Search Results (1,204)

The global countryside constitutes a complex social–ecological system undergoing profound transformation. Understanding how such systems navigate transitions and achieve resilient, sustainable outcomes requires examining the interactions and adaptive behaviors of multiple actors. This study investigates the restructuring of rural China through a complex adaptive systems lens, focusing on the county of Lin’an in Zhejiang Province. We employ a middle-range theory and process-tracing approach to analyze the co-evolutionary pathways shaped by the interactions among three key agents: local governments, enterprises, and village communities. Our findings reveal distinct yet interdependent behavioral logics—local governments and enterprises primarily exhibit instrumental rationality, driven by political performance and profit maximization, respectively, while villages demonstrate value-rational behavior anchored in communal well-being and territorial identity. Crucially, this study identifies the emergence of a vital integrative mechanism, the “village operator” model, underpinned by the collective economy. This institutional innovation facilitates the synergistic linkage of interests and the integration of endogenous and exogenous resources, thereby mitigating conflicts and alienation. We argue that this multi-agent collaboration drives a synergistic restructuring of spatial, economic, and social subsystems. The case demonstrates that sustainable rural revitalization hinges not on the dominance of a single logic, but on the emergence of adaptive governance structures that effectively coordinate diverse actor logics. This process fosters systemic resilience, enabling the rural system to adapt to external pressures and internal changes. The Lin’an experience offers a transferable framework for understanding how coordinated multi-agent interactions can guide complex social–ecological systems toward sustainable transitions. Full article

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors have become central to international trade, transforming how firms, industries, and governments engage in global markets. This study conducts a systematic literature review to synthesize current knowledge on the ESG–trade nexus. Using content analysis, three key thematic clusters were identified: (i) ESG in supply chains and logistics, (ii) ESG in export performance and international competitiveness, and (iii) ESG and trade within geopolitics, energy, and resource security. The synthesis reveals that ESG has evolved from a voluntary corporate initiative into a structural determinant of global competitiveness, resilience, and legitimacy. Building on these findings, the study proposes an integrative ESG–Trade framework, which conceptualizes ESG as a multidimensional governance ecosystem comprising (i) institutional and regulatory, (ii) technological and operational, and (iii) geopolitical and strategic dimensions. This framework explains how sustainability regulations, digital transformation, and global political economy dynamics co-evolve to shape trade flows and industrial upgrading. The study highlights the need for greater regulatory coherence and strategic ESG integration while offering a foundation for future interdisciplinary and empirical research on sustainable trade governance. Full article

This article critically examines the role of Buen Vivir (Sumak Kawsay) as a Latin American alternative to development and to contemporary sustainability debates, clearly distinguishing this paradigm from Western approaches to sustainable development rooted in economic growth and the exploitation of nature. Guided by the question What are the contributions of Buen Vivir (Sumak Kawsay) as a Latin American alternative to the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainability?, this study conducts a systematic review of scientific publications indexed in Web of Science and Scopus between 2018 and 2024. Following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, a final sample of 69 documents was analyzed. The findings indicate that Buen Vivir is not only a cultural and philosophical framework but also a political and practical model articulated through education, territorial governance, solidarity and community-based economies, and the protection of nature as a subject of rights. The study concludes that Buen Vivir constitutes a decolonial, epistemic, and biocentric proposal in which the social, economic, and environmental dimensions function as complementary and interdependent. From this perspective, Buen Vivir contributes to the construction of sustainable communities from a Latin American standpoint and offers alternative pathways for rethinking global sustainability debates. Full article

Ecosystem restoration is increasingly recognised as part of the global solution for building a resilient, low-emissions economy, with its associated employment opportunities helping to provide political legitimacy for government investment. In Aotearoa New Zealand, however, little is known about the employment effects of government-funded ecosystem restoration initiatives. This study addresses that gap by analysing project-level data from 359 “Jobs for Nature” projects to examine how funding levels and contextual factors influence direct employment outcomes. Multiple regression analyses build on one-way ANOVA tests to quantify the contribution of funding and contextual factors to employment outcomes and to assess their differential impacts across various settings (regions, agencies, project types, and durations). The analysis reveals that while funding is the primary driver of employment—with each additional NZD 100,000 creating approximately 0.7 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs—contextual factors call for a more dynamic, targeted policy approach to maximise marginal employment returns. Three key policy implications are accordingly drawn: (1) direct more funding to regions with higher socio-economic deprivation; (2) preferentially support projects of medium-term duration; and (3) evaluate and replicate the practices of high-performing funding agencies. Full article

With the rapid development of mobile internet technology, the explosive growth of image–text multimodal data generated by social networking platforms has provided rich practical scenarios and theoretical research value for multimodal sentiment analysis. However, existing methods generally suffer from inefficient modal interaction and imperfect sentiment aggregation mechanisms, particularly an over-reliance on visual modalities, leading to an imbalance in cross-modal semantic correlation modeling. To address these issues, this paper proposes a sentiment analysis algorithm for image–text modalities based on curriculum learning and attention mechanisms. The algorithm introduces the concept of curriculum learning, fully considering the negative impact of irrelevant images in image–text data on overall sentiment analysis, effectively suppressing interference from irrelevant visual information without requiring manual data cleaning. Meanwhile, the algorithm designs a dual-stage attention architecture—first capturing cross-modal correlation features via cross-modal attention, then introducing an attention bottleneck strategy to compress redundant information flow, achieving efficient feature fusion by constraining intra-modal attention dimensions. Finally, extensive experiments were conducted on two public datasets, demonstrating that the proposed method outperforms existing approaches in sentiment prediction performance. Full article

Transition to renewable energy leads to assumed economic diversification; however, the institutional risks for hydrocarbon-dependent economies remain high. This paper identifies the conditions under which transitioning economies enter a novel dependency during the renewable transition. Our analysis combines the Multi-Level Perspective with Historical Institutionalism to explore Azerbaijan’s 30-year trajectory across the oil, gas, and emerging renewable phases, serving as an illustrative case. Evidence from the literature and expert interviews illustrates that renewable investments are channelled through hydrocarbon-era institutional practices, enclave-style contracting, centralised decision-making, and reliance on foreign technology providers. These conditions constrain domestic niche formation and limit opportunities for local capability development. As a result, renewables become embedded within the existing institutional architecture rather than displacing it, serving primarily to substitute hydrocarbons as an export commodity rather than to catalyse diversification. The paper conceptualises this trajectory as a possible renewable dependence: a pathway in which renewable energy is integrated into an export-oriented, state-dominated political economy without altering its core institutional logic. The identified configurations are common across hydrocarbon economies in Central Asia and MENA, offering transferable insights into when and why renewable transitions risk reproducing, rather than transforming, established development models. Full article

Eco-cities have become global initiatives in recent years. This paper aims to discuss the construction, evolution and future of eco-city movements in China, especially in areas with abundant ecological resources. Extant literature emphasizes that sustainable development is the purpose of an eco-city. However, in the spatial practice of ecological modernization, many European and American countries develop ecological construction at a slower pace, resulting in sustainable ecological outcomes. Those countries developed ecological practices at a smaller scale, aiming to achieve green towns with zero carbon emission. In contrast, the construction of China’s eco-cities typically involves building new cities in outer suburbs with a larger scale and faster speed. This has led to the rapid construction of so-called ecological cities without sustainable development. In this context, this paper starts from the perspective of political economy and conducts qualitative research on the Shanghai Dongtan Eco-city as a case study. It analyzes the motivation and practical measures of different actors by examining the planning, design and construction process of Dongtan Eco-city during 1998–2024. The results suggest that gaining national political priority through the intervention of international actors and foreign investment is the key to the local pilot ecological city project. This paper further analyzes the differences between the planning concept and the actual practice of Dongtan Eco-city, critically discussing the “Eco-city as the enclave of ecological technology.” This is driven by the integration of eco-city construction and the local government performance appraisal system. Consequently, the pursuit of economic returns redirected Dongtan’s sustainability experiment into a form of green-branded retirement real-estate development between 1998 and 2012. From 2012 to 2024, Chongming’s development model continued to evolve, as the project was reframed from a real-estate-led eco-city paradigm toward an “ecological island” agenda articulated in the language of sustainable development. Full article

Fuels constitute one of the most strategically significant categories of goods in the global economy. In many countries, including Poland, fuel prices are determined not only by global market dynamics but also by domestic fiscal instruments such as excise taxes, value-added tax (VAT), and fuel surcharges. The primary objective of this study is therefore to assess the extent to which tax burdens and profit margins shape diesel prices in Poland, thereby providing a deeper understanding of the market’s sensitivity to fiscal interventions and the pricing strategies adopted by fuel companies. The analysis draws on weekly data for the period 2006–2025, encompassing crude oil prices, wholesale and retail diesel prices, and relevant tax components (VAT, excise tax, and fuel surcharges). Methodologically, the study employs the Bai–Perron breakpoint test alongside correlation and comparative methods. The findings indicate that changes in indirect taxation and the fuel surcharge in Poland were predominantly upward and incremental, exerting only limited immediate effects on wholesale and retail fuel prices. This pattern was particularly evident outside of periods of acute geopolitical shocks, such as the 2022 war in Ukraine, when government interventions aimed to mitigate sudden price surges. Moreover, analysis of PKN Orlen’s margin dynamics shows that the company remained consistently profitable, with the highest processing margins observed following the reduction of the VAT rate, highlighting the interplay between fiscal policy and corporate pricing behavior. An exception occurred in 2022, when political involvement led to negative retail margins despite a reduction in VAT, a policy decision intended to mitigate sharp increases in fuel prices. The evidence suggests that petrochemical companies have greater capacity to affect prices through adjustments to wholesale margins than to retail margins. The study also underscores the critical role of fiscal policy in protecting households from fuel price volatility. It also demonstrates that carefully designed adjustments to taxation and other fiscal instruments can meaningfully influence market outcomes and corporate profitability, thereby highlighting their importance in broader economic stabilization efforts. Full article

Wastewater management plays a critical role in advancing the circular economy, as wastewater is increasingly considered a recoverable resource rather than a waste product. This paper reviews physical, chemical, biological, and combined treatment methodologies, highlighting a lack of a holistic framework in current research which includes both the operational phases of wastewater treatment and proper risk analysis tools. To address this gap, an innovative methodological framework for wastewater recovery and risk management within an integrated logistic–production process is proposed. The framework is structured in five steps: description of the logistic–production process, hazard identification, risk assessment through the Failure Modes, Effects, and Criticality Analysis (FMECA), prioritization of interventions using the Action Priority (AP) method, and definition of corrective actions. The application of the proposed methodology can optimize the usage of available resources across various sectors while minimizing waste products, thus supporting environmental sustainability. Furthermore, political, economic and social implications of adopting the proposed approach in the field of energy transition are discussed. Full article

Rural-to-urban migration is most prevalent in developing countries and has been a key driver of urban growth since the onset of industrialization. Initially beneficial, this migration trend has become unsustainable due to its rapid and uncontrolled rise, posing challenges for both rural and urban development. As a result, attention has shifted toward reducing rural–urban migration and encouraging reverse migration to achieve sustainable development. This study investigates the factors influencing rural-to-urban migration in Türkiye, aiming to contribute to rural development policies in similar economies. Using the Arellano–Froot–Rogers estimator, the study analyzes data from 81 Türkiye provinces over a 12-year period, focusing on variables such as population, human development index, agricultural and industrial income, terrorism, agricultural subsidies, and unemployment. The findings reveal that population, agricultural GDP, terrorism, and human development index significantly impact migration trends. These results suggest that rural outmigration is driven not only by economic factors but also by social and political dynamics. Effective rural development strategies, especially those aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), must therefore adopt integrated and collaborative approaches to reduce migration pressure and potentially reverse the trend in the long term. Full article

Developed and developing economies use globalization and foreign direct investment (FDI) to pave the way and to maximize economic growth. This study aims to investigate the impact of globalization and FDI on the economic growth of South Africa over the period from 1998 to 2022. The study employed the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach on annual data from the World Bank and the KOF index of globalization. ARDL tests reveal a long-run positive and statistically significant relationship of 12.7% in the case of economic globalization. This indicates that there is a reasonable level of the emergence of a globalized economy to integrate new and diverse systems, within internal economic growth forces that are supporting the globalization and endogenous growth theories. Political globalization is negative and statistically significant, while social globalization is positive but is used to depress long-run economic growth because of its insignificant status. The novelty of this study is to focus on the impacts of economic, social, and political globalization and FDI on the economic growth of South Africa, through direct and interactive procedures. The findings can be used by South African policymakers and other countries to prioritize reaping the benefits of globalization. These outcomes can be used to sensitize and promote policies that can attract relevant FDI, while enhancing economic growth. Full article

Like many modern economies, Latvia experiences demographic decline, which will cause shortages in the labor force in the future. This article aims to characterize the decline in the working-age population and the factors causing it using system dynamics, PEST, and SWOT analysis. First, the article provides two scenarios for the numerical presentation of a long-term change in the population of working age in Latvia due to emigration. Second, the article describes political, economic, social, and technological factors important for a territory to be economically active and attractive for living and working, which, in turn, is a prerequisite for a populous territory. Third, the article characterizes current peculiarities of the labor market in Latvia given findings on political, economic, social, and technological factors, including achievements and issues. As a result of the analysis, the article provides an analysis of a highly illustrative case study of Latvia, with low birth rates and high emigration, on the one hand, and a broad understanding of reasons for demographic decline on the other hand. In combination with the current characteristics of the labor market, the analysis provides knowledge on achievements and issues for the long-term development of the labor force. The article contributes to debates through a multimethod approach to clarify both working-age population projections and factors affecting the economic attractiveness of a territory. The novelty of the research lies in the application of system dynamics for population projections and a combination of PEST and SWOT analysis for macroeconomic issues. The findings may advise policy-making. The main research findings demonstrate that the expected decline in the working-age population in Latvia is alarming. Besides policies for preventing further decline in the working-age population, policy-making should address such issues as the lack of human capital in smart specialization areas, a low interest of society in becoming an entrepreneur, and insufficient activity in high-tech sectors of the economy. At the same time, the realization of smart specialization strategies contributes to labor market resilience. Full article

This review explores the intersection of gender, geography, and sustainability by examining the role of women in the blue economy across Europe’s Outermost Regions (ORs). Despite growing recognition of the blue economy’s role in sustainable development, there is limited understanding of how women participate in these sectors at the geographic periphery of the European Union. Using publicly available data from Eurostat, INSEE, ISTAC, and other national portals, we analyze employment patterns through a gender lens, supported by qualitative insights from case studies in regions such as the Azores, Réunion, and Guadeloupe. Due to the scarcity of disaggregated blue economy data, general labor force participation is used as a proxy, highlighting both opportunities and visibility gaps. Theoretically grounded in feminist political ecology and intersectionality, the review identifies key barriers, including data invisibility, occupational segregation, and structural inequalities, as well as resilience enablers such as women-led enterprises and policy interventions. We conclude with targeted recommendations for research, policy, and practice to support inclusive blue economies in ORs, emphasizing the need for better data systems and gender-sensitive coastal development strategies. Full article

Family businesses play a central role in the ongoing growth and development of the Vietnamese economy. Economic, social, and demographic changes are undermining the transition of family business to succeeding generations. This study examines the challenges of intergenerational succession in Vietnamese family businesses through the lens of social capital theory. The article examines how the next generation of family business leaders in Vietnam is addressing social capital deficiencies that hinder effective business transition. The study employed a constructionist ontology and an interpretivist epistemology, utilising semi-structured interviews with family business owners and managers. The research draws from participants’ perceptions of social, political, and competitive contexts and the subsequent behaviour that is predicated by those contexts. Findings: Economic transformation, driven by disruptions to the business environment through central planning, coupled with demographic shifts and changes in educational attainment, has impacted family structures, complicating intergenerational business transfers. This is compounded by social transformation weakening familial relationships and connections critical to family cooperation and business continuity. The preservation and renewal of social capital are critical issues for succession planning in Vietnamese family businesses. This research addresses gaps in understanding the interplay between the generational divide, social capital, and family business succession in Vietnam. Full article

Groundwater sustains more than 60% of irrigation in Pakistan’s Indus Basin, yet accelerating depletion, rising salinity and fragmented governance threaten agricultural productivity and rural livelihoods. Although new monitoring technologies and provincial water laws have emerged, a persistent gap remains between scientific evidence, policy frameworks and farmer practices. This study applies the Science–Policy–Practice Interface (SPPI) to examine these disconnects, drawing on qualitative data from multi-stakeholder focus groups and interviews with farmers, scientists and policymakers in Punjab, Sindh and federal agencies. The analysis identifies five governance challenges: weak knowledge integration, fragmented institutions, political resistance to regulation, limited adaptive capacity and under-recognition of farmer-led innovations. While depletion is well documented, it rarely informs enforceable rules and informal practices often outweigh formal regulation. At the same time, farmers contribute adaptive strategies, such as recharge initiatives and water-sharing arrangements, that remain invisible to policy. The findings highlight both the potential and the limits of SPPI. It provides a valuable lens for aligning science, policy and practice but cannot overcome entrenched political economy barriers such as subsidies and elite capture. The study contributes theoretically by extending SPPI to irrigation-dependent aquifers and practically by identifying opportunities for hybrid knowledge systems to support adaptive and equitable groundwater governance in Pakistan and other LMICs. Full article