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Purpose Students play an unequivocal role in sustainable universities as they are theorized to embody the mission of a sustainable university through a sustainable lifestyle and spread sustainability practices during their professional careers. Despite this, it is not well known how or why students come to embody a sustainable lifestyle. This study aims to better understand the relationship between happiness, academic achievement and sustainability behaviors among the student population in a Mexican higher education institution. Design/methodology/approach In a questionnaire study, engineering and psychology university students at a large public university in northwestern Mexico answered questions regarding their environmental sustainability behaviors, happiness and academic performance. A stratified random sampling technique was used to obtain the sample population that best represents the entire population. After chi-square tests, it was confirmed that the three variables were independent of one another. Therefore, a series of correspondence analyses were conducted to examine clusters or patterns that could indicate relationships among the three variables. Findings The main finding from this work was that the happiest and most academically astute participants were only slightly environmentally sustainable or not sustainable at all. The lack of environmental sustainability in students from one of the most top-rank sustainable universities in Mexico does not align with previous sustainability reports. External factors to the university, such as cultural values and extreme weather conditions, may have influenced students’ sustainability behaviors. Research limitations/implications As with any other questionnaire study, the provided data is subject to interpretation, judgment and bias. In addition, the environmental and happiness index used in this study are not free of criticizing, and some author had disputed its efficacy. Finally, this study’s findings did not determine any causality or directionality between any of the latent variables. However, causality and directionally between environmental sustainability-happiness and happiness-academic performance have to be found in both directions. Practical implications Despite the unsustainability of students in this study, this study has several contributions. First, it provides an evaluation of a sustainable university from the perspectives and behaviors of students. The views of students as they relate to the complexities and visions of a sustainable university have remained relatively underexamined. Second, these analyses point to specific sustainability-oriented challenges and inadvertent barriers (e.g. extreme weather patterns) toward the embodiment of a sustainable lifestyle. These challenges and barriers suggest that sustainable universities need to address the dynamic changes inherent in sustainable development. Finally, this study indicates that the link between happiness, academic performance and sustainability may be more complicated and driven by cultural and structural barriers. The issue of barriers, as they relate to sustainability behaviors, is highly relevant and presents important opportunities and questions for future research. Originality/value This study provides an evaluation of a sustainable university from the perspectives and behaviors of students. Students’ views as they relate to the complexities and visions of a sustainable university have remained relatively underexamined. Second, these analyses point to specific sustainability-oriented challenges and barriers as they relate to the embodiment of a sustainable lifestyle. These challenges and barriers suggest that sustainable universities need to address the dynamic changes inherent in sustainable development. Finally, this study indicates that the link between happiness, academic performance and sustainability may be more complicated and driven by cultural and structural barriers.

Several regions have struggled to define and implement strategic priorities to ensure resource supply security and environmental, economic, and social sustainability. The circular economy is gaining more and more importance as one of the forms of transition towards a sustainable future that integrates, in a balanced way, economic performance, social inclusion, and environmental resilience, for the benefit of current and future generations. In light of the challenges of solving or avoiding future problems, the G20 bloc created proposals and action plans to support the transition towards a more circular economic model while at the same time fostering discussions on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to monitor and compare the performance of 19 countries in the G20 bloc (the 20th member is the European Union) from 2000 to 2020 to assess their progress toward environmental, economic, and social sustainability supported by the CE principles. To achieve this objective, the five sectors sustainability model was used and was supported by goal programming as a multicriteria analysis tool generating a synthetic sustainability indicator to assist decision making. The results showed that the countries with the best overall sustainable performance (environmental, economic, and social) in 2020 were Canada (which also occupied the best position in 2000), Australia, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, while Argentina, South Africa, India, Indonesia, and China showed lower sustainability. The results can serve as a reference for decision making by stakeholders in designing policies and incentives to encourage the adoption of the circular economy and boost economic development without compromising welfare or the environment.

The current world environmental challenges claim for actions towards a sustainable development. Humans demand huge amount of resources to support the chosen development pattern, and returns concentrated human-waste to be diluted by nature, making this relationship unbalanced. This situation becomes worse when the resources extracted are beyond their own natural capacity of replenishment, which jeopardizes the resources availability and all social related issues as described by the 17 sustainable development goals. There is a common sense about the need of rethinking about the world we want for today and future generations, and for this task, looking for more sustainable production systems is an important step to feed policy makers with reliable scientific data to support better-oriented public policies. This special issue brings research show cases focused on themes discussed during the 8th and 9th International Workshop Advances in Cleaner Production, including cleaner production technologies, resources efficiency, environmental management, ecological modeling and business sustainability report. The main goal of this paper collection is to collaborate for the advances of cleaner production for the most different scales as an important approach to achieve the needed sustainable development.

Water resources are under pressure because of human activities. Its management faces the challenge of enhancing long-term water security while minimizing undesirable economic, social, and environmental impacts along with its production chain. Since water and wastewater treatment plants are designed to maintain and conserve freshwater provisioning services, it is paramount to understand how it operates before proposing options for sustainability. At this point, the diagnosis phase claims for methods scientifically-based, systemic, and more objective to provide information for decision-makers towards strategic management of water resources. This work applies the five-sector sustainability model (5SenSu) to assess Brazil's twenty major water and wastewater treatment companies (WWTC) to quantify their sustainability levels that allow ranking procedures and the establishment of benchmarks for improvements. Under comparative basis, results identified the top-three sustainable companies, CORSAN, CASAN, and SANEPAR, which should be considered examples of best practices. Specifically, the following best-ranked companies in each sector within 5SenSu should be used as benchmark patterns for more oriented best practices: SANEAGO, sector 1; AGESISA, sector 2; CORSAN, sector 3; CASAL, sector 4; MA, sector 5. This work contributes to the advancement in modeling sustainability assessment of human-managed systems (applied in WWTCs in this present study) from a systemic and epistemologically rooted approach, avoiding shortcomings and misleading discussions on the sustainability issue. Quantifying sustainability of WWTCS from 5SenSu allows the identification of those sectors/indicators that requires immediate cleaner production practices by decision-makers to improve overall sustainability, besides identifying those companies more aligned with the requirements of UN SDGs.

Thirty years ago, the systems ecologist Howard T. Odum introduced the concept of transformity, which is a thermodynamic measure of quality within the trial and error evolutionary dynamics of ecosystems, namely an indicator of rank in the hierarchical system structure of the biosphere. Based on a global database of individual processes and whole economies, this paper extends, refines, and updates Odum's idea, demonstrating the strength of the postulated relation. In particular, an inverse linear logarithmic relationship is shown to hold between resource quantity (exergy) and quality (emergy), which is the result of an overall energetic efficiency characteristic of energy transformation processes of the biosphere. This relation extends from natural renewable energy sources to human information (including global internet data flows) and know-how embedded in national economies, thus identifying a consistent theory of hierarchical organization of the biosphere grounded in energetics and ultimately setting constraints to illusions of unlimited growth., Graphical abstract, Public summary • A well-defined representation of the self-organizing hierarchical structure of biosphere is provided • Additional evidence shows transformation processes result in work potentials (exergy) of differing quality depending on placement within the hierarchy • Expansion of higher levels of organization (i.e., information) are constrained by availability of resources requiring investments of nearly 20,000 times the energy invested at the top of the biosphere hierarchy • The understanding of energy constrains may lead to better resource management and economic policy perspectives

The pressure imposed by human-dominated systems on the natural environment and the search for more balanced social systems are current concerns worldwide. Among scales of attention and shared responsibilities, companies are also in the radar of and interested in to be more sustainable. An efficient way in disclosing information on companies' sustainability is through sustainability reports, such as the global reporting initiative (GRI) framework. Although recognized as an important alternative, the GRI is receiving criticisms about its ability in accurately express the meaning of sustainability. This work applies the paraconsistent annotated evidential logic (PAEL) on opinions of experts in the sustainability theme to verify whether the GRI indicators are aligned to the concept of `strong' sustainability. A survey applied to twenty-two experts from different field areas, backgrounds and work experiences on sustainability-related issues provided their beliefs and disbeliefs, in a quantitative way, about the ability of each of the 91 GRI indicators in expressing sustainability. Results show high dispersion (coefficient of variation $>$30%) among the experts opinions for 77 of the GRI indicators, in which the social category appears with the worst performance with its total 48 indicators with high dispersion. This is an indicative of different understandings by experts about the meaning of sustainability concept and/or the meaning and reach of GRI indicators in achieving sustainability. The PAEL reports that all three categories (economic, environmental and social) fall into the `paracomplete' region of the Cartesian unitary square's graph, indicating an inconclusive result about whether these three categories are able to capture and/or express the concept of strong sustainability. The overall performance (barycenter with beliefs of $\mu =0.26$ and disbeliefs of $\lambda =0.17$) also fall into the paracomplete region, rejecting the initial hypothesis that GRI may show strong sustainability. Recognizing the increasing importance of sustainability reports, this work contributes in identifying and suggesting improvements to the GRI developers on indicators that may better represent the strong sustainability and achieve its main goals. GRI's framework should be based on a clear sustainability model and provide through a simple, fast and understandable way, information about the purposes of each indicator. Focus for improvements should be especially directed to: EC4-6; EN18, 20, 21 and 34; LA2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14; SO3-8, 11; PR1-5, 7-9; HR3, 8-10.

Increasing economic and population growth has put immense pressure on energy, water and land resources to satisfy national and supra-national demand. Through trade, a large proportion of such a demand is fulfilled. With trade as one of its key priorities, the China Belt and Road Initiative is a long-term transcontinental investment program. The initiative gained significant attention due to greater opportunities for economic development, large population and different levels of resource availability. The nexus approach has appeared as a new viewpoint in discussions on balancing the competing sectoral demands. However, following years of work, constraints exist in the scope and focus of studies. The newly developed multi-regional input–output (MRIO) models covering the world’s economy and its use of resources permit a comprehensive analysis of resource usage by production and consumption at different levels, and bring more knowledge about resource nexus problems. Using the MRIO model, this work simultaneously tracks energy, water and land use flows and investigates the transnational resource nexus. A nexus strength indicator is proposed which depends on ternary diagrams to grade countries based on their combined resources’ use and sectoral weighting. Equal sectoral weighting is assigned. The analysis presented a sectorally balanced nexus approach. Findings support existing work by recognizing energy, water and land as the robust transnational connections, from both production and consumption points of view. Resource nexus issues differ from country to country owing to inequalities in industrial set-up, preferences in economic policy and resource endowments. The paper outlines how key resource nexus problems can be identified and prioritized in view of alternative and often opposing interests.

Para Cuba alcanzar un desarrollo económico próspero y sostenible como al que aspira, necesita actualizar su estructura productiva a escalas macro y meso económicas, adaptándola a las actuales dinámicas y requerimientos del desarrollo económico internacional. El artículo tiene como objetivo contribuir al desarrollo de la estructura productiva de la provincia de Santiago de Cuba, midiendo la importancia relativa y complementariedad de sus sectores y actividades económicas. Usando modelos econométricos, se estimaron reservas productivas y calcularon los presupuestos de capital en aquellas actividades con mejores oportunidades de emprender proyectos inversionistas, para contribuir a la toma de decisiones en la estrategia de desarrollo económico y social del país hasta el 2030.

Sustainability assessment is a fundamental step to support decisions towards sustainable development, and several procedures to assess the sustainability of antrophic production systems have been suggested. However, most of them lack a scientific-based construct supporting their conceptual model of sustainability, which usually results in a choice of indicator(s) without criterion that can best represent a fraction of the larger and deeper concept of sustainability. This work proposes a novel framework, named Sustainability Assessment Procedure for Operations and Production Processes (SUAPRO), supported by the PDCA four-step management method (plan, do, check, and act) and the five sectors sustainability (5SEnSU) model. Grounded on scientific bases, SUAPRO provides the steps for a sustainability assessment, including its contextualization (objectives, functional unit, boundaries, energy diagram), the choice of indicators based on the 5SEnSU model, the quantification step including goal programming as a multicriteria tool, and conclude the first cycle with a sensitivity analysis. To illustrate an application of SUAPRO, the road and railroad transportation options for soybean in Brazil are considered as a case study. Results show that the railroad mode has better performance as for the Sustainability Synthetic Indicator (SSIS of 3.6 ± 0.4) than the road mode (SSIS of 4.0 ± 0.3). Towards a SSIS improvement, the sensitivity analysis highlights that public policies or even private actions should be mainly focused on reducing the emergy invested in the railroad system, while the road transportation option claims effort in reducing its global warming and acidification potentials. SUAPRO is the main contribution in this work, as it tries to overcome shortcomings as usually found in scientific papers aiming to assess the sustainability of antrophic systems. The subjectivity inherent in any multicriteria method is present as the main limitation, thus all criteria used in choosing weights must be clearly presented.

The importance of aquatic ecosystem services (ES) has been widely recognized. However, complexities among different aquatic ecosystems, the uncertainties of ES delivery mechanism and the lack of a unified accounting method from a production perspective still bring challenges for assessing aquatic ecosystem services valuation (ESV). To address these three concerns, this study develops a coherent accounting method on aquatic ESV. This includes: (1) an aquatic classification system (“source”, “process” and “sink” type); (2) an aquatic ES classification system, which considers their formation mechanisms; (3) a set of detailed ESV accounting techniques. Aquatic ES are divided into direct services, indirect services and existing services. In addition, according to the characteristics and uniqueness of different aquatic ecosystems, the importance degree of each aquatic ES is identified. Further, the aquatic ESV accounting techniques are established to reach three study goals: (1) integration with the characteristics of specific aquatic ecosystems when measuring ESV, (2) aquatic ESV assessment from supply side, and (3) unified metric. The newly developed aquatic ESV accounting is applied to aquatic ecosystems as a case study to test this method. The results show that: (1) Sichuan has the largest aquatic ESV (1.12E+23 sej/yr); (2) Tibet has the largest aquatic ESV per unit area (5.55E+11 sej/m2/yr); (3) Most China's aquatic ecosystems have microclimate regulation as their largest ESV per unit area. This study can fill several research gaps on aquatic ESV evaluation, providing also scientific suggestions on differentiated conservation and management policies applied to specific aquatic ecosystems.

The decision-making process towards sustainability is usually based on quantitative indicators, and becomes more complex the more indicators are considered. The lack of a clear criterion (i.e. a conceptual model of sustainability) supporting the choice of one indicator rather than others creates doubts about the real attainments of such studies. The holistic-based approach in choosing indicators to express sustainability claims for a multicriteria perspective. This work proposes a sustainability assessment tool based on the FIVE SEctor SUstainability (5SEnSU) model that is capable to show the relationships between humans and the natural environment, and the use of goal programming as a multicriteria method. The advantages of the proposed tool are based on clear criteria in choosing indicators supported by the 5SEnSU model, which recognizes the double functions (as a donor and receiver) of natural environment and society, as well the application of goal programming to obtain an easy-to-understand final indicator: the sustainability synthetic indicator of systems (SSIS). The countries that form Mercosur economic bloc were used as a case study to illustrate the application of the proposed model. Results have shown that Uruguay holds the highest sustainability performance among all Mercosur countries, although still demanding efforts from public policies to improve its national happiness level (K52 indicator), employment rate (K41 indicator) and total emergy flow per capita (K12 indicator). Instead of using a single criterion in choosing indicators, this work provides a scientific-based tool in choosing, calculating, and supporting discussions on the sustainability of production systems under a more holistic perspective.

The sustainability of the development of water resources is a pressing challenge. Natural forces, economic pressure and increasing population determine a significant growth in water use and pollution not supported by highly inefficient water supply practices. In this framework, the Italian water services with fragmented management, highly deficient collection and treatment of wastewater - and existing and potential problems in water supply in some areas of the country – explains the reasoning of the drastic restructuring introduced by Law 36/1994 (Act n. 36 on Water Resources, 1994). The impossibility of avoiding natural monopoly and the necessity to industrialize the whole sector determined the imposition of a “for the market” competition in order to exploit possible economies of scale and scope. In this work, a group of Italian water utility companies is used to assess the sustainable efficiency of the Italian water sector, using the mathematical/linear programming of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) on a set of key variables including, water losses (never considered in the previous studies) to assess technical and environmental efficiency. This well-known technique allows evaluating the systems’ efficiency not only by calculating the efficiency of each unit, but also helping policymakers by suggesting corrective policies and measures which could make the inefficient units efficient. This approach can be useful for policymakers to direct decisions towards a more sustainable and efficient water sector.

This special volume of the JCLP is mainly built upon articles presented at the 6th International Workshop Advances in Cleaner Production held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2017. The event had provided a progressive interdisciplinary meeting for knowledge advance and information trade. Papers in this issue cover a broad range of perspectives of cleaner production strategies and practices, and a special focus was placed upon the type of contribution – practical, conceptual/practical, conceptual - and the scale of their coverage – local, regional and global. The papers provide understanding on the research intended to systematically include cleaner production in the path sustainability, and identifies the extent to which cleaner production practitioners directly and indirectly provide local, regional and global solutions. Key results of this introductory article include research on: efficient and responsive use of energy and resources; the search for reduced emissions, the role of managerial support and environmental assessments, and the implementation/analysis of closed-loop systems of materials.

Global level agreements related to sustainability have changed the way organisations work. Many companies, mainly the larger ones, have assessed their environmental impacts to achieve both economic and environmental benefits by reducing waste generation and by using less energy, water, and materials. Considering this approach, many of these companies have strategically set up environmental management practices guided by Cleaner Production (CP) concepts. Despite its benefits, CP has a low application rate in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which is attributed to barriers such as a lack of resources, concentrated decision-making by owners and lack of leadership. Based on CP concepts and focusing on overcoming internal barriers in SMEs, this article proposes a management methodology of CP in small companies. A longitudinal action research of six cycles was carried out to develop a suitable methodology, comprising a meta phase and a five-step cyclic phase, which was a simple and viable way of conducting a CP program. It was found that promotion and monitoring actions, prioritisation of preventive opportunities and employee involvement facilitate the process of continuous improvement. This methodology may facilitate SME environmental management and contribute to developing products and processes towards sustainability objectives more efficiently.

An ecological footprint is an accounting tool that reports the balance between resource supply and demand to assess environmental sustainability. Among the many available indicators of social progress, happiness reflects how a person feels about their quality of life. We combined these two approaches to assess the ecological efficiency of social performance in the low-income community of Felicidade, in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2019. We assessed the ecological footprint and gross domestic happiness (GDH) through questionnaires. We found that the community has a lower environmental footprint than higher-income communities in Brazil. However, the per capita ecological footprint in the community is still above what is available per person globally. We found that the community has a high level of life satisfaction (GDH = 0.86) and that the main contributor to happiness is health, time use, psychological wellbeing, education, good governance, and community vitality. The results suggest that other contributors unrelated to income are more robust determinants of happiness. In Brazil, despite higher footprints characterizing higher-income communities, further efforts in low-income communities are needed to reduce environmental footprints, ensure dignified income, and nurture the underlying conditions for high levels of happiness and social capital.

The objective of this paper is to assess the sustainability of the agricultural production chain of rice (Oryza sativa L.) in Brazil and Cuba, using a conceptual model that considers five sectors of sustainability supported in the Goals Programming philosophy as multicriteria analysis tools. A synthetic sustainability indicator is constructed to support decision-making through the benchmarking process to contribute the environmental, economic and social sustainability of rice farming. As results, Brazil shows a greater sustainability based on better availability of environmental resources for rice cultivation, a lower relative environmental load, better economic and productive performance, poorer employment and wage policies and higher satisfaction of the social demand for rice. On the other hand, Cuba shows a deficit of environmental resources, higher relative environmental load, low economic and productive performance, better employment and wage policies, and unsatisfied social demand for rice.

Agriculture production in Pakistan is one of the main economic and social sector. It contributes about 20–25% to the country GDP and provides more than 60% employment opportunities for rural peoples, playing a backbone role in the country economy and food security. However, sustainable production of the agricultural system is very important to address a societal concern for environmental impacts and nutritional value, while maintaining an economically feasible production system for farmers. Therefore, this study used various indicators based on emergy accounting method to analyze the sustainability of the agriculture production systems in Pakistan from 2001 to 2015 in four provinces namely Punjab, Sindh, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan are investigated. The analysis indicates that (1) in all selected provinces the maximum portion among all inputs are purchase non-renewable inputs and purchase renewables input. Among in purchase non-renewable comprise inputs the largest portion are for labors, agriculture machinery and fertilizer inputs, while in purchase renewables comprise inputs the largest share are for water that used during irrigation purposes in all provinces. (2) In Punjab and Sindh, among purchase non-renewable comprise inputs the labor, pesticides and diesel were found decreased, while in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan the pesticides, diesel and electricity were found declined. The efficiency of overall output agriculture production in selected provinces are in the order of Punjab > Sindh > Kbyber-Pakhtunkhwa > Baluchistan. The output emergy share of the agriculture production increased by 66% in Punjab, 34% in Sindh, 110% in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and 72% in Baluchistan in the study period. (3) The analysis of overall agriculture performance through emergy based indicators indicates that the NRP% (non-renewable portion) ratio for Punjab declined by 12% while for Sindh, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan increased by 1%, 8% and 1%, respectively. That is why the EIR (emergy investment ratio) value is lower in Punjab and higher in other selected provinces. (4) The ESI (emergy sustainability index) values were declined for Punjab, Sindh, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan by 18.91%, 16.19%, 35.51% and 11.21% respectively, with average values of 0.51, 0.11, 0.22, and 0.21 indicates increased in Punjab than other provinces. We believe this study provides the policy makers and producers the understanding of the important drivers influencing agricultural system productivity and environmental, social and economic sustainability, and to create more adaptable and responsive management practices and strategies for truly sustainable agricultural production systems in Pakistan.

Although there are many studies on strategy formulation, little research has been done on how to improve strategy implementation in industries. The focus of this study is to analyze the variables that can make Production Planning and Control (PPC) an important ally in the strategy implementation process to assist sustainable industries to be more competitive. The methodology used was multiple case study supported on interviews with production planning and control managers of six renowned Brazilian industries, considered sustainable by their concern with the social and environmental cause, beyond the economic. Using Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), it was possible to separate these industries in three different groups by the number of employees for analysis, where PPC had a different role, and so identify the following variables that can differentiate PPC to help in the process of implementing strategy: (1) the possibility to align business and operation strategy, (2) the PPC intention to disseminate the operation strategy on the shop floor and (3) in the company, and (4) disseminate the business strategy in the company. The academic relevance is to extend the usual concept that PPC should be only involved with operation strategy and present the variables that should be focused on by PPC to assist in the process of implementing strategy in sustainable industries. The practical contribution and originality of this research are to present entrepreneurs, executives and leaders that PPC should be used more effectively in an effort to improve the process of strategy implementation, assisting sustainable industries to be more competitive.

Revegetation has significantly contributed to improvements in ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration and soil retention. Yet, vegetation expansion in water-limited regions may generate conflict of water demand between nature and humans. Present studies are still lacking when it comes to identifying the permissible vegetation capacity, i.e. net primary productivity (NPP) threshold, based on the local water resources limits, and further proposing adjustment and optimization strategies to keep water use balanced in anthropogenic-biological systems. Under such a circumstance, this study assesses the difference between the actual NPP and NPP thresholds at regional and ecosystem scales in China. The results show that 8 out of 31 provinces have their provincial actual NPP above the regional NPP thresholds, mainly concentrated in northern China between 400 and 800 mm iso-precipitation line, i.e. North China Plain (Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei), the middle reaches of the Yellow River Basin (Shaanxi and Henan provinces), and the Northeast China (Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning). Forest ecosystems dominate the difference between the actual total woodland and grassland ecosystems NPP and the permissible NPP thresholds in these regions, ranging from 67% (Beijing) to 99% (Tianjin). If the current vegetation intensity in these regions remains unchanged, the areas of woodland and grassland ecosystems should be optimized 0-48% and 0-100% of their present areas to balance the water demand between the ecosystems and humans, without considering the potential consequence of climate change and soil erosion. Although 23 provinces have their regional actual NPP below their permissible NPP thresholds, 6 out of 23 provinces still have their woodland and grassland ecosystems NPP above the corresponding NPP thresholds, mainly focusing on the Northwestern China north over the 400 mm iso-precipitation line, including Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Hainan, Shanxi, Gansu and Xinjiang. Forest ecosystems also dominate the negative NPP differences in these regions, ranging from 91% (Inner Mongolia) to 46% (Gansu). These reveal the hidden and potential pressure in the 6 provinces to balance limited water resources in the local anthropogenic-biological system. This study provides a method to assess the water-resources permissible NPP threshold and further proposes the specific adjustment and optimization plans for the areas with actual NPP above the corresponding NPP thresholds, which can provide guidance for ecological restoration program implementations in a more sustainable way.

Para alcanzar un desarrollo económico sostenible consistente con los 17 objetivos de la agenda 2030 de las Naciones Unidas, Ecuador debe transformar su modelo económico primario exportador a otro de economía diversificada. El artículo tiene como objetivo evaluar las relaciones intersectoriales de la matriz productiva de la provincia Esmeraldas usando el modelo insumo producto como herramienta de gestión sectorial, lo que permitió elaborar la matriz insumo producto provincial y evaluar su potencial económico. Fueron clasificados los 44 sectores que componen su estructura económica e identificados aquellos con mayores y menores encadenamientos productivos. Además se identificaron discontinuidades en los encadenamientos y se formularon políticas públicas para contribuir al cambio de la matriz productiva.

Cities play a crucial role in the development of nations, since they are responsible to concentrate energy from diverse forms and transform it into higher quality outputs. An alternative way in assessing urban agglomerates is by means of Odum’s macroscope, represented by the eMergy synthesis method, which allows understanding and quantifying the energy flows driving cities functioning. The macroscope is able to identify the relationship of dependence among cities and their surrounding environment that provides less concentrated resources to be transformed into high quality products and information, as well as undesired by-products. After two decades developing studies related to urban systems and the Odum’s macroscope, the research team of Paulista University in Brazil acquired experience and maturity to write this conceptual analysis about how Brazilian cities work. Several cases are provided (including anabolic and catabolic ones) to sustain final insights towards more sustainable cities in Brazil. The main identified characteristics about how Brazilian cities work, derived from the case studies presented, can be summarized as: (i) the growing importance of studies focused on cities including their surrounding supporting areas to assess their sustainability; (ii) the need for both macro and micro perspectives when assessing cities’ sustainability; (iii) the importance in using Odum’s macroscope for a holistic understanding of cities’ sustainability performance; (iv) the importance in using Odum’s macroscope to understand how to achieve higher quality of life; (v) the use of macro and micro perspectives in supporting public-oriented policies.

Controversies on food delivery services environmental impacts have been sparked due to the growth of this economic sector. This study focuses on the environmental impacts generated by packaging waste related to urban food delivery services. In particular, the Python based web-crawling and sample survey methods are used for big data mining, and LCA-based environmental impacts evaluation and Kernel density analysis methods are combined to determine the positioning trend of food delivery service providers and expansion direction of environmental pollution load in Jing-Jin-Ji region (North China). Results indicate that (1) food delivery service packages presently account for a very small proportion (