moderates the relationship between green knowledge creation and sustainable development; furthermore, green pressure also moderates the process of digital capabilities influencing sustainable development through green knowledge creation, and that moderated mediation role is significant. According to the bootstrap mediating effect test, both the direct effect and indirect effect are significant. Overall, our research results provide important insights for new ventures to promote sustainable development through digitalization. Therefore, managers should pay more attention to digital construction in the strategic layout of new ventures, and they should advocate the concept of green knowledge so that the goal of sustainable development can be achieved with the drive for digitalization.

Evaluating the level of green development is of great significance to better implement the concept of green development. By constructing an evaluation index system for green development, this paper comprehensively uses the entropy weight Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method and coefficient of variation method to evaluate the green development level of 30 provinces in China from 2010 to 2019 and analyzes the regional differences of green development in China. The research findings are as follows: First, the level of green development in China is low but shows a slow rise trend, from 2010 to 2019; China's green development level rises from 0.274 to 0.317, an increase of 15.7%. Secondly, regional differences of green development in China are obvious, with the level ranking from high to low as eastern, western, and central regions. Third, regional differences in China's green development first widen and then narrow, with the variation coefficient of green development in 30 provinces and eastern, central, and western regions of China showing an inverted U-shaped trend of first increasing and then decreasing. Fourth, the regional difference of green development in eastern China is largest, followed by western China, and the smallest is central China. Finally, based on research findings, relevant policy recommendations are put forward.

Sustainable development seeks to strike a balance between economic growth, social well-being and environmental protection. It should be integrated into financial development as well. As a consequence, banks are realising changes in their roles, decision-making, and operations. This paper aims to introduce a structured literature outlook about the different interpretations of sustainable financial development (SFD) on micro and macro levels. The literature mapping is focusing on three main contexts. The basic assumption of the paper is that it is crucial to emphasise the importance of country-level economic growth, the indicators used to determine the level of financial development and the resilience of the financial intermediary actors. As a consequence, the paper represents some existing results in terms of these three contexts. This gives the future basis for the efficient interpretation of sustainable financial development aspects in the operation and the decision-making processes of financial institutions and also for policy-making institutions on the macro-level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(1) Background: Under the background of building a new pattern of "double cycle" development, the green meaning of the digital economy is highly valued. The innovative feature of the digital economy is forming a new economic growth pole, and gradually becomes the driving force for China's economic restructuring and green development; (2) methods: this paper empirically tests whether the digital economy can promote green development by using various econometric models based on panel dataset with 30 provinces from 2011 to 2019 in mainland China and measuring the development level of the digital economy and the greening index; (3) results: it is found that the digital economy can directly boost green development in greening degree of economic growth, resources and environment-carrying potential, and government policy support. The digital economy's influence on green development has an inverted U-shaped trend; environmental control is an effective regulatory variable with a substitution effect on green development. With an obvious regional heterogeneity, the digital economy promotes green development; the digital economy can greatly affect green growth through technical innovation through mechanism analysis. The robustness test supports the above conclusion; (4) conclusions: the findings provide a foundation for multi-party policymakers to effectively formulate and implement policies for the digital economy that encourage green growth.

In recent years, there has been a significant rise in the importance of sustainability in business and personal life. Unsustainable techniques are used throughout the whole lifecycle of the clothing and textiles business, from the time it is made to the time it is recycled or thrown away. The garment sector and its customers must be ready for a more sustainable future as the government, corporations, and society turn their focus toward it. An investigation of how the apparel design industry (ADI) might adhere to the global value chain (GVC) in light of sustainable economic development (SED) and their relevance in China. This study analyzes the ADI moves up from one functional level to another within the global apparel value chain and what factors allow them to break into the global market. Researchers demonstrate that the existing sustainable operations in the AD industry are a long way from attaining the aims of economic development going hand in hand with the goals of economic sustainability by studying both the relevant literature and the industrial practices in the sector. This study relies on various case studies, proposes the "apparel global value chain" of governance-based sustainability, explores the implications of these models for areas with very varied degrees of development and diverse AD structures, and considers their implications for regional development and sustainability. As a development of a better knowledge of how fashion design contributes to economic sustainability. The study aims to examine how ADI uses economically sustainable techniques and how designers contribute to the creation of environmentally friendly goods., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known conflicts of financial interest or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 Dan Yu and Peipei Zhao.)

Background: China has been exploring a sustainable development path that harmonizes economic growth and environmental protection, targeting to build a beautiful China. The role of green finance in adjusting the misallocation of financial resources and leading the green sustainable development of the real economy is receiving increasingly more attention. Currently, green credit accounts for more than 90% of the total green finance funding in China and constitutes the most significant component of the green finance matrix. Whether green credit effectively promotes the green and sustainable development of the regional economy largely determines the success of China's economic green transformation., Objective: Existing studies of green credit mainly focus on its influences on financing, investment, and emission reduction of environmental pollution industries or companies. Extending the literature by exploring whether green credit is effective in promoting green sustainable development and what impact green credit exerts on the upstream (energy inputs), midstream (technological innovation), and downstream (pollution outputs) stages of the green sustainable development value chain, is the leading research objective of this paper., Methods: This paper discusses the impact of green credit on green sustainable development based on city panel data from 2012 to 2019. The level of green sustainable development is calculated by the GML index based on SBM directional distance function. The city-level green credit scale is calculated from the green credit issued by banks, weighted by the density of bank branches in a city. Synthetic control methods are employed in the robustness analysis to reduce the impact of endogeneity issues., Results and Conclusion: The results of this paper indicate that green credit can promote green sustainable development and the impact gradually strengthens over time as the incremental implementations of complementary policies with substantial constraints and incentives, through which pollution control and economic growth achieve a "win-win" situation. Furthermore, the results indicate that green credit reduces the overall amount of energy inputs while optimizing the energy input structure. However, green credit does not boost the green technological level and even crowds out high technical value green innovations. Besides, the pollution reduction effects of green credit are associated with the strength of green credit constraints and the importance of pollution industries in the local economy, which means green credit performs better pollution reduction effects in regions with relatively strong green credit binding effects or in regions where pollution industries are not local economic pillars. The empirical results are further validated through robustness tests, including changing scope and measurement variables and applying the synthetic control method., Limitations: Although this paper provides valuable contributions to the research area of green credit and green sustainable development, specific limitations exist in the current study. Firstly, as the official information disclosure of green credit in China is not sufficient, existing studies, including ours, could only use estimation methods through different perspectives to measure green credit, which is overall logical and reasonable but may lose some accuracy. Secondly, since there might be a certain degree of lag in the effect of green credit on the economy, the dynamic impact and long-term effects of green credit deserve further study. Thirdly, considering the characteristics of the Chinese administrative systems, introducing the behavior of local governments and local officials into the analysis of green credit and green sustainable development could be valuable., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2022 Bao, He. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Due to the successful holding of the Winter Olympics, China's enthusiasm for ice and snow sports has soared, and its enthusiasm for ice and snow tourism has also been further stimulated. At present, most of China's ice and snow tourism (IST) attractions are concentrated in the three eastern provinces. At the same time, due to the increasingly harsh environment, the natural landscape of IST is also shrinking. Therefore, this paper aims at studying the strategies of IST to optimize the ecological environment and economic growth from the perspective of sustainable development. First of all, this paper makes a certain introduction to the current situation of IST. After that, the current IST resources in China were analyzed, and the three northeastern provinces were taken as the research objects, and the distribution location, traffic conditions, and development trends of IST resources were studied in detail. Then, the autoregressive model is used to fit the tourism resources and tourist growth with the economic growth, and combined with the trend shown by the economic growth model, a strategy for the sustainable development of IST is proposed. The experimental results of this paper prove that the regional system attribute of IST resources and economic growth model is between 3 and 5, and the average is about 3.6, which shows that the growth of tourism resources has a positive correlation with economic growth. Therefore, from the perspective of sustainable development, the economic growth of the IST industry should also focus on the protection and humidity development of natural ice and snow landscapes., Competing Interests: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (Copyright © 2022 Xiejun Cheng and Donghui Zhang.)

Urban economic development is crucial to regional economy and people's life, and enhancing the efficiency of urban economic development is of great significance to boost sustainable and healthy economic and social development. In this paper, from the perspective of sustainable development, data of 104 cities in China's Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) from 2004 to 2019 are selected, and the urban resource consumption index and urban pollutant emission index are synthesized as new input-output indicators using the Time Series Global Principal Component Analysis (GPCA), combined with the Global Malmquist-Luenberger (GML) Index Model, Standard Deviation Ellipse (SDE) Model to measure the total factor productivity index of urban economic development in China's YREB and analyze its spatial and temporal evolution. The results show that from 2004 to 2019, the total factor productivity index of urban economic development in China's YREB showed an overall fluctuating upward trend with an average annual growth of 5.8%, and the analysis by decomposing indicators shows that the growth of total factor productivity of urban economic development in China's YREB is mainly influenced by the growth of technological progress. Meanwhile, there are obvious regional differences in the efficiency of urban economic development in China's YREB, with the largest difference in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, the second largest in the upper reaches, and the smallest in the lower reaches. From 2004 to 2019, the efficiency center of gravity of urban economic development efficiency in the YREB has always been located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River region. The spatial distribution pattern of urban economic development efficiency in the YREB is dominated by the northeast-southwest direction and tends to be concentrated in the study time period., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

"Green economy and sustainable development" has become the focus of contemporary world economic development. As an important part of green financial instruments, green credit has become a hot topic. This paper investigates whether the Green Credit Policy has had any impact. Does it have a binding effect on the debt financing of heavily polluting enterprises? Using the Green Credit Guidelines as the starting point for the implementation of the Green Credit Policy, this paper takes Chinese A-share listed enterprises from 2004 to 2020 as the research sample, and applies the propensity score matching combined with difference-in-difference (PSM-DID) method to analyze the impact of green credit policies on the long- and short-term financing scale of heavily polluting enterprises. The study found that the implementation of the Green Credit Policy significantly suppressed the long-term financing of heavily polluting enterprises, but allowed for the expansion of short-term financing for heavily polluting enterprises. Compared with the state-owned enterprises, the Green Credit Policy has a more significant impact on non-state-owned enterprises in terms of suppressing long-term financing and increasing short-term financing, suggesting that the Green Credit Policy is affected by the "credit discrimination" of non-state-owned enterprises. Therefore, the Green Credit Policy still needs to be improved. This study provides empirical evidence of the effectiveness of green credit policies in China, and offers suggestions for further green credit policies in the future.

Developing high-quality manufacturing industries and realizing green transformation are relatively pressing issues in the 21st century. Existing studies only focus on the economic or environmental effects of agglomeration, and the combined effects of manufacturing agglomeration have been neglected. Therefore, by referring to industrial agglomeration theory and constructing a theoretical analytical framework for manufacturing agglomeration and green development, this paper adopts the spatial panel Durbin model and mediating effect model with the panel data from China's Yangtze River Economic Belt to empirically test the influence and its mechanism of manufacturing agglomeration on green development. The results show that: (1) There are significant temporal and spatial differences in green development in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Overall, green development has maintained a steady increase on the timeline, but each region shows a hierarchical structure of "multiple peaks-multiple centers". (2) There is a typical inverted U-shaped relationship between manufacturing agglomeration and green development, and the linear and quadratic coefficients of manufacturing agglomeration are -0.585 and -0.167, respectively. (3) Under the constraints of temporal, spatial, and urban heterogeneity, the impacts of manufacturing agglomeration on green development show significant differences. (4) Manufacturing agglomeration affects green development through three paths: the labor force upgrading effect, industrial structure upgrading effect, and technological innovation effect. The study can provide a theoretical and empirical basis for the green development of developing countries around the world.

While promoting the economic growth, energy has also brought pollution problems to the world environment, which has gradually become a bottleneck impeding sustainable economic development. In view of the rapid evolution of urbanization and industrialization, economic growth is increasingly dependent on the energy consumption, the development of the two is difficult to coordinate, and the internal contradictions are becoming increasingly serious, which hinders the sustainable development of economic growth. This study establishes the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth according to the energy Kuznets curve and studies the future trend of China's sustainable development through the comparative analysis of the energy Kuznets curve of the United States and Germany. The results show that, at the turning point of energy consumption, China's energy economic rate is higher than that of Germany and the United States. In addition, in terms of urbanization rate and industrial structure, although China's tertiary industry has made a breakthrough, it is still lower than that of the United States and Germany, but the level of urbanization rate has made significant progress. In short, China has obvious advantages in future economic development and has a late developing advantage compared with the United States and Germany. This paper makes an empirical analysis of the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in OECD countries and finds out the turning point of energy consumption, so as to provide a theoretical basis for coordinating China's energy consumption and economic growth., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Liuyi Dai et al.)

Green and smart city is an optimal choice for cities to realize their modernization of governance capacity and sustainable development. As such, it is necessary to clarify the evolutionary characteristics and driving mechanism of urban green and smart development level (GSDL) systematically. From the perspective of green total factor productivity (GTFP), this study adopted the SBM-GML (slack-based model & global Malmquist-Luenberger) method to measure the urban GSDL considering smart input-output elements. Based on the panel data of China's 232 prefecture-level cities from 2005 to 2018, the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of urban GSDL were explored, and the factors and structural mutation points affecting urban GSDL were analyzed with quantile regression tests and threshold regression tests. The findings of this paper showed that (1) there is an upward trend in the volatility of urban GSDL from 2005 to 2018, in which the eastern region was highest, followed by the central and western regions, and the differentiation showed no converge among regions; (2) the effect of technical progress and technical efficiency improvement on the urban GSDL was demonstrated with a fluctuating "Two-Wheel-Drive" trend on the whole; (3) the urban GSDL was promoted by the opening-up level and urban scale significantly, while inhibited by the level of economic development and government size. Additionally, the effects of industrial structure, financial development level, and human capital level on the urban GSDL were distinctive at different loci; (4) the threshold effects of economic and financial development level on improving the positive effects of industrial structure and opening-up level on urban GSDL were significant. These findings may enrich the research literature on the evolutionary heterogeneity of green and smart cities and provide theoretical and practical exploration for the construction of green and smart cities.

To promote urbanization in the next stage, it is of great significance to explore the ecological efficiency of green ecological regions and advance the sustainable development of a social economic system. However, spatial heterogeneity has not been fully considered in the existing evaluation models or methods for regional ecological efficiency (REE), and the corresponding decisions on sustainable development are not the optimal solutions. To solve the problems, this paper explores the evaluation of REE and intelligent decision support for sustainable development by analyzing environmental big data. Firstly, the spatiotemporal evolution of REE was examined based on environmental big data to clarify the spatial layout of REE and the sources of the spatial differences. Next, a multiobjective optimal decision-making model was established for the sustainable development of a regional ecosystem, and the solving method was presented for the model. The proposed model was proved valid through experiments., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Lelai Shi et al.)

Regional collaboration and the division of economic zones have been widely discussed for sustainable development. This paper aims at building a framework for analyzing the provincial division of economic zone (DEZ) via considering spatial interaction among regions based on the improved gravity model and clustering approaches. The proposed framework of province DEZ is applied in the case study of Hunan Province, China. The results reveal that Chenzhou city in the south of Hunan Province is always excluded from the DEZ due to its larger external gravity from other cities in neighboring provinces. It also shows that the city components of economic zones (EZs) have experienced a fluctuation at a higher degree from 2002 to 2006 to 2009 while it reached to a stable phase in 2013. Furthermore, cross-provincial regional integration and the highway construction have a significant impact on the change of city components of EZ. The findings are of great potential in regional planning that should be incorporated to the toolkit of regional policy and sustainable development for local governments., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

The term 'Blue Economy (BE)' is increasingly popular in modern environmental research. The concept seeks to explore ocean-based development opportunities with environmental stewardship and protection. Yet different scholars and actors adopt this term often in conflicting ways without attempting to explore the relevance and the link between the blue economy and the broader environment viz., total environment. The potential opportunities to resolve the conflicts require a better understanding of the impacts and/or interactions of the BE on the total environment. This paper aims to map the interface between the two for a better understanding of the total environment and implications for the BE. Using a systematic literature review, this study finds that the field of the blue economy in association with the total environment is very new and emerging in the literature, and the link between the BE and the total environment is increasingly being invoked, yet clarity on the link or interactions remain vague. By analysing the co-occurrence of selected keywords and networks, we present six clusters (three for general relationship, and the other three for specific dimensions of total environment). In a general relationship between the BE and the total environment, clusters of environmental sustainability, marine resource, and economic development are identified to link directly to the BE. In specific dimensions of the total environment, clusters of growth and sustainable development, spatial planning and environmental management, and environmental sustainability and the BE are presented. The analysis outcomes show that specific areas from the total environment (growth, spatial planning, environmental management, and environmental sustainability) are directly linked to the BE where a call for a wider range of studies in the future is identified., (Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Introduction and aim. The aim of this research poster is to explore the interconnections between climate change, energy consumption, and their impacts on public health. It seeks to raise awareness of the challenges and consequences these factors have on global health and discuss potential mitigation strategies. Material and methods. The poster is based on two primary research papers, one focusing on the relationship between climate change, conflict, and health, and the other examining the connection between economic growth and energy consumption in the context of sustainable development. I have extracted key information from these articles, analyzed the relevant data, and combined the findings to create a comprehensive overview. Analysis of literature. The literature analysis involves comparing and contrasting the findings from the selected studies, highlighting the causal pathways linking climate change with conflict and health risks, and examining the economic growth-energy consumption relationship from the perspective of sustainable development. Conclusion. The research poster concludes that climate change and energy consumption have significant and far-reaching impacts on public health. Greater understanding of these connections is crucial for mitigating climate change, promoting sustainable development, and addressing the health risks associated with resource scarcity and conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scientific analysis of spatial-temporal differentiation characteristics and driving factors of illegal land use is of great significance for the formulation and optimization of policies to control the emergence of illegal land use. This paper establishes two variable systems of illegal land use and its driving factors, defined the multidimensional characteristic variables of illegal land use and analyzes the relationships among them by the Pearson's correlation coefficient; In addition, the spatial-temporal characteristics of each variable of illegal land use from 2004 to 2017 are described by the spatial autocorrelation analysis; Finally, based on the geographical detectors, the influence direction and degree of the factors of economic structure, social structure and land market behavior on the characteristics of different illegal land use are studied. The results show that the spatial agglomeration of different characteristics of illegal land use had been weakening from 2004 to 2017, but the rate of weakening was different, and L-L agglomeration changed between Xinjiang and other central-western provinces, H-H agglomeration changed in the coastal regions of the central-eastern of China, the level and ability of the central government and local governments to govern illegal land use is constantly improving on the whole; the compositional factors of economic development structure, social development structure, and land market behavior of driving factors had different influence in the degree, the location or the direction of different characteristics of illegal land use. According to the spatial-temporal characteristics and the differences of driving factors, managers can formulate differentiated illegal land use control policies, which will help to control the occurrence of illegal land use and help the settlement of illegal land use cases, and ultimately achieve sustainable development.

As economic development continues to advance globally, countries are increasingly focused on the green transformation of their economies. This paper employs a data envelopment analysis (DEA) model and entropy weighting methodology to construct and assess an indicator system for economic green transformation, taking into account environmental pollution. The analysis is based on panel data from 215 prefecture-level cities in China between 2015 and 2019. The two-way fixed effects model and moderating effect model are employed to investigate the influence of land finance on economic green transformation and to ascertain the moderating effect mechanism of local government debt. The study's conclusions are as follows: (1) Land finance impedes the transition to a green economy. (2) Local government debt is a major factor that restricts the influence of land finance on the transition to a green economy; as local government debt levels rise, land finance's role in impeding the transition to a green economy rises, and a positive moderating effect occurs. (3) Depending on the urban geographic location, the size of the economy and other factors, the impact of local government debt and land finance on the economic green transition varies. This empirical study demonstrates that the more local government debt there is in an eastern region or city with a bigger economic output scale, the more of an inhibitory influence land finance has on the economic transition to a green economy. In light of this, the paper suggests that the land finance policy be updated at the appropriate time, that the land market be regulated, that the government's reliance on land finance be gradually decreased, that the nature and amount of public debt be actively optimised, that the industrial infrastructure be enhanced to facilitate the transition towards a more environmentally sustainable economy, and that other suggestions be made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The availability of sufficient and trustworthy energy services at the reasonable cost in a securely and environmentally friendly manner, and conventionality with economic and social development requirements, is an important factor of sustainable development (SD). Energy plays a significant role in eliminating poverty and increasing living standards. However, most of the present energy forms of energy supply and consumption are unsustainable. This paper analyzes the association between economic growth (EG), energy consumption (EC), and sustainable development (SD) among other economic factors. The sample of 14 developed and developing member states of the Union for the Mediterranean (UFM) was selected. To deal with the endogeneity issue, the system- generalized method of moment (GMM) model was employed. Moreover, panel co-integration, Granger causality tests, and robustness tests were employed to examine the long-run and short-run causality among variables of interest. The results confirmed the short-run dynamic association from sustainable development (SD) to energy consumption (EC), and economic growth (EG) to sustainable development (SD). Moreover, the results validated the presence of long-run equilibrium association in the equations of EC and sustainable development (SD). The findings of this study will be supportive for the policymakers to formulate sustainable energy policies to stimulate the economic growth (EG) in the way of sustainable development (SD) in the UFM countries.