Sustainable Digital Transformation for Inclusive Growth: Green Transition Strategies
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 March 2027 | Viewed by 531
Special Issue Editors
Interests: sustainability; inclusive growth; green strategies
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
In an era marked by urgent climate challenges and accelerating technological disruption, the intersection of sustainability, digitalisation, and inclusive economic development presents critical opportunities and complex trade-offs. This Special Issue seeks to advance scholarly and practical understanding of how digital transformation can be harnessed to drive regional inclusive economic growth while ensuring a just and ecologically responsible green transition. We invite interdisciplinary research that integrates natural resource economics, environmental valuation, data analytics, lean sustainability, and green transition strategies to address the complex relationships between digitalisation, sustainability, and regional development.
Digital technologies promise efficiency and innovation, yet carry significant environmental costs, from mineral extraction for hardware to data centre energy demands and e-waste. Simultaneously, digital tools offer unprecedented opportunities to optimise resource use, monitor ecosystem services, and accelerate circular economic models. Green transition strategies, policy mixes, investment frameworks, and institutional reforms for low-carbon, resource-efficient pathways provide essential context for situating digital transformation. Lean sustainability applies waste reduction and continuous improvement principles to minimise ecological footprints while maximising value. Data analytics, including machine learning and spatial analysis, enables sophisticated modelling of ecological-economic trade-offs. Environmental valuation methods, enhanced by digital data streams, allow meaningful integration of ecological considerations into decision-making. Supply chains serve as critical leverage points for embedding sustainability, tracing resource flows, and enabling circular economy transitions. Regional inequalities risk exacerbation without deliberate strategies addressing resource access, benefit distribution, data capacity, and differential environmental impacts on vulnerable communities.
We welcome theoretical, empirical, and policy-oriented contributions that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:
- Green transition strategies aligning digital transformation with decarbonisation, biodiversity, and circular economy goals at regional scales
- Lean sustainability principles in digital system design and infrastructure operations
- Data analytics applications in sustainable agriculture, water management, extractive industries, ecosystem monitoring, and low-carbon logistics
- Environmental valuation methodologies using high-resolution digital data for regional planning
- Spatial analytics for natural resource allocation and environmental compliance monitoring
- Lean-digital synergies enabling circular economies and industrial symbiosis
- Sustainable supply chain management in the digital age, supply chain resilience and regional vulnerability
- Governance models steering digitalisation toward sustainable resource use and inclusive access within transition frameworks
- Just transition in resource-dependent regions, addressing digital divides and equitable benefit-sharing
- Lifecycle analysis and environmental footprints of digital infrastructure
- Metrics and predictive modelling for evaluating sustainable digital transformation outcomes
- Regional case studies where digital transformation, resource management, and green transitions intersect
- Sectoral analyses of digital green transitions in energy, mining, agriculture, manufacturing, and transportation
- Behavioural and participatory dimensions of green transitions in digitally mediated environments
- Financing green transitions through climate fintech and digital-green infrastructure investment
- Trade-offs between digitalisation and sustainability, including rebound effects and resource competition
We encourage diverse disciplinary perspectives, including natural resource economics, environmental economics, data science, circular economy, innovation studies, economic geography, information systems, operations management, and transition studies. High-quality research articles, reviews, and policy analyses are invited.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Dr. Khine S. Kyaw
Dr. Zheng Liu
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- sustainable digital transformation
- inclusive growth
- natural resource economics
- environmental valuation
- green innovation
- data analytics
- lean sustainability
- circular economy
- digital economy
- supply chain resilience
- green transition strategies
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