Search Results (2)

Aquaculture and waste valorization have the potential to show solid achievements toward food security and improvements in the circularity of resources, which are crucial aspects of achieving a sustainable lifestyle in agreeance with Agenda 2030 goals. This study aims to optimize and simplify the decision-making processes for the valorization of marine wastes (natural and from aquaculture) as secondary raw materials to produce high-value-added market goods. However, significant concentrations of pollutants may be present within wastes, compromising overall quality, and social dynamics can hinder their usage further. Goro’s lagoon was chosen as a case study, where the relations between the ecosystem services, a thriving bivalve economy, and social dynamics are deeply rooted and intertwined. Therefore, in the manuscript cost–benefit and foresight analyses are conducted to determine the best usage for algal biomass considering pollution, social acceptance, and profitability. These analyses are virtually conducted on bio-refineries that could be operating in the case study’s area: briefly, for a thirty-year running bio-plant, the CBA indicates the two best alternatives with an income of 5 billion euros (NPV, with a 5% discount rate) for a biofuel-only production facility, and a half for a multiproduct one, leading to the conclusion that the first is the best alternative. The foresight, instead, suggests a more cautious approach by considering external factors such as the environment and local inhabitants. Hence, the main innovation of this work consists of the decision-maker’s holistic enlightenment toward the complexities and the hidden threats bound to this kind of closed-loop efficiency-boosting process, which eventually leads to optimized decision-making processes. Full article

This paper has a three-fold purpose: to challenge the current conceptualization of firm-stakeholder engagement, to popularize ‘allemansrätten’, the Scandinavian social innovation tradition for environmental value creation and environmental governance for ensuring ecological balance, and to introduce the concept of usufructual rights and the tutelage of natural resources for promoting human dignity. We underscore the deficiencies in the current stakeholder paradigm by pinpointing the specific essential catalysts that move the stakeholder theory to a new paradigm of a universal stakeownership. This is a quest to ensure the preservation and sustainability of natural resources and life support systems within specific institutional orders. We employ an adaptive research approach based on the Finnish/Nordic ecological case with a focus on the concept of ‘everyman’s right’: Everyone has the freedom to enjoy Finland’s/Scandinavia’s forests and lakes but with that also comes everyman’s responsibility to preserve the country’s nature for future generations. We argue that uncritically valorizing the universalized position of the current understanding of stakeholdership, with its flourish of contradictory and inaccurate characterization of global sustainability, retroactively aborts our ecological ideals from the uterus of preferred futures at the expense of humanity as a whole for the benefit of a few speculators and profiteers. Thus, we are woven into an ecological and economic tapestry whose present and future the current generation is accountable for in the era of universal stakeownership for a crucial evolutionary adaptation. This, however, cannot come about without fundamentally ‘democratizing’ resource democracy from the grassroots and questioning the global power structure that decides on the distributive effects of resources. Full article