Earth Summit Research Articles

Implementation of Sustainable Development by Cities and Businesses in Poland. Evolution of the Approach

Adoption of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in 2015 put the theoretical concept of sustainable development (SD) into practice. The goals kindled a vivid interest among Poland-based companies, too, especially large enterprises, which took them to the next level, and embedded them in their corporate strategies. Truth be told, Polish local governments started to implement SD much earlier, namely through Local Agendas 21 after the Second Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The year 2015 was a pivotal moment for the development of the SD concept. Yet, in the opinion of many experts, 2020 was a major test for SDGs as the COVID-19 pandemic was exerting an adverse impact on the progress in their achievement. The study attempts to assess the approach of SD pioneers in Poland, both cities and companies, to the implementation of the concept in the first year of the pandemic. The text provides a critical analysis of the literature on the subject, web research, and authors’ empirical studies conducted among those cities and businesses in Poland that are considered the leading SD implementers. The conducted research demonstrated that most of these leaders (both cities and businesses) are acquainted with both SD and SDGs. In the period covered by analysis, there was a major growth in SD institutionalization. Both business and city representatives understand SD primarily in accordance with the definition framed in Agenda 2030. A stable majority of the surveyed cities and businesses believe that their approach to SD implementation has changed since the announcement of SDGs in 2015. The COVID-19 pandemic has not halted the implementation of SDGs, although in some cases, it has forced the surveyed implementers to revise their modus operandi.

The Power of the Periphery: How Norway Became an Environmental Pioneer for the World

The Power of the Periphery: How Norway Became an Environmental Pioneer for the World

Abundance Against Scarcity

Abundance Against Scarcity

A Review of Global Policy Mechanisms Designed for Tropical Forests Conservation and Climate Risks Management

Deforestation and forest degradation of tropical forests are major global concerns due to their ecological, social, and economic roles. In the wake of climate change and its diverse global effects, fragmentation and degradation of tropical forests have jeopardized their ability to support livelihoods and regenerate climate regulating services. Concerted efforts by local, national, and international players, which are primarily scientific, technological, or economic, have borne minimal results in safeguarding these forests from destruction, necessitating a more integrated and inclusive approach. The Rio Earth Summit (1992) brought together world leaders to set targets and priorities on the global sustainability agenda and laid a strong foundation for international policy cooperation in the future. This study employed a systematic review of articles published between 1992 and 2020 to establish how various policy mechanisms have been developed and evolved to bridge forests and climate change discourse in tropical forests while highlighting their strengths and weaknesses. The initial search of peer-reviewed publications and gray literature yielded 2622 records, which were subjected to inclusion and exclusion criteria based on The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta Analyses guidelines, resulting in a final list of 65 records for in-depth qualitative analysis. The study establishes that the mechanisms in place have contributed mainly to more coordination and incentives to manage climate risks, primarily through tropical forests conservation. However, hurdles such as inadequate participation and involvement of the local and indigenous people, insufficient national and local policy frameworks and bureaucracies around emissions monitoring, measuring, reporting, and verification processes continue to slow tropical forest conservation. Thus, there is a need for more integrated, multilevel, and diverse stakeholder engagement to achieve the set global targets effectively.

Afterword

For a professor of law who teaches and writes on intellectual property and health, this collection is both fascinating and immensely useful. This is especially so given my work on the history of the life science industries and, going back to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, my work on

COP26 AND HEALTH: SOME PROGRESS, BUT TOO SLOW AND NOT ENOUGH

COP26 AND HEALTH: SOME PROGRESS, BUT TOO SLOW AND NOT ENOUGH

Assessment Method on United Nation Sustainable Development Goals, Applied for a Sustainable City, with a Focus on Greater Khartoum Services

The first approach for environmentally sustainable development to the global community was introduced in 1992 in the United Nations conference on environment and development, the "Earth Summit", which took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.(genda21). Defining Sustainable development as the one that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
 
 Therefore, the study will focus on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals UN-SDGs and the making of Sustainable cities. The aim of the research is to propose a framework to transform Greater Khartoum into a Sustainable city and to find out criteria for an Assessment Method that is applicable for Greater Khartoum. Which including providing Safe affordable housing and basic services, Sustainable transportation, Sustainable home settlements in the three towns, protect culture and Natural Heritage, Reduce Waste including water, air and solid waste, public access, Green-space, Support positive economic, social, and environmental links between urban and rural areas, National and local disaster risk reduction strategies, Interlinkages and implications for policy-making
 
 In addition, the methodology of the research focuses on defining, identifying, and measuring the indicators and sub-items. The measurement applied through survey and questionnaire. Distributed and distribute to all engineers specialized in architecture, urban, civil, electrical, and mechanical engineers in the three cities (Khartoum-Khartoum North-Omdurman).
 
 Finally, the outcomes of the research, applying the criteria of SDGs to evaluate the present situation in sustainable development criteria in Greater Khartoum; most of the indicator record results the research recorded results show that the goals were not achieved in most of the situations, between (20-30) especially in services (Table 1), waste management and open spaces are average (40-49). Will provide valuable recommendations towards improving the future and urban planning and sustainable development for the Capital city.

Environment Problems and Sustainable Development: with Special Reference to Thoothukudi District of Tamil Nadu

Productive resources, which are vital for economic development of nations, are primarily scarce among nations. Capital being an important productive resource is abundant in industrialized economics. Structural adjustments in developing economics due to the introduction of globalization, since 1991, enabled Indian economy to attract these productive resources in a massive scale. Being the second largest populated nations of the world, India is unable to exploit its labour resources fully, due to the scarce availability of capital. This is one of the main reasons, why India had not achieved the desired level of economic growth, as expected. However the flow of capital movements to India during the post reform period is encouraging. As a result, India has achieved the growth rate of GDP at 7.2% per annum recently. But due to the uncontrolled growth of urbanization and industrialization, expansion and massive intensification of agriculture and the destruction of forests has created heavy pressure on land, forests, water and biodiversity. In the era of globalization, water has considered as an economic goods due to the higher demand. Water quality problem arises due to the extractive industries as well as from various manufacturing and agricultural production processes. Various pollutants are generated as the by product in the production of Pesticides, leather goods, detergent, plastic, pulp and paper. These pollutants have led to major environmental issues such as Forest and Agricultural land degradation, Resource depletion (water, mineral, forest, sand, rocks etc.,), Environmental degradation, Public Health, Loss of Biodiversity, Loss of resilience in ecosystems, Livelihood Security for the Poor. In recent years there has been growing concern about degradation and pollution of environment and climate change as they impact on future development of both the developing and developed countries. In 1992, representatives of over 150 countries met at Rio in Brazil to discuss the environmental issues and their implications for future development of the world. This meeting at Rio is called the ‘Earth summit’ or the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED).

Measurement of Composites Index on Low Carbon Development Supporting Food Security

Since the concept of low carbon development (LCD) was adopted at the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, Indonesia has been committed to implementing the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2020, the country issued Presidential Regulation No. 18, which made LCD one of the national priority programs to maintain economic and social through low emission activities and reduce the overexploitation of natural resources. The LCD is a way for the country to overcome the tradeoff between economic growth and environmental degradation. Nevertheless, LCD is a new initiative for Indonesia, so it needs strategic indicators that influence the achievement of development. This paper attempts to integrate macro-regional development indicators that combine each region’s gross domestic product, human development index, and unemployment rate with LCD indicators, including the environmental quality index and g reenhouse gas emissions. The combined indicators were constructed by composite index through the Shannon entropy method, geometric and arithmetic means using the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method. The results show significant differences among provinces concerning to macro-regional indicators once the LCD indicators were incorporated. The results of this analysis could be used by policymakers to evaluate the green development of regions.

How can we pay for it all? Understanding the global challenge of financing climate change and sustainable development solutions.

Despite the heightened attention to climate change and sustainable development initiatives by governments, civil society groups, and private companies in the USA and worldwide, the international community is confronted with a question that has existed since the 1992 Earth Summit: how can we pay for it all? To better understand this climate change and sustainable development goals (SDGs) funding dilemma, there needs to be greater clarity around four climate change investment and finance-related questions that are frequently absent or inadequately addressed in the academic and policy literature. Firstly, what are or should be the boundaries of climate change investment and finance when the problem of climate change becomes impossible to separate from biodiversity, land use management, and other dilemmas related to the broader SDGs? Secondly, how we should define and what constitutes “adequate” financial resources to address the climate change and SDGs dilemmas on the global level? Thirdly, why is it important to close the gap between climate change adaptation and mitigation funding levels? Finally, what role should the private sector and business actors play in terms of climate change investment and finance issues? In addition to achieving greater clarity around these four issue areas, I argue in this article that three questions are likely to shape the future success (or failure) of the global climate change investment and finance architecture. One, what is likely path of the United Nations as a global climate change/sustainability governance institution? Two, will the emerging Green New Deal model in the USA and in other countries actually materialize? Three, what is the future outlook for “market-fixing” sustainability-driven enterprises?

A Concept of Optimum Forest Area for the Sustainable Development of Nepal

Forest sector was badly suffered due to anthropogenic activities in the last two centuries before it is getting revitalized due to serious conservation efforts particularly after the Earth Summit in 1992. In order to expedite the development efforts by being considerate to the environment of the planet we live, United Nations has adopted seventeen sustainable development goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. Sustainable development aims for harmony among physical, social and environmental development, and hence, guides for finding a balanced approach of development and conservation. This paper highlights the need for finding a balance between infrastructure development and forest conservation initiatives in Nepal with a focus of attaining SDGs by 2030. The economic status of Nepal is reviewed along with the plans, policies and trends of forest conservation. It highlights the need for a system perspective in which forest conservation is a component of the overall objective of sustainable development. A theoretical framework of optimum forest area for Nepal is presented by considering the contributions and obstacles of the forest sector towards attaining SDGs. Rather than focusing on complicated mathematical models; this paper presents a simple and practical concept of gauging the attainment of SDGs by a single index that may be useful to planners. The optimum forest area for Nepal has not been assessed and will be a scope of future studies. Once the idea of optimum forest area is adopted, major breakthroughs can be expected towards attaining SDGs in Nepal.

Assessing the Relationship between Food Insecurity and Agricultural Sustainability (Case Study: Rural areas of Gorgan County)

Introduction: Since the 2009 Earth Summit, the importance of sustainability in order to protect the environment, cropping systems and food security has been emphasized as part of sustainability. In this regard, the present study was conducted to evaluate the relationship between food insecurity and agricultural sustainability in Gorgan County in the 2019-2020 year. Materials and Method: Data was collected based on two types of questionnaires of farmers and specialists (for weighting criteria and sub-criteria of sustainability). The coping strategy index was used to measure food security and analytical hierarchy process was used to measure agricultural sustainability. Pearson correlation coefficient was used to evaluate the relationship between food insecurity and agricultural sustainability.Results and discussion: Based on the aggregated sustainability criterion, North Esterabad with a weight of 0.236 was selected as the most sustainable village. Ghorogh, Roshanabad, Anjirab and South Esterabad villages with weights of 0.199, 0.197, 0.195 and 0.173 are in the next priorities. According to the environmental criterion, South Esterabad with a score of 0.216, according to the economic criterion, North Esterabad with a score of 0.249 and according to the social criteria, Roshanabad with a score of 0.204 had the highest level of sustainability. Also, according to the coping strategy index, 14 households (4.67%) had food security, 211 households (70.33%) had poor food insecurity, 54 households (18%) had moderate food insecurity and 21 households (7 %) Experience severe food insecurity. There is also a strong negative correlation between food insecurity and overall, economic and environmental sustainability. Suggestion: Given the importance of agricultural sustainability in improving food security, it is suggested that policymakers design and implement policies in order to improve economics, social and environmental sustainability that have negative effects on food insecurity.

Carbon footprinting of universities worldwide: Part I\u2014objective comparison by standardized metrics

BackgroundUniversities, as innovation drivers in science and technology worldwide, should be leading the Great Transformation towards a carbon–neutral society and many have indeed picked up the challenge. However, only a small number of universities worldwide are collecting and publishing their carbon footprints, and some of them have defined zero emission targets. Unfortunately, there is limited consistency between the reported carbon footprints (CFs) because of different analysis methods, different impact measures, and different target definitions by the respective universities.ResultsComprehensive CF data of 20 universities from around the globe were collected and analysed. Essential factors contributing to the university CF were identified. For the first time, CF data from universities were not only compared. The CF data were also evaluated, partly corrected, and augmented by missing contributions, to improve the consistency and comparability. The CF performance of each university in the respective year is thus homogenized, and measured by means of two metrics: CO2e emissions per capita and per m2 of constructed area. Both metrics vary by one order of magnitude across the different universities in this study. However, we identified ten universities reaching a per capita carbon footprint of lower than or close to 1.0 Mt (metric tons) CO2e/person and year (normalized by the number of people associated with the university), independent from the university’s size. In addition to the aforementioned two metrics, we suggested a new metric expressing the economic efficiency in terms of the CF per $ expenditures and year. We next aggregated the results for all three impact measures, arriving at an overall carbon performance for the respective universities, which we found to be independent of geographical latitude. Instead the per capita measure correlates with the national per capita CFs, and it reaches on average 23% of the national impacts per capita. The three top performing universities are located in Switzerland, Chile, and Germany.ConclusionThe usual reporting of CO2 emissions is categorized into Scopes 1–3 following the GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting Standard which makes comparison across universities challenging. In this study, we attempted to standardize the CF metrics, allowing us to objectively compare the CF at several universities. From this study, we observed that, almost 30 years after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (1992), the results are still limited. Only one zero emission university was identified, and hence, the transformation should speed up globally.

Sustainability as an Effective Strategy for Development of Human Settlements.(Dept.A)

Sustainable development has become popular phrase in the 1990. The term came into wide use after publication in 1988 of our common future, the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, and was further spread after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the concept of sustainable development has been used to evaluate the development projects and rural natural resource management projects in developing countries. Recently, it has been applied to evaluate cities, communities and human settlements on the field of planning and growth management. Developing countries are in great need of sustainable development that meets the needs of the current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to obtain their own requirements.

Accountability Asset Recovery: A Leadership and Sustainability Initiative

Since Rio, also known as the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development [UNCED] held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992 and informally referred to as “The Earth Summit,” a practical way forward has eluded leadership specifically in regard to an accountability process. High instructions have been evaded and postponed by actors on the international economic front not due to the lack of vision, clarity, or agency infrastructure, but due to a missing link in the chain at follow-through. Dialogue-based public diplomacy competence is the key to collaboration with summit leadership when instigating geo-political macro-economic initiatives correspondent to the practice of public private partnership within the vast confines of a participatory democracy. Research can find positioned in the media, via internet and electronic sources, signals, visuals, and language cues by leaders which can be utilized as building blocks in conjunction with summit level leadership directives toward public participation, by citizens. Thus this missing link is the focus of an initiative created by this writer; the topic of this research.

Eco-Activism: Youth and Climate Justice in South Africa

Since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, there has been a surging network of climate youth movement (CYM) calling for an end to environmental injustice. In South Africa, while a handful have taken on the reins of climate activism, many remain nonchalant or the few outspoken ones face a greater hurdle of alienation from decision-making processes. To this end, the article draws from existing literature and surveys how young South Africans could mobilize themselves into CYM in order to reshape, reclaim and reconstruct their future in a changing environment.

25TH CONFERENCE OF THE PARTIES (COP 25) IN THE FRAMEWORK OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Küresel bir sorun olan iklim değişikliği ile mücadelenin ilk adımı 1992 yılında Birleşmiş Milletlerin “Dünya Zirvesi” adı altında Rio de Janeiro kentinde düzenlemiş olduğu konferansta “Birleşmiş Milletler İklim Değişikliği Çerçeve Sözleşmesi’nin (BMİDÇS)” kabul edilmesi ile atılmıştır. Bu sözleşmenin yürürlüğe girdiği 1994 yılından itibaren her yıl Taraflar Konferansı (COP) düzenlenmektedir. Bu bağlamda, "Harekete Geçme Zamanı" sloganı ile 2-13 Aralık 2019 tarihleri arasında Madrid’de düzenlenen 25. Taraflar Konferansı (COP 25) hem Türkiye hem de tüm dünya için önem arz etmektedir. Bu çalışmada 25. Taraflar Konferansı çıktı ve sonuçlar itibarıyla iklim değişikliği ile mücadele bağlamında ele alınmıştır. Yapılan inceleme neticesinde COP 25’in beklentileri tam olarak karşılayamadığı ve pek çok noktanın bir sonraki taraflar konferansına bırakıldığı görülmüştür.

Sustainable Production Policy Impact on Palm Oil Firms’ Performance: Empirical Analysis from Indonesia

Sustainable production is a key element of sustainable development. The concept was first introduced in the United Nations Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and has become an important item on the management of industries. In conjunction, the government of Indonesia introduced the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) policy in 2011 to adhere to international sustainability standards of Sustainable Palm Oil and of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+). This study investigates the impact of ISPO policy on palm oil firms’ performance. Using a sample of 409 palm oil firms of the Indonesian palm oil sector for the years 2010 and 2015, we employed a regression discontinuity (RD) with a difference-in-differences approach to explore the effect of the policy on firms’ performance. The RD results show that the introduction of the policy significantly reduced large firms’ profit by IDR 75m (equivalent to USD 5250); the negative effect of the policy increased with firm size. Furthermore, there was a significant reduction in performance for firms that promptly purchased land before the policy’s ban on land expansion. These findings suggest that a punitive sustainable production policy does not sustain the palm oil sector. Nevertheless, large companies that complied with international sustainability measures ahead of the introduction of the domestic policy benefited.

Potential for Ecotourism in Nepal

Ecotourism is a new approach in modern tourism. Sustainable tourism, green tourism, rural tourism, community-based tourism are the relative terms for ecotourism which have been emerged before 30 years. The potential of ecotourism as a strategy for sustainable development which was recognized during the Earth Summit in 1992 when sustainable tourism was considered as an environment friendly economic activity.
 Ecotourism is a burning issue and one of the fastest growing sectors in the world tourism industry. In Nepalese perspective tourism is in flux and gradually heading towards mass tourism. So it is the right time to implement the principles of ecotourism for its sustainability. Nepal Tourism Policy 2009 and Vision 2020 identify ecotourism as the key vehicle for sustainable tourism. Nepal government has been focusing it since long. Proper implementation of ecotourism principles can be very beneficial in Nepalese industry to achieve the desired goal.

Sustainable sourcing Healthy sweetness that respects nature

Sustainable sourcing <i>Healthy sweetness that respects nature</i>