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In sustainable development, infrastructure has an important role, although infrastructure growth and investment have positive and negative impacts. Indonesia has a strategic program in the form of infrastructure improvement. However, due to the condition of Indonesia which is an archipelago, infrastructure development has only concentrated on Java, especially in Jakarta City. This resulted in a gap in infrastructure development outside of Java. This study identifies the relationship between infrastructure and the regional economy in Indonesia. Indonesia is an archipelagic country so that long-distance transportation, such as using airports, is an absolute necessity to support equitable economic activities and support sustainable development. The relationship between traffic on airports and regional economies is still debating and growing. Therefore, by looking at the characteristics of the archipelagic country, it is interesting to see the relationship between infrastructure and the regional economy in Indonesia. This research aims to provide an understanding of the effect of economic growth in airports and be able to be a stakeholder consideration to making policies about air transportation and regional economic growth evenly on island geography conditions such as Indonesia. The relationship between the two in this study is shown by looking at traffic in airports and 17 economic sectors of GRDP in six different regencies with similar characteristics. The model show the relationship in this study. This model built using a regression approach. The results of this model show the relationship between traffic in airports with regional economic sectors, especially outside the island of Java. The results of this study can be concluded that the effect is found between the economic sectors of the region on the existence of airports

Economic crises often become the source of new business concepts and the transformation of economic systems. Since the global financial crisis of 2008, the importance of implementing the principles of sustainable economic development has been growing as a key element of the green revolution and the transformation of the existing, traditional, brown economy of surplus into a sustainable, green economy of moderation. However, the main factor behind the increase in popularity in the world of science of the issues of sustainable economic development, social environmental responsibility, green economy and circular economy are confirmed by the results of research conducted by climatologists, biologists, ecologists, etc. the process of global warming, the source of which is the growing emission of greenhouse gases, which is a side effect of the development of civilization based to a large extent on the classic model of energy production based on the combustion of fossil fuels. This article deals with a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to the issues of determinants of the implementation of the principles of sustainable development into economic processes, including corporate social responsibility, environmental social responsibility, eco-innovation, green finance and the pro-ecological transformation of the economy towards green economy and circular economy.

The article explores the problem of changing the worldview of mankind and the transition to the concept of sustainable development, which requires harmonization of the economic, environmental and social component to ensure the life of modern generations without prejudice to future ones. The conditions for the emergence of the concept of sustainable development and the progress of countries in achieving it using the index of achieving sustainable development goals are studied. A significant role in the process of studying the goals of sustainable development is given to ecologization of all life spheres, including the economy. The place of ecologization in the goals and objectives of sustainable development is determined, the interpretation of ecologization and the evolution of this concept are analyzed. The ecologization of economy has passed certain stages in its development and has led to the emergence of a new direction of science and practical activity − the ecological economy, which was formed at the intersection of economics and ecology. The main task of the ecological economy is to reduce the eco-destructive impact on the environment from human economic activity. Ecological economy adheres to the goals and objectives of sustainable development and is an integral part of a sustainable economy, reflecting its environmental aspect. Determination of the country's subsidiaries in ecologization of the economy is carried out using the green economy index, which reflects the degree of ecologization in various fields and has something in common with the index of achieving sustainable development goals. A comparative analysis of the indices of sustainable development and the green economy index, their values for Ukraine. The composition of the ecological (green) economy includes other ecologicallyoriented types of economy, each of which studies a certain direction of ecologization and reducing the eco-destructive impact on the environment. With the development of ecological thinking and a change in the worldview of mankind, the number of environmentally-oriented types of economy will increase as the number of scientific studies on environmental issues increases, which, in turn, will achieve the goals of sustainable development

The main objective of the study is to empirically examine how economic growth is impacted upon through financial inclusion. Economic growth per capital income is the study’s explained variables while, rural deposits, private sector deposits, rural loans, private loans, and number of banks branches are proxies for the explanatory variable. Secondary data was sourced from the Central Bank of Nigeria statistical bulletin and World Bank financial indicator and span thirty-five years (1982 to 2017). From the augmented dickey fuller (ADF) test results, autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) regression was adopted. Findings shows that individually, rural deposits, and number of banks branches are significant in the short-run while, only the former is significant in the long-run. However, jointly, and from the Wald test result, a no significant relationship is established between the variables in the long-run. The study thus recommends a nurturing approach from primary to tertiary level of financial inclusion.

In recent years Saudi Arabia has launched many campaigns to promote a model of global excellence to be a pioneer in future growth. As part of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s National Vision 2030, the country encourages the improvement of national quality services based on the commitment of the government to build up a prosperous country, starting with the valorisation of local traditions. In particular, the Saudi, Arab, and Islamic heritage, built by an ancient civilisation and deeply rooted in the country’s history, is currently valorised to strengthen the national identity of local Arab values. The country aspires to preserve heritage sites and the local environment by promoting hospitality services for tourism. In the last years, Muslim pilgrims and all visitors to heritage sites entering the country from abroad have reached eight million people, tripling the numbers in the last decade. The government has started many initiatives and promoted many urban planning processes, programmes, and projects to enhance the touristic offer. The intent is to reach a sustainable approach to target the healthy growth of the country and the Saudi Arabian cities. The article presents some interventions that are currently under development to pursue the Saudi Vision 2030 and its goals. The recent third expansion of the Two Holy Mosques, the modernization of national airports, and the Mecca Metro project to complement the railroad and train public transportation offer will be presented and discussed as part of the national strategy to achieve a sustainable economy and tourism.

A circular economy is viewed as a promising paradigm of organizing a sustainable economy and society. However, the circular economy requires a transition in organizing societal functions. The field of transition studies aims to explain how such systemic shifts unfold. This chapter contributes to the knowledge of transitional processes by analyzing the literature on niche development and systematizing the theoretical insights by taking a multiphase approach. We applied these conceptual findings to a longitudinal case study of the Dutch dairy sector and found (1) empirical evidence of the characteristics of the four phases; (2) a distinctive pathway for a transition: alongside the niche-to-regime process, a top-down process guided by a governmental vision; (3) the Dutch dairy sector on the return to a circular agriculture, recommended to be organized at a regional scale; (4) support for the need for collaboration and cooperation to achieve a CE, yet capturing multiple values.

When inferring on the magnitude of future heat-related mortality due to climate change, human adaptation to heat should be accounted for. We model long-term changes in minimum mortality temperatures (MMT), a well-established metric denoting the lowest risk of heat-related mortality, as a function of climate change and socio-economic progress across 3820 cities. Depending on the combination of climate trajectories and socio-economic pathways evaluated, by 2100 the risk to human health is expected to decline in 60% to 80% of the cities against contemporary conditions. This is caused by an average global increase in MMTs driven by long-term human acclimatisation to future climatic conditions and economic development of countries. While our adaptation model suggests that negative effects on health from global warming can broadly be kept in check, the trade-offs are highly contingent to the scenario path and location-specific. For high-forcing climate scenarios (e.g. RCP8.5) the maintenance of uninterrupted high economic growth by 2100 is a hard requirement to increase MMTs and level-off the negative health effects from additional scenario-driven heat exposure. Choosing a 2 °C-compatible climate trajectory alleviates the dependence on fast growth, leaving room for a sustainable economy, and leads to higher reductions of mortality risk.

The recent trend in New Economics is the establishment of measures of sustainable wealth and welfare which take into account all the parameters of economic, environmental, and social life and progress, juxtaposed to the conventional and myopic GDP. This review summarizes results from a series of recent papers in the energy-growth nexus field, which have perused a proxy for the sustainable GDP instead of the conventional GDP and discusses the difference in results and policy implications. The energy-growth nexus field itself has generated a bulk of work since the seminal study of Kraft and Kraft (1978), but still the field needs new perspectives in order to generate results with a consensus. The bidirectional causality between energy consumption and sustainable economy provides evidence for the Feedback Hypothesis, a statement that essentially warns that it is too early for sustainability to be feasible without fossil energy consumption, and vice versa. The unidirectional causality reveals, on the one side, that an economy cannot grow without the plentiful consumption of energy (the Growth Hypothesis) and, on the other side, that the growth of the economy fuels energy consumption (the Conservation Hypothesis). Failure to corroborate causality between energy consumption and economic growth is evidence for the Neutrality Hypothesis.

Contemporary capitalism, with all of its contradictions and variability of existence, dominates the present. Even though it retained its basic characteristics of classical capitalism, its peculiarity is present in socially-productive relations that are in mutual contradiction. Modern capitalism is still capitalism. The aim of this paper is to research the relationship between contemporary capitalism and sustainable economy and to give an answer what is necessary for those two to be connected.

As a part of the transition to a sustainable economy, China has set a cap on primary energy consumption for the first time, of 5.0 billion tonnes of standard coal equivalent by 2020. However, there is a debate on the cap feasibility and failure to adequately address the underlying equity-efficiency trade-off, which hampers achievement. This paper identifies some key challenges ahead, including the coal-dominant energy mix, declining financial support, inconsistent central-local goals, rising costs of energy-saving measures and quality of energy statistical data. By quantifying the preference of each providence toward equity-based or efficiency-based allocation schemes, the great disparity among provinces is revealed and the equity-efficiency trade-off relationship is confirmed. Developing regions, primarily located in central and western areas, tend to favor equity-based disaggregating schemes. Contrarily, developed coastal provinces strongly favor efficiency-based schemes. The present national disaggregation schemes are mainly based on historical energy consumption, but disregard the provincial development gap and efficiency factors. We conclude that this ambitious goal is likely within reach, but increased efforts and flexible instruments are needed.

Over the past decade, central banks in a majority of developed countries injected astonishing amounts of money into national and international economies in the hope of helping real sectors and with worries of high inflation. Neither of these came true. This paper describes the reasons for such unusual dynamics using a case of the sustainable economy. The three factors considered include the increased propensity to save, the decreased money multiplier, and substantial growth in the financial markets. The mathematical model studies the effect of the new money created on the real sector via the effect on real consumption depending on the share of the new money received by the less and more affluent part of the population. The results suggest, that the higher is the proportion of new money allocated to the poorer part of the society, the higher is the effect of overall money on the real sector if the propensity to consume in this part of the population is held constant.

In this study, the effect of green jobs on youth employment is examined. In this context, firstly, the terms of green growth and green jobs are explained. In this context, the positive and negative effects of green growth in terms of a sustainable economy are mentioned. Additionally, the aspects that may be an opportunity or a threat for developing countries are explained. On the other hand, Turkey is examined in terms of green growth and green jobs-oriented strategies in this study. Moreover, a framework has been drawn regarding the possibility to evaluate the potential of young population in green areas, such as renewable energy. It is concluded that green job opportunities will be more significant for Turkey in the future to minimize youth unemployment.

Searching for new ways to stimulate a sustainable economy, a tax on meat might be worth considering. This study finds many sources claiming a substantial part of the costs related to the production of meat are not included in the price the consumer pays. A meat tax should include this ‘external’ costs. The income from a meat tax can be spent on measures that mitigate or compensate for the impact of meat production and consumption. Though exact numbers are still hard to give, conservative estimations enable us to define a minimum for such a tax. There is ground for a meat tax of 26–53% (depending on the kind of meat). Apart from the mitigation measures, this may lead to a drop of the meat consumption by 50%.

To achieve sustainable development, it is evident that new approaches to governance are required to govern the transformation of the economy and enable the replacement of unsustainable technologies and practices. Very much like new technologies and social innovation, institutional innovation emerges from the bottom up by non-state actors aiming to facilitate the governance of transformation. What is the potential of such institutional innovation?A sustainable economy fulfills societal needs in a fundamentally different way to the current economic system. Improvements to the efficiency of existing technologies or practices appear insufficient for achieving sustainable development within the planetary boundaries. Disruptive, systemic and transformational changes appear necessary in order to replace existing technologies and practices to establish a sustainable economy. Such innovations often start out in niches; however, the scaling up and the ultimate replacement of current socio-technical systems requires governance to allow for the coordination of actors, the reorganization of socio-technical systems and the mobilization and allocation of resources. As governmental institutions are part of the current (non-sustainable) systems and thereby fail to provide coherent, integrated and transformative governance, we explore whether institutional innovation from non-state actors can step in to provide governance of transformation processes. Based on explorative qualitative case studies of networks in the food sector, city planning and reporting tools, we analyze the potential of bottom-up institutional innovations to coordinate actors in transformation processes.

For sustainable economy approaches to gain more political support and be more present in forums of public debate, they must be allowed to have their wider economic and social implications subjected to scrutiny. Our focus is on the nexus of intended emission reduction and unintended structural implications on the economy. In order to gain insights into the possible implications, we construct two sustainable economy scenarios for Germany. The scope of these scenarios is based on 30 research projects of the funding measure Sustainable Economy. Our model based analysis shows that the effects of these scenarios on emissions are in the order of magnitude of seven to twelve percent of German annual CO2-emissions. The net effects on employment are moderate, but labor markets face huge challenges in managing the high number of job turnovers.

Reaching the Sustainable Development Goals requires a transformation to a sustainable economy. This special issue presents new scientific results produced within projects of the funding measure Sustainable Economy, which is part of the Social-Ecological Research (SOEF) funding priority of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The articles focus on new lines of inquiry with regard to impacts, governance approaches, and sector-specific conditions and options for a transformation to a sustainable economy.

The principle of “common but differentiated responsibility”, as a key concept of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), acknowledges the conditions for a generally acceptable and differentiated pricing mechanism on carbon emissions. With reference to this principle, carbon price determination has become a necessary instrument for sustainable policies. Considering the development gaps and the historical responsibility of the OECD's countries, a single carbon price would raise a major issue of equity between “developed” and “developing” countries. Although from a climate perspective each molecule of CO2 produces the same level of damage despite the nature or the location of the activity generating the emissions, all CO 2 emissions are not on an equal footing. Indeed, some are necessary to improve the lives of people in “developing” countries when others can be considered not indispensable, especially beyond a certain level of development. In this policy paper, we explain how the price of carbon should be fixed according to a reference price depending on the Human Development Index (HDI) and CO 2 emissions per capita. The HDI criterion enables to integrate progressivity into taxation while distinguishing what is essential from what is not. By taking a reference price based on the HDI, countries with low HDIs should pay a lower carbon price. However, with same HDI levels, countries with higher CO2 emissions should pay a penalty on the reference price. Our policy paper analyses the benefits of a differentiated and progressive carbon pricing mechanism to facilitate intergovernmental cooperation for a more sustainable economy.

There is an ongoing debate among private, non-governmental, and governmental institutions about development and its degree of sustainability. This study sets out to answer whether or not India and Nigeria, as developing countries, are on the right path towards attaining sustainable development. If they are not, the study identifies a probable pathway, from developing to sustainable economy. This is achieved by conducting a comparative analysis of the development planning systems and sustainable development indicators, using the case studies of India and Nigeria. The results of this work will be useful to researchers, policy-makers and development workers.

The pace of GDP growth in China has shifted from an average of 10 per cent between 1980 and 2010 to below 7 per cent recently. This change is to some extent desirable, if the moderated growth reflects a successful transition towards a more efficient, inclusive and sustainable economy. However, certain ideas about China’s transition are problematic. This article rebuts a particular notion that China needs to replace its investment-driven growth by consumption-driven growth. This notion is erroneous both theoretically and empirically. Should China follow this path, its growth in the future would decelerate more precipitously than intended, falling into the middle-income trap.

The agricultural biogas market differs in different European countries. Both in Europe and in Poland, the basic form is the use of biogas to generate electricity and heat. In nine EU countries, the biogas produced is also used in local gas networks and in transport, especially communal. Biogas production can be based on agricultural raw materials (Germany) or the use and processing of all agricultural, industrial and municipal waste (Denmark, Sweden). The aim of this article is to present dynamics and structure of biogas market development, raw materials used and profitability in various legal and financial models. The presented analyzes have concluded that biogas plants could be an important part of the energy market in the future, particularly at the local level and an important part of a sustainable economy. / Synopsis. Rynek biogazu rolniczego rozni sie w poszczegolnych krajach europejskich. Zarowno w Europie jak i w Polsce podstawową formą jest wykorzystanie biogazu do wytwarzania energii elektrycznej i cieplnej. W dziewieciu krajach unijnych wytworzony biogaz wykorzystywany jest rowniez w lokalnych sieciach gazowych oraz w transporcie, szczegolnie komunalnym. W wytwarzaniu biogazu mozna opierac sie na surowcach rolniczych (Niemcy) lub wykorzystaniu i przetworzeniu wszelkich odpadow rolniczych, przemyslowych i komunalnych (Dania, Szwecja). Celem artykulu jest przedstawienie dynamiki i struktury rozwoju rynku biogazu, wykorzystywanych surowcow oraz oplacalności w roznych modelach prawno-finansowych. Przedstawione analizy pozwolily wnioskowac, ze w przyszlości biogazownie mogą byc waznym elementem rynku energii, szczegolnie na poziomie lokalnym oraz istotna cześcią zrownowazonej gospodarki.

The recent 2015 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change established a legally binding and universal framework for reducing carbon emissions around the world. This landmark agreement has given renewed impetus to global efforts to tackle some of the fundamental challenges that inhibit the emission reductions.

Bioeconomy solutions potentially reduce the utilization demand of natural resources, and therefore, represent steps towards circular economy, but are not per se equivalent to sustainability. Thus, production may remain to be achieved against losses in natural resources or at other environmental costs, and materials produced by bioeconomy are not necessarily biodegradable. As a consequence, the assumption that emerging bioeconomy by itself provides an environmentally sustainable economy is not justified, as technologies do not necessarily become sustainable merely through their conversion to using renewable resources for their production. A source of the above assumption is that the utility of bioeconomy is mostly assessed in interaction between technology developers and economists, resulting in biased assessment with private commercial technology benefits being included, but environmental costs, especially longer term ones, not being sufficiently considered in the economic models. A possible solution to this conceptual contradiction may come from bioethics, as a strong concept in environmental ethics is that no technological intervention can be imposed on nature beyond its receptive capacity. To achieve a better balanced analysis of bioeconomy, environmental and ecological, as well as non-economic social aspects, need to be included in the overall assessment.

Due to globalization, entrepreneurship has become fundamental for the competitiveness of countries, and as shown by the Triple Helix Framework enterprises, universities and governments must create synergies to their mutual advantage. In Kazakhstan, a Post-Soviet transition economy, gross domestic product has doubled over the past decade thanks to the extractive and heavy industries and on an intensive use of electricity produced from coal. The authors present a goal programming model for environmental policy analysis involving criteria such as economic development, electricity consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and the total number of employees to determine the optimal labour allocation across different economic sectors. The purpose is to provide empirical evidence and policy recommendations to decision makers in developing the optimal strategy able to simultaneously satisfy energy demand, decrease GHG emissions, increase economic growth, and foster labour development by 2050. The analysis will allow to compare Kazakhstan with similar economies.

Community currencies are a popular way localities around the world pursue a sustainable economy. However, no studies look at the economic impact of community currencies using modern causal inference methods. We use the synthetic control method to examine the short and long-term effects of the popular community currency BerkShares on the number of businesses, unemployment rate, and per capita income in the county in which it circulates. The results suggest that BerkShares has not had a discernible impact either directly on businesses or indirectly on local economic conditions. Additionally, BerkShares has not impacted business dynamics in a measurable way. Results from the synthetic control method suggest that establishment births, deaths, expansions, and contractions figures following BerkShares are no different than what they would have been without the currency. Given its lack of discernible impact, the results serve as a caution for localities considering community currencies as an economic development strategy.

All scientific disciplines are characterized by continuous development under a varying dynamic. This applies to the engineering sciences, the natural sciences, and the humanities, as well as to economics and other scientific disciplines. This is often referred to as scientific progress as observed in the context of the many sub-disciplines of the individual branches of science. A somewhat bold specification of progress in an economic sense allows scientific progress in general to be described as follows: If the younger researchers in a discipline could know and do all that the older generations have known and done plus just a bit more, scientific progress will result. This chapter focuses on the progressive thinking in neoclassical economics and the sustainable economy, which is characterized by controversy.

The United Nations have attempted to create a coordination mechanism— UNFCCC—to halt CO2 emissions rise by means of the Paris Treaty 2015— COP21. But the states of the world have not yet started to implement the objectives of anti-global warming governance. Here the link between CO2 and temperature rise in Celsius is analysed and one key remedy is suggested as a model example, namely solar power parks. Time has come for halting and reducing CO2 emissions by real implementation and not utopian dreams of a sustainable economy [1].

The introduction of environmental taxation policies had reached most European countries by the late 1990s. The pricing of activities considered harmful to the environment has given rise to the design of various economic instruments, such as environmental taxes, aimed at promoting environmental responsibility and at enabling the Kyoto Protocol targets to be met, and at the same time generating a marked increase in tax revenues. The aim of this article is to examine whether convergence in environmental taxation has taken place among 27 EU countries, doing so by analyzing time series and applying unit root tests. Our findings show there has been no such convergence, overall, despite the existence of groups of countries with common patterns of behavior.

The bioeconomy emerges as an opportunity to focus on a more sustainable economy, avoid dependence on non-renewable resources and help to mitigate negative environmental impacts. The bioeconomy is considered a priority for the European Union and for Spain, which launched its strategy in 2016. To promote the Spanish bioeconomy, the impact and variables that may influence its development must be known. While previous works have analyzed the domestic sectors, this paper focuses on analyzing the economic importance of Spanish bioeconomy products and on the influence of and the existing links between the foreign sector and the rest of the economy. For this purpose, we apply two different methodologies based on linear social accounting matrix (SAM) models. The linkages show that many bioeconomy products have the potential to promote the rest of the economy and the values of some product multipliers become more significant due to their import dependence. These results enable us to know the structure of the Spanish bioeconomy and the relationships within its account. This analysis is a useful tool for developing policies focused on fostering the bioeconomy and economic growth.

The purpose of this paper is to present the evolution of views on a role of the environmental factor in theories of economy. It also aims to define the role of this factor in building the strong economic and social development. It was pointed, that the base of sustainable economy development (that assumes equality of orders: economic, ecological, social, institutional and spatial) was created as a result of long process of maturity of thought of many economists and societies.

Being relatively new, even definition of green bonds is under scrutiny. As the market of green bonds is rapidly growing (with the small recent setback in growing rates), it is crucial to establish the main determinants of the green bonds market growth and evaluate the perspectives of green bonds in sustainable economy. The main objectives of the research are the following: to evaluate the need for the green bonds as instruments, fostering the sustainability of economy; to identify the determinants of both green bonds related and green investment; to analyze the green bond yields and prices in comparison to non-green bonds; to estimate the perspective volatility of the green bonds price. Green bonds characteristics were compared against characteristics of the non-green bonds. Covariation and regression based analysis was used for the identification of green investment determinants. Variance was estimated in the assessment of bond price volatility. The results showed that price of both green bonds and non-green bonds has tendency to fluctuate in the similar trend; green bond appeal determinants are in coherence with the determinants of green investment; green bonds tend to be less volatile than non-green bonds. It is concluded that the use of green bonds has significant potential to add to the sustainability of the economy.

Dual channels have become popular strategies for manufacturers due to the development of innovative selling platforms. The examples in practice also show that the lack of relationship management, such as cooperation and sharing, may cause an unsustainable supply chain performance. However, previous studies on coordination of dual-channel supply chains always focus on the contribution to profits and neglect the sustainability of relationship development between channel members. In this paper, we study the coordination of a dual-channel supply chain including a direct channel and a traditional channel. Under the fact that sustainable economy, instead of profit maximization, is the more proper objective in channel members’ decision making, we consider the retailer’s risk exposure and assume the risk degree is also the factor that impacts the decision making. We assume the manufacturer is risk-neutral and the retailer is risk-averse, and measure the risk attitude with Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) approach. We first study four traditional contracts used in single-channel supply chains widely such as revenue-sharing contract, profit-sharing contract, buy-back contract and quantity-discount contract. It is shown that some contracts may not coordinate the system in this case, and their required ranges of risk-averse degree are restrictive under same coordination parameters. Then we propose a risk-sharing contract which could distribute profits between two channel members and coordinate the system under varied risk-averse degrees with a fixed coordination parameter. Finally, we analyze the sensitivity of the direct price, channels’ market shares, product’s substitutability and risk factor on the risk-sharing contract’s coordination effect, thus gaining managerial insights with numerical and sensitivity analysis. The results provide important managerial insights.

The purpose of this volume, as articulated in the title and under the aims and objectives presented in this introductory chapter, is indeed unique with respect to making a case of promoting sustainable use of resources and bring down pollution targets keeping the COP21 agenda in Paris in mind. It is now established that climate change has affected every continent, from the equator to the poles, from the mountains to the coasts. The many kinds of extremes that climate change has contributed so far are heat waves, heavy rain and untimely floods, wildfires, drought and melting ice and snow contributing to sea level rise. This volume is based on a conference held in Brisbane, Australia in November 2016—1 year on from COP21. The main objective of this conference was to identify the key issues that need to be addressed in order for nations to achieve their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) proposed at COP21. With this in mind, this volume has focused on how one can add further to the present debate on emission control globally involving both developed and developing nations of the Asia-Pacific. This introductory chapter gets the debate to a level where it will be clear to readers how the aims and objectives of the volume can be achieved.