Systems Approaches to Green Supply Chain Decision-Making for Sustainable Development Goals

Dear Colleagues,

Achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires coordinated transformations across production, consumption, logistics, and governance systems. As environmental challenges become increasingly interconnected with economic and social development, green supply chain management has emerged as a strategic priority for governments, businesses, and society. Green supply chains are inherently complex systems involving multiple stakeholders, competing objectives, and dynamic interactions across organizational and geographical boundaries. Addressing these challenges therefore requires systems approaches that support integrated, adaptive, and evidence-based decision-making. Recent advances in artificial intelligence, blockchain, big data analytics, digital twins, the Internet of Things, and other digital technologies are reshaping the design and management of sustainable supply chains. In addition, carbon neutrality initiatives, circular economy strategies, environmental regulations, and evolving consumer expectations are creating new opportunities and challenges for supply chain decision-making. These developments call for interdisciplinary research that integrates systems science with decision analysis, operations management, optimization, data analytics, and sustainability to better understand the complexity, uncertainty, and interdependence of modern supply chain systems. This Special Issue aims to provide an international forum for high-quality research that advances systems approaches to green supply chain decision-making in support of the SDGs. We welcome original research articles and comprehensive reviews that contribute to theoretical development, methodological innovation, and practical applications. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to, systems approaches to green and sustainable supply chain management, decision-making for sustainable supply chains, circular economy and closed-loop supply chains, carbon neutrality and low-carbon supply chain optimization, artificial intelligence and digital technologies for sustainable supply chains, multi-criteria decision-making, systems modeling and optimization, resilient and adaptive supply chain systems, consumer behavior and sustainable consumption, environmental policy and governance, risk and uncertainty management, sustainable logistics and transportation, and interdisciplinary studies that advance sustainable development. This Special Issue closely aligns with the aims and scope of Systems by promoting systems thinking and systems science for understanding and managing complex socio-technical systems. It encourages interdisciplinary research on complexity, decision-making, modeling, optimization, and intelligent systems while fostering innovative solutions to sustainability challenges. By bringing together researchers from diverse disciplines, this Special Issue seeks to advance both theoretical insights and practical approaches for developing more sustainable, resilient, and intelligent supply chain systems that contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Dr. Xingwei Li
Guest Editor

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