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Economic Geography, Innovation, and Environmental Sustainability Transitions
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Economic Geography, Innovation, and Environmental Sustainability Transitions

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainability in Geographic Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2020) | Viewed by 32644

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Travis Gliedt

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability, College of Atmospheric and Geographic Science, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, United States
Interests: sustainability; energy system transitions; water system adaptation; green innovation

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainability transitions involve innovation in technology, infrastructure, and institutions. Sustainable innovation processes are expected to generate sustainability value and enhance social-ecological system integrity. Economic geographers studying transition activities and processes are interested in technology, infrastructure, and institutional changes and the resulting uneven impacts on places. Economic processes (e.g., investment, trade, research, and development) and non-economic processes (e.g., institutional changes) help diffuse technologies for sustainability transitions. Given that both economic and non-economic processes are important for innovation, economic geographers and transitions researchers can help understand how these processes are coordinated, accelerated, and guided in the direction of sustainability targets.

This Special Issue seeks original research that addresses some of the major challenges facing sustainability transitions. For example, papers can focus on innovations that lead to integrated changes in technology, infrastructure, and institutions. Submissions can examine how triple-bottom-line economic development strategies create green jobs and sustainability value, as well as heterogeneous impacts on the well-being of places. Papers can also focus on understanding how global sustainability targets (e.g., the UN Sustainable Development Goals), federal sustainability transition plans (e.g., the Green New Deal in the United States of America or the Energiewende in Germany), or state/provincial sustainability policies (e.g., the Ontario Green Energy and Green Economy Act) lead to uneven innovation and economic development patterns. Papers are welcome to explore the economic and non-economic processes that connect these targets, plans, and policies to local, urban, and community innovations. A further topic of interest is how authority is distributed between global, federal, and state/provincial actors and local/regional innovation systems.

Papers can focus on understanding the impacts of business creation, expansion, attraction, and entrepreneurship strategies in the context of sustainability transitions. Assessments of societal benefits from sustainability job creation including multiplier effects and government tax revenues are also encouraged. Finally, case studies that connect innovation processes to triple-bottom-line economic development strategies will help explain how technology changes lead to broader economic benefits as well as social disparities between places.

Other topics include but are not limited to the following:

  • Greening of value chains and value cycles.
  • The relationship between technological change, pollution levels, and economic development.
  • Comparisons between the technological innovation systems framework and multi-level sustainability transition theory (e.g., socio-technical systems).
  • Examinations of misalignments between technology and policy innovations.
  • Case studies of sustainability transitions that highlight processes that have the potential to lead to radical innovations.
  • Triple, quadruple, and quintuple helix innovation system implications for sustainability transitions.

Dr. Travis Gliedt
Guest Editor

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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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

  • Technological innovation systems
  • economic geography
  • socio-technical systems
  • niche
  • regime
  • landscape
  • sustainability
  • clusters
  • place

Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

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25 pages, 2802 KiB  
Article
Studying the Transition towards a Circular Bioeconomy—A Systematic Literature Review on Transition Studies and Existing Barriers
by Alexandra Gottinger, Luana Ladu and Rainer Quitzow
Sustainability 2020, 12(21), 8990; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12218990 - 29 Oct 2020
Cited by 42 | Viewed by 5035
Abstract
The European Commission’s strategic long-term vision for 2050, “A Clean Planet for All”, identifies the bioeconomy and the circular economy as key strategic areas for achieving a climate-neutral economy. Focus is given to the sustainability of biomass and the circularity of materials. However, [...] Read more.
The European Commission’s strategic long-term vision for 2050, “A Clean Planet for All”, identifies the bioeconomy and the circular economy as key strategic areas for achieving a climate-neutral economy. Focus is given to the sustainability of biomass and the circularity of materials. However, in order to facilitate the transition toward a sustainable bio-based circular economy and to unlock its potential, strong accompanying measures are required. These should be designed based on a systematic understanding of transition drivers and barriers. This paper, after providing a systematic review of transition research on the circular bioeconomy, focuses on the identification and classification of transition barriers, clustering them into relevant categories. Moreover, it provides a comparison of the barriers identified by various frameworks. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Economic Geography, Innovation, and Environmental Sustainability Transitions)
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26 pages, 1010 KiB  
Article
Making Use of Evaluations to Support a Transition towards a More Sustainable Energy System and Society—An Assessment of Current and Potential Use among Swedish State Agencies
by Sofie Sandin
Sustainability 2020, 12(19), 8241; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12198241 - 07 Oct 2020
Viewed by 1608
Abstract
Evaluations hold the potential to support decision-making so that current global challenges related to climate and energy can be addressed; however, as the challenges are becoming increasingly large and complex, new and transformative evaluation approaches are called for. Such transformative evaluation in turn [...] Read more.
Evaluations hold the potential to support decision-making so that current global challenges related to climate and energy can be addressed; however, as the challenges are becoming increasingly large and complex, new and transformative evaluation approaches are called for. Such transformative evaluation in turn builds on an extended and more deliberate use of evaluations. This study focuses on the current evaluation use practices among Swedish state agencies who are commissioning and/or conducting evaluations within climate and energy-related areas. Building on focus group sessions with four agencies and a structured interview questionnaire answered by representatives at five state agencies, the results shed light on how informants perceive the current practices of using evaluations, following the models of use presented in the evaluation literature. These results show perceived use as mainly instrumental or conceptual, along with showing an overall emphasis on models of use that are deemed constructive for moving towards transformative evaluations. The results also outline key benefits and challenges related to the adoption of a transformative evaluation approach. Such benefits include a more structured planning and use of evaluations, while challenges relate to institutional barriers and mandates to coordinate evaluations on a transformative scale. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Economic Geography, Innovation, and Environmental Sustainability Transitions)
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23 pages, 2225 KiB  
Article
Spatial Agglomeration of Manufacturing in the Wuhan Metropolitan Area: An Analysis of Sectoral Patterns and Determinants
by Lei Luo, Zhenhua Zheng, Jing Luo, Yuqiu Jia, Qi Zhang, Chun Wu, Yifeng Zhang and Jia Sun
Sustainability 2020, 12(19), 8005; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12198005 - 28 Sep 2020
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2566
Abstract
The important role of the entity economy, especially manufacturing, has been further highlighted after the outbreak of COVID-19. This study fills a research gap on manufacturing in the Wuhan Metropolitan Area by analyzing the spatio-temporal evolution patterns and characteristics of manufacturing, exploring the [...] Read more.
The important role of the entity economy, especially manufacturing, has been further highlighted after the outbreak of COVID-19. This study fills a research gap on manufacturing in the Wuhan Metropolitan Area by analyzing the spatio-temporal evolution patterns and characteristics of manufacturing, exploring the major location factors causing spatial reconstruction and comparing the effect intensities of the different factors in the manufacturing sector. From 2003 to 2018, the process of industrial suburbanization in the Wuhan Metropolitan Area continued to strengthen and currently the overall spatial pattern of manufacturing in the Wuhan Metropolitan Area is characterized by spreading in metropolitan areas and aggregation in industrial parks. The results of a spatial metering model showed that the dominant factors affecting the layout of manufacturing included innovation and technical service platforms, industrial parks, the number of large enterprises, living convenience, and air quality. However, the effect intensity of the different location factors varied among industries. The findings may help the government to understand the characteristics of agglomeration and spreading in the manufacturing industry and, in accordance with the dominant factors affecting the location of this industry, rationally develop ideas for adjusting the industrial layout in the post-coronavirus age. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Economic Geography, Innovation, and Environmental Sustainability Transitions)
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25 pages, 4856 KiB  
Article
Empowering Urban Governance through Urban Science: Multi-Scale Dynamics of Urban Systems Worldwide
by Juste Raimbault, Eric Denis and Denise Pumain
Sustainability 2020, 12(15), 5954; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12155954 - 23 Jul 2020
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2579
Abstract
Cities are facing many sustainability issues in the context of the current global interdependency characterized by an economic uncertainty coupled to climate changes, which challenge their local policies aiming to better conciliate reasonable growth with livable urban environment. The urban dynamic models developed [...] Read more.
Cities are facing many sustainability issues in the context of the current global interdependency characterized by an economic uncertainty coupled to climate changes, which challenge their local policies aiming to better conciliate reasonable growth with livable urban environment. The urban dynamic models developed by the so-called “urban science” can provide a useful foundation for more sustainable urban policies. It implies that their proposals have been validated by correct observations of the diversity of situations in the world. However, international comparisons of the evolution of cities often produce unclear results because national territorial frameworks are not always in strict correspondence with the dynamics of urban systems. We propose to provide various compositions of systems of cities in order to better take into account the dynamic networking of cities that go beyond regional and national territorial boundaries. Different models conceived for explaining city size and urban growth distributions enable the establishing of a correspondence between urban trajectories when observed at the level of cities and systems of cities. We test the validity and representativeness of several dynamic models of complex urban systems and their variations across regions of the world, at the macroscopic scale of systems of cities. The originality of the approach resides in the way it considers spatial interaction and evolutionary path dependence as major features in the general behavior of urban entities. The models studied include diverse and complementary processes, such as economic exchanges, diffusion of innovations, and physical network flows. Complex systems dynamics is in principle unpredictable, but contextualizing it regarding demographic, income, and resource components may help in minimizing the forecasting errors. We use, among others, a new unique source correlating population and built-up footprint at world scale: the Global Human Settlement built-up areas (GHS-BU). Following the methodology and results already obtained in the European GeoDiverCity project, including USA, Europe, and BRICS countries, we complete them with this new dataset at world scale and different models. This research helps in further empirical testing of the hypotheses of the evolutionary theory of urban systems and partially revising them. We also suggest research directions towards the coupling of these models into a multi-scale model of urban growth. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Economic Geography, Innovation, and Environmental Sustainability Transitions)
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15 pages, 9336 KiB  
Article
Analysis of China’s Manufacturing Industry Carbon Lock-In and Its Influencing Factors
by Xia Wang, Lijun Zhang, Yaochen Qin and Jingfei Zhang
Sustainability 2020, 12(4), 1502; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12041502 - 18 Feb 2020
Cited by 24 | Viewed by 2908
Abstract
There are industry lock-in and regional lock-in phenomena in China’s manufacturing industry carbon emissions. However, the existing researches often focus on global carbon emissions, which is not adverse to finding the main problems of manufacturing industry carbon emissions. The biggest contributions of this [...] Read more.
There are industry lock-in and regional lock-in phenomena in China’s manufacturing industry carbon emissions. However, the existing researches often focus on global carbon emissions, which is not adverse to finding the main problems of manufacturing industry carbon emissions. The biggest contributions of this study are the identification of the industry lock-in and regional lock-in of China’s manufacturing industry and the finding of the regional factors that affect the carbon lock-in of the manufacturing industry, which points out the direction for the low-carbon transformation of the local manufacturing industry. This paper is based on the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) carbon emissions coefficient method and energy consumption data from 2000 to 2016 to count the manufacturing industry carbon emissions of 30 provinces in China (except Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Tibet). On this basis, the paper uses a spatial–temporal geographical weighted regression (GTWR) model to analysis the regional influencing factors of the high-carbon manufacturing industry. Results demonstrate that China’s high-carbon manufacturing industry mainly concentrates on the ferrous metal processing industry, non-metallic mineral manufacturing industry and other sectors. In addition, the carbon emissions of high-carbon manufacturing industries are mainly concentrated in Bohai Bay and the North China Plain. The industrial structure and economic scale are the main reasons for the regional carbon lock-in of the high-carbon manufacturing industry, and the strength of the lock-in has continued to increase. Resource endowment is a stable factor of carbon lock-in in high-carbon regions. Technological progress helps to unlock carbon, while foreign direct investment results in the enhancement of carbon regional lock-in. This study focuses on the regional factors of carbon lock-in in the manufacturing industry, hoping to provide decision support for the green development of China’s manufacturing industry. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Economic Geography, Innovation, and Environmental Sustainability Transitions)
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26 pages, 3607 KiB  
Article
The Causality between Participation in GVCs, Renewable Energy Consumption and CO2 Emissions
by Zhiheng Wu, Guisheng Hou and Baogui Xin
Sustainability 2020, 12(3), 1237; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12031237 - 08 Feb 2020
Cited by 15 | Viewed by 3099
Abstract
Using the panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) model accompanied by the system-generalized method of moment (System-GMM) approach, this paper investigates the dynamic causality between participation in global value chains (GVCs), renewable energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions throughout 1990–2015 for 172 [...] Read more.
Using the panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) model accompanied by the system-generalized method of moment (System-GMM) approach, this paper investigates the dynamic causality between participation in global value chains (GVCs), renewable energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions throughout 1990–2015 for 172 countries. The results show that participation in GVCs negatively causes renewable energy consumption except for the Middle East and North America (MENA) and sub-Saharan Africa. Second, except for the Asia–Pacific region and globally, participation in GVCs has no causal impact on CO2 emissions, and participation in GVCs has a positive effect on CO2 emissions in the Asia–Pacific region and globally. Third, except for globally and sub-Saharan Africa, CO2 emissions have no causal impact on participation in GVCs; however, CO2 emissions hurt participation in GVCs globally and in the sub-Saharan African region. Forth, renewable energy consumption positively causes participation in GVCs in MENA, while renewable energy consumption does not cause participation in GVCs globally and in other regions. Fifth, there is no causality between CO2 emissions and renewable energy consumption both at the global and regional levels. Several policy implications are proposed and discussed for promoting participation in GVCs and improving the environment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Economic Geography, Innovation, and Environmental Sustainability Transitions)
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Review

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17 pages, 230 KiB  
Review
Green New Deal Policy of South Korea: Policy Innovation for a Sustainability Transition
by Jae-Hyup Lee and Jisuk Woo
Sustainability 2020, 12(23), 10191; https://doi.org/10.3390/su122310191 - 06 Dec 2020
Cited by 74 | Viewed by 14057
Abstract
This paper explores the recently announced “Green New Deal” policy of South Korea as a sustainability transition strategy. Originally proposed as a post-COVID-19 stimulus plan, the Green New Deal is a sustainability-centered strategy for building a low-carbon and climate-neutral economy. The Green New [...] Read more.
This paper explores the recently announced “Green New Deal” policy of South Korea as a sustainability transition strategy. Originally proposed as a post-COVID-19 stimulus plan, the Green New Deal is a sustainability-centered strategy for building a low-carbon and climate-neutral economy. The Green New Deal sets out eight targets to be accomplished under three strategic areas: green urban development, low-carbon decentralized energy, and innovative green industry. The Deal also takes measures to protect the people and sectors at a higher risk of being left behind in the process of the economic transition. It is an upgraded version of the “Green Growth” national policy, with more emphasis on sustainability in addition to the growth aspect. This paper will examine the accomplishments and challenges during the Green Growth policy era and argue why the transition to the new Green New Deal is necessary for a sustainability transition. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Economic Geography, Innovation, and Environmental Sustainability Transitions)
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