Search

Palm oil, derived from Elaeis guineensis, is a critical component of the global edible oil and industrial fat market. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the sustainability of the palm oil chain, focusing on industrial applications, environmental implications, and economic sustainability. The processing of palm oil, from fruit pulp to refined oil, is detailed, highlighting the importance of refining in maintaining quality and extending application ranges. While palm oil offers health benefits because of its rich fatty acid composition and antioxidant properties, its production poses significant environmental challenges. This review underscores ongoing efforts to balance technological and culinary demands with environmental stewardship and sustainable economic growth. Emerging trends, including interspecific hybrids such as E. guineensis and E. oleifera, are discussed for their potential to increase sustainability and productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic development has long been heralded as a key driver of progress, sparking advancements that have significantly elevated living standards and technological innovation. However, this relentless drive for growth has come with a steep environmental price, prominently featuring climate change as one of its most pressing consequences. The relationship between economic growth and climate change is intricate and multifaceted, and understanding this relationship is crucial for charting a sustainable path forward. In this exploration, we delve into how historical and contemporary economic practices have shaped our environmental landscape and examine strategies that can harmonize economic growth with environmental stewardship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the changing role of the local government's environmental management in Guangzhou, China, through a historical content analysis of archival data. Environmental governance in Guangzhou has followed a government-led, top-down model. The content analysis showed that over the past four decades, the role of Guangzhou's municipal environmental governance has been characterized by transformation -- from passive responses to accelerating and securing economic growth, and finally to active interventions that balance economic growth and ecological protection. The changing role of the Guangzhou government in environmental governance is driven by varied urban political priorities at different historical stages. This article argues that the urban political economy and the national government's commitment to pragmatic, sustainable development shaped the local government's response to environmental problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mining and sustainable development are opposed for three fundamental reasons: mineral resources are not renewable, their irrational exploitation does not guarantee their use by future generations, and the practice of mining attacks ecological systems. This article defends the idea that mining should be open to a concept of development that not only covers economic growth but also social and cultural progress as a condition for an effective and rational economy-ecology relationship in decision making. For this, the mining company needs an effective and rational management as an environmental business policy in which the application of legal-administrative norms for the execution of good mining practices is not enough. It is essential the application of knowledge, norms, values and moral principles that result in the effectiveness of good environmental practices, so it is urgent the implementation of an environmental code of ethics, of deontological character, that provides the miner with knowledge, skills and procedures in the work activity that favors the formation of individual responsibility towards nature and the social commitment of their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Law Studies Journal / Revista Novos Estudos Juridicos is the property of Novos Estudos Juridicos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: This study aims to explore the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on exports of goods and services, logistics performance, environmental management system (ISO 14001) certification and quality management system (ISO 9001) certification in top affected Asian countries of India, Iran, Indonesia, Philippines, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Design/methodology/approach: A novel grey relational analysis models' approach is used to examine the inter-relationship between COVID-19 economic growth and environmental performance. Moreover, the authors applied a conservative (maximin) model to investigate which countries have the least intensifying affected among all of the top affected COVID-19 Asian countries based on the SS degree of grey relation values. The data used in this study was collected from multiple databases during 2020 for analysis. Findings: Results indicate that the severity of COVID-19 shows a strong negative association and influence of COVID-19 on the exportation of goods and services, logistics performance, ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certifications in all the six highly affected countries during a pandemic outbreak. Although the adverse effects of COVID-19 in exporting countries persisted until December 31, 2020, their magnitude decreased over time in Indonesia and Pakistan. During the COVID-19 outbreak, Pakistan showed comparatively better performance among the six top highly affected Asian countries due to its smart locked down strategy and prevents its economy from severe damages. While India and Iran export drastically go down due to a rapid increase in the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths. Research limitations/implications: The research findings produce much-required policy suggestions for leaders, world agencies and governments to take corrective measures on an emergent basis to prevent the economies from more damages and improve their logistics, environmental and quality performance during the pandemic of COVID-19. Originality/value: This study develops a framework and investigates the intensifying effects of COVID-19 effects on economic growth, logistics performance, environmental performance and quality production processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current stage of socio-economic development is focused on ensuring prosperity by meeting the goals and intensifying the practices of the 4th generation smart industry. The ways and methods of advancement are being scientifically researched and specified, while at the same time revealing errors and weaknesses in the development so far, which are the potential for continuous increase of prosperity and sustainable production and consumption. From this point of view, the paper analyses and more accurately formulates the effects of smart industry 4.0 on the economy and society in a global sense. In the context of the new industry 5.0 development concept identifies significant progress in automation, robotization and digitization of imaginary processes supporting economic growth with obvious reserves and risks in the social field, as well as in relation to sustainable development and climate strategies, especially in the environmental field. In the article, the authors present the concept of models for intensification and transition from the developed implementation model for Industry 4.0 to the environment and concepts of Industry 5.0. Priorities for the development and innovation of the fourth generation smart industry within the fifth generation concept and possible synergy effects from human-robot-machine-environment cooperation, especially in the social field and in ensuring the well-being of workers in industry, are formulated in more detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic expansion gives rise to modern and energy-efficient technologies and, thus, contributes to a decline in energy usage. Developing countries, including Pakistan, require tremendous efforts to sustain economic growth. However, to attain economic growth, these countries have to cope with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and other environmental problems. This research focuses primarily on the asymmetric impacts of energy consumption and economic growth on Pakistan's environmental quality. Accordingly, secondary data spanning from 1971 to 2018 was used, and carbon dioxide emission (CO2) was considered a target variable (a proxy for environmental quality), whereas energy consumption (E) and gross domestic product (GDP) as a proxy for economic growth, and trade accessibility (TR) and foreign direct investment (FDI) as control variables. The nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) approach is used to verify the asymmetric co-integration between the variables selected. Moreover, to examine data stationarity and nonlinearity, we used the Zivot–Andrews structural break unit root and BDS tests, respectively. The findings confirmed the asymmetric and symmetric co-integrations among the considered variables. In addition, the causality analysis reveals that only negative shocks to TR have an effect on CO2 emissions. Similarly, negative shocks to FDI asymmetrically cause CO2 emissions. Meanwhile, GDP symmetrically affects CO2 emissions. Finally, a neutral causal response was observed between E and CO2 emissions. These findings have policy implications in terms of environmental management and carbon neutrality, and they serve as a baseline for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa had a number of sustainable policy reforms pre-Covid-19, including the protection of rural producers, consumers and the markets. However, the spread of Covid-19 / novel coronavirus at the beginning of 2020 was fast and dramatic. With an increase in death toll in various countries around the world resulting from different Covid-19 variants, its effect had tremendous impact on the general economy and local communities, most particularly in rural areas. The economic effects were also exacerbated by emergency strategies like lockdowns by various countries around the world. Strategies to turn the situation around in poverty-stricken local communities, but mostly the rural settings, post-Covid19, must be established. This is due to the fact that the rural institutions in South Africa are viewed as having a potential role to play in rural poverty alleviation and sustainable development. The enforcement of local institutions and capacity building as fundamental elements of strategies for rural poverty alleviation becomes necessary. Local economic growth, as a poverty alleviation strategy, is a people-centred process and circumstance specific. Common parameters for such growth include improved health facilities, infrastructure services, sanitation facilities and educational services. Other than the above parameters for local and sustainable development, local communities have vast indigenous knowledge that can be used to facilitate sustainable development. This knowledge is not fully utilised due to a lack of complementary institutions and facilities that enable people to improve productivity and sustainability. It is essential for development practitioners and policy makers to facilitate the dissemination of this local knowledge to enable sharing amongst community members, rather than spend scarce resources in bringing in more new knowledge and information that will not benefit the local community for sustainable development. This study assesses the influence of sustainable development on local economic growth in South Africa. It establishes the suitability of sustainable development as a strategy for local economic growth, post-Covid-19, for South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, the rising concentration of anthropogenic greenhouse gases emission in the atmosphere is extremely detrimental to the environment. The high concentration among all greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide emission. Therefore, this study explores the linkages between energy consumption, trade openness, globalization, urbanization, and carbon dioxide emission for Malaysia over the spans from 1978 to 2018. ARDL bound testing model was employed to investigate involvement in the elevation of carbon dioxide emissions in the economy. The study illustrates that a 1% growth in energy consumption, trade openness, and urbanization will deteriorate the environment by 0.18%, 0.03%, and 2.51% respectively. Further, variance decomposition analysis predicts that all the determinants in the study have significantly caused carbon dioxide emission in Malaysia. The paper presents scientific support for further studies and argues for the use of innovation shocks as a policy instrument for a prosperous future by formulating more successful environmental policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's adoption of an "ecological civilization" strategy since 2012 demonstrates its vision to move toward more sustainable development models while promoting green energy and strengthening environmental protection. However, China's continuing heavy reliance on fossil fuels, especially coal, masks the complex positive trends in energy use, more sustainable economic development, and environmental management. Through examining the evolving energy-GDP relationships in China over the past few decades, we elucidated the underlying complex nonlinear processes using environmental Kuznets curve analysis and showed that the energy–GDP relationship has fluctuated between positive and negative decoupling. Furthermore, fluctuating trajectories manifested as sharp regional divergences when early-transitioning coastal areas restructured toward services and exhibited robust decoupling, whereas the industrial interior remained fossil fuel reliant. We identified various forces related to these provincial disparities, where rapid urbanization, industrial realignment, and income growth were all important. By promoting service transitions and enabling low-carbon technologies in coastal hubs, these drivers also exposed infrastructure deficits and entrenched fossil fuel usage in the interior. These problems led to China's latest strategic plans emphasizing "higher quality" growth underpinned by clean energy transitions and coordinated regional policies. Ongoing declines in coal and the rise in renewable energy usage highlight promising momentum, but stable decoupling remains contingent on sustained policy coordination. The intricate balance between growth and environmental pressures in China provides essential lessons to help emerging economies achieve sustainability by catalyzing green transitions and attaining developmental milestones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a bi-objective bi-level programming model to balance economic growth and environmental management, which orients sustainable transport development by combining a tradable credit scheme (TCS) and a link capacity improvement measure. At the upper level, the decision maker aims to both maximize the economic benefit and minimize the total amount of traffic emissions by the optimal determination of a TCS and a link capacity improvement measure. The lower level is the user equilibrium problem, with elastic origin-destination (O-D) demand given the TCS and link capacity expansion measure. Further, a relaxation algorithm with a series of transformations is proposed to solve the proposed model. Numerical experiments illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed bi-objective bi-level model as well as the proposed relaxation algorithm. This study demonstrates how economic and environmental goals are influenced by the implementation of different development patterns comprising TCSs and link capacity improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines current efforts by the woman-led Lower North Shore Bioproducts Solidarity Coop on the northeastern coast of Québec, Canada to re-brand their region for sustainable economic growth. This cooperative is using the narrative tools of social media to counteract stories of decimation following the collapse of the fishing industry in the region in the 1990s. The goal of the Coop is to create jobs in the community through the production and export of local products made from wild berries and other plants. Through their creative use of Facebook and YouTube, narratives about the Lower North Shore are changing. The use of online platforms for sharing videos and stories allows the community to re-create itself through the lens of environmental stewardship rather than exploitation. These efforts can be seen as a form of feminist place-making. This photo-essay argues that using the discourse of terroir to re-brand the region for outside consumption has the dual possibilities of valuing non-invasive, seasonal fruit harvesting performed on a small scale by locals, and also opening the door to detrimental transformation of the land. Analyzing the deployment of the term terroir in this case will point to its ambiguous potential for sustainable development. This original artistic research, based on interviews and fieldwork conducted from 2013 to 2015, will be of interest to readers of Gender, Place & Culture for its focus on the efforts of women, many of whom are seniors, to re-present nature-cultures in a geographically remote coastal region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study empirically explores the linkage between urbanization and deforestation while controlling for the role of energy consumption, trade openness, and economic growth within recent data from 1971 to 2015. To do this, we employed the vector error correction‐Granger causality approach and Pesaran's autoregressive distributed lag cointegration technique. The Bayer–Hanck cointegration test establishes an equilibrium relationship among the variables. Results reveal that economic growth, energy consumption, and urbanization have a significant impact on deforestation in Nigeria, thereby reducing the quality of the environment. Short‐ and long‐run unidirectional casualty flows from urbanization to deforestation. Therefore, policies for reducing deforestation and enhancing environmental sustainability for growth and development were suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mines play an important role in the economic growth of countries since they are suppliers to many industries. In addition to the economic growth, the mines positively affect the social development factors such as the employment creation, the development of rural areas, building new roads, and etc. But sometimes it may lead to the negative environmental, and social impacts. Therefore, the mining activities should be carefully monitored for the concept of sustainable development. In this paper, a fuzzy Best-Worst Method based approach is developed for the evaluation of an iron mine. The case study, Sangan iron ore mine is one of the biggest mines, located in a rural area in the north eastern of Iran. Three factors including the economic, environmental, and social parameters were considered as main sustainable development criteria. The sub-criteria for each mentioned factor were then extracted from the literature as well as knowledge expert's opinions. In the proposed approach, each sub-criterion was carefully weighted using the fuzzy Best-Worst method and scored by 12 experts. Afterwards, the sustainability score was defined as the summation of final fuzzy scores which was gone under a defuzzification process. The performance evaluation was calculated using this sustainability score resulted to a score of 0.626 out of 1, indicating its acceptable performance. The results showed that the mine performs well in terms of the economic benefits, rate of return, exploration capacity, and stockholders' rights, but in the environmental management systems, water discharge, recreation and tourism aspects, it does not play well. The results of the implementation of the proposed approach showed the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed approach that is confirmed by experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary progress in civilisation is combined with new scientific approaches, technological innovations and the huge and growing use of natural resources, which leads to their over-exploitation and, as a result, to their depletion. There is an opinion that without further regulation of economic growth and excessive harvesting of resources, the entire ecosystem of the Earth can be irreparably destroyed. The 2030 Agenda is based on the decoupling principle, which means that the economic growth of the manufacturing and service sectors must be faster than the consumption of natural resources and energy. To this end, countries around the world have developed and are still pursuing different environmental measures, such as regulations, laws and orders, taxes, etc. The most popular management systems in Europe are ISO 14001 and EMAS. The newest analyses reveal that a large number of companies that have received an EMAS certificate are not willing to renew their registration after some time and the reasons are not very clear yet. The article discusses the methods for environmental impact assessment, sustainable industry development and motivations for resources efficiency. The study of the selected three production companies operating in Lithuania and currently using a pollution prevention tool - the environmental management system - is presented and discussed aiming to evaluate the effectiveness of resources consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiversity loss reduces ecosystems productivity generating negative impacts on the global economy. Even though the economy is dependent on biodiversity or its ecological processes, few companies develop Biodiversity Conservation Actions (BCA) to benefit ecosystems, despite the growing number of sustainable companies worldwide. Here, we investigated the relationship between sustainability and biodiversity conservation of five sustainable corporations which controls more than 1,130,000 ha in five Brazilian biomes. We hypothesised that sustainable companies develop BCA to mitigate their negative environmental impacts and stimulate the refill of ecosystem services they had used. We analysed 5420 pages of annual sustainable reports between 2011 and 2018, qualifying and quantifying BCA indicated by each year companies' reports. We discovered that 90% of the units did not mitigate any negative environmental impacts. We found no BCA that included all productive units of each company, finding that most of the conservation actions were concentrated in few areas, most of them required by law. Companies are most concerned with how to economise costs of Environmental Management Systems than rebuild the ecosystems. We show a possibility to interrupt the "Jevons Paradox" by implementing BCA into the centre of the sustainability tripod's thinking. Finally, once BCA benefits the ecosystem services, they should be used as a ballast to validate sustained economic growth that respects the current and future generations. • Way to analyse companies by reading sustainability reports through measuring Biodiversity Conservation Actions (BCA). • Sustainable companies are not protecting and neither refilling ecosystems which they are dependent. • BCA should be inserted at the centre of decision-making on sustainable development. • Inserting biodiversity conservation actions at the centre of the economy would terminate the Jevons Paradox. • All economic drivers should utilize ecosystem services as ballast to achieve sustainable economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations (UN), goal 12 ("ensure sustainable consumption and production [SCP] patterns") has eight outcome targets (12.1–12.8) and three targets for the means of implementation (MoI) (12.a–12.c). This "SCP-via-SDGs" approach is a much narrower, specific concept based on historical agreements that range from the Stockholm conference (1972) to the 10-Year Framework of Programmes (10YFP) (2012–2022). Meanwhile, "the academic SCP" is a highly interdisciplinary and complex approach that pursues an answer to what sustainability is, and it has not explicitly provided the SCP-via-SDGs framework at present. Thus, this study proposes a five-by-five framework for the SCP-via-SDGs approach from the production perspective (i.e., for individual firms), following the literature on corporate environmental management. The five stages (I–V) consider environmental management systems (EMS; I. strategy and process) for target 12.4, environmental management accounting (EMA; II. accounting and disclosure) for 12.6, and environmental management control systems (EMCS; III. financial, IV. environmental, and V. overall performance) for 12.2. Meanwhile, the five factors (1–5) consider the baseline and material flow (MF) factors (total waste, hazardous waste, raw materials used, and recycled waste) for targets 12.3 and 12.5. As an application, this study surveyed non-financial listed firms in Vietnam and compared the results to a previous study on Thailand. The results show that the firms are more likely to be at stage III (financial performance of EMCS) in Thailand and stage I or II (EMS or EMA) in Vietnam, suggesting that each market requires its own SCP policies, depending on the economic growth of each. • Five-by-five framework for SCP-via-SDGs from the production perspective was proposed. • The five stages included EMS and EMA for specific instruments and EMCS for efficiency. • The five factors were the baseline and four MF factors of waste and raw materials. • The survey of non-financial listed firms in Thailand and Vietnam was conducted. • Presumably, Thailand was at stage III (EMCS), and Vietnam was at stage I&II (EMS&EMA). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]