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Achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) has garnered significant attention from academia and policymakers worldwide. In this study, we examine the impact of ICT, technological innovation (TI), and environmental policy stringency (EPS) on SDI, considering the moderating role of governance quality (GQI) and transport infrastructure (TIS). A comprehensive dataset of 17 advanced nations is utilized from 1996 to 2021. To capture the dynamic and extreme marginal impacts of these policy instruments on SDG attainment, we employ the advanced technique of Feasible Generalized Least Square (FGLS). The results demonstrate that ICT has a positive and significant effect on SDGs, particularly when combined with high levels of governance quality (GOV) and transport infrastructure (TIS). Likewise, TI has a positive impact on SDGs, especially in the presence of strong governance. Furthermore, EPS exhibits a positive association with SDGs. The findings also reveal that while governance hurts SDGs, this effect diminishes when combined with higher levels of ICT, TI, and EPS, and when TIS positively moderates the relationships. The robustness estimations using DOLS and PCSE methods validate the FGLS findings. These results underscore the importance of ICT, TI, and EPS in advancing sustainable development. Moreover, they highlight the significance of good governance and robust transport infrastructure in maximizing the positive effects of these factors. These findings hold implications for policymakers and stakeholders involved in promoting sustainable development., 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 © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This key article seeks to empirically examine the impact of geopolitical risk, economic policy uncertainty (EPU), natural resources, and renewable energy on a country's ecological footprint, a proxy for environmental sustainability on a national scale. We conducted a quantitative study using the cross-sectional autoregressive distributive lag, augmented mean group, and common correlated effect mean group estimation models, as well as a few tests such as the CD test, Westerlund's co-integration, and CIPS and CADF unit root tests, beginning in January 2000 and ending in January 2021, to determine the data's reliability. The findings indicate that while GPR and renewable energy sources lessen the ecological footprint (EF), EPU and the use of non-renewable energy enhance the EF. The study's scope is narrowed to the BRICS nations, but its implications for expanding existing knowledge and shaping policy are enormous. The results can aid decision-makers in preparing for the possibility of unexpected events causing harm to the economy. The reliability of the evidence can be strengthened by employing more stringent research methods. This study's dimensions reflect the current research paradigm. The research has policy implications for achieving sustainable development goals in emerging economies., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Carbon emissions have become a global challenge, and China, as the world's largest developing country, has a serious emissions problem. Developing green buildings is an important way of reducing carbon emissions. China's low-carbon city pilot policy may be an effective way of promoting green building development and reducing these emissions. This study uses the low carbon city pilot policy as a quasi-natural experiment and employs the staggered difference-in-differences method to investigate its impact on green building development. The results show that the low-carbon city pilot policy promotes green building development, and this policy promotes it by enhancing regional green innovation capacity, improving green total factor productivity at the firm and regional levels, and reducing the financing constraints of firms in the construction and real estate sectors. In addition, the promotion effect of the policy on green building development is stronger in western and non-resource-based regions and large-scale cities in China. This study contributes to the literature related to environmental policy, green building, and carbon emissions and supports the promotion of green building development and the reduction of carbon emissions., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Liu 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.)

Low carbon sustainable development (LCSD) has become an inevitable choice, for which China has put forward a "dual-carbon" policy. The purpose of this study is to capture the interaction between the environment and the economy in the context of this goal, thus evaluating LCSD level from a systematic perspective. This paper proposes a super slack based measurement (SBM) model with a non-equal weight structure to assess the LCSD level. Firstly, a maximum influence minimum redundancy (MIMR) index selection algorithm is designed to establish input and output index systems, which avoids redundancy indexes. Secondly, the objective function of the original super SBM employs an equal weight structure, which leads results inadequately reflect the research preferences. Therefore, the weights of indexes are introduced to form an improved super SBM. Finally, 40 cities along the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) are selected for empirical analysis. Results show that (1) the LCSD level of YRBE decreases from downstream to upstream to midstream; (2) Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Sichuan provinces have higher LCSD levels, while Hunan and Jiangxi provinces have lower levels; and (3) up to 2021, there are 32 effective cities and 8 ineffective cities. The research implies that balancing the economy-environment relationship is crucial for higher efficiency. The LCSD evaluation method not only reflects the coordination level between the economy and the environment, but also integrates the research preference into the results, providing decision support for the government to formulate carbon reduction policies and allocate resources., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The crucial role of environmental assessment quality has been recognised by environmental and sustainable development goals in addressing climate change challenges. By focusing on the key identifier of environmental assessment, progress can be made towards overcoming climate change issues effectively. The current study considers environmental commitments under COP28 to study the role of economic complexity, greenfield investments, and energy innovation in environmental degradation in newly industrialised economies from 1995 to 2021. We employ novel panel estimations from CS-ARDL, CS-DL, AMG, and CCEMG to confirm that economic growth and greenfield investments degrade environmental quality. On the other hand, energy innovation and urbanisation improve environmental sustainability. Lastly, we confirm the EKC hypothesis for economic complexity as well. Given the reported empirical findings, the study suggests policymakers must focus on economic complexity to transform industrial sectors' economic potential. Furthermore, foreign investment projects must be linked with environmental goals to increase renewable energy capacity., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

With the acceleration of urbanization in recent years, China has witnessed large-scale construction across its provinces, generating massive amounts of construction waste that pose challenges to environmental protection and sustainable development. This study evaluated the impact of construction waste policy intensity on its environmental efficiency. Firstly, the content analysis method was used to analyze the construction waste policy text quantitatively. Second, this study constructed a slack-based measure (SBM) model based on data envelopment analysis (DEA), considering resource input and construction waste output to measure environmental efficiency. Finally, we built and tested an econometric model of how policies affect environmental efficiency using the system generalized method of moments (SYS-GMM). The findings indicate a non-linear U-shaped link between policy intensity and environmental efficiency. Among all five control variables, population density, urbanization level, and technological innovation enhance environmental efficiency, while economic development and highway density will lower it. This study advances the research on construction waste policies and offers some insights for the construction industry to pursue sustainable development., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

The establishment of green finance reform and innovation (GFRI) pilot zone is an important measure of the Chinese government to urge enterprises to develop green transformation. This paper explores the impact of pilot policies in the GFRI pilot zone on corporate environmental investment. Based on 819 A-share listed enterprises from 2010 to 2020, our staggered difference-in-differences (staggered DID) estimation documents revealed that enterprises in the GFRI pilot zone significantly increased the corporate environmental investment efficiency but reduced the scale of corporate environmental investment.This conclusion remained robust after Propensity Scores Matching difference-in-differences (PSM-DID), replacing dependent variables, and shortening the time window. We contend that the increased research and development (R&D) expenditure and technological innovation are the potential mechanisms at work. Heterogeneity analysis showed that the establishment of GFRI improved the environmental investment efficiency of polluting enterprises but had no effect on green enterprises.Meanwhile, the effect of GFRI exhibited heterogeneity in the type of enterprise ownership. This paper evaluates the implementation effect of GFRI from the perspective of corporate environmental investment, and provides theoretical support and an empirical basis for green finance policy to serve China's green economy., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Yang 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.)

China has implemented a series of environmental policies aimed at promoting green and innovative development by enterprises, to mitigate the adverse effects of environmental pollution. However, the frequent revision and introduction of environmental policies have also increased enterprises' perception of environmental uncertainty. This study, based on the upper echelon theory, uses data from listed companies in China from 2011 to 2021 to construct an index of perceived environmental uncertainty of firms through textual analysis and empirically examines its impact on green innovation and its potential mechanisms and boundary effects. The results show that, first, perceived environmental uncertainty of firms has a noteworthy inhibiting impact on green innovation. Second, mechanism analysis reveals that perceived environmental uncertainty of firms inhibits green innovation mainly in two ways: reducing the level of transparency in corporate information and reducing R&D investment. Third, the moderating effect finds that government subsidies can mitigate the inhibitory impact of perceived environmental uncertainty on green innovation among firms. In other words, higher government subsidies correspond to a reduced inhibitory effect of perceived environmental uncertainty on green innovation among firms. In addition, heterogeneity analysis shows that this inhibition is more obvious in non-state-owned enterprises, small enterprises, and enterprises in non-heavy pollution industries. This study holds immense practical significance for enterprises in harnessing the opportunities of green innovation amidst perceived environmental uncertainty, facilitating progressive green development, and ultimately fostering the harmonized growth of economic and environmental benefits for enterprises., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

In our groundbreaking exploration, we meticulously delve into the relationship between environmental policy stringency, international trade dynamics, and financial openness within the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) spanning from 1996 to 2021. With a focus on critical variables such as economic growth and technological innovation, our empirical findings challenge conventional wisdom. Surprisingly, we found that those stringent environmental policies, when standing alone, do not invariably lead to reduce CO 2 emissions. Equally interesting is our startling discovery that the anticipated moderating influence of environmental policy stringency, catalyzed by trade and foreign direct investment, on the well-being of our environment does not materialize; contrarily, both trade and foreign direct investment moderating channels exhibit unanticipated positive correlations with CO 2 emissions. These revelations provoke us with the presence of a "pollution haven" phenomenon within the BRICS economies. Furthermore, our investigation reveals that, when examined individually, trade and foreign direct investment also appear to contribute to elevated emission levels. These findings provide a resolute solution to our research quandary, underlining the indispensable requirement for cutting-edge and robust environmental policies. These policies must possess the prowess to effectively counteract the adverse environmental consequences stemming from the amalgamation of global trade and financial integration. In doing so, they shall propel BRICS nations toward a future firmly grounded in principles of sustainability and ecological integrity., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Establishing effective climate control and reducing the ecological footprint (EF) are necessary for pursuing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular Goal 13. In this context, it is required to enhance the understanding of various factors that can either decrease or enhance the EF. In the literature to date, limited studies on external conflicts (EX) have reported diverse results, and also the impacts of government stability (GS) on EF are less explored. This study explores the roles of external conflicts, economic growth, and government stability on EF in the context of SDG-13. The study also contributes to the literature by examining the environmental effects of government stability and external conflicts for the first time in Pakistan. This research uses time-series methodologies on data from Pakistan from 1984 to 2018 for exploring the long-run relations and causal dynamics. The results unfolded that external conflicts stimulate and Granger cause EF and therefore expand environmental deterioration. Thus, limiting conflicts is in the favor of Pakistan to achieve SDG-13. Surprisingly, government stability also poses harmful impacts on environmental quality by enhancing the EF, indicating that stable governments focus on improving economic conditions rather than environmental quality. Moreover, the study proves the validity of the environmental Kuznets curve. Policy suggestions are made to move forward in achieving SDG-13 and to evaluate the effectiveness of government environmental policies., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. FundingThe author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

This paper examines the common themes delivered in studies on corporate reporting in relation to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Articles of the aforesaid studies were mostly acquired from Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) archives from year 2015 to 2022 in which the contents were carefully reviewed for selection. To systematise the literature, PRISMA 2020 statement is used. Descriptive analysis reveals an increase in publications on corporate SDG reporting, although most are focused on developed nations. The analysis also shows a scarcity of studies on the consumer goods, agricultural, fishery, and forestry sectors. Furthermore, current studies have yet to adopt a qualitative or mixed-method approach. There are fundamentally six themes that emerged from the review of literature-the degree of SDG engagement, the quality of SDG reporting, the determining factor in SDG reporting mechanism, the consequences of SDG reporting, the legitimisation approaches, as well as the institutional/stakeholder pressure. For determinants of SDG reporting, it is observed that environmental governance is not explored. This paper identifies the least addressed SDGs that businesses can focus on to accelerate their SDG contribution rate. This paper guides future research and informs decision-making by organisations and stakeholders interested in promoting sustainable development through SDG reporting., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The study investigated "Building Ecological Civilization: the Importance of Promoting Green Investments by Chinese Companies" to examine the complex connections between the factors affecting Chinese businesses' ecological performance (EP). An autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model is used in the study to analyze the impact of green investments (GI), the policy environment (PE), government support (GS), public awareness and perception (PAP), and technological capability (TC) on companies' earnings per share (EPS). The results show a strong correlation between GI and EP, indicating that businesses' growing use of green initiatives is essential for raising environmental sustainability. The study also shows that PE, TC, and EP have an inverse relationship, indicating the need for more supportive governmental policies and regulations and the effective adoption and implementation of green technologies. The interaction of GS and PAP significantly reduces the ecological impact of green investments, highlighting the significance of citizen involvement and the role of government in advancing ecological civilization. The findings also demonstrated that green investments, policy environments, public perception, and technology influence the ecological performance of businesses. They also demonstrate statistical robustness with low p-values. This information is essential for developing policies that support an ecological civilization, which is necessary for China and globally in light of the current climate crisis., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

In recent years, academics have paid more attention to green finance, and public companies have reached a broad consensus on the concept of timely environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure. Due to the close relationship between green finance and ESG, this presents an opportunity to determine whether green finance compels companies to actively disclose ESG. The sample for this study consists of China's non-financial A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2021, and the empirical findings demonstrate that green finance can positively influence the ESG performance of listed companies. Through an analysis of heterogeneity, this study reaches the following conclusions: state-owned enterprises, heavy pollution companies, and companies in low-carbon pilot cities perform better in terms of green finance's role in promoting ESG scoring. This study also introduces market concentration and social trust as the moderating variables, enriching the green finance research framework. Through the analysis of moderating variables, the 'black box' effect of green finance on ESG is disclosed, providing theoretical support for the government and companies to better comprehend the policy effect as well as a reference for reform and experimental promotion of green finance., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Using the difference-in-difference model and panel data from 283 Chinese cities from 2006 to 2019, this study assesses the effect on CO 2 emissions of an innovative city pilot policy and analyzes its mechanism using the mediation effect model. The findings demonstrate that the pilot policy significantly reduces urban carbon emissions overall, and this finding holds even after conducting several stability tests. Innovative pilot cities can cut carbon emissions by 11.5% compared to nonpilot cities and thus significantly impact carbon reduction. Reducing carbon emissions is possible through three mechanisms. These are the enrichment of cultural resources, the development of technological innovation levels, and the optimization of industrial structure. There is a significant lag in how the innovative city pilot policy affects this reduction. The emission reduction effects of innovative pilot policies on different pollution levels, regions, and cities of various sizes are heterogeneous. In the long run, the scope of pilot projects needs enlargement in an orderly manner, and specific policies should be implemented according to local conditions. Meanwhile, advanced technologies are required in cities of different scales to build innovative development mechanisms for carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, and environmental regulations should be strengthened to implement in urban areas the concept of green and sustainable ecological development., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Environmental regulation (ER) and industrial agglomeration (IA) are important factors that affect green development efficiency (GDE). However, there is a lack of studies on their relation in the context of the marine economy. This paper integrates ER, IA, and marine GDE (MGDE) into a unified analytical framework and uses balanced panel data from China's 11 coastal provinces during 2008-2019 to quantify the linear, nonlinear, and spatial spillover effects between the three using the spatial Durbin model (SDM) and threshold effect model. The results show that ER has a negative impact on local and surrounding MGDE through the direct and spatial spillover effects. IA has a positive impact on local and surrounding MGDE through direct and spatial spillover effects. The synergistic impact of ER and IA can significantly boost local and surrounding MGDE. When ER surpasses a certain threshold, it amplifies the positive impact of IA on MGDE. These findings offer theoretical and practical references for the Chinese government to formulate marine environmental governance and industrial development policies., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Since the reform and opening up, China's urbanization level has rapidly increased. However, urban civilization construction lags behind, creating a series of problems, such as environmental pollution, further restricting the healthy and sustainable development of cities. Therefore, China has carried out top-down civilized city construction led by the government. This paper regards the "national civilized city" selection implemented by the Chinese government as a quasi-natural experiment and empirically tests the impact of government-led civilized city construction on urban green innovation and the mechanism of this impact by using the progressive difference-in-differences (DID) model based on panel data of 281 Chinese cities from 2003 to 2018. The results show that civilized city construction contributes to increasing the level of urban green innovation, which is supported by a series of robustness tests conducted through variable substitution and sample adjustment. The quantile regression results show that the higher the level of green innovation, the stronger the green innovation effect of civilized city construction. This finding indicates that the marginal effect of green innovation in civilized city construction is gradually enhanced with the gradual increase in the level of green innovation in cities. The mediating effect analysis shows that civilized city construction can provide financial support for green innovation activities by promoting the expansion of the urban investment scale, which, in turn, increases the level of urban green innovation. In addition, environmental regulation can strengthen the promoting effect of civilized city construction on green innovation. These findings hold important theoretical and practical significance for understanding the green innovation effect of government-led civilized city construction and further leveraging the important role of government in the construction of the urban business environment as a means to promote urban investment clustering, lay the factor foundation for green innovation and strengthen the synergy between environmental regulation policies and civilized city construction policies., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Environmental sustainability investigation has been a hotly debated topic of the modern literature; however, past studies have primarily overlooked its transmissibility or spillover outreach across economies. Herein, we investigate the novel aspect of whether transportation-based environmental taxation spatially induces spillover impacts across Italy, Germany, and France over the 1994-2020 period by employing a simultaneous spatial equation with multi-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium modeling (DSGEM) framework. Transportation-based environmental taxation of the domestic economy negatively impacts its own investment and consumption, while it impacts the economy of neighboring economies positively. Change in output and investment in the domestic economy can be well explained by the environmental volatility of the domestic economy, whereas the environmental volatility of neighboring economies does not contribute much to explain the change in investment and output of the domestic economy. Volatility in pollution discharge occurs more by environmental volatility in the neighboring economy than in the domestic economy, and validating that environmental sustainability is transmissible across regions and economies. It urgently calls for environmental protection policies integrated and coordinated across the countries and regions to spread and capitalize on environmentally and economically favorable and sustainable effects globally. Achieving the spatially transmitted positive environmental and economic outcomes would help strengthen the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), with a particular focus on Climate Action (SDG13), Sustainable Production and Consumption (SDG12), and Affordable and Sustainable Energy for All (SDG7)., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

As a typical practice of regional innovation policy, national innovation demonstration zones (NIIDZ) plays an important role in empowering green technology innovation. Analyzing the internal logic between NIIDZ and green technology innovation is of great practical significance to enhance China's independent innovation capability and accelerate the ecological civilization construction. Based on the panel data of 280 cities from 2005 to 2020, we use the difference-in-difference model (DID) to evaluate the policy effect of NIIDZ on green technology innovation from the dual perspective of quality and quantity. The results show that NIIDZ effectively contributes to the quantity of green technology innovation (GTI) and the quality of green technology innovation (GTQ), especially GTI. The conclusion is still valid after robustness tests like PSM-DID and eliminating the pilot interference of innovative cities. The test of the intermediary mechanism shows that regional innovation policy can not only directly drive GTI and GTQ but also indirectly promote them through accelerating talent gather, driving industrial clusters, and increasing government financial support. Spatial heterogeneity analysis indicates that the effectiveness of regional innovation policy demonstrates a decreasing trend from east to west, and this positive effect is more significant in cities with a higher level of financial development. Our results provide important policy insights for the Chinese government to further stimulate the effectiveness of green innovation in the NIIDZ, accelerate the construction of an innovative country, and achieve high-quality green economic development., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

To address climate change and promote green development, the Chinese government has implemented low-carbon city pilot policy since 2010, and continued to expand the scope of pilots. Accurately assessing the policy effects of pilot city construction is of great significance for the further promotion of low-carbon policy. Carbon emissions are included in the evaluation framework of China's low-carbon city pilot policy, and used the panel data of 272 cities in 2000-2018 to evaluate the effectiveness of low-carbon city pilot policy based on the multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) model. Empirical findings that (1) low-carbon pilot policy could not only directly reduce carbon emissions, but also indirectly reduce carbon emissions through upgrading industrial structure and promoting technological innovation. (2) Given that there is remarkable gap in economic and social development across different regions, the policy effect is reexamined for nature resource and region location. The results indicate that carbon emissions reduction effect of low-carbon city pilot policy is more significant in resource-based cities and eastern cities. (3) Carbon emissions have significant spatial correlation, that is to say, low-carbon pilot policy has positive spillover effect on reducing carbon emissions in surrounding cities. The study provides empirical evidence for further expanding the scope of the pilot projects, as well as scientific basis for making environmental policies for carbon emissions reduction., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Green innovation is an important way for manufacturing enterprises to achieve green and high-quality development. The existing literature has ignored the heterogeneous motivations for enterprise green innovation. The strategic green innovation behavior (SGIB) aiming at seeking strategic differences and building core competitiveness is the necessary measure for enterprises to realize green transformation. Furthermore, the existing research studies the influencing factors of green innovation from a single perspective, ignoring the interaction of institutional and resource factors. Based on this, this study uses QCA to identify the driving mechanism of enterprise SGIB. The research collected questionnaire data from 199 manufacturing enterprises in China. The main results show that a single factor will not constitute a necessary condition for positive SGIB, but the not-high green dynamic capability is a necessary condition for negative SGIB. Positive SGIB includes four configuration paths: institution-ethics synergy, normative pressure oriented, environmental ethics oriented, and institutional incentive oriented. Lack of institutional pressure is the only configuration path that leads to negative SGIB. Further analysis found that environmental ethics and institutional pressure are the main forces to promote SGIB. After a series of robustness tests, the above basic conclusions did not change significantly. Based on the above conclusions, we believe that government departments, industry associations, and enterprises should form a joint force to enhance the level of institutional pressure and enterprise environmental ethics, promoting the implementation of strategic green innovation., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The sustainable development goals (SDGs) constitute an ambitious comprehensive global framework including monitoring mechanisms and indicators to evaluate progress towards precise targets of sustainable development. Most European countries have adapted their national sustainability indicator systems to conform to the UN Agenda 2030 for sustainable development, introducing new indicators and monitoring frameworks and governance processes in which these are embedded. What do we know about the political processes and struggles of implementing this important global framework? How does the politics of indicators differ in national contexts? We propose a classification of national indicator systems along dimensions of indicator selection, appraisal landscape, participatory nature, and political communication. We empirically explore these dimensions for four European national sustainability indicator systems through a comparative analysis based on national policy documents, indicator databases, and web portals as well as inputs from workshops and expert interviews. Given the considerable variation with respect to the trajectory of national sustainability indicator systems, we posit that these differences correspond to different national interpretations of sustainability., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

How environmental taxes affect green innovation in businesses is closely related to enterprise sustainable development and green economic development. This study uses the data of non-financial listed companies from 2010 to 2020 in China, and adopts the difference-in-difference method to examine the effect of the environmental protection tax (EPT) on corporate green innovation in China. Results show that EPT reform has a significantly negative effect on corporate green innovation, and the robustness test supports this result. EPT has a larger inhibitory effect on non-state-owned enterprises' green innovation than state-owned enterprises. This inhibiting effect is particularly prominent in companies situated in northern and low-marketization regions. Further analysis shows that EPT affects enterprises' green innovation by reducing the cash flow and financing of enterprises. This study provides an empirical basis for the implementation of the EPT policy., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

As an important policy instrument to achieve greenhouse gas emission reduction, carbon emissions trading has also promoted the green transformation of enterprises while achieving carbon reduction targets. This study uses the implementation of the Chinese carbon emissions trading pilot policy (CETPP) as a quasi-natural experiment and analyzes the impacts of the CETPP on the green transformation of enterprises with the difference-in-differences (DID) method based on a sample of 297 listed Chinese A-share high-energy-consuming enterprises. The result findings show that CETPP can significantly promote the green transformation of enterprises. The heterogeneity analysis also reveals that CETPP has differential effects on enterprises belonging to different industries, which is caused by the fact that enterprises in different industries differ significantly in their green transformation paths and modes. Moreover, CETPP has a significant facilitating effect on the green transformation of non-state-owned enterprises compared to state-owned enterprises. Finally, marketization and enterprise social responsibility are two major mechanisms for the CETPP to promote the green transformation of enterprises. Our findings reveal that policymakers should further deepen the dynamic management of carbon emission allowances and guide enterprises to actively undertake social responsibility, thus leveraging the market regulation mechanism to promote the green transformation of enterprises., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Blue foods, sourced in aquatic environments, are important for the economies, livelihoods, nutritional security and cultures of people in many nations. They are often nutrient rich 1 , generate lower emissions and impacts on land and water than many terrestrial meats 2 , and contribute to the health 3 , wellbeing and livelihoods of many rural communities 4 . The Blue Food Assessment recently evaluated nutritional, environmental, economic and justice dimensions of blue foods globally. Here we integrate these findings and translate them into four policy objectives to help realize the contributions that blue foods can make to national food systems around the world: ensuring supplies of critical nutrients, providing healthy alternatives to terrestrial meat, reducing dietary environmental footprints and safeguarding blue food contributions to nutrition, just economies and livelihoods under a changing climate. To account for how context-specific environmental, socio-economic and cultural aspects affect this contribution, we assess the relevance of each policy objective for individual countries, and examine associated co-benefits and trade-offs at national and international scales. We find that in many African and South American nations, facilitating consumption of culturally relevant blue food, especially among nutritionally vulnerable population segments, could address vitamin B 12 and omega-3 deficiencies. Meanwhile, in many global North nations, cardiovascular disease rates and large greenhouse gas footprints from ruminant meat intake could be lowered through moderate consumption of seafood with low environmental impact. The analytical framework we provide also identifies countries with high future risk, for whom climate adaptation of blue food systems will be particularly important. Overall the framework helps decision makers to assess the blue food policy objectives most relevant to their geographies, and to compare and contrast the benefits and trade-offs associated with pursuing these objectives., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

While previous studies have recognized the importance of resource tax in environmental governance, we know relatively little about whether resource tax can get a win-win both in corporate financial performance (CFP) and corporate environmental performance (CEP). Using China's resource tax reform (RTR) policy in 2016 as a quasi-natural experiment and adopting a difference-in-differences (DID) strategy, we estimate the real effect of resource tax on CFP and CEP. The results show that RTR increases the financial performance of the regulated firms by 32.26% and the environmental performance by 46.15% compared to the non-regulated firms, indicating that resource tax can promote firms' sustainable development. Mechanism analysis shows that the effect of resource tax is mainly driven by firms' technological innovation and productivity improvement. Moreover, we further find that RTR performs better for firms with weaker tax burden-shifting ability and firms located in areas with poorer resource endowments. Overall, our study not only provides evidence for the Porter hypothesis from the perspective of resource tax, but also offers important policy implications for developing countries in their pursuit of sustainable economic and environmental development., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Despite extensive studies focused on environmental tax revenue (ETR) on the driver and linkage with socioeconomic variables over time, an in-depth investigation on the spatiotemporal driver and intrinsic characteristics (e.g., convergence and complex network) is in need, providing valuable information on formulating better environmental tax policy towards sustainable development. Therefore, the study comprehensively analyzed the spatiotemporal driver, convergence trend, and complex network of provincial ETR in a case of China over 2000-2019 by using temporal and spatial logarithmic mean Divisia index models (LMDI), convergence models, and social network analysis, respectively. We found that, first, two convergence clubs of ETR for China's provinces over the period were found. Second, GDP per capita and tax intensity were the positive and negative drivers contributing the increase in ETR. Third, within differences in tax intensity and GDP per capita, as well as the differences in population and GDP per capita, were the main drivers widening the overall ETR gap. Fourth, the original hierarchical ETR spatial correlation structure has changed, while provinces exhibited certain degrees of heterogeneity in terms of ETR spatial association network. The study highlights that ETR plays a significant role in maintaining sustainable development and thus suggests that more importance of environmental tax policies at various levels should be attached., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Enterprises have emerged as primary actors in environmental protection owing to the increasingly severe global energy crisis and environmental pollution. Companies can reduce operational costs, achieve environmental social responsibility, and enhance their green image by increasing their green investments. Simultaneously, companies can gain support from investors, governments, and other stakeholders for improving their sustainable development. This study uses fixed-effects regression models to analyze the impact of green investment on corporate sustainability in Chinese listed companies for the period from 2010 to 2020. It also investigates the moderating effects of government environmental subsidies, investor attention, and executives' overseas experience on the relationship between green investment and corporate sustainability. The data used in this study were not only obtained from the China Stock Market & Accounting Research (CSMAR) database but also collected manually from the annual reports and social responsibility reports of listed companies using web crawler technology. And the robustness test was conducted by removing the epidemic year and replacing the range of independent variables and 2SLs. This study uses Stata 17.0 to filter and process the data. The results show that green investment can significantly improve the sustainability of enterprises; besides, government subsidies, investors' attention, and executives' overseas experience all play a positive role in moderating the positive effect of green investment on the sustainable development of enterprises. Further analysis of this study finds that the moderating effect is more significant in non-state-owned enterprises and highly polluting enterprises. This study contributes to broadening the theory related to the green development of enterprises and environmental governance and provides theoretical support for enterprises to make green investment decisions and green transformations.

Promoting greener and sustainable development is one of the main goals of the most recent 14th Five-Year Plan (i.e., 2021-2025). Environmental regulation is seen as fundamental to green transformation and an important way for all of China to reach a high-quality and sustainable development mode. However, large spatial disparities exist across the different regions in China, so formulating region-oriented environmental regulatory policies to achieve regional high-quality and sustainable development is now a matter of great practical significance. In the present paper, we analyze this problem and begin by calculating the high development level measured through the Green Total Factor Productivity (GTFP) of 259 Chinese cities. Thereafter we construct a comprehensive index of environmental regulation through the linear weighted-sum method. Lastly, we investigate the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of the impact of environmental regulation on GTFP using a Geographically and Temporally Weighted Regression (GTWR) model. We find that: (1) From the spatial dimension perspective, the impact of environmental regulation of Chinese cities on GTFP is either linear (monotonically increasing or decreasing), non-linear (U-shaped or inverted U-shaped), or nonsignificant. Most cities have a U-shaped relationship, indicating that environmental regulation first inhibits GTFP at the early stage, but then promotes it. There are also significant differences among cities in the turning points of environmental regulation; (2) From the time dimension perspective, the number of cities is on the rise having monotonically decreasing impacts of environmental regulation on GTFP. Furthermore, even for the same city, the relationship between the two variables shows different characteristics in different years; (3) The impact of five control variables on GTFP may also vary from one city to another over the sample period, also presenting spatiotemporal heterogeneity effects. Consequently, the formulation and implementation of environmental regulatory policies should not only adapt to local conditions but also choose reasonable and effective measures to achieve high-quality development targets.

Inability to ensure sustainable mining practice has brought the awareness that mining enterprises must be more pragmatic on achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in their operations. This research propose a new approach to select and prioritize relevant targets to the industry, which will allow companies, communities, and public authorities to establish a proper framework for environmental governance. The methodology includes appraisal of questionnaires, prioritization of targets following a thorough screening and quantitative assessment, and a bipartite network analysis approach. The results indicate that 55 out of the 169 targets were considered relevant for oil sands mining. The targets in SDGs 1, 12, and 16 were identified as having high or very high priority. There was high correlation between proposed conditions and targets based on the bipartite analysis, which signifies that the people's opinion has relevance in the priority ratings. To achieve SDGs, the implication of mining activities on the environment must be addressed. It was concluded that targets with high relevance in the three phases of mining should be given high consideration when establishing governance principles. Furthermore, engagement of relevant stakeholders that will be impacted directly or indirectly by mining operations is critical in the pursuit of achieving SDGs., (© 2022. The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.)

Agriculture is particularly essential in the equilibrium between man and nature because of its intimate contact with nature. So the cornerstone for the sustainable development of the human economy and society is the sustainable development of agriculture. When it comes to global trade, agricultural trade has always been in a very special position. The basic situation of agriculture involves food safety, environmental protection, Chinese politics, and many other issues. In order to overcome the problems of overlapping, repetitive, and too many indicators in the evaluation method of agricultural environmental sustainable development and unfavorable for practical operation, this paper proposes an ecological footprint model based on emergy. The model can effectively evaluate the ability of sustainable development of agricultural environment and solve the problem that traditional evaluation methods cannot comprehensively evaluate. This makes agricultural development sustainable and is conducive to the liberalization of international agricultural trade. The experimental results of this paper show that from 2014 to 2018, the degree of damage to the agricultural environment has increased from 21% to 45%, which has led to a decline in the quality of agricultural products, and the output and sales are not as good as before. It can be seen that only by ensuring the sustainable development of the agricultural environment can we ensure the smooth progress of the international agricultural trade liberalization and make China's economy flourish., Competing Interests: These are no potential competing interests in our paper. And all authors have seen the manuscript and approved to submit to your journal. We confirm that the content of the manuscript has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere., (Copyright © 2022 Xiaozhong Li and Feng Huang.)

Commons governance theory is central to identifying and managing conflicts arising from natural and cultural resources traps. Scholars - using game theory and economic analysis of law - have proposed alternative models, consisting of a set of mitigated scenarios, multiple players, and new equilibria in commons governance. Likewise, novel legal innovations of the commons have also been designed. Reinterpreting the commons in light of political economy, ecology, and pluralistic approaches, a critical review of existing scholarship, economic analysis of law, and case study investigations are performed. Examining an array of views - including governance of water in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Italy - a research and policy agenda is put forward to offer original interpretations and novel holistic perspectives. Germane environmental policy implications deriving from SDGs, resilient governance, and polycentric perspectives are thus extrapolated. Finally, pluralistic frameworks drafted by mitigation and adaptation are measured by improved sustainable development performance in commons, resource, and water governance., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

This paper offers an evaluation index system of agricultural green development level based on the Rural Vitalization Strategy. The evaluation index system includes four dimensions: agricultural development, ecological resource protection, environment-friendly, and industrial extension and integration. Then, the paper calculates the level of agricultural green development in the three provinces of Northeast China using the entropy-gray correlation method from 2009 to 2019. The calculation results show that between 2009 and 2019, the level of agricultural green development in the three northeastern provinces of China fluctuates and increases, and there is some variation between them: in terms of the overall level of agricultural green development Heilongjiang Province > Liaoning Province > Jilin Province, in terms of the average change speed of agricultural green development level, Heilongjiang Province > Liaoning Province > Jilin Province; in terms of each dimension, the average level of correlation degree of agricultural development dimension is Liaoning Province > Heilongjiang Province > Jilin Province, the average level of correlation degree of ecological resource protection dimension is Heilongjiang Province > Jilin Province > Liaoning Province, the average level of correlation degree of environment-friendly dimension is Heilongjiang Province > Jilin Province > Liaoning Province, and the average level of correlation degree of industrial extension and integration is Liaoning Province > Heilongjiang Province > Jilin Province. Finally, the basis of the calculation results, combined with the actual situation of agricultural development in the three provinces, the countermeasures, and suggestions for promoting the green development of agriculture are put forward. Specifically, it includes the establishment of an evaluation system for agricultural green development; strengthening the protection of agricultural ecological resources; increasing rural environmental governance; promoting the integrated development of rural tertiary industries; vigorously supporting agricultural scientific and technological innovation; and strengthening regional cooperation and other suggestions., Competing Interests: XW was employed by Fujian Jonorm Bio-Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. The remaining author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Hou and Wang.)

The green innovations, environmental policies, and carbon taxes are the tools to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) in the mitigation process. This study is intended to examine the impact of innovation, carbon pricing (CTAX), environmental policies (EP), and energy consumption (ECON) on PM 2.5 and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission for Central-Eastern European countries. The panel effect during 2000-2018 is tested using a dynamic panel data model while the Granger causality approach obtains country-related outcomes. The outcomes reveal that eco-friendly innovations have a more profound effect on carbon mitigation. Environmental policies reduce emissions by 2.7% in the short run and 17.4% in the long run. Similarly, CTAX mitigates GHG emissions by 8.6% in the short-run and PM2.5 by 0.9% and 5.7% in the short and long run. However, urbanization, energy consumption and trade openness are the leading polluters in the region. The main findings remain dominant in the country-specific results and find unidirectional and bidirectional causality evidence among variables. The research concludes that green innovations and strict environmental policy can lead towards achieving sustainable development goals using carbon taxes as a tool on the way., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

To direct financial resources to cleaner production enterprises and achieve the goal of environmental governance, the Chinese government has devoted increasing efforts to facilitating green finance. As one of the major policies of green finance, the Green Credit Policy (GCP) was issued in 2012. Evaluating whether the GCP can promote green development has important significance, but few studies have explored its policy effects for the investment and financing behavior of "two high" (high energy consumption and high pollution) enterprises and environmental quality from both micro and macro perspectives. Taking the promulgation of the GCP as a quasi-natural experiment, based on a panel dataset involving 945 A-share listed companies and 30 provinces for the period of 2004-2017, this paper adopts the difference-in-difference model to explore the investment and financing behavior changes of enterprises and environmental impacts of the GCP. The following conclusions are derived. (1) The GCP provides incentives for the short-term financing behavior of "two high" enterprises, but it has a punitive effect in the long term and significantly inhibits the investment behavior of such enterprises. (2) The GCP contributes to the mitigation of sulfur dioxide and wastewater emissions. (3) The GCP has a greater effect on investment and financing behavior among state-owned and large-scale "two high" enterprises than among medium-sized and micro enterprises. (4) There exists regional heterogeneity in the effects of the GCP on the investment and financing of "two high" enterprises and environmental quality. The GCP has positive impacts in the eastern and western regions, and the policy effect is not obvious in the central region., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Fish and other aquatic foods (blue foods) present an opportunity for more sustainable diets 1,2 . Yet comprehensive comparison has been limited due to sparse inclusion of blue foods in environmental impact studies 3,4 relative to the vast diversity of production 5 . Here we provide standardized estimates of greenhouse gas, nitrogen, phosphorus, freshwater and land stressors for species groups covering nearly three quarters of global production. We find that across all blue foods, farmed bivalves and seaweeds generate the lowest stressors. Capture fisheries predominantly generate greenhouse gas emissions, with small pelagic fishes generating lower emissions than all fed aquaculture, but flatfish and crustaceans generating the highest. Among farmed finfish and crustaceans, silver and bighead carps have the lowest greenhouse gas, nitrogen and phosphorus emissions, but highest water use, while farmed salmon and trout use the least land and water. Finally, we model intervention scenarios and find improving feed conversion ratios reduces stressors across all fed groups, increasing fish yield reduces land and water use by up to half, and optimizing gears reduces capture fishery emissions by more than half for some groups. Collectively, our analysis identifies high-performing blue foods, highlights opportunities to improve environmental performance, advances data-poor environmental assessments, and informs sustainable diets., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)

China and other emerging market countries have suffered from the problem of environmental pollution while developing rapidly in the past few decades. In recent years, many countries have introduced strict environmental regulations in order to achieve sustainable development. This paper discusses the relationship between environmental regulations and corporate green innovation from the perspective of regional leaders' promotion pressure. The empirical results show that direct policy regulation within the region stimulates green innovation on the part of enterprises, and the promotion pressure of city leaders has a further positive moderating effect on the positive correlation between environmental regulations and enterprises' green innovation. The conclusion of the study proves that a strict environmental policy can promote the effectiveness of an environmental performance appraisal system in the sustainable development plans of cities and enterprises. This paper not only reveals the influence path of official promotion pressure on the sustainable development of enterprises in the administrative area from the micro perspective but also sheds some light that may improve government governance and promote the transformation of enterprises.

Because of the size of its population and economy, good environmental governance in Asia is fundamental not only for the well-being of the region's population but also for the health of the planet. This article introduces the challenges of governing the environment in Asia. The issue evaluates the outcomes and institutional changes in selected countries related to substantive environmental issues such as air pollution, water quality, municipal solid waste, transport, land use, and climate change. By synthesizing the main research issues, methodology and findings of the growing literature on the region, we highlight the trends in environmental governance and gaps in policy and research. Despite the efforts made, there are still remaining environmental governance challenges to be addressed by both the academics and practitioners in Asia., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The future of the global ocean economy is currently envisioned as advancing towards a 'blue economy'-socially equitable, environmentally sustainable and economically viable ocean industries 1,2 . However, tensions exist within sustainable development approaches, arising from differing perspectives framed around natural capital or social equity. Here we show that there are stark differences in outlook on the capacity for establishing a blue economy, and on its potential outcomes, when social conditions and governance capacity-not just resource availability-are considered, and we highlight limits to establishing multiple overlapping industries. This is reflected by an analysis using a fuzzy logic model to integrate indicators from multiple disciplines and to evaluate their current capacity to contribute to establishing equitable, sustainable and viable ocean sectors consistent with a blue economy approach. We find that the key differences in the capacity of regions to achieve a blue economy are not due to available natural resources, but include factors such as national stability, corruption and infrastructure, which can be improved through targeted investments and cross-scale cooperation. Knowledge gaps can be addressed by integrating historical natural and social science information on the drivers and outcomes of resource use and management, thus identifying equitable pathways to establishing or transforming ocean sectors 1,3,4 . Our results suggest that policymakers must engage researchers and stakeholders to promote evidence-based, collaborative planning that ensures that sectors are chosen carefully, that local benefits are prioritized, and that the blue economy delivers on its social, environmental and economic goals.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 2030 Agenda represent global development programs. Education can widen the acknowledgement of their relevance and their applications. This survey aims to assess awareness, knowledge and attitudes towards SDGs and sustainability among first-year students in nine Italian Universities. A Likert scale-based online questionnaire of 70 items was compiled by students from March to July 2019. It examined knowledge and expectations referred to sustainable development concepts, indicators and documents/models accounting for sociodemographic variables. Statistical analyses performed were Chi-square test, Fisher's Exact test, Kendall's W correlation coefficient, univariate and multivariate analysis. The questionnaire was completed by 1676 students. A low percentage referred a good knowledge of SDGs and 2030 Agenda, most of them had never attended related educational activities previously. Better knowledge of SDGs and 2030 Agenda was observed in case of previous specific educational activities ( p < 0.001). The expectation towards university guaranteeing an education on SDGs was high, both for personal wisdom and for usefulness in future professional context. A significant difference ( p < 0.001) in such expectations was found, as healthcare students were less interested than colleagues of other areas. The results showed low knowledge but interest towards sustainable development. A scheduled implementation of academic initiatives should be considered.

The importance of heeding the environmental sustainability commitment call cannot be underestimated. Laggards in terms of environmental sustainability commitment are likely to face fines and penalties as talks to tighten environmental legislation are now at an advanced stage globally. The current work assessed the link between environmental sustainability commitment and financial performance of firms listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). The study was quantitative in nature with a case study research design. The longitudinal design was adopted where the researcher collected panel data from 2011-2018. The population of the study included all firms listed on the JSE Responsible Investment Index in South Africa. The sample constituted of 32 firms listed on the Financial Times Stock Exchange FTSE/JSE Responsible Investment Index in South Africa. The researchers employed the panel regression analysis model to analyze the data. Specifically, the Feasible Generalized Least Squares regression model was used in this study. Financial performance was treated as the dependent variable as measured by earnings per share and share price. The independent variables of the study included components of environmental sustainability such as carbon emission reduction and environmental compliance. Control variables such as firm size and liquidity were used in the study. The findings indicated that carbon emission reduction was positively and significantly related to earnings per share and share price. The findings further exhibited that environmental compliance was positively related to earnings per share and share price. It was concluded that firms can enhance their financial performance from environmental investment as all the hypotheses were supported. This study contributes practically towards shaping environmental policies and it also serves as motivation to listed companies that they can enhance both their profitability and market value from environmental investments.

Green development is an important way to meet the challenges of ecological and environmental protection and economic growth, as well as an inevitable choice to realize China's sustainable development in the new era. The Chinese economic system is such that local government competition has become a key factor affecting regional green development under the current leadership. Based on the inter-provincial panel data of 30 provinces in mainland China from 1997 to 2017, this paper uses the total-factor non-radial directional distance function and slack-based measure data envelopment analysis (SBM-DEA) to measure the green development efficiency of the provinces. Additionally, it also uses the Malmquist-Luenberger (ML) index to decompose green development efficiency and analyzes its internal driving factors. Finally, taking environmental regulation as a mediating variable, this paper empirically analyzes the influence mechanism of local government competition on green development efficiency from three perspectives including growth competition, fiscal competition and investment competition. The study found that: the green development efficiency of Chinese regions showed a downward trend, with significant regional differences; technological progress is the key factor to improve the efficiency of green development, and its role gradually decreases from eastern to western and central regions; pure technical efficiency has become a bottleneck restricting the improvement of green development efficiency, while scale efficiency shows significant regional differences; the growth competition, fiscal competition and investment competition of local government all have a significant inhibitory effect on the efficiency of green development. This paper puts forward policy suggestions supporting enterprise technology research and development, optimizing energy conservation and emission reduction as well as improving the local government performance evaluation system for green development.

As a significant ecological corridor from west to east across China, the Yangtze River Economical Belt (YREB) is in great need of green development and transformation. Rather than only focusing on the overall growth of green productivity, it is important to identify whether the technical change is biased towards economic performance or green performance in promoting green productivity. By employing the biased technical change theory and Malmquist index decomposition method, we analyze the green biased technical change in terms of industrial water resources in YREB at the output side and the input side respectively. We find that the green biased technical change varies during 2006-2015 at both the input side and output side in YREB. At the input side, water-saving biased technical change is generally dominant compared to water-using biased technical change during 2006-2015, presenting the substitution effects of non-water production factors. At the output side, the economy-growth biased technical change is the main force to promote green productivity, whereas the role of water-conservation biased technical change is insufficient. The green performance at the output side needs to be strengthened compared to the economic performance in YREB. A series of water-related environmental policies introduced in China since 2008 have promoted the green biased technical change both at the input side and the output side in YREB, but the policy effects at the output side is still inadequate compared to that at the input side. The technological innovation in sewage treatment and control need to catch up with the economic growth in YREB. Our research gives insights to enable a deeper understanding of the green biased technical change in YREB and will benefit more focused policy-making of green innovation.

This paper examines whether governments should adopt stricter environmental policies-such as raising environmental taxes-in closed and open economies. It reconsidered the policy effects of enterprise heterogeneity in an open economy and studied the relationship between environmental policies and sustainable development. In the case of self-sufficiency, it is possible to replace punitive environmental policies with environmental subsidies, which is beneficial to sustainable development. However, when trade is opened up, as less productive enterprises withdraw from local and export markets, the stricter environmental policy is the optimal strategy for environmental and energy sustainable development.

Water can carry a boat but can also overturn it (human societal sustainable development). Governments faced aquatic ecosystem restoration and preservation challenges following the establishment of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This paper proposes a social welfare maximization game model to analyze the dominant strategy equilibrium of enterprise-1 and enterprise-2 based on welfare maximization under the total sewage emission control policy. Under the aforementioned control policy, a stricter total sewage emission control of an enterprise corresponds to a lower enterprise output and a higher output of a competing enterprise; that is, the profit transfer effect occurs. When the government implements a relatively strict total sewage emission control policy for an enterprise, it is beneficial to reduce the amount of sewage emission from an enterprise but has no impact on the amount of sewage emission from a competing enterprise; however, the amount of sewage reduction of both enterprises will increase. If the government does not provide capital and technical support to enterprise-2, then enterprise-1 and enterprise-2 should implement total quantity control policies with different rigor degrees to avoid the one-size-fits-all phenomenon. To maximize social welfare, the government should adjust the total sewage emission control policy in time according to sewage stock changes and focus more on enterprises with insufficient capital and poor technical skills and provide financial and technical support.