With the advancing global sustainable development, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure has become a key channel for companies to communicate with stakeholders. This study takes Chinese A-share listed companies from 2018 to 2025 as samples to explore the correlation between ESG disclosure quality and corporate value creation, as well as its internal mechanism. The results show a significant positive correlation between ESG disclosure quality and corporate value creation, which is more prominent in highly polluting industries and private enterprises. The research indicates that ESG disclosure promotes corporate value creation through two paths: enhancing corporate innovation capabilities and alleviating financing constraints. The conclusions provide theoretical and practical references for enterprises to improve ESG management and for regulators to optimize ESG disclosure systems.

The Yellow River Basin (YRB), a typical river system facing the challenge of balancing ecological conservation and economic development, offers valuable insights for global sustainable watershed governance through its forestry green transformation. Based on panel data from nine provinces in the basin from 2005 to 2022, this study constructs an efficiency evaluation indicator system for forestry green development. This system incorporates four inputs (labor, land, capital, and energy), two desirable outputs (economic and ecological benefits), and three undesirable outputs (wastewater, waste gas, and solid waste). By systematically integrating the undesirable outputs-based super-SBM model and the global Malmquist–Luenberger (GML) index, this study provides an assessment from both static and dynamic perspectives. The findings are as follows. (1) Forestry green development efficiency showed fluctuations over the study period, with the basin-wide average remaining below the production frontier. Spatially, it exhibits a pattern of “downstream > upstream > midstream”. (2) The average GML index is 0.984 during the study period, representing an average annual decline in forestry green total factor productivity of 1.6%. The growth dynamics transitioned from a stage dominated solely by technological progress to a dual-driver model involving both technological progress and technical efficiency. (3) The drivers of forestry green total factor productivity growth in the basin show profound regional heterogeneity. The downstream region demonstrates a synergistic dual-driver model of technical efficiency and technological progress, the midstream region is trapped in “dual stagnation” of both technical efficiency and technological progress, and the upstream region differentiates into four distinct pathways: technology-driven yet foundationally weak, efficiency-improving yet technology-lagged, endowment-advantaged yet transformation-constrained, and condition-constrained with efficiency limitations. The assessment framework and empirical findings established in this study can provide empirical evidence and policy insights for basins worldwide to resolve the ecological-development dilemma and promote forestry green transformation.

Is goal-setting an effective strategy for global sustainability governance? Insights from the Sustainable Development Goals

This study, analyzing the intersection of trade and socio-environmental governance, investigates how the requirement for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria influences business practices beyond the borders of the European Union (EU). The research adopts a qualitative methodology based on documentary analysis and case studies of large European companies that already publish sustainability reports aligned with the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (EU) 2022/2464 (CSRD) and international standards. The results demonstrate that the EU exerts indirect regulatory pressure on third-country companies integrated into its value chains, encouraging the adoption of standardized reports and reinforcing the role of transnational administrative governance in promoting sustainability. The analysis also indicates that large companies in the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) are progressively converging on these standards, demonstrating alignment with EU standards and opening up prospects for regulatory harmonization within the Agreement. This dynamic creates both opportunities and challenges: although standardization promotes innovation and transparency, it imposes significant compliance costs, especially for small and medium-sized companies within MERCOSUR. It is concluded that international trade agreements can act as instruments of global sustainability governance, provided they are designed to balance competitiveness and socio-environmental protection through specific provisions, monitoring and technical cooperation, thus strengthening the role of governments and companies in this process.

Background: Singapore faces pressures from rapid urbanization, climate change, and digital economic transformation amid limited land and resources. As both a city-state and global economic hub, Singapore develops adaptive strategies that balance growth, sustainability, and competitiveness through technology-driven governance and long-term planning. Aims: This study analyzes Singapore’s adaptation strategies in addressing urban, environmental, and digital economic challenges while evaluating policy effectiveness and limitations within the frameworks of the global city, state capitalism, and sustainability governance. Methods: A qualitative literature review and SWOT analysis were conducted using secondary data from academic journals and policy reports. The analysis focuses on the integration of spatial, environmental, and economic policies as instruments of global city adaptation. Results: Findings reveal three main pillars: environmental resilience through innovation, smart urbanization via smart city and transit-oriented development, and economic resilience through high-tech industrial diversification and nationwide digitalization. Policies such as carbon taxation, adaptive drainage, NEWater, and the Smart Nation Initiative have enhanced national competitiveness and resilience. Challenges remain—foreign labor dependence, high living costs, digital energy consumption, and social inequality due to automation. Conclusion: Singapore’s adaptive strategy positions it as a model smart sustainable global city in Asia. Through state control, technological innovation, and sustainability-oriented governance, Singapore expands the global city paradigm under state capitalism. The study implies that urban sustainability depends not only on technological and market efficiency but also on the capacity of state and society to foster adaptive, collaborative, and equitable governance.

The year 2025 marks a critical juncture in global sustainability governance, coinciding with the tenth anniversaries of the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement, and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. Yet, progress remains uneven. Financing gaps, fragmented governance, and weak legal integration between climate and development commitments continue to constrain decarbonization. Energy storage, essential for stabilizing renewable-based power systems, exemplifies this challenge. Despite its recognized role in achieving Paris goals and advancing multiple SDG targets, storage deployment and financing remain ungoverned by binding international or European Union targets, reflecting a gap in the combined mosaic of internal and external commitments. This study extends an original integrative framework—first developed at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment for the electric utilities sector—to renewable energy storage in the EU. The methodology combines doctrinal legal analysis, sustainability science, and the policy coherence literature to evaluate how storage investment and regulation align with broader climate and development objectives. Particular attention is given to financial flows, subsidy reform, and enforceability in light of recent developments such as the Draghi Report on EU investment needs and the International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on climate finance obligations. Findings indicate that while storage has the potential to act as a systemic enabler of policy coherence for sustainable development, incoherence persists where investments, regulation, and justice considerations remain fragmented. Embedding storage policy coherence in binding EU legislative instruments would transform storage into both a lever and a leverage point for aligning the Paris Agreement and the SDGs, moving coherence from discourse to enforceable practice.

This study examines the integration of global sustainability into China's ideological and political education (IPE) curriculum, responding to the urgency of global environmental crises and UNESCO's call for transformative education. Employing a sequential mixed-methods approach, it investigates how the "community with a shared future for mankind" and UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can be systematically embedded in IPE to enhance students' global environmental literacy and political participation in environmental governance. The "Ideology-Governance-Action" (IGA) Tridimensional Curriculum Model, implemented at Southwest Jiaotong University Hope College, aligns learning objectives with the Paris Agreement and China's "ecological red line" policies via case-based learning, simulated UN climate negotiations, and NGO-led service-learning projects. Post-reform outcomes—72% increased SDG awareness up from 28% and 45% extracurricular sustainability engagement up from 15%—coupled with qualitative evidence of students critiquing "Western-centric" narratives and proposing China-led "ecological civilization" solutions, demonstrate feasibility and effectiveness. While faculty face interdisciplinary collaboration and resource challenges, the model offers emerging-economy higher education institutions (HEIs) a replicable framework to balance national sovereignty and global citizenship, with implications for curriculum design, faculty development, and student-led sustainability initiatives.

Understanding how media narratives frame the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is essential for global sustainability governance. This study presents a novel, data-driven analysis of 135,000 news articles mapped to SDGs 1–17 across 100 countries. Using polarity-based sentiment aggregation and principal component analysis (PCA), we reduce high-dimensional SDG sentiment profiles into a two-dimensional space and identify emergent clusters of countries using K-means. To contextualize these clusters, we integrate national-level indicators like Human Development Index (HDI), GDP per capita, CO2 emissions, and press freedom scores, revealing robust correlations between sentiment structure and developmental attributes. Countries with higher HDI and freer media environments produce more optimistic and diverse SDG narratives, while lower-HDI countries tend toward more polarized or crisis-framed coverage. Our findings offer a typology of SDG discourse that reflects geopolitical, environmental, and informational asymmetries, providing new insights to support international policy coordination and sustainability communication. This work contributes a scalable methodology for monitoring global sustainability sentiment and underscores the importance of narrative equity in achieving Agenda 2030.

Correction to “The Politics of Accountability in Global Sustainable Commodity Governance: Dilemmas of Institutional Competition and Convergence”

Leave no one behind: Prioritising equality and equity towards integration of global sustainability governance

Within the framework of global climate governance and sustainable development, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings have emerged as a critical indicator for assessing corporate sustainability. This study investigates the dynamic influence of media sentiment on ESG ratings in Chinas energy industrya three-dimensional analytical framework of media sentiment is developed to systematically examine the interplay among media discourse, public perception, and corporate sustainability practices. Using quarterly panel data from 139 A-share listed energy companies in China between 2021 and 2024this study integrates textual mining of CNKI financial press articles with ESG ratings from Huazheng Index. The empirical findings reveal the following: First, both optimistic and pessimistic media sentiment amplify fluctuations in ESG ratings, with the amplification effect being more pronounced in firms with lower information transparency. Second, ESG ratings of new energy firms exhibit greater sensitivity to media sentiment than those of traditional energy firms, underscoring the reputational vulnerability of policy-driven sectors. Third, optimistic sentiment is more likely than pessimistic sentiment to induce irrational upward shifts in ESG ratings, reflecting the asymmetric risk preferences postulated by prospect theory. This research incorporates media ecology theory into the ESG evaluation framework, addressing limitations of conventional financial-data-driven models; it also unveils the heterogeneous effects of media sentiment across different ESG dimensions, offering a theoretical foundation for differentiated governance strategies; and it extending the application frontier of big data methodologies in ESG research for the energy sector.

The 2024 revision of the Declaration of Helsinki (DoH) marks a pivotal shift in biomedical research ethics, with significant implications for nursing research. This paper critically evaluates the Declaration's relevance to nursing practice, with particular attention to challenges in low-resource settings. Key updates emphasising global health equity, environmental sustainability, participant-centred consent and artificial intelligence (AI) governance are examined through nursing's ethical lenses of justice, beneficence and patient advocacy. Using a multidimensional ethical framework grounded in Virtue Ethics, utilitarianism and phenomenology, the manuscript explores how nurses can ethically engage vulnerable populations, safeguard data privacy and advance inclusive, community-based research. It highlights gaps in the Declaration, particularly regarding algorithmic bias and digital consent and proposes practical strategies for nurse researchers, such as AI governance tools, dynamic consent models and context-sensitive sustainability practices. Rather than treating ethics as an abstract principle, the paper grounds theory in real-world practice, offering case examples that reflect the lived constraints of nursing researchers in underfunded and culturally diverse environments. By aligning ethical ideals with operational realities, this work reinforces nursing's critical role in shaping equitable and ethically resilient research practices under the revised Declaration.

Global supply chains have faced unprecedented disruptions in recent years, ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to geopolitical tensions and climate-induced shocks. These events have exposed structural vulnerabilities in operational models overly optimized for efficiency at the expense of resilience and sustainability. This conceptual paper proposes an integrated framework linking resilience enablers, post-pandemic operational strategies, and sustainability outcomes. Through a synthesis of the interdisciplinary literature across operations management, sustainability science, institutional theory, and organizational behavior, we develop typologies of operational responses—including agile, lean–green, circular, and decentralized models—and connect them to broader Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Drawing on systems thinking and the Triple Bottom Line framework, we present a conceptual model that outlines causal relationships between resilience drivers, adaptive operational strategies, and long-term sustainable performance. The paper further discusses policy implications for public and private sectors, offering insights for global sustainability governance. We conclude by outlining a research agenda to empirically test and refine the model through multi-method approaches. This study contributes to theory by reconceptualizing sustainable operations in the context of compound global disruptions and offers a normative direction for future scholarship and practice.

The global sustainability paradigm, catalyzed by environmental degradation since the 1960s, has positioned green consumption as a critical strategy to reconcile economic growth with ecological preservation. While international scholarship extensively explores this field, China's unique socioeconomic trajectory---marked by rapid industrialization, centralized governance, and the ``dual carbon'' (carbon peak and neutrality) targets---necessitates a dedicated investigation into its indigenous knowledge system. Leveraging CiteSpace, this scientometric study systematically analyzes 2,793 core journal articles from the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI, 1994--2024) to map the intellectual evolution of green consumption research. Key findings reveal three developmental phases: initial conceptualization (1994--2000), rapid expansion (2001--2011), and thematic stabilization (2012--2024). Cluster analyses identify dominant research foci, including green marketing, circular economy, and ecological civilization, with emerging frontiers in carbon neutrality and digital economy. Despite high scholarly output, collaboration networks exhibit sparse connectivity (density = 0.0004--0.0005), reflecting structural barriers in China's academic evaluation system that prioritizes first-author publications over interdisciplinary synergy. Methodologically, this study advances a systematic knowledge map to guide future research and policy formulation, emphasizing the synergistic potential of digital innovation and green finance in implementing sustainable consumption. The findings underscore China's policy-driven research paradigm, contrasting with Western market-centric approaches, and provide actionable insights for global sustainability governance.

The Chinese Foreign Relations Law (‘the FRL’) – a collection of rules legalizing China's foreign policies – was enacted in 2023. While technically a set of policy goals and public law rules, it provides an opportunity to orient Chinese private international law (‘PIL’) towards sustainable development. Notably, the FRL connects Chinese PIL with sustainable development for the first time and revisits the conceptions of what is being understood as ‘domestic’ versus ‘foreign’, and ‘public’ versus ‘private’. This article explores how PIL can leverage this shift to accommodate sustainability as a normative value, foster positive interactions with foreign laws and courts, and develop a robust and tailored regulatory function. By doing so, Chinese PIL, as a form of foreign relations law, can expand its function beyond conflict resolution and develop a role in China's foreign policy and global sustainability governance.

Coastal wetland degradation continues to threaten the stability and ecological function of rare waterbird habitats, highlighting the need for a multi-species, long-term habitat assessment framework. This study examines the YRDNR using an integrated approach that combines MaxEnt and HSI models, high-resolution Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) data, and Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation to assess habitat dynamics for five rare waterbird species from 2005 to 2024. The key findings include the following: (1) The total wetland area first declined, then increased, with natural wetlands decreasing and artificial wetlands expanding. (2) Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) emerged as the primary factor influencing habitat suitability, with species-specific environmental responses. (3) Habitats for Ciconia boyciana, Larus saundersi, Grus japonensis, and Numenius madagascariensis declined and then recovered, while the Cygnus olor’s habitat steadily expanded. Habitat fragmentation increased for Larus saundersi and Numenius madagascariensis, while patch size and connectivity improved for Ciconia boyciana, Grus japonensis, and Cygnus olor. (4) Overall, the suitable habitat area of rare waterbird increased, accompanied by a structural shift from natural to artificial wetlands. The proposed framework supports the long-term monitoring and precise management of coastal wetlands, offering valuable insights for global waterbird conservation and sustainable wetland governance.

Global supply chains have faced unprecedented disruptions in recent years, ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to geopolitical tensions and climate-induced shocks. These events have exposed structural vulnerabilities in operational models overly optimized for efficiency at the expense of resilience and sustainability. This conceptual paper proposes an integrated framework linking resilience enablers, post-pandemic operational strategies, and sustainability outcomes. Through a synthesis of interdisciplinary literature across operations management, sustainability science, institutional theory, and organizational behavior, we develop typologies of operational responses—including agile, lean-green, circular, and decentralized models—and connect them to broader sustainable development goals. Drawing on system thinking and the triple bottom line framework, we present a conceptual model that outlines causal relationships between resilience drivers, adaptive operational strategies, and long-term sustainable performance. The paper further discusses policy implications for public and private sectors, offering insights for global sustainability governance. We conclude by outlining a research agenda to empirically test and refine the model through multi-method approaches. This study contributes to theory by reconceptualizing sustainable operations in the context of compound global disruptions and offers a normative direction for future scholarship and practice.

Abstract: There exists a knowledge gap in the literature on how international actors address artificial intelligence (AI) in international sustainability governance. By addressing this gap and bringing a critical perspective, this paper aims to enrich discussions on AI within international relations. First, this paper shows that the development and deployment of AI-based technologies are mainly seen as an opportunity to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in international politics, while their drawbacks are only considered to a limited extent. Second, this paper refers to the tendency to rely on AI to address societal challenges that are considered too complex for humans to comprehend as potential "AI solutionism." It defines this approach as being based on an insufficient understanding of the operation and socio-environmental impacts of AI, arguing that these two aspects should be thoroughly analyzed by actors in global sustainability governance.

ABSTRACT This study examines the strategic responses of Brazilian agricultural interest groups to the sustainability demands in the EU-Mercosur Association Agreement (EMAA), with a focus on the EU’s anti-deforestation regulations. Employing document analysis, interviews, and a framing approach, it highlights the diverse strategies used by large-scale agribusinesses and family farmers to navigate international trade norms and sustainability standards. Large agribusinesses frame the EU’s regulations as protectionist while leveraging geopolitical rivalries, particularly Brazil’s ties with China, to contest Northern regulatory dominance. Meanwhile, smaller producers emphasize their role in sustainable practices but face marginalization in policymaking. The analysis reveals how Brazilian agribusiness actors challenge and reshape global sustainability governance, exposing asymmetries in North–South trade dynamics while advancing their economic interests. This case underscores the increasing agency of Southern capital in global trade negotiations and offers critical insights into the evolving intersection of trade, sustainability, and power in the global political economy.

Abstract Philanthropic foundations are key players in global sustainability governance. This paper explores the legitimation strategies these foundations use to justify their actions and positions in the sustainable development community. By combining Theo van Leeuwen’s legitimation framework with our novel analytical justice framework, we offer a new tool to analyse hard-to-research actors. Analysing data from 41 foundation websites, we find that foundations emphasize Global Egalitarian Cosmopolitanism in their values and objectives to align with global sustainability discourses. However, Libertarian ideas dominate when discussing programs and founders. This indicates there may be internal conflicts within foundations over the relationship between extreme wealth accumulation required for global philanthropy and sustainability objectives. In turn, this has implications for how foundations position themselves as agents of justice in sustainable development. While discourse analysis provides valuable insights into philanthropic legitimation strategies, further research is needed to fully understand how justice intersects with organizational decision-making.