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Growth target management drives China's economic expansion, leading to potential carbon emission externalities. This study examines the impact of economic growth target setting on carbon emission performance in 257 Chinese localities from 2004 to 2020. Using cluster standard error regression, 2SLS instrumental variable regression, and the spatial Durbin model, the results show that moderate growth targets improve urban carbon emission performance. Conversely, aggressive targets do not enhance regional carbon emission performance. Moderate growth targets foster innovation in green technology, while aggressive ones encourage investment in fixed assets and new city growth, impeding performance. Cities in the eastern and western regions, with larger populations and less reliance on natural resources, benefit more from effective economic development targets. The establishment of local targets negatively affects neighboring regions' carbon emissions performance, particularly at a spatial scale of 100 to 200 km. This paper contributes to understanding the environmental consequences of growth target setting and offers insights for balancing economic growth with carbon emission governance in emerging market countries., (© 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.)

It is extremely difficult for emerging economies to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and in order to close this policy gap, a comprehensive policy framework is needed. The purpose of this research is to determine the proportional impacts of domestic and foreign capital to environmental degradation in newly industrialized nations (NICs). For this reason, panel data methodology is used to evaluate, for the years 1991 to 2018, how the ecological footprint is affected by stock market capitalization, foreign direct investment, economic growth, urbanization, and energy intensity. Using the squared terms of stock market capitalization and foreign direct investment, respectively, it is also looked at whether domestic and foreign capital may have non-linear effects on the environment. According to the empirical findings, whereas local capital growth worsens the environment, increasing international capital prevents environmental degradation. There is an inverted U-shaped link between domestic capital and environmental degradation in the event of non-linearity, but foreign capital has a monotonically declining effect on environmental degradation. The study outcomes are utilized to design a policy framework to address the objectives of SDG 7, SDG 11, and SDG 13., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

There has been a call on policy makers in the African continent to formulate and implement initiatives that help to realise some of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), due to the low performance of the continent in terms of meeting the targets of the SDGs. Because of this, the study sought to investigate how banks' financial outreach and intermediation contribute to sustainable development in the continent. Information was collected on 34 African economies for a period of 11 years spanning from 2010 to 2020. The study employed the two-step system generalised method of moments technique to estimate the findings. It was discovered that financial outreach has a significant positive and negative relationship with sustainable development, depending on the indicator used to measure outreach. On various dimensions, financial outreach had a negative influence on carbon dioxide emissions, a positive impact on economic sustainability, and an inverse relationship with social sustainability. It was also revealed that financial innovation has a significant negative link with sustainable development in Africa. Additionally, the findings revealed that both financial outreach and innovation serve as moderating variables in the finance/development nexus. The study recommends that governments and policy makers in various African countries work together with financial service providers to ensure fair, flexible, and alluring interest rates on loans to the underprivileged, disadvantaged ones in society, and vulnerable businesses to smooth their consumption and boost their businesses., (© 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.)

Though construction sector development and economic openness contribute to regional economic development, they have also been debated to pose some environmental challenges. Along these lines, we explored the long- and short-term connections of intensive energy consumption, economic openness, and construction sector development with the chemical oxygen demand throughout the scales of regional development of China's 30 provincial units over the 2004-2021 period. Theoretically, we contribute to the existing knowledge by incorporating chemical oxygen demand pollution, construction sector development, and economic openness to the Kaya identity's baseline framework. Empirically, we apply a series of advanced methods of panel data econometrics for robust results. Our key findings are as follows: First, we revealed a long-term stable cointegrating association among our variables of interest. Second, using the common correlated effect mean group estimator, we unfolded that the intensive energy consumption showed a chemical oxygen demand pollution reduction influence in both the long and short term, demonstrating the most substantial influence in the high regional development panel while expressing the least powerful influence the least regional development setting. Third, we unveiled that economic openness and construction sector development showed a linear chemical oxygen demand pollution enhancement influence in moderately and least developed regions. Nevertheless, both established an inverted U-shaped linkage with chemical oxygen demand pollution for the whole country as well as for high regional development data samples. Eventually, we found consistent estimates across long- and short-term investigations regarding signs of relationships; however, long-term effects remained more powerful than short-term ones. These findings would serve as factual scientific knowledge to help local as well as national governments create the optimal environmental regulations for the construction sector to achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs), especially the Climate Action Plan (i.e., SDG-13)., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The relationship between digital finance and regional green innovation has been partially confirmed, yet the role of environmental regulation in it remains unexplored. Therefore, this paper examines the impact of digital finance on regional green innovation and tests the moderating role of environmental regulation using Chinese city-level data from 2011 to 2019 as a research sample. The results show that digital finance can significantly promote regional green innovation by alleviating regional financing constraints and increasing regional R&D investment. Besides, digital finance has apparent regional difference effects (the contribution of digital finance to regional green innovation is greater in eastern China than in western China, and the development of digital finance in neighbouring regions has a negative transmission effect on local green innovation). Finally, environmental regulation positively moderates the relationship between digital finance and regional green innovation. This paper explores the relationship between digital finance and regional green innovation from the perspective of environmental regulation, providing empirical evidence to promote regional green innovation., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Under the scenario of the complex external environment and internal structural changes in agricultural development, exploring the synergistic relationship between agricultural green efficiency (AGE) and agricultural economic resilience (AER) can offer a new path for fostering sustainable regional agricultural development. This paper fills the research gap in the interaction between efficiency and resilience in agriculture. We explore the synergistic mechanism of the two based on the perspective of sustainable development, providing a reference for constructing a synergistic theoretical system of AGE and AER. Moreover, we apply the Haken model to the field of the agricultural economy and scientifically evaluate the level of AGE and AER synergy in Northeast China from 2010 to 2020. Finally, we analyze the influencing factors of AGE and AER synergy in Northeast China from three dimensions: economic, social, and natural. The results show that AER is dominant in the AGE-AER synergistic system. The synergy level of AGE and AER in Northeast China is mainly in the higher and advanced synergy stages, with obvious spatio-temporal differences and insufficient inter-regional radiation effects. Social factors are the main factors of spatial differentiation of AGE and AER synergy., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The present paper aims to analyze the influence of environmental practices over the sustainable development of economies which create economic resilience for the economies classified according to different income levels. The authors aim to assess the impact of high environmental degradation (HED) on GDP growth volatility and GDP growth for economies over the long term and short term for the period of 1955-2020 in 124 countries. The findings of empirical analysis conclude that HED economies will have high growth in the long term than their counterparts. The economies of HED have a significant mean difference in volatility with their counterpart control group that implies HED economies have low volatility than the control group. Economies with HED have higher financial development relative to their control economies. The empirical analysis of robustness checks shows that economies with HED have low volatility in GDP and higher growth rates. HED economies enjoy high and sustainable financial development and high gross fixed capital formation, which signifies a high level of investment in their economy than their control counterpart., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Building livable rural regions is a key objective of China's rural revitalization, and fostering coordinated and sustainable regional development in China necessitates investigating the geographical and temporal distribution and influencing variables of livability in China's rural areas. This paper compares the concept and connotation of rural livability based on regional economic development theory and sustainable development theory, integrates China's rural revitalization strategy, proposes an index system for evaluating rural livability in China, and conducts an empirical analysis of livable rural areas. Firstly, the level of rural livability development is measured by the entropy method; secondly, the aggregation effect of provinces is demonstrated by using the Moran I index, and finally, the spatial Durbin model is used to explore the influencing factors of rural livability and its spatial spillover effects. Findings of our study reveal that the results of the entropy method indicate that the livability of rural China is in a growing development trend in all provinces, but the livability shows some regional disparities. The Moran index reveals that there are obvious spatial autocorrelations in the livability of Chinese rural areas, and the most typical features are the "high" and "low" clusters. The spatial Durbin model suggests that the influences on the development of rural livability are diverse. Besides, other variables such as environmental pollution and per capita housing area show a negative association with rural livability, and investment in fixed assets, cultural atmosphere and medical health show a positive relationship with rural livability. Based on the study findings, it is proposed that in the rural revitalization strategy process, the formulation of monitoring system should be strengthened and intensify the promotion of coordinated inter-regional development., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

In sustainable development, energy is critical in human activities and shapes a sustainable future. Thus, it is an unignorable element in human development. This paper analyzes the contributions of renewable energy sources (RES)'s to the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of sustainable development. Moreover, we add energy security as a possible fourth dimension into the analysis. For the sample size, we limit the countries members of the OECD and run generalized methods of moments for the period from 1995 to 2015. This method can produce efficient estimators under the problems of endogeneity, omitted-variable bias, measurement errors, and heteroscedastic residuals. According to the results, RES has a small reducing effect (-.007%) on output in the Cobb-Douglas production function for the economic dimension. We found that RES has a positive contribution to the environmental dimension and abates the level of carbon emission (-.093%). RES also confirms the inverted-U shape of environmental Kuznets curve. In the social dimension, RES improves human development and a 1% increase in RES consumption causes to .0045% increase in human development. In the last contribution, RES has a positive effect on sustainable energy supply security in the context of electricity generation (.032%). Although the effects of RES on the environment, social, and energy security are significant, they are limited. These limitations point to barriers that can be overcome over time. Our conclusions recommend that these effects might flourish with technical developments and political support in the long run. Furthermore, public awareness, rising income level, and economies of scale are also beneficial in this process. As a result, RES might be an excellent source for a sustainable future and development. Especially, RES might have remarkable contributions to the 7th, 11th, 12th, and 13th goals of sustainable development., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

This paper forwards the notion that languages are an important resource for sustainable development for modern societies. Informed by theories from both sociolinguistics and language economics on the value of language skills, it is suggested that language(s) have different kinds of value in multilingual societies. Sociolinguists often emphasize the value languages have to their speakers and highlight the importance of social justice and equality between languages. Language economists argue that proficiencies in languages other than the dominant language are a form of human capital that can have a range of direct or indirect benefits. In language economics this is captured by the concepts of non-market and market value. Based on the example of the situation of languages in Australia, this paper argues that migration-induced multilingualism deserves more substantial support from both perspectives. Employing a theory-generating approach, this paper argues that multilingualism forms an important addition to Australia's human capital. For sustainable development, both on economic and social levels, it appears necessary to maintain and support languages in order to enable the country to cater for present and future linguistic needs. These linguistic needs include job market demands, but extend to other aspects of social participation and cohesion.

This paper takes inspiration from the Indigenous Fijian practice of 'curui' -- weaving or patching together -- as a metaphor to explore connections between climate justice, gender equality, and education in Fijian policies and practices. The paper argues that neither gender equality nor education can be 'silver bullets' for the huge challenges that the climate crisis raises, particularly for small island developing states (SIDS) such as Fiji that exist at the sharp end of the crisis. The paper contributes close analysis of Fijian national climate change policies and development plans from 2010, identifying the ways in which these policies frame and discuss the connections between climate, gender, and education, and asking whether these policies acknowledge traditional ecological knowledges, and the extent to which they are aligned with notions of justice. It argues that connected approaches to education, centred in Indigenous knowledges and ontologies, have thus far been insufficiently included in Fiji's policies.

Higher education is the refinement of teaching--learning and research acumen. It is the epitome of a learning system before entering the job market or venturing into new start-ups. Various studies indicate that the growth of an economy is positively associated with development in the higher education ecosystem. The state-run institutions have their inherent stereotypical challenges for propelling the essence of excellence. Barring a few, the mushrooming of private institutions has diluted its holistic objectives at par with the national standards. The quality outcome of higher education research brings momentum to all the development vectors across society, nation and the global community. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in developing countries have failed to secure top positions in various global rankings, causing concern for all stakeholders. This paper attempts to develop a comprehensive strategic model best suited to developing nations like India that can transform the higher education ecosystem par excellence to the apex institutions across the globe. The paper strongly suggests establishing a unitary institution that would pool the best talents from the existing HEIs through a stringent and unbiased scoring instrument that would augment the quality of life, resurgence of the economy, superior Human Development Index and sustainable development.

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

Poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs) present a recipient country's program of intent for the utilization of World Bank loans and grants to alleviate debt under the bank's programs of action for poverty reduction in highly indebted poor countries (HIPCs). This article argues that structural transformation is a prerequisite for poverty reduction in Zambia. However, the Zambian PRSP is largely informed by mainstream thinking on poverty and livelihoods. It champions a neoliberal program constructed on the sanctity of the market and seeks to maintain the very structural processes that engender poverty. Because it fails to break, conceptually and methodologically, from past program failures, the PRSP is likely to be just the latest installment in the ever-changing fashionable semantics of the "development community." The article examines the conceptual and methodological failures of the Zambian PRSP particularly with respect to the measurement of poverty and the concept of participation.

The UN Sustainability Goals recognise the important efforts of organisations to meet global commitments to the terms of the Paris Agreement. This paper argues that the UN Sustainability Goals are deeply embedded in neoliberal goals for sustainable development. The result is that the goals require commitment to contradictory ends: achieving climate goals, while also working to continue economic growth. Education is the focus of SDG4, which features an emphasis on STEM subjects, and the same nod to sustainable development that underpins many of the other 17 goals. Philosophy of education remains one of the most powerful tools available to rethink societal and educational futures.

China is a rising power of the twenty-first century with its brilliant economic performance as a result of the transition to the free market economy model. However, China's economic development process has caused high environmental costs. For the past decade, China has been the leading country responsible for global carbon dioxide emissions (CO 2 ). Therefore, determining the dynamics that have a reducing effect on CO 2 emissions in China is very important for the development of sustainable environmental policies. This paper aims to examine the impacts of the institutional structure on environmental sustainability in China. To this end, the study follows the method of cointegration with multiple breaks that produce robust econometric results and consider structural changes. According to the results, (i) the validity of an N-shaped EKC relationship is supported between economic growth and environmental pollution. (ii) Industrialization and trade have an increasing impact on environmental pollution. (iii) Political rights and civil liberties have a reducing effect on environmental pollution. Consequently, this study implies that political rights and civil liberties can make an important contribution to achieving sustainability goals in China.

Energy consumption for sustainable development has become a crucial issue in recent years. The anthropogenic effects of traditional energy sources (non-renewables) underscore the need for renewable energy and efforts to promote its adoption have comprised policy makers' strategies to achieve sustainable development. At the same time, institutional stability is a necessary element needed to meet the goal of sustainable development via improved management of resources and technology diffusion. The literature shows some contradictory findings on this matter and this study aims to clarify. Thus, this research scrutinizes the contribution of renewable and non-renewable energies in sustainable development while also taking into account financial development and institutional quality in ASEAN countries from 1980 to 2018. To assess for co-integration, a pooled mean group (PMG) regression technique is employed and the findings from this technique are verified by using fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS), dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS), and canonical cointegration regression (CCR) techniques in conjunction with other panel-based econometric procedures to evaluate the robustness of the model. The findings reveal a significantly positive influence for renewable energy and a significantly adverse impact for non-renewable energy with respect to sustainable development in ASEAN countries. In addition, the results indicate that institutional quality and financial development have adverse effects on sustainable development. Therefore, this research recommends sustainable management of non-renewables and greater promotion of renewables by strengthening institutional quality in ASEAN countries., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

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

Inclusive green growth (IGG), as a new way to attain sustainable development, aims to achieve comprehensive and coordinated economic, social, and environmental development. How to define IGG and explore its driving factors is key to realizing IGG. This study takes China as an example, using panel data from 30 provinces in Mainland China from 2009 to 2018 for research. The epsilon-based measure (EBM) model and Global Malmquist-Luenberger (GML) index are used to evaluate China's IGG, and a spatial panel regression model of the impact of urban land resource misallocation on IGG is established. The research found that (1) China's IGG level from 2009 to 2018 displayed an upward trend, and combined with exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA), it was found that IGG has an obvious spatial correlation; (2) the regression model shows that the misallocation of land resources hinders the improvement of IGG in China; and (3) the decomposition of spatial spillover effects demonstrates that the misallocation of land resources has negative externalities, which will also have adverse effects on neighboring areas., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

This study attempts to determine the untapped factors that affect sustainable development in 64 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries from 2006 to 2019. The study employed the two-step system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) validated through Two-stage Least Square (2SLS). The findings of system-GMM revealed a significant dynamic nature of the relationship between sustainable development and its determinants. Findings demonstrate that financial development, financial inclusion, energy efficiency ratio, per capita health expenditure, per capita income growth, governance, and integration of before and after BRI dummy show a significant positive impact by contributing to BRI countries' sustainable development path. However, e-government, natural resource rent, macroeconomic conditions, and government size have a significant but negative effect by hurting sustainable development. Integration of BRI further enhances and promotes a country and regional sustainable development path. Therefore, better regional policies for financial development, financial inclusion for poverty alleviation, and e-government development are required, boosting per-capita income and sustainable development in the coming years. The study concludes that BRI country's natural resources rent contributes to national saving but declines the natural resources. Also, it endorses the theory that a nation should adopt the "Hartwick rule" to reinvest rents from the depletion of the natural resources in reproducible capital forms to shift from a weak sustainable path. This study also proposes significant policy implications for balanced and sustainable growth in light of the current research findings., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

In this study, we analyze the time-varying causality linkages between energy consumption, economic growth, and environmental degradation in 33 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, spanning the period 2000 to 2013. The curve causality approach provides evidence of a significant environmental Kuznets curve in 25 countries in the case of the ecological footprint and in 23 countries in the case of the Environmental Performance Index. However, out of them, only Italy, Slovakia, and South Korea have traditional environmental Kuznets curve, in the form of an inverted U-shaped curve. For the remaining countries, different forms of curves are valid. In particular, an N-shaped curve appears to be valid between income and environmental degradation for nearly half of the sample, i.e., for Austria, Belgium, Chile, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, New Zealand, Turkey, and the USA. Additionally, bidirectional causality relationships are confirmed among all covariates in most countries. In view of the results, some crucial policy implications would be suggested, such as sustainable development that aims to make a balance between economic growth and environmental protection.

Without enhancing the quality of the environment, the goals of sustainable development remain unachievable. In order to minimize the damage to the planet, sustainable practices need to be considered. This study is conducted to identify some of the drivers behind the increasing sustainability issues and tried to investigate the impact of natural resources, financial development, and economic growth on the ecological footprint in Malaysia from the year 1980-2019 by utilizing the dynamic simulated autoregressive distribution lag approach. It was identified that financial development, economic growth, and natural resources are the determinants behind the upsurge of the ecological footprint as all three show a positive and significant effect on ecological footprint. However, in the long run, the presence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis was also validated in Malaysia. Therefore, it is recommended to increase awareness among the public regarding the adoption of sustainable practices in everyday life and to use green technologies that offer maximum efficiency and minimum damage to the environment in commercial and domestic activities. Finally, based on the research results, a comprehensive policy framework was proposed which could allow the Malaysian economy to attain the objectives of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 7, 8, and 13., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Considering that the rigor of economic activities has widely been linked with the turbulent nature of the increasing global atmospheric and environmental hazards thus hampering environmental sustainability, it then presented a suggestive dilemma realizing that increasing unemployment, i.e., de-economizing human activities posit a desirable environmental quality effect. Given this backdrop, and employing the more recent estimation techniques, the current study probes the validity of the novel environmental Phillips curve (i.e., negative relationship between unemployment and environmental degradation) opined by Kashem and Rahman (Environ Sci Pollut Res 1-18, 2020). In this case, the panel of BRICST (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and Turkey) economies for the selected data set over the experimental period 1992-2016 is analyzed. After using related approaches that are designed to account for probable country-specific factors, i.e., the cross-sectional dependence concern, the findings from the PMG-ARDL model affirmed the validity of the environmental Phillips curve for the BRICST countries. Thus, there is a significant trade-off between unemployment and environmental degradation. Moreover, this study concludes that renewable energy consumption improves the environmental quality, while conventional energy sources remained detrimental factors to environmental quality in the panel of the examined countries. Therefore, the study identified that the share of renewable energy in the energy mix should be escalated to improve environmental quality and maintain or improve the employment level, thus advancing the sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the BRICST countries., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to report the findings of a synthesis of literature reviews and stakeholder interviews conducted in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The synthesis provides an overview of instructional leadership policy and practice in these six countries. Design/methodology/approach: This paper reports the findings of a systematic literature review, and participant interviews, in six sub-Sahara African countries. The research links to the British Council's initiative to develop instructional leadership in developing contexts, including the six countries featured in this submission. Findings: The findings show diverse policy and practice of instructional leadership in these African contexts. Three have no explicit policies on this important leadership construct, while the others have relevant policy statements but limited evidence of instructional leadership practice. Research limitations/implications: The research provides an overview of instructional leadership policy and practice in these six countries, but more school-based research is required to develop grounded evidence on whether and how this is practiced. The pandemic inhibited such school-based research in 2020. The study provides emerging evidence of the impact of instructional leadership on school and student outcomes, confirming what is known from international research. Practical implications: Developing awareness of how instructional leadership can improve student learning, linked to appropriate training, could lead to more effective schools. Social implications: The Sustainable Development Goals stress the importance of high quality education for economic and social development. Leadership is an important aspect of quality, and the research reported in this paper shows the potential for instructional leadership to enhance student learning. Originality/value: This is the first cross-national study of instructional leadership in sub-Saharan Africa.

This philosophy of education paper describes a schizophrenic situation. A new airport is being planned in the locale of a university which is a Centre of Excellence of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), and the university is a major partner. The airport involves an investment in jobs, resources, and will encourage further economic development. The planners have named the inter-connected developments around the airport as the 'Aerotropolis', including new university facilities. One could argue that the airport is a classic example of the 'Capitalocene', where capital rushes into a new project, and environmental costs are ignored. This paper will execute a schizoanalytic critique of the process, from the perspective of a university education researcher caught up in the rushing flows of capital. Schizoanalysis has been chosen as the educational methodology to analyse this situation, because the researcher is part of what is happening, and is turned inside out (schizo) by the designation in their region of the new airport. This paper is positioned in education between capital and the environment -- it will describe from an insider's perspective what it is like to be possessed, evacuated, sold out, and exploited by capital.

In 2015, the United Nations member states adopted the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Education, which is the fourth Sustainable Development Goal, has seen some major transformations with the advent of digital technologies. Education is increasingly being imparted through these digital technologies. However, this change resulting from the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is often reported without in-depth analysis especially in emerging knowledge economies. This paper overcomes that barrier by exploring the motivating factors and de-motivating factors; as well as potential facilitators of online education. The paper also attempts to understand the enrolment, preference and awareness related to online education of the respondents with respect to country, gender, age, employment status and educational qualification, while presenting a comparative analysis of two emerging knowledge economies: India and Uganda. In the first phase, in order to explore motivating, de-motivating factors, and potential facilitators of online education, in-depth interviews were conducted with 51 learners. Data thus collected was checked for content validity through an extensive literature review. In the second phase, a questionnaire was administered to 252 respondents from both countries, drawn from a population of participants pursuing or having an intention to pursue online education. It explored any potential differences in enrolment, awareness, and preference for online-education on the basis of country, gender, age, employment status and existing educational qualification, in order to get better insights for further facilitation and improvement of online-education in emerging economies. To establish statistical validity, Mann-Whitney U-Tests and Kruskal-Wallis Tests were conducted. Based on this primary and secondary data, the paper concludes with some suggestions and recommendations on how to overcome barriers and factors which de-motivate learners from pursuing online education in order to achieve the desired Sustainable Development Goals.

Purpose: This paper aims to assist higher education institutions (HEIs) in their decision-making process to define initiatives and foster research projects contributing to sustainable development (SD) and minimizing the deficits found in the municipalities. Design/methodology/approach: A documental analysis was performed to select HEIs and Brazilian regional development indicators. Then, the assessment of the sustainable and institutional performance of Brazilian municipalities that have HEIs consisted of three parts: clustering with an unsupervised machine learning model, ranking with a hybrid multi-criteria decision making method and visualization of sustainability performance with the dashboard. Findings: The critical analysis of institutional and sustainability indicators contributes to a more active role of HEIs in matters of social responsibility, with a more holistic view of the performance and quality of municipal education. Furthermore, this critical analysis creates a scenario where HEIs can develop public policy proposals in partnership with the government to mitigate the main issues identified. Social implications: With this study, HEIs will be able to direct their actions to minimize the deficits found in the municipalities, consolidating their social responsibility. Originality/value: This study proposes a new decision-support tool with a dashboard of indicators so that HEIs can foster research projects with a focus on regional SD.

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

Enhancing resource cities' resilience and advancing their sustainable development are imperatives, particularly in light of the "dual-carbon" agenda. Double-difference and spatial double-difference models are developed based on the panel data of 281 Chinese cities from 2005 to 2020 to investigate the effects of implementing the National Plan for the Sustainable Development of Resource-Based Cities on the level of ecological resilience in Chinese cities. This paper found that the National Sustainable Development Plan for Resource-Based Cities significantly improves the ecological resilience level of Chinese cities, and the findings are robust. The impacts of implementing the Plan on the ecological resilience of cities of different growth types, regions, and resource types are heterogeneous. Further study finds a spatial spillover effect of implementing the Plan on the ecological resilience of cities, which can improve the ecological resilience level of neighboring cities through spillover effects while improving the ecological resilience level of cities in the region. Based on these new findings, this study provides some policy implications for better advancing sustainable urban development., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a significant marker in global efforts to universalise a conception of ecologically sustainable human development. SDG 4's expanded vision of quality education for all extends to the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Agenda's call for education that contributes to all of SDGs, and prepares students to 'transform our world'. From a critical perspective, this paper considers the incompatibility of endless (compound) economic growth and capital accumulation, under capitalism, with the required CO2 reductions that the climate emergency demands. The paper shows how the ESD proposals reflect the orthodoxy of education as human capital formation for economic development, albeit within a reformed 'green growth' model. At the same time, it argues that their distinctive ambitions and transformational language provide space for critical educators to simultaneously work with and against their contradictions and limitations, and to advance non-capitalist and degrowth alternatives.

In 2018 the OECD added a set of global competence measures to its PISA programme, and reported on the outcomes in November 2020. In this paper I explore the provenance of the idea of global competence underpinning the OECD-PISA Global Competence framework and measure. The official account by the OECD references the OECD PISA Governing Board, Expert Panels, National Teams and Consortia engaged in the creation and delivery of this assessment tool. However, in this paper I problematise this narrative and sketch out an alternate genealogy that seems to operate in the shadowlands of the official account. I describe a web of relationships and projects and identify nodal actors like Asia Society, experts and brokers in élite US universities, agencies involved in the circulation of results. I argue that this rendering of global competence is not only provincial in that its ideational base can be linked to US corporate interests, but its pedagogical impulse is in shaping the culture of the new capitalism, on the one hand, and managing its tendencies to reduce social cohesion, on the other.

This paper applies insights from narrative theory to analyse the OECD's transition to providing humanitarian large-scale assessments under the SDGs, situating this within the evolving dynamics of a global development complex. The perspective is guided by the thematic interests of the special issue, with the goal of enriching understanding of both the OECD's changing positions and capacities in the global field, and the theories, ideas and styles of reasoning it has employed (as well as how they operate). The paper takes its starting point from recent scholarship in international relations (IR) that has applied narrative to the study of international organisations, highlighting the central role of strategic narratives in forging world order and in establishing organisational legitimacy. We describe the core narrative as akin to a Three Act Play (with five stages) which we use as a heuristic device to trace the entwined development stories of PISA and the advent of Humanitarian Assessment in international development.

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

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

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

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